Having done research on my chosen designer and typographer, Neville Brody, one of his comments really struck me. He said that in this day and age, most designers are keen to know all about the newest technologies and ways to present their work. This is so much so that these designers have lost the real focus of creating a design. To Neville Brody, a good designer and a successful design must have a message to send across to the intended audience. The methods employed by the designer to convey this message need not utillize the latest technologies and trends. The purpose and message behind the design is thus far more important, then using the latest design tools.
For this assignment, we were required to do a design, based on the teachings and influences of our chosen designer. In my case, Neville Brody. We could not use any digital content creation tools of any kind. Instead, we were tasked to create the design using non-digital tools.
The requirements for this assignment posed a unique challenge. However, it also presented the opportunity to practise what Neville Brody felt. After looking at some of Neville Brody's works (pics. 1 to 3), I decided to emulate one of his styles. From the pictures shown, the messaged Neville Brody tries to put forth are strong and meanigful. The works had also a no frills approach about it.
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pic.2
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My inital concept was to create a montage of people's faces, by cutting pictures from magazines and newspapers. (pic.4) However, the look turned out to be too messy and did not keep to the spirit of Neville Bordy's works shown above. The idea needed to be simple, but unique. It also had to have a strong message behind the visuals.
pic.4
However, by pure incident I must add, I happened to chance upon this graphic novel while browsing around kinokuniya. It was called "DMZ" by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli. (pic. 5) It tells the story of the future state of America, where civil war has broken out and everyday is like 9/11. I bought the novel. The story really struck me and served as a remainder of the state of mankind at present and in the near future. The visuals were also unqiue. Simple lines and interesting use of negative and positive spaces combined creating complex scenes using simple methods. This was what I wanted.
pic.5
Next, I had to find a message to convey. With the conflicts happening all over the middle east, I decided to do a slogan for peace. Images of the famous Iraqi hostages kept coming to mind during brainstorming, so I decided to use that as my visual. The tank you see in pic.5 particularly inspired me to try a radical approach in creating my visual. I decided to try and use correction fluid with a ruler, to draw out the hostage on a black background, in this case, a black A4 construction paper. The result turned out to be fantastic. (pic.6)
