Industry - Design Development: Unit 8

 Industry - "Plastic Beach"

For this unit I was required to create a typographical response to a quote with relevance to environmental impact. I chose to explore the work of the band Gorillaz, in particular their album Plastic Beach - as it directly links to the theme of environmental damage by human negligence.

By the end of this project I had a total of 2 outcomes, one being a digitally animated quote and the other being a physical poster incorporating a variety of relevant materials to portray the meaning of the quote, alongside a typographic image of the quote. I feel these outcomes were fairly successful in relation to the brief, as both used my understanding of colour, shape language, and experimentation with forms to portray a message relevant to the brief and representative of each chosen quote.

In particular, I believe my second outcome was successful due to my experimentation with materials I wouldn't normally use. I decided to laser cut a piece of acrylic plastic for a typographic image, and surrounded this image with waste plastic materials to better link to the lyrics portrayed. I have previously only used the laser cutting process once and would usually rely solely on my illustrative skills to hand-make assets. By using this method, It created a much more refined piece of work and allowed me to further incorporate relevant materials (plastic) into the typography itself.
This experimentation extended to my first outcome as well, as I had never previously created an animation or used After Effects software. In doing so, I have found a new area of interest that I could later incorporate into future projects.

I wasn't happy with the simplicity of my initial animation, as I do not feel it accurately depicted the meaning behind the quote. However, I then decided to rework this animation - adding gradients of colour and changing the direction of some assets, to better translate the text visually.

I found most aspects of this project very challenging as all of the areas were fairly new experiments for me. I have only briefly touched upon typography in the past, am very inexperienced with laser cutting and collage, and had never previously used After Effects. Due to this inexperience, I found myself learning how to use these different skills and methods throughout the project - which will prove useful in future projects for if I want to revisit such methods.

 

Outcome 2: "Some Kind of Plastic"
physical collaged poster

The one area that I struggled with the most was planning. I feel that I went in to this project with a lack of ideas and due to this struggled to plan out my time practically. This lead me to developing my ideas in the heat of creation rather than going in with an initial plan. To improve on this aspect in the future, I plan on ideating more ideas than the ones I end up moving forward with, and then actively considering the days and weeks ahead for when I begin to schedule my project. This way, I will be able to balance my time researching and creating without feeling confused as to where I am in the project's development.

Throughout this project, I have picked up a basic understanding of how to use After Effects to create an animated piece of text, and how to use laser cutting technology to create a 3D representation of my artwork out of a chosen material.

I plan on using my newfound knowledge of After Effects in the future, perhaps incorporating my illustration skills into creating animations/animatics to tell a story or represent a particular theme.