Anti-hunting Campaign - Symbol Design

For our brand symbol, we wanted to design something simple and easy to recognize, but also ‘trendy’ (professional with an ‘edge’). For the overall designing strategy, we intended on combining both our opposing creative styles. My creative style is more ‘feminine’ and cute, while Farsya prefers the opposite.  

We compromised by making a more ‘adorable’ version of my concepts (example: our mascot being a cheerful deer that is shot in the head with its’ brains leaking out, to show how unaware they are of their future and how they are living creatures that are similar to humans. 

Below it's our first 2 designs of the deer. As we liked the first sketch we did, we decided to use it for the final logo. I have created the first illustration and Farsya the second one. At first, we wanted to make our design be very simple and black and white. We asked couple people for feedback which said:

* On the first illustration, the brain looks more like a hairstyle - so it made people quite confused.
* We should try to experiment with some colours - it will make the design look more appealing to the young audience.
* The second design has too many details on.
* Most of the people said they prefer the first design.

As people from feedback preferred the first design we decided to stick to it. We tried to add some colours which made our design more appealing to the young target audience. We also redesigned antlers and the brain so it doesn't confuse the audience.

After finishing the final symbol design people suggested to us to make the colors a bit darker as it makes our design look too bright and plain. Also, it is hard to see different tones of brown colour. 

Final symbol design: 

From surveying our audience, we noticed that people do not engage visuals that are ‘disgusting’ or ‘scary’ and designs that are too ‘serious’ or verbose. This gave us more of a reason to make our designs friendly and approachable. Also, our strategy is to keep things vague, so this leaves the audience imagining the more ‘gruesome’ reality and imagery for themselves, whilst not being bombarded with information.

Anti-hunting campaign / Painting ceramics

Painting our ceramics

Our last step with the ceramic work was to paint our sculpture. I did paint our little porcelain deer which came up looking very cute. It was only experimentation with the little sculpture but due that it came up very successful, we both with Farsya decided to put it for the final branding. The small deer scolputre will be used for the website mock up where people can purchase it. 

However, our big final sculpture is not looking as we wanted it to be. We wanted the sculpture to be in pastel, light colours and linking to our colour scheme. It turns out looking almost like an alien because of the eyes and red colour ears and nose. 

Anti-hunting Campaign / Studio Arhoj

Studio Arhoj has been a favourite of mine from the start of the year, specialising in unique ceramics through different materials and techniques, I visited their website to find out what they're all about.

The Studio

Located by the harbour in Copenhagen, Studio Arhoj is a Danish interior & design studio run by Anders Arhoj. Originally founded in Tokyo in 2006, Studio Arhoj is now based in Denmark.

In addition to exploring the visual relationship between Scandinavian simplicity and traditional Japanese culture we are interested in keeping alive traditions and knowledge about old crafts such as wheel throwing and glaze construction.

The Design

We design and produce new items on a regular basis - with the ambition to present something new around spring and fall every year.

Our products are developed on both paper and on the potters wheel. Materials used in production include wood, clay, porcelain, paper and glass.

Our main focus is form as opposed to function. This doesn't mean you can't use our items in your everyday life, it just means we're really focused and interested in creating beautiful, fun objects.

The Process

Experimenting is a deeply integrated part of our daily production. We dedicate a lot of time to discovering and testing the seemingly endless possibilities of glaze and clay. Failure is something we know well, however, when something works the reward is worth the struggle.

Many of our items are hand-thrown by skilled potters on the throwing wheel in different kinds of clay. Our porcelain items are cast in plaster molds by skilled artisans." source

Some of my favorites...

Studio Arhoj are well known for their ghost ceramics, which are sold in other outlets such as Colours May Vary. They also deal with everyday items such as mugs, bowls and cups, but what sets these aside is their unique treatments and colours/glazing. They are mesmerizing and each one hand crafted, making them special and personal. Looking further into Studio Arhoj gave me an insight to how a contemporary ceramic studio works, and how everything is hand crafted through various methods and techniques. 

Anti-hunting Campaign - Clay Modelling

After research into various existing ceramic artists and style, I felt I was able to start practicing. As Farsya is a Visual Communication student she taught me basic skills about ceramics work. In the ceramics department, we were advised on what would be the best methods of making our sculpture. I began to create a deer's head while Farsya was creating a sculpture of the brain.

The idea was to start modeling a rough shape of the deer's head and then to cut the model in half and scoop out the insides and make a hole in the bottom of the model. When the clay is sent into the kiln room, a model like this should be hollow in order to avoid explosions.

The model needs to be sliced and scooped using the tools provided, and then put back together carefully. This step was quite hard as we had to make sure that the model has an appropriate thickness so it didn't collapse on itself.

When the inside of the deer model was removed and formed back together it was time to ass texture and details such as eyes, nose, head shape, and mouth.

As we wanted to add the model of a brain to the sculpture we had to cut out the whole and get rid of one of the deer's antlers. As the clay was very dray we had to use special tools. Below is a picture of final deer model which will be the proceeded to be put in a kiln to harden. 

Below are the final images of the scupltures after the firing process. Farsya has made 4 different models of the brain so we could chose the most appropriate one. Our next step is to add the colour. We also feel comfortable enough to begin production of the branding section of this brief. 

Anti-hunting Campaign - Clay experimentation

During this session, we aimed to learn new techniques and decide what type of clay we will use to produce our sculpture. We tried stoneware clay, earthenware clay, and porcelain.

Porcelain

 

At first, we have been told by tutors to really decide what we want to create out of porcelain as the clay dry out very quickly and we really need to know what we are doing.The porcelain was very soft at the beginning so it was very difficult to model something and make it stay in the same position.
Also, we had to model our sculpture as quick as possible because modeling it way too much made it dry quicker.

Stoneware clay

 

Stoneware clay was the easiest clay to use as it didn't dry out very quickly so we could model our sculpture as much as we wanted to. If the clay dries out, adding extra water makes it soft so we could still shape it and glue extra things to it. We decided to use this type of clay for our final sculpture.


Earthenware clay

Same as stoneware the earthenware clay was very easy to use, it didn't dry out very quickly so we could shape it as much as we wanted to. The only problem why didn't choose this clay was because of the paint colors later on, they were way too dark.

- Unfortunately, there wasn't enough air inside the form when it was in the kiln and it sadly exploded. 

Anti-hunting Campaign - Sketches/Logo

To understand deer and how they look like before we began to craft them out of clay. We researched different deer illustrations and photos and sketched out three of them. 

We ended up quite liking the first sketch, this could possibly be used in the future for branding, logo etc. 

Anti-hunting Campaign - Inspiration

Searching for ceramics on Pinterest allowed us to get some inspiration for our work. As our ceramic work will be for multiple uses we looked for :

- Functions (plant pots, trinket dish)
- Animals
- Colour application
- Imperfect shapes

Anti-hunting Campaign - Ceramics - Sophie Woodrow

 



Sophie Woodrow is a ceramic artist who mainly works with porcelain. Her artwork is hand crafted, focusing on intricate details, humanistic animals merged with natural looking forms.

Sophie was drawn to working with clay from an early age. Born in Bristol in 1979, she graduated in 2001 from Farmouth College of Art with a BA in Studio Ceramics. Since then she has refined an intricate labour-intensive technique and a highly distinctive visual language. Each piece is hand-built, involving coiling, incising and impressing to create a delicately textured surface.

"Her work has been informed by an interest in the Victorians as the first generation who chose to define nature in opposition to what is human. In a spirit of wild curiosity, tinged with fear, the Victorians idolised nature, ‘packaging’ it into highly romanticised, palatable works of art. Our modern-day understanding is very different, so that we now interpret much Victorian art as ‘unnatural’ or kitsch" (source).

Her work is both fantastical and figurative, depicting many different kinds of creatures made up of fragments of the natural world. The creatures themselves are often colonised by elements like limpets, mushrooms or faceted crystalline formations. The majority are painstakingly hand built but, more recently, Woodrow has made moulds of far simpler figures to be slip-cast. This was an economic decision which has proven profitable, though her interest remains predominantly on the hand-buil, more detailed work. 

Nature is an essential part of Woodrow's work. The attraction of depicting natural forms and themes is not just a response to nature itself as 'an endless source of fascination' but also 'an impulse to make art that reflects our understanding of our relationship to nature' She suggests that in referencing the natural world, designers and artists are trying to understand not only nature itself but also a sense of alienation from some lost aspect of what it means to be human. 



We find her work highly inspiring due to interesting forms and proportions. Me and Farsya are begginers, as we havn't done a lot of ceramics work before so it would be unrealistic to assume we would be able to produce a realist looking piece of ceramics work. Sophie's work gave us an idea to experiment more with patterns and shapes during modelling which will give us more experience and pust us to create unique and interesting pieces.

Anti-hunting Campaign / Research

To get a further understanding ( more than we currently do...) on how deer look, we gathered a small collection of the inspiring deer which can influence our modeling. We found these sculptures in shops like TK Maxx and HomeSense. We wanted the deer to look 'crafty' and abstract but it is also beneficial to have a comprehension of how they really look. Due to this brief being very experimental, it is hard to say what will look best, and it will only be through practice and experiments that I will find out what is successful.

What are you ashamed of? / Brief

Brief

We often remember negative, unpleasant memories and feelings more than positive ones. Some of us are having trouble letting go of painful feelings of the past.

Create a design resolution which allows participants to release negative feelings.

Consideration 

Consider who the audience is and what designs appeal to them. Conduct research into methods that can draw customers in. Ensure you organize your time to prepare for different avenues the brief can take across disciplines.

Mandatory Requirements

Design Blogs
Design Boards

Deliverables 

Design resolution archiving submissions

LUXURY FAMILY RANGE OF CANS FOR TEAS / BRIEF

Brief 

To design and develop a new, exciting and eye-catching range of at least three tins for either teas or coffees.  Students will need to create a fictitious brand targeting the quality retail sector, including duty free areas at airports and the higher- end retailers such as, John Lewis, Selfridges and M&S. This new range is to be designed primarily for purchase as a luxury gift pack. Metal offers great potential for creative design solutions with not only embossing and debossing but the high quality of print finishes that can be achieved with colour, varnishes and bare metal.

Consideration 

Consider when designing your range (minimum 3 in range) marriageability as a set of three and that the labelling, graphics and overall presentation ensure they are a family of luxury products.

When developing your designs consider re-usability of the tins for a secondary use within the home.

To meet food standards, the contents (tea, coffee or infusions) would if going into production be sealed separately in foil bags and presented in the secondary pack.

Points to consider:

• Creative use of tin
• Marriageability as a set of three luxury tins
• Innovative use of decorative and graphic elements
• Re-usability as a secondary pack
• Shelf impact
• Consumer appeal as luxury gift packaging

Materials to use

The set of tins must use tinplate as the core element but your models can be made of any appropriate material to represent the metal components. Similarly, any appropriate material can be used to represent the tin contents.

Mandatory Requirements

Design Blogs
Design Boards