During the first week of my project my target was to produce and collect primary and secondary research to plan how I was going to approach the concept design within the brief and also to decide on the name of the car production company and the name of the car model I will be designing.
My first actions were to look at car manufacturer logos and analyse each one to see how it relates to and represents the company it belongs to. I also studied an article about the car design development process and the responsibilities of a Concept artist. I found this article very informative and helpful it gave me an idea of what the industry expects from a professional designer in a live brief.
I also went a bit further in my action plan and started to develop my logo ideas I collected a wide range of ideas and I feel that there are two strong ideas, I plan to digitise these and develop them further till I can choose which one is more appropriate and stronger.
Week 2
For my second week my target was to finalise my logo design and to create guidelines on how the logo should be used in certain situations and conditions. I also aimed to start designing and developing concepts for my car by looking closely at the form of other sports cars that target the same customer as mine.
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| Final Aquila logo |
I was able to finalise my brand and logo and decided to call my car manufacturing company Aquila which is Italian for Eagle, I also decided to call the car Superari, which again is an Italian phrase which has a few meanings and all of them I feel portray the sort of car I am looking to design, with meanings like; to overcome, to Surpass, to soar, to exceed etc I feel these meanings send very positive messages to the target market. I am very pleased with my brand identity because it is strong and expresses my intentions for the company direction. Unfortunately I was unable to complete the logo guidelines this week as I spent a large majority of my time design and developing my concepts for the car, which seems to be a more lengthy process than I anticipated. I aim to complete this in my own time and I want to spend a good amount of time planning it.
All in all I feel that this week has been productive despite not completing the logo guidelines, I was able to get a very good idea of my car's form and some of the details, next week I aim to perfect my designs and have a digital 2D copy of various angles of the car, if possible I aim to begin a 3D model of the car but I may need outside help as I have very limited experience with 3D software but I will do my best.
Week 3
In my second week I my targets were to have finished my concept sketches and have a clear idea of the body and form of the car, to begin my 3D model and to plan and develop ideas for advertising material.
During this week I was able to complete all of the tasks I had set, at the beginning of the week I spent alot of time finalising my concept sketches and getting a clear idea of the what my final car would look like, I was also able to create a digital vector of the car design to provide a guideline for what the car should look like from certain angles.
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| Final concept design |
After talking to a fellow student who is studying 3D and using 3D software and talking to a tutor of 3D at my college, I decided that I wouldn't be able to produce a 3D model for my car as I was told that it could take up to six months to learn how to use the software to the standard it would require to create a model of a car, in talking with a student from 3D I was able to commission a 3D model and I gave him the vector template as a template, he told me it could take him about an hour to complete which was very surprising and satisfying as I am keen to focus now on the advertising side of the brief. Towards the end of this week I collected some print based based media from car companies like Skoda, Seat and Mercedes, things like brochures and a few leaflets, they weren't ideally what I was looking for but they were able to give me an idea of the style and formatting of a car manufacturers documents which is quite helpful in giving me an idea of what I need to create for Aquila. I was also able to begin brainstorming ideas for my advertising and I believe I have come up with some exciting ideas, especially for the the launch of the Aquila Superari.
Overall I am very pleased with my progress this week I have completed all of the tasks I have set and I can now look forward to focusing on my advertising material.
Week 4
In week 4 of my action plan my targets were to have completed a concept design and continue development for my advertising campaign.
As I said in last week I was able to complete a concept design and I approached a student of 3D to ask him to produce a 3D model based on the concept designs I gave him, he was able to create the model in a week which was very impressive and helpful to me as I could begin my advertising, which is the most important part of the brief. However when I was extracting screenshots of the car I found that the images were not suitable for advertising the car and I believe I could create a better advertising campaign without using the images from the 3D model, wether it means producing more sketches of the car for advertising imagery or creating advertising that doesn't include an image of the car. I will be exploring a variety of advertising ideas during next week.
In this week I was also able to finalise my logo guidelines, I am pleased with them as they are detailed and in-keeping with the corporate image of Aquila, I will be looking at getting the guidelines finely printed in brochure form if it will be beneficial to the brief.
I did hit an obstacle this week due to the images that I took from the 3D model but I feel I can overcome this by looking at other advertising ideas and I am confident that I will be able to produce a high quality outcome.
Week 5
My target for this week was to finish all work, which I feel was quite optimistic in light of the amount of work I have to do, so I think it would be more reasonable to say that all work should be completed by the sixth week in a seven week time frame.
During this week I have been working on my advertising as it is thew last remaining part of the brief yet to be fulfilled I managed to put together a standard campaign which is very traditional in that it displays the car from the front and the side in a two part campaign designed for A3 print. This campaign is intended to reveal the product (Superare), to do this I produced a detailed vector of the car in views from the front, back and side of the car, this method wasn't ideal but I believe it is very realistic, and I am pleased with the final result.
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| Aquila Superare surpasses reveal ad |
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| Aquila Superare overcomes reveal ad |
I believe I have made good progress through this week and I am excited to finish the advertising campaigns so that I can present and review my work.
Week 6
This week my target was to have finished all of my work including all branding, concept design and advertising for a car manufacturing company.
During this week I have been developing and finalising teaser advertising material, and I am pleased to say that I have completed all the work necessary to fulfill the brief and more. For the teaser material I used facts and figures of the car as well words that I have associated with the car like "Surpass" to create a typographical background and I created a vector of the car shape in black and white which shows the basic design and shape of the car but doesn't give away too much. I've also made a code which uses the rule A=1 etc to decode it, this was made so that people could work out what the car is called and it also makes people spend more time thinking about the product and thought it was a good strategy of teasing the audience.
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| Aquila Superare side view teaser ad |
I feel that I have made some very good advertising material this week and my next task is to print my work and review it during next week.
Week 7, FMP summary
During this week my task was to print and present my work in the form of an exhibition.
I have been able to fulfill the task and the entire brief this week, my prints are complete and ready to be displayed in exhibition when we build the boards, which will be next week. I have also done a bibliography showing links to websites and articles that I used in my research, and to this blog.
Evaluation
The brief was to create a car manufacturer brand identity, concept designs for on of the cars that it will manufacture, and posters and advertising material for that product. On reflection this was a very challenging brief to set myself, in the time period I was permitted, although I think I managed the brief very well.
I think the highlight of this brief is the brand identity, I really think the name (Aquila) and the logo could represent a real car manufacturing company, I am also pleased with the name I came up with for the car (Superare), which is Italian and has meanings like soar, surpass, overcome, exceed, outdo and I think these meanings fit well with the car I have designed. I am also very pleased with the concept designs I produced especially the sketches. There was an obstacle in my concept designs however I realised that I need much more time to be able to create something like a car model in 3D because I had never used the software before, I knew that I wouldn't have enough time to create the 3D model myself so I commissioned a 3D model from a student studying 3D at my college I showed him my concept sketches and gave him a vector of the car to work from. He was able to produce the model in a week but unfortunately after taking several screenshots of the car I decided that it wasn't suitable for artwork in my advertising because the model had a few flaws and it didn't really represent the car I had designed.
This was a problem because I needed some sort of images of the car and the 3D model was the best option but that wasn't available now, I decided to create a detailed full colour vector of the car I had designed from several different angles and I used these in my advertising. I designed and printed two A3 posters which show the car from the front and the side. I then created teaser material which shows the outline of the car and hints at the name of the car, there is a code which translates to Superare and some of the letters in the background are highlighted to create the word Superare.
I think that I handled the concept design and advertising very well in this brief as I came up with a very good design of a sports car and the advertising, particularly the teaser cards were very clever as I think they would grab an audience's attention because of the codes on them, I think this sort of thing engages the audience and makes the advertising successful.
On balance I am very pleased with my response to the brief I learnt alot about advertising and concept design and I realise that there are some very different roles in the visual communication industry and that you need to choose your own role, I'm now certain that mine is within the branding and visual identity industry. I also had the opportunity to collaborate with a 3D student which was new to me and an experience I will need in the future.
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| Final Exhibition, Aquila car brief |
