OUGD503 - Studio brief 02 - Collaboration and brief

For the responsive presentation slides which were presented to graphic design, illustration and animation I highlighted Monotype as the brief I was interested in undertaking. I decided to pick this brief as one i’d be interested in doing because firstly I believe its current in terms of world affairs, relating to immigration and politics and gives the designer an opportunity to communicate personal views on certain affairs that may interest them. Secondly having the chance to engage in a topic that is vastly diverse such as culture allows you to have an open mind for this brief, referring back to my first point it can make it personal. And lastly being able to work with type draws me to the brief, as I am eager to further my practice involving typographic responses.

When it came to the task of finding other people to collaborate with I was surprised at how only a small number of people were interested in the Monotype brief. In total five graphic designers, two animators and one illustrator but in the end I was lucky enough to find an ideal group. Working with Ben Cooper (Graphic design) and Joe Baker (Illustration), neither of us has worked together before but we all share similar interests in and outside of the creative world. When we first got together as a group we discussed when we could organise to meet up, we looked through each others timetables and realised we both have free time after lectures on Wednesdays. Along with most Thursdays these were the two days we highlighted as contact time, then we could organise frequent meet ups in between them days. For other ways of contact we set up a Facebook group chat so we can keep each other updated at any time.

D&AD Monotype brief

In this brief Monotype challenges you to embody and express the importance of cultural diversity through a typography solution or campaign. In our first meeting as a group the aim was to analyse and interpret the brief in our own way. We agreed the best way to achieve this was highlighting key parts in the brief, this helps us understand exactly what the brief is asking for. As sometimes briefs can be overcomplicated but what we highlighted follows below:

• In collaboration with Craig Oldham
• Unique opportunity to express culture, local aesthetics, traditions, tastes, humour, quirks, place and people.
• Identify a culture, community, or country you feel is misunderstood, misrepresented or underrepresented
• Spark a conversation, evoke better cultural understanding and celebrate diversity
• Think about unique qualities 
• At least one poster, one digital element, one other touch point
• Use only type as the major creative expression 

Reading the brief a number of times really helped single out what we wanted to achieve as group for this brief, so we began to note down countries and notable cultures within them countries. When noting down these cultures we always had in mind if we felt it was misunderstood, misrepresented or underrepresented. By doing this it would help eliminate possible cultures that we considered an obvious response to the brief. 

As a group we decided to individually go away and find two possible cultures, communities or countries that we felt suited the briefed. Then we could meet up again and present what we have found, this would leave us with a total of six possible cultures, communities or countries in which we could select one then undertake extensive research.