Sample First Year Briefs

Tasmanian College of the Arts

Visual Communication

PLEASE NOTE THAT EACH YEAR BRIEFS ARE REWRITTEN AND REFINED TO ENSURE THAT WE DELIVER A STRONG AND ENGAGING PROGRAM

We look forward to working with you in the future.

Summary

In this subject you will explore; graphic image-making, message construction, and communicating messages through found imagery and hand generated image and collage.

Introduced projects will provide you with a strong introduction to experimental imagemaking and working with a range of messages. Projects are structured around a
number of workshop tasks including using line and collage. The two larger projects will engage your image-making skills with your ability to generate and communicate a range of ideas and messages through two different contexts and platforms.

You are encouraged to make mistakes and explore new ways of working, to challenge your own stereotypes and viewpoints, and to re-evaluate your opinions through image and message-making.

You are asked to respect the boundaries set by the format, material, colour specifications and context, you are however encouraged to push subject and content as far as you think possible.

Submission Requirements

Your final folio will consist of two major projects, workshop projects and journal.

Journal + Workshop Exercises

This should include research into graphic image-making, general research into the field of graphic design and visual communication, workshop exercises and progressive visuals indicating a range of ideas. Each entry into your journal should be annotated and if imagery or information is sourced from the internet it MUST be properly referenced.

Your folio submission should also include written critical comments about your design decisions. It MUST ALSO include the following class workshop activities:

1. POINT AND LINE WORKSHOP - Expressive Marks NARRATIVE DESIGN
2. STABILITY AND DYNAMICS WORKSHOP - layouts
3. TYPOGRAPHY WORKSHOP - Type expression
4. TEXTURE AND COLLAGE

+ Evidence of further research into ideas, concepts and techniques delivered in the studio and lecture programs

Project 1

COLOUR MY WORLD

(Using a variety of the above mentioned strategies + evidence of how you achieved your results)

Project 2

CONCEPTUAL POSTER 'THE STANCE'

+A RATIONALE; A short written piece that describes your final thoughts, ideas and the concepts. No more than 200 words.

ASSESSMENT DETAILS

• Workshops and journal 30%
• Project 1 35%
• Project 2 35%

Please make sure your work has a cover sheet and all submission requirements as listed on previous page are easily identifiable.

Project:

Rants and Musings Poster

Brief

Boldly designed to catch our gaze, posters have throughout history, appealed to our subconscious wishes, fears and desires. Posters employ scale, colour and a clear design hierarchy to ensure that the desired message is received by the viewer.

This assignment is designed to reinforce the material covered during this unit. You are asked to put into practice the elements and principles of art and design, and create an image which expresses something that inspires you, and of course, have fun creating your design! Your poster should be as individual as you.

This assignment asks you to design a poster that expresses one of your most inspired statements/quotes, heard or said.

The objective is to create a poster with a strong concept, one that communicates clearly the one inspirational source. You have creative freedom but must meet the minimum specific requirements set out in the brief, prior to finalising your artwork. The use of image together with type is required. The treatment of typography and image is in your hands; the poster can be full colour, produced in any way you like.

Content

The poster MUST contain the following elements:

• Imagery - this can be photography,illustration,painting,collage,and soon.
• Typography - your poster must include at least one word as the headline,or you may use the statement; typography should help strengthen the concept.

RESEARCH YOUR CONCEPT, the subject of the poster, this will help with initial brainstorming. Look at the many different ways it can be visually represented, formats, mediums, and so on.

Begin by looking at solutions/designs of other posters. These could be directly related to your subject, and indirectly - poster design generally. Browse through design books and journals in the library. Look on the internet, visit a book store where you will find contemporary design books.

Think about the purpose of your poster; how will you engage with the viewer to get the message across.

Record and document your research for submission with your final design. This will form part of assessment under 'conceptual development'.

BRAINSTORM your initial ideas. Discuss and evaluate ideas. Then complete a series of thumbnails, exploring your chosen concept. Select the most appropriate designs, draw up roughs and discuss.

LAYOUT AND TYPOGRAPHY will need careful consideration. Explore stable and dynamic principles. What font will you choose? What style or expression will suit best, and so on.

There are many options, consider whether digital or hand generated fonts are more suitable.

DO NOT use images or photographs from the internet, unless they are stock images suitable for free use and high in resolution (300 dpi min), which you then may use in order to create your own image, eg. a collage or montage. You can also include images from other sources like magazines. All images/illustrations must be your own, all must be original work.

DO NOT use the computer to compose your poster. You may use the computer to typeset the text. Or to print sections, for example photos/images that will be used in the poster. Please get approval for all production techniques before finalising your design idea.

All initial design ideas must first be considered by hand, on paper, and submitted as evidence of your conceptual development, and as evidence of your creative process.

Think about how you can produce the most professional poster at this stage of your studies, using techniques and mediums you are best at.

Careful consideration of every element is crucial to the success of the posters' ability to communicate the intended message. To complete the final piece you may consider using the cut and paste method to create your layout, as well as colour photocopying.

Use the class time wisely and complete the necessary work at home in order to complete the poster by the due date.

Size and Presentation

• A3 portrait ONLY (297 mm x 420 mm)
• Submit the final poster, in a plastic sleeve with your FOLIO
• No mounting required
• Include ALL your research and developmental work, neatly presented

Workshop

The Power of Typography

Brief

Hand render your own name in both a serif and sans serif font.

OBJECTIVES

• To consider the forms that create typography
• To investigate questions of legibility
• To explore the dynamics of shape and counterspace
• To realise the communicative power of type-only designs
• To explore and interpret typographic form to express meaning.

Specifics

Project

Illustrate the meaning of a word with its graphic treatment.

Choose an adjective - ecstatic, glum, exhausted, angry, bubbly - that describes you and render it in a descriptive way. Consider the page area, counterspaces and how these considerations impact on the perceived meaning. The goal of this project is to visually and conceptually interpret an existing form into an expressive, conceptually layered visual message.

Size

210 x 210mm square

Process

Pick 5-10 words - hopefully much more interesting than the ones I have suggested and consider the following strategies to communicate their meaning:

• Your ideas could express a literal and descriptive approach.
• You could take a more playful approach.
• You might try to express sound associated with meaning.

Whatever your approach, the effective solution will result from careful reflection on the word's meaning - its symbolism in present day language and close observation of its formal elements and shape. Create at least 5 quick thumbnail sketch ideas for each of your words. This is the research stage. Review your sketches for the ideas that are the simplest and yet most compelling. Also ask your classmates and teachers for feedback. Refine three of your best solutions further in class.

At the start of the next class you will submit three hand rendered/photocopied options in A4 plastic sleeves.

Output in class

• At least 5-10 pages of thumbnail sketches (representing 5-10 different words)
• Three hand rendered refinements (of any of the best solutions)

Submission for Start of Next Class

• Three hand rendered refinements

WORKSHOP

COLOUR MY WORD

Fanelli covers a broad range of emotional ground, somewhere between the serene and the boisterous, happiness and melancholy, never failing to stimulate. 'Her art is in no way artifice. Her art is personal expression and through it she experiences what in real life is impossible, opening up new worlds and new thoughts.' Steven Heller

INTRODUCTION

Colour is a powerful communication tool available to you as graphic designers. It can be used to manipulate, confuse and entice. There is a big business in colour, so much so, that colour forecasters are paid large sums to identify and sell 'this seasons new colour palette'. Well actually they have spent the previous two years devising, hatching and marketing their choices. Dulux lets you know it will 'colour your world', and Pantone is announcing the newest brightest and best choices for you the young hip designer. Your colour decisions are not always yours for the making. Colour can suggest emotion, reflect cultural identities or hold branding associations. As children we begin to connect with colour and learn of its associations - animals, environments, rainbows, traffic lights and warning signs. In the commercial world the communicative power of colour can build strong associations with brands (e.g. Coca Cola red) .

We live in a world of constructed colour. Colour that surrounds us in our daily lives has a profound effect on our mood and on our behaviour. It was only recently that prisons where painted in bright cheery shades of yellow, this practice has since stopped since it was discovered that the wrong shade of yellow can evoke violent and psychotic episodes. Interiors, the clothes we wear, light, the colours encountered in landscape can have a profound impact on our mood and sense of well being.

Piet Mondrian, famously stated when explaining his use of colour within his work, 'Everything is expressed through relationship. Colour can exist only through other colours, dimension through other dimensions, position through other positions that oppose them. That is why I regard relationship as the principal thing.'

This project requires you to investigate the 4 simple colour harmonies listed on the previous page. You will produce four colour layouts: Monochrome, Analogous, Complimentary and Triadic.

Brief

Having investigated the use of basic shape, collage and form in the previous projects, you are to produce 4 A5 vertical pages or 4 A5 horizontal pages (depending on concept) that explore sequence, pattern and narrative through the use of colour.

As subject you are asked to create a visual interpretation of one of the children's novels listed. You may choose to focus on a key chapters, or illustrate a favourite piece of text within. Alternatively you may choose to illustrate four different front covers. The choice is yours and open to discussion. Be creative, lateral, and have lots of fun.

Refer back to your success with composition, texture, scale etc...

You can create colour, with paints, coloured paper, collage etc...

What's Required

4 A5 Horizontal or Vertical layouts which explore colour

List of children's novels:

Workshop

The Power of Typography

Aims

• To consider the forms that create typography
• To explore and interpret typographic form to express meaning.

Project

Experiment One

In this project you will explore and develop strategies to craft letter forms. This project marks the beginning of your exploration into form, meaning and the language of typographic design. We will unpack typographic terminology, methods of production and introduce you to type rules, do's and don'ts which you need to know before you can rebel, reject and create your own rules.

Type design is a rich and rewarding area, which requires focus, commitment, inventiveness and expression.

As future designers, you need to explore, critique, and enter into constructive dialogue importantly take creative risks. Failure is an important part of learning.

As you will soon see, there are many ways and methods to construct typographic form, from intricate drawing, to collage, to digital manipulation.

PROCESS

You have been supplied with a type template and a grab bag of material goodies. You will notice that the type is all in UPPERCASE, there is a reason for this UPPERCASE madness. Using the materials supplied, you are going to interpretatively reproduce A, B, C, P, Q, R. The focus will be on the stroke. You must not introduce any curves or true diagonals. Consider proportion, weight, and structural features.

To assist you to hold it all together, use a sheet of graph paper and work each letterform to a 9cm x 9cm square grid.

At the start of the next class you will submit each solution photocopied on A4 sheet of paper. And all letterforms photocopied together on one sheet.

OUTPUT IN CLASS

• Construction of letterforms
• Making

WHAT'S REQUIRED

Complete set: A,B,C,P,Q,R

Have ready to sight by your lecturer at the beginning of week 10 inserted into the sleeves of an inexpensive A3 folio.

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