Client Studies Blog
During the first few weeks of this project, I faced hurdles and changes in figuring out the concept for my exhibition piece as well as working with my team (location) to finalise where the event would be held.
things I found hard during this project were to imagine new ideas that would match the theme and colour pallets that other teams had allocated. I found it hard working in a team of completely new people and getting to know them while working towards a goal we all held, luckily we all worked well and we were open to ideas, each of us was confident enough to talk about our decisions as a group with the rest of the teams and class members.
Things in this project I think i did particularly well were how I communicate any issues within the group as an example we had a hard time communicating in the beginning due to how new a few members were to the class. In order to work efficiently i mentioned a separate chat, as a small group we could get to know one another as well as introducing myself and two other team members to those we did not know in order to build a relationship with them and to work effectively on finding the perfect location.
I also think I was able to show off my traditional art skills by stepping out of the safety blanket of digital art and going back to my roots as a traditional ink and pen artist. I flourished in the area of nightmares loving creating something within the horror genre.
In retrospect, I would try and build an even better team and possibly reach out to the other members in different teams for feedback and ideas on location and possibly what their preferences would be idealistically.
I also think if i looked back at this section of the project i would look at the time i had available and work out a better time management scheme so that i could have put more time and detail into my exhibition piece possibly changing things around making the art slightly less in a messy style and cleaning it up more and refining the detail in the linework.
After building the concept of what I would create for the exhibition settling on the concept of monsters keeping you under control while your fast asleep. I decided to create this image with biro ink pens to show defined detail and shading I then continued to add watered-down inks to my canvas to add depth and colour with dark greys and vibrant greens fading out of the background highlighting the monster and his objects that are under his control such as the beds hanging by threads, I would later add white highlights to the image to make these strings pop as well as to separate some of the linework throughout the image.
Later on in this process, we began to set up the location going over everything with a finite comb, to ensure the process goes smoothly. I personally took on all of the health and safety measures and have worked in that area before in previous experiences.
If I were to do this project once again I would try and become more invested in communicating with other teams, I think that would have helped guarantee a larger success of the exhibition.
Looking at the art I created i wish I would have had a slightly larger amount of creative freedom considering our colour pallet was limited as well as having a particular theme of dreams and nightmares. Although i am a horror artist at heart i would have preferred to have a bit more creative freedom in how i perceived the topic.
However, I think the exhibition did suberbly and all went according to plan. we all worked very hard, I think i coped well under stress which is something i have struggled with before. I think i showed many of my fellow students my style i worked hard to keep to a schedule helping those around me to the best of my ability.
Something i learned throughout the process of organising the exhibition was how many components went into the setup and promotion watching the other teams and all their ideas i became incredibly inspired by all of the people who helped bring the exhibition to life and continued to work after the first day keeping the exhibition alive for 4 days after opening night.
Firstly in the project, i spoke to my father to figure out ideas for clients, We eventually thought about the company Sero which does fantastic work for the environment moving housing towards a greener future. so i reached out and emailed the head leading the creative side of the company who was a lovely woman. we arrange a meeting within that week to discuss the project and what it could be.
As we began to speak at this meeting we thought of ideas and what they wanted to be represented; They wanted a mural in their companies colors for their office which was a limited colour pallet of a series of orange shades so I was also thinking about how i could incorporate that into the design effectively, the design was also something we wanted to appeal to their staff so we decided to involve something that they either enjoy outside of work or something that they love.
Throughout this creative process during this section of my project, we had many meetings to think about building up ideas for the project and what it could involve and what could be represented, The only part of this project I wished for was more meetings in person however busy schedules seemed to get in the way of being able to meet in person until much later on. For the future at this point, i wanted to push some of my ideas harder for the sketches i was particularly proud of and i wanted to ask more questions. However, both of these concerns would fade as the project moved forward in the following weeks as i build a better relationship with my client.
This is the second part of my client studies with Sero, we were finally able to meet face to face where Katie gave me a tour around the office we were able to discuss all ideas that i had sketched out, which at this point was close to 25 sketched out ideas on procreate.
As we spoke and as i showed Katie all my ideas and she found interest in a black line-work older PC setup as well as a wire map of the UK she mentioned she liked both concepts so after the meeting and walking around the office i went home and began to merge them together and look at how i could incorporate both ideas together into a design.
During this time period, i also began to fully get the colour pallet involved with the design thinking of how it could be incorporated into each of the designs that i had to create depth of the images all of which were created on procreate. Throughout this time we had great communication with several meetings in and out of the office as well as numerous amounts of emails. I went away from this portion of the project with a burst of creativity due to the good feedback that i was given i used this to accelerate my passion for creating moving on to using colour in all of the smaller designs that i had created in the first few weeks.
I did however wish that i had a clearer idea of what was wanted at this stage i was still only working on feedback with very little of an idea of what is actually wanted until later on in this project. I also walked away from this section with the idea of possibly making something bigger to fit the space with much more detail, by adding other colours that they used in their illustrations i proceeded into the next week doing that.
During the last weeks few weeks of this project, i finally had the PC design fully fleshed out and in the company's colours, i had incorporated it into the design as well as using the computer design as a base and then adding to it with other illustrations.
As I had gotten further into the process working along side Sero we began to develop a clear idea of what the design would be. After previous sessions with Katie the head of the graphic side of Sero.
We had decided on this idea of a retro pc as I began to work off of this initial ideal and I had a clear sketch I began to experiment with other adaptations of the project; further and further I eventually had the idea of turning the wires into the map of the UK due to this being a UK based company and having great pride in leading the renewable housing market across the world and having the pride of being British. This also came to mind as they have many people in their company spread all over the UK including Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
I also began to experiment with lots of other ideas basing them in what Sero had done previously so I began to include the flowers that are found throughout the companies' illustrations representing being one with the nature their technology is trying to protect and be one with. So, after talking and having another meeting with Katie I began to incorporate all three of the ideas I had into one graphic. Which from that came this idea which over time we adapted into something bigger trying to find the right design for what they wanted.
Something that went well during this process was how clear the communication back and forth was and how determined to make the best design possible for their office space, Communication throughout the process had been great the creative feedback was so clear and was able to inspire me to create so much for this commission and there are so many unused ideas since I was so motived to keep creating.
While in this process I developed a great creative relationship the the company seeing the hard work put into there designs inspired my own.
During the last 3 weeks of this process, I was able to convert all designs into colour and the illustrations started to come to life. The illustration to the left is the last illustration I sent off before myself and Katie began to brainstorm and come up the final fleshed out idea. The final idea we decided to adapt and add more text to do with the companies' moto's of Zero carbon energy and focused on making green energy easy. Something we decided to change what the controls due to feedback from the office, so we switched them to something more recognizable driving home the idea behind the controller of having control over your home being green and Zero carbon. Throughout the end development stages we began to look at the colour contrast and wanted to make it something more eye catching.
So, we devolved the colours and made them darker so that the messages could pop and the white in the image could be used to highlight the most detailed areas of the illustration
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We began to add some important symbols as well and add the company's logo of the bee and the charging symbol adding small hints of the globe on the TV buttons and white pok-a-dots to the flowers to make them ore eye catching driving home the nature friendly message of the company.
The final image is something that myself and Katie from the company loved, working on this project together was so motivating, knowing it was with a company that had such a great work environment fighting for a brighter and greener future and had such a set design style was something I had never worked with before I found to be a great challenge. Keeping the idea within a simple illustration style was something that was foreign to me as an artist I tend to add so much detail to my images so moving away from my usual style was much more out of the box than I originally expected.
My final thoughts on this project are as follows, I had a great time working with this company also having competition with other illustrators for the position for this to be eventually used as a design in the Sero office is something that motived me. I decided to do my best with communication and building a relationship with my client to the best of my ability and I thing this is a life long lasting connection in the creative industry.