Live brief

Creative Challenge:

Over the past decade the world of music has undergone a revolution. Just as the ways people consume and experience music have been turned upside down, so the role of illustration in the world of music has changed too.

From the decline of the 12” album cover as a ‘creative canvas’, to the rise of downloadable tracks with artwork reduced to the size of a screen based icon. This situation has pushed people creatively to explore new opportunities that include street art, online video, experimental performances and interactive applications.

Your challenge is to choose a band or artist and create an illustrated response inspired by two of their tracks. In doing so, you’ll be facing this issue head on and demonstrating your vision of a brave new world for illustration in music.

Target Audience:

The target audience intended for the illustration will be the fan base of the musician/band/artist you select as part of answering the brief.

Considerations:

• Successfulentrieswilldemonstrate how illustration can reinvent itself as a powerful tool for promotion and expression within the world of music.

• Wearelookingforworkthatexplores new ways that illustration can be integrated into the music experience.

• You should consider how musicians are reinventing the way that they interact with their fans and the increased importance of building intimate relationships and new experiences between fans and bands.

Mandatory Requirements:

• Produceaminimumoftwo illustrations, each based on a different track from any band or artist who’s music inspires you. While your solution maybe 2D, 3D or even time based, they must be documented and presented in A3 format as per the Formatting Guidelines PDF. The choice of band is unimportant – they maybe well known or equally unheard of.

• Create a short, clear and concise presentation of how the illustration would be integrated within the context of an unconventional music experience.

• Ashortexplanation(max300words) about how you decided to interpret the music.

• Forthebenefitofthejury,pleasealso submit MP3s of the two tracks that your work is based on.

Deliverables:

This category will be judged in two rounds with physical work not required until round two. Please see the Formatting Guidelines PDF.

Further Information:

www.diesel.com www.dieselumusic.com www.dandad.org/studentawards @baby_pencils

Background

Like balloons, we are filled with hopes and dreams. But over time a single sentence creeps into our lives. Don’t be stupid.

The world is full of smart people, doing all kind of smart things (with other smart people). That’s smart. Well, we’re with stupid.

Stupid is the relentless pursuit of a regret free life.

Smart may have the brains. But stupid has the balls.

The smart recognise things for how they are. The stupid see things for how they could be. Smart critiques. Stupid creates. The fact is if we didn’t have stupid thoughts, we’d have no interesting thoughts at all.

It’s not smart to take risks. It’s stupid. To be stupid is to be brave. The stupid aren’t afraid to fail. Why? Because they ain’t dumb. The stupid know there are worse things than failure like not even trying. Only the stupid can be truly brilliant.

So, be stupid.

A strong believer in creativity as a force for positive change, Diesel has consistently broken with convention.

Eminem

I am whatever you say I am

Cleaning out my closet

Billy the kid

This image is of Billy the kid I started to draw out, the main composition of the illustration in red but it lacked certain features of detail which threw me off a bit, such as the neck and chin went into one.

I altered this by giving him a big jaw line, as he was such a 'bad ass' I thought giving him a chewing kind of look would best resemble his character,.

In some of the areas I struggled with filling in I simply added wound texture and other items of filling in.

Emails

Hey Christ!
I understand where you are coming from...I still don't really no all that much about magazine design and spreads and such. Basically what FRONT does with me is they approach me and give me the general idea on what the article is about, and then they pretty much have a layout sketched out with all their ideas that they want to have and where everything will go, so it's pretty easy. Usually they want it very fast and sometimes it's hard to accommodate.

The best advice I could give you is to just study how magazines are laid out, all different kinds and then apply with what you learned!

I hope that helps, I'm not very good at this kind of stuff!
take care!

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 8:04 AM, Christopher Matthews wrote:
Hey Matt,

I study at Leeds college of art and design in my final year and at the moment I am doing a brief for Front, I came across some of your work whilst researching and thought it was amazing and really relevant due to you designing for them, I was just wondering if you could possibly help me out by sending some information or maybe some tips for some of your past briefs? it's just I'm having a bit of an issue with finding a theme to set the contents for my double page spreads out.

Look forward to hearing from you,
Chris



--
Matthew Skiff
http://www.ithew.com/

Abe

For front I am doing an 3 page DPS on famous dead people, I plan to call title it as 'DEAD FAMOUS' out of the ten Abraham Lincoln was one of the ten so I drew him.

I thought it would be a cool idea to make it a zombie Lincoln I added a circle on his head as a bullet wound.

I wasn't entirely sure wether or not to incorporate a top hat to Abe so it was more obvious it was him due to the fact that it is one of his signature items.

after a bit of texture I decided the top hat was appropriate.

I then changed the colour to black.

and it looked like this:

I then began to colour in the dark areas

Then the RAM on my mac was full and it was time to invest in a portable hard drive and this happened, which in a way I think looks really wicked in a way.

I used a lime green which links in with the brightness of front magazine, I added depth into the wound on Abe's head which looks pretty 3 demential.

This is the zombie finished with all the details added, I think the illustration came out really well and has a great decayed appearance.

For crit

-No screen printing, these are full colour items and would cost to much in screens and the fact screen print have other students and I would need around about 10 screens for one print.

I will be heat transferring the items for a fast cost effective outcome which will then be documented digitally and physically in promotions once the photography has been taken of the finished items of clothing.

My five questions are:

1) Do the illustrations look visually interesting?

2) Should I go into even more detail with the illustrations (I am not interested in simplifying)?

3) What other outcomes for distribution could/ should I look into?

4) For Front magazine I am producing three double page spreads in a halloween theme, I am considering carrying out illustrations featuring a top ten in relation to 'If you could meet a famous person who was dead who would it be?' any ideas on something else I could do?

5) What other methods could I use for distribution in front mag other than the cover and DPS's????

FRONT

BRIEF TITLE - Front – DPSX3+FC

The Brief

We want you to create two double page spreads to feature in our magazine ‘Front’ as well as a front cover featuring details on the magazine, due to it coming out on Halloween we want this edition to be related to all hallows eve.

The magazine reaches out to a lot of young people and it is important to keep them interested, the double page spread needs a good theme that we haven’t done before, but is in the same style as our previous magazines.

Concept/Proposition

It has to be exciting and fun and in a way... spooky/ MYSTERIOUS.

Background

Front was first published by Cabal Communications in 1998, it was created to rival IPC's publication Loaded, catering to a demographic of 16-25 year-old males. It began as part of the British "lads' mag" genre of magazines though the covers rejects this description with the statement "Front is no lads' mag".Whilst a major selling point is the photo-shoots of models, the magazine also focuses heavily on music, films, gadgets and games, plus sections on fashion and sport. Glamour shoots within the magazine usually involve well-known models rather than celebrities.

The magazine has also been responsible for a number of high profile stunts, most notably smuggling an Eric Cantona lookalike into the Manchester United team photo during a Champions League game. Today it is edited by Joe Barnes and published by The Kane Corporation who are based in Soho, London.

The Kane Corporation is led by 24 year old self made millionaire entrepreneur Dominic McVey and managing director of talent agency Money, Francis Ridley.

(www.wikipedia.com/frontmagazine)


Target Audience

16 – 25 rockers, male and female, who are interested in a laugh, students are a big inspiration


Tone of Voice

Funny, sexy, laid back, slang

Considerations

Literature isn’t a strong point in front, they do swear a lot and talk in lingo, don’t let this fool you and do not get carried away, the magazine still needs to make sense.

Think about what is new, what is coming in to fashion, who is coming to fashion, what is the rage

Pick a topic which will fill up 6 whole pages of the magazine and still be interesting and new, without losing any of the design qualities in previous issues.

Make it modern and new, do not repeat what has all ready been done.

Check out some back issues for inspiration.

Whats hot, whats not, whats in, whats out

Mandatory requirements

Front cover needs a woman with grabbing points of what is in the issue with an interesting colour scheme, it wants to be eye catching and inspiring, the DPS’s must all relate to one another and work as a set.

Deliverables

A front cover for this month’s issue

3 double page spreads to feature in the magazine

M

Front Magazine

Double page spread x3 based on:

-Halloween costumes for students

- A cheap costume to make

- Cook list format, what you need (ingredients)

-In appropriate language = appropriate with this magazine.

Illustration of what it looks like?

1st of November to do:

Pay day:

-Print T-shirts

-Print booklet

-Print postcards

-Print stamps

-Print poster

-Take photos on models

-Put photos in context online

-Put photos in store

-Send photos to Drop dead.

-Evaluation

Mock ups

I mocked up a brief idea of some phone cases for the blackberry curve and the i phone. These two in particular as in the modern age most people in my T.A. own one or the other smart phones.

These mock ups were pretty fast and look a little sloppy, but it is enough to get the idea across to what they would look like in reality.

I enjoyed designing for the I phone rather than the blackberry as it was just one sided and I didn't have to worry about cutting out the design, In reality the blackberry case would be a full picture but would have the button holes cut out.

Postcards and stamps

Within the London shop, I wanted to sell some counter merchandise which was not really linked in with the clothing, something that was cheaper and a form of saying you visited the shop which was when I came up with the idea for making some post cards.

Im happy with the postcard designs, again I need to wait till the 1st to get them printed due to lack of funds, post cards were not the only idea I had, I thought it would be pretty cool if you had something else that could go with the postcard which is when I considered making stamps.

I chose two designs which had the clearest faces on them

I then cropped them and added them on to a stamp like background.

This is what it would look like in context, on say a post card.

Same again for the Monroe stamp (which is my favourite)

This didn't seem to be enough which is when the idea of buying the stamps in a stamp book would fit the idea better.

It would be the scale of 4 stamps put together as so:

- with tear paper.

The cover would be black and the logo on the front would be screen printed, to fit in with range.

Bag packaging

I chose a black paper bag with paper handles as my packaging for when one of the T-shirts was bought at the London store I wanted to keep the same theme so I incorporated the Limited edition logo to the range of bags.

These two bags were my favourites. I think that the big one is a lot more interesting and really stands out.

The small logo is a little to tucked away, I want people to think wow, I wonder whats in that bag?!

Wallpapers

Here are some of the illustrations in context for wallpapers which will be featured on the Drop dead website in the extra's feature, they will come in three different sizes to fit what ever size monitor/ screen you may have:

1024x768

1280x800

1680x1050

Here are the screen backgrounds I chose to use.

Monroe:

Poseidon was a hard due to the scale of it, so I thought it would be better (as it is a detailed illustration) to crop it and have a certain area stand out, I do not believe I will use this particular background.

But this cropping is of the detailed area in the illustration which I think looks really cool and is in fact my screen desktop background now.

The same went for this one, I simply cropped the top half.

Here is an image of them all together:

Below is an image of the extras bar featured on www.iheartdropdead.com with the screen savers in context and ready to download. This is what the illustrations will look like when added online.

Posters

For my poster designs I only altered the illustrations slightly in order for them to fit into the A2 format and shape of the posters. I chose the best four illustrations as voted by other members of the course to proceed with.

The octopus was fine as it is and I think that the white spaced out background gave emphasis to the illustration.

Monroe was pretty simple as well, I simply added a background colour of a lighter blue pantone and rescaled the illustration.

This one was a little more tricky due to the shape of the T shirt, I extended the back colours out and added more texture in certain places, but I kept it simple as I didn't want to take focus away from the image.

Finally Poseidon was an interesting one to deal with, I simply drew out a rectangle changed the anchor points to make it like a ray and added different colours and rotated them from a central point to get this effect, I then outlined the type and illustration in white so they stood out.

Again I used bold colours so the illustration stood out.

Cover

I wanted the cover and contents pages to match with in colour scheme. I also needed my front cover to be plain, rather than some crazy illustration, but enough to cause some attention and linking in with the books contents.

I added sharp illustrations around the DD logo to make it's texture visually interesting. The technique used is similar to a lot of the strokes used within the illustrations in the booklets content.

This is a small image of the pages together

Outside pages

I thought that it would be appropriate to find a way to incorporate some structure to the book. I chose to make a contents page incorporating all 5 of BMTH's albums beginning with 2004 moving 6 years on to There is a hell believe me i've seen it released in 2010.

To the left I added the images of the albums and to the right of that I added the album title, the year of release, the songs I have used off the albums and the page they are on.

This enabled me to work out what images went in what order.

At the back of the booklet I thought an advertisement would be best suited to give the viewer a bit of information about what Drop dead have to offer, where they can get it and where the audience can go online to gather more information via social network sites.

7 illustrations

I thought for a visual look, it would be appropriate to upload a post with all seven finished illustrations on it together: