End of Year Show - evaluation

Project:

Our End of Year Show project was created as part of a collaborative group between myself, Emma, Shuffs and Hannah. We decided to take on the project as a group as we knew it would be extensive with may different outcomes needed. We tackled the project by brainstorming our concept together, which turned out to be 'We Are Gold' focusing on the standard of the work produced by LAU students as well as the students themselves. We landed on this concept and developed it onwards using our own primary research as well as feedback from our peers and tutors. In the research we analysed existing exhibition branding as well as previous years pitches to identify what elements of their projects worked and which didn't as well as getting an idea for what the SMT would be looking for to represent 2019's students. We delegated research on the show as well as further concept research between us to ensure that we had covered the full breadth of research that we needed to create a developed project. After collating all our research and finalising our concept and idea, we reached out to Megan Banner, a third year photography student to help us with the photographic element we needed. We sourced materials for the shoot and experimented with photography within the shoot which lead us to many photos which we all sat down and refined together, picking our favourites and which photos would work best in which situation. The shoot went better than we were expecting which was great. 

Carrying on from this, we all sat down and generated lots of poster designs within 4 styles that we had identified as working during the research stage. Using the same process as we did to narrow down the many photos we had, we went through and picked our favourites to then tweak and refine. This lead to the generation of a style which came from a few different poster designs combined, which shows how effective the method of collating designs together was. From this style, we then delegated the rest of the content between us, so 1 would create the email banner, 1 would create publication design etc. At the end of the project we pulled all these designs together and made tweaks to make sure it was all consistent. With project management conducted by Emma, the project ran smoothly and all files were collated in the same place at the end for us all to access. 

As we knew we would not be present for the actual pitch, we decided to go the extra mile for our project, and include a gold spray painted easel which would display our finished a2 pitch as well as portraying the idea that it could be used within the show for wayfinding purposes, which would tie it all together. However, when it came to the pitch, they hung the posters on wire from the ceiling so our plan was slightly foiled and did not have the same impact because the easel was there on its own, despite having a label.

Design: 

Overall, the designs for the project were professional looking and executed, due to the use of clean type as well as studio photography. This photography made the designs look professional and they stood out, especially due to the contrast between the metallic gold and monochrome colour palette. The simplistic style of the poster allowed the photography to take centre stage which represented our 'We Are Gold' concept perfectly.