OUGD505 STUDIO BRIEF TWO - DISOBEDIENT OBJECTS NORTH STUDY TASK

The Brief:

Background:
Understanding the needs of specific layouts for specific jobs is key to your development and practice. There are many times as a designer that you will have to consider differing formats for layout due to clients’ needs and also the need of information.

This one week task is a practical exercise that will highlight layout skills and understanding of application of text, point sizes, columns, margins, gutters, image, page size, bleed, scale, format, pagination, fluidity, audience and composition.

You will be given dummy type / text / images to work with during this task that is studio based. You will be given instructions per layout requirements and also a context to help you decide how information should be positioned and organised.

You will be expected to add your own design flourishes upon these designs, where appropriate.

You will share visual representations of your work with a partner / small group.

Layout 1 – Minimal Text / image: A5 Flyer

Layout 2 - Text Heavy / Imagery: Concertina spread (10x A5 pages)

Extended Practice:
As soon as you have completed your flyers and brochures, you are expected to extend the range of design across platforms. Suggestions are: Poster / mail shot / tickets and appropriate mediums.
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Disobedient Objects North Brief 1

Background:
This simple layout will ask you to utilise a short amount of body copy, title, date, and location. The minimal amount of text allows for the simple use of single imagery and the type to serve as the main visual elements.

Brief:
You are asked to produce a simplistic flyer design for a 'Disobedient Objects North' Exhibition at the People's History Museum (www.phm.org.uk) using the instructions below.

Specifications:
Format: A5 – Portrait
Title: Disobedient Objects North
Sub-Title: In Association with the V&A
Date: August 3, 2015 - August 29, 2015
Location: People's History Museum, Manchester.
Contacts:
www.phm.org.uk
www.vam.ac.uk
Image: Single exhibit-based image, People's History Museum logo, V&A logo,
Use of two colours only: Black and white
(Use embedded InDesign file and follow grid.)
Save as PDF file.
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Disobedient Objects North Brief 2:

Background:
This text/image heavy layout will ask you to utilise body copy, title, date, and location, heading, sub heading, imagery, indexes, highlighted quotes. The amount of text allows for the use of imagery and the type to serve as the main visual elements.

Brief:
You are to layout and design a 10-page concertina folded brochure for a forthcoming exhibition titled ‘Disobedient Objects North’ at People's History Museum, Manchester. All images, copy and branding are included. You have to create a visually stimulating layout that showcases the artists’ imagery but does not sacrifice important information in this process. The images and information must flow harmoniously and offer a taste of what is to be expected during the exhibition. One further consideration may be whether you emphasise the 'North' aspect: whether the materials need to offer a distinction between this and the V&A (London) exhibition from 2014-2015.
Branding elements must be kept to black and white. Images must be unaltered and in colour.

Considerations:
Headings, headlines, body copy, grid, type, colour, image sizing, bleed, margins, flow, audience, narrative, language, purpose, size, external print methods, preparing for print, stock, distribution.

Specifications:
Format: A5 x10 – Portrait – Concertina spread (front and back).
Title: Disobedient Objects North
Sub-Title: In Association with the V&A
Date: August 5, 2016 - August 31, 2016
Location: People’s History Museum, Left Bank, Spinningfields, Manchester, M3 3ER, United Kingdom

Introduction:
Disobedient Objects is an exhibition about the art and design produced by grassroots social movements. It includes exhibits loaned from activist groups from all over the world, bringing together for the first time many objects rarely before seen in a museum.

Additional info:
From a Suffragette tea service to protest robots, this exhibition is the first to examine the powerful role of objects in movements for social change. It demonstrates how political activism drives a wealth of design ingenuity and collective creativity that defy standard definitions of art and design. Disobedient Objects focuses on the period from the late 1970s to now, a time that has brought new technologies and political challenges. On display are arts of rebellion from around the world that illuminate the role of making in grassroots movements for social change: finely woven banners; defaced currency; changing designs for barricades and blockades; political video games; an inflatable general assembly to facilitate consensus decision-making; experimental activist-bicycles; and textiles bearing witness to political murders.

Additional info:
Disobedient Objects How-To Guides
Disobedient objects are often carefully designed solutions to problems faced by activists on the ground, in the midst of social and political movements around the world. The exhibition includes several take home guides on how-to make some of these objects, from Book Bloc Shields to Tear-Gas Masks. Made available with help from many of the activists who created these objects, the guides were illustrated by Marwan Kaabour at Barnbrook. Additionally, these are now available online at www.vam.ac.uk.

Additional info:
Essentially Disobedient Objects is an exhibition about out-designing authority. Looking beyond art and design framed by markets, connoisseurs and professionals, this exhibition considers the role of social movement cultures in re-making our world from below. Disobedient objects can be ingenious and sometimes beautiful solutions to complex problems, often produced with limited resources and under duress. Working by any media necessary, they may be poor in means, but they are often rich in ends.
Disobedient objects have a history as long as social struggle itself. Ordinary people have always used them to exert counterpower, and object-making has long been a part of social movement cultures alongside music, performance and the visual arts. While these other mediums of protest have been explored before, this exhibition is the first to look broadly at material culture’s role in radical social change. It identifies these objects as part of a people’s history of art and design.

Additional info:
When looking at making which places itself in social movements’ conditions of production, we have tried to select objects which embody an important or notable moment in their histories of making. But it is far from an exhaustive survey. We hope this exhibition will be a starting point to get beyond easy stereotypes and open up objects of social movement cultures as an area for further study.

Quote:
"First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you." — Nicholas Klein

My understanding of this study task:

From carefully reading this study task brief, I gather that there are two sections to it. The first being to design the layout for an A5 portrait flyer for the Disobedient Objects North exhibition at the People's History Museum in Manchester. This should include the body copy, title, date, location, and one image. Everything should be in black and white, presumably for ease of reproduction. The second aspect being to produce the layout for a 10 page concertina folded brochure. This should include the body copy, title, date, location, heading, subheading, imagery, indexes and highlighted quotes. The layout should be visually stimulating and should showcase the artists imagery but not sacrifice important information. It should also offer a taste of the exhibition as well. The branding should be in black and white, however the imagery should be in colour with the photographs unaltered. Once the layouts have been produced they should be shared with a parter or a group of people, and then they should be expanded upon to create further outcomes, such as a poster, or tickets or any other appropriate things.

The Work:
Flyer:
The idea behind the flyer was to not have the photograph perfect, but looking like it's wonky and hanging off the page, not fitting within the normal rules. I also chose a typeface that looked in a typewriter style, to look like people could of produced this poster by themselves, as a campaign poster perhaps.

Initial poster design, using a gorilla girls image, as it looks like they're running out at the reader. It also works well in a slanted arrangement. The typeface was typewriter style for reasons mentioned above. The date was positioned at the same angle as the photograph to highlight more so the disobedientness. 

Adding in the branding logos. Also I changed the date so it sat in the photograph and white, as it looked slightly neater. Also changed the subtitle text, so it fit better with the photograph. The photograph was also made slightly larger so all the ends hung off the edge, making it look more in place.

contact emails and People's History Museum and accompanying logos were swapped over to fit better within the space. Also with the People's History Museum being on the right and with more space around it it puts more of an emphasis on it, highlighting it's importance.

People's History museum was made larger to fill more of the space and to put more emphasis on it.

Subheading was made slightly smaller so it didn't overlap the photograph and therefore stands out more.

Also tried two different photograph layouts for this flyer rather than going with the first design and photograph, however they just didn't have the same impact as the initial design did, as they don't interact with the reader like the gorilla girls one does.

Changed the typeface to Bebas Kai as being a strong sans serif it has a lot more impact and creates a stronger appearance. Also changed a bit of the layout, with the title much larger and the subtitle within the photograph, which creates a fuller appearance. The People's History Museum logo was made larger again to ill the space and to look less like a dot.

Rotated People's History Museum logo to look like a stamp and smaller so it doesn't look so domineering.

Brochure:

Sam front cover as the flyer but with a coloured photograph following specifications of the brief. Kept the same cover so people recognise the identity easier, and connect the advertisements together.

First page. Legible typeface for the body copy for ease of reading. Text on an angle to fit within the slant of the photograph and to add a rebellious element.

Changed the lower photograph so it didn't line up to well with the cover photograph, instead so it lines up with the edge of the page and doesn't look so perfect. Also the text was changed so it wasn't at an angle, making it easier to read, but still so it lines up with the edge of the front cover photograph so still has that rebellious edge.

Text made larger to create more impact on the first page, and also to fill some of the black space, and to make it more legible.

Second page uses angled imagery to create a dynamic blank first page before the text comes in. Also gives a taste of some of the content of the exhibition.

First page of text. Fits within an edge of a photograph, which the photograph extends form the previous page in an odd shape, highlighting it's disobedience. The first couple of lines of this piece of text are produced in a much larger point size and in a very dark grey, and put against the black strip, to highlight the first section and repeat some of the words, whilst also making the black space more interesting.

Last page of the first side. Photograph is relevant to the text, and the title is at an angle fitting in with disobedience. The text fits alongside the photograph, and the photograph doesn't go all the way up to the black space, as the photograph shape would be compromised, however this leaves space for the title.

First side full. This shows the reasoning for the black stripe, as it extends out from the front cover photograph, and helps to break up the space a bit. 

First page of the other side. The text continues with it fitting along the photograph taking up the majority space. The photograph is of the same angle and size as the front cover, only slightly lower to mix things up a bit.

Second page, you can see the photograph extend onto this page, and the text takes on the same style as the introduction on the other side, creating a continuing layout so it's not too much of a jumble.

Another photograph only page, layout again taken from the other side. The would be black space takes on a photograph, and makes use of it being such a big space to include a photograph that has text on and you need to read all the text for it to have impact.

Text continues, edging onto the side of a left side photograph, which stretches over two pages.

To finish, a quote on the back page, to summarise the exhibition and brochure. I chose to have it as large as possible so that it has the most impact.

Full back side. You can see the layout is very similar to to front side to ease confusion as it is quite busy and all over the place, although this was intended to reflect disobedience.

After discussing our publications with two other people on the course and seeing what they produced, I changed the front cover of the brochure so that the logos were both in the bottom left corner, where they look much more organised and simple, and moved the contact websites to the back cover, so as not to clutter too much the front cover. This also makes the People's History Museum look more more at home next to the V&A logo, as opposed to out in the open next to text. 

Poster:

The poster was again taken from the front cover of the brochure and also the flyer, only the title text was altered slightly so the point size goes down a bit with each word, fitting in with the photograph and also to highlight each words decreasing importance.

This study task was really useful to me to highlight the importance of a specific layout for a specific kind of even and target audience, as I feel a sleek, minimal layout wouldn't of been appropriate for an exhibition titles Disobedient Objects.