Newspaper article I orginated from
"School's birthday cake ban is really taking the biscuit"
Brief 1 Research
Initial ideas reduced to three ideas. These included unnecessary health and safety laws, "taking the biscuit" studying slang or Cockney Rhyming Slang and finally birthday cakes; a history.
My research of these three subjects spoke for themselves as far as choosing the idea I develop further. The Health and safety laws when researched resulted in plenty of appropriate and humorous stories which offered a lot of potential imagery. However, I didn't see any of this as "new" as I always find myself creating humorous outcomes and wanted to try something different. The third possible idea spoke for itself in the way that from my research I only found exceedingly dull information. This isn't a set back as anything can be made interesting with the right approach, the problem was that it was yet again a light hearted subject which would offer me nothing to to experiment with involving moods I would portray.
The second idea I had involving slang stood out as i felt is was a fairly under developed subject matter, meaning that I hadn't seen much about it anywhere. This proved to be a problem later on. I started by researching the origin and who used/uses it, but again offered only basic facts which weren't particularly engaging to me let alone if I had to draw interest from someone else. After this i had a look at the Rhyming Slang itself. These finally offered a light hearted set of engaging information. There was a generous amount to be found and play with and a lot of imagery popped into my mind as soon as I saw it.
Brief 2 Posters
After finding engaging information to play with we were the given our next brief which consisted of producing 3 posters which worked as a set using only 2 colours plus stock.
My first ideas consisted of playing with the phrases to make it really hard to understand it as a sentence. For example "Don't be piccadilly you've you've got sexton Blake all over your boat race", meaning "Don't be silly you've got cake all over your face". I then tried to create a pun using the song head shoulder knees and toes song.
"And mince pies and donkeys years and North and South and nose,
crust of bread shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes."
I liked this idea of construction sentences with obsurt replacements of words using Cockney Rhyming Slang. It drew a lot of attention when printed in a poster format and most importantly raised confusion resulting in wanting to know more. After I had established the sentence I would use, "Have a butchers, you've left your dog and bone in the jam jar", i then set about the imagery and extras I would be using to tie it all together. I decided on using the phrase "Don't understand a Dicky Bird?" to raise the question that would be being asked in most people's head when reading such a statement. I then decided on using "Cockney Rhyming Slang, keep it simple, keep it english" to merely say what it is and that it is English. However, looking back on this I feel it is a complete confusion. I should have either picked if I was simply informing people or producing a campaign to tell people to use English properly by talking simpler without using slang. Informing was the better option with this particular brief due to the fact that one of the posters had to be image only. Inform would simplify this greatly. For this I simple drew a jam jar and car with a simple equals symbol in between as all I wanted to say was, this equals this. I chose Times New Roman in the end after using 'Apple' as I needed a simple, British and Legible font. I am happy with my choice and like it's appearance against the beige stock I chose. I chose this stock merely for the reason that the jam jar drawing proved a problem as I used water colour in production which incorporated too many different shades of red and white. I had to cut this but still include highlights i.e.. using a light stock to give highlights. White looked horrid so beige offered a homely british mail job and providing the jam jar with essential highlights within it.
Brief 3 Mail Shot
I decided straight away that I wanted this next brief to match as a set with the second brief. Still using the same theme minus the confusing influence of a possible campaign I decided to produce a mail-shot that informs the chosen audience of a simple vocabulary set of what the phrases mean. This is simple because from some reviews of my last brief resolvent some people commented on how they didn't understand what the phrase meant. I would do this by creating as equally light hearted design as the subject matter with a simple photo-copiable leaflet which can detach from the given envelope template. After some experimentation of layout of possible envelopes I ended up with a doubled up envelope which on one side had a playful 'wheel' which demonstrates one simple translation, jam jar equals car. The other side held the detachable leaflet. I wanted to make a fairly intricate design which involved a lot of physical activity to get involved in no matter if I had to produce ten of them. It would be worth it. I played with various gadgets involving pull-outs flaps, wheels and various colour options including red and black whilst abiding to the brief. However, i carried my dedication to continuing the works as a set. After resolving a fair few design (layout) problems mostly involving the wheel I was happy with the outcome. After receiving some feedback i changed the legibility of the address and the construction of the wheel the final criticism which is yet to be resolved is the practicality of being able to post the mail-shot and it returning in it's full state. After faffing with the possible templates I hope I have made this possible.
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