TARGETS FOR THE SUMMER

Jacob Ham

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DATE

1st May 2017

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DEADLINE.

NA

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Introduction.

During the summer, I aim to further develop my skills in various aspects of both personal and professional sides of design. I set these aims to help me have a greater understanding certain areas of design that will be crucial for Level 5 and Level 6.

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Set Targets.

The following targets are set to help me outline areas of study throughout the summer period, these could change throughout the duration, but they will strongly reflect and be helpful for Level 5. The targets below are a small insight to what I plan to spend my summer doing;

• Redevelop my portfolio

• Develop early concepts for my Critical Study

• Continue to work with clients on various types of projects beyond branding and logo design.

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Redeveloping my portfolio.

Currently my portfolio(website) is used for my PPD blog and nothing more. I would like to rapidly change this across the summer, building a new and more professional site that gives a better representation of the standard of my work.

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During the summer, I will either be hiring a coder to develop the site I produced for my personal branding or switching from Wix to Squarespace for a more professional appeal on my website. I will still use the site for my blogs but will fit into the style and theme developed for the site. 

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Develop early concepts for my Critical Study.

One of my first modules upon returning after the summer is known as "Critical Study" in which I develop a editorial piece based on an area of interest that contains between 3,500 to 4,000 words. I decided it would be best to start earlier to both get a head start and produce a higher quality outcome compared to spending the allocated three months given when briefed. This would be beneficial to myself with having to get professional standard prints for handing in on deadline.

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During the April half term, I came up with an idea of researching into music albums both contemporary and historical to base around the hypothesis "What is the importance of album artwork? and how it can be used in a symbolic way!". Although this does not seem like a controversial topic, but in recent years. Album covers have often started to become more meaningful and symbolic to the artist. However album's such as "The Life of Pablo" by Kanye West that features a derogatory image on the front of the cover, have often sparked issues to why and arises issues for equality and the freedom that is given to artists when producing music.

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This entire concept for this study, comes from listening to one of my favourite artists known as "Logic" or better known as "Bobby Tarantino" after his favourite director "Quentin Tarantino". Bobby released a song called "Everybody" on 30th March 2017 and shortly after that "Black SpiderMan" on April 13th. These two songs focus on everyone being equal regardless of race, sexual orientation and creed. Prior to Bobby released the cover for his upcoming album known as "Everybody" and what really appeals to me about this is that from the few songs he has released as pre-order incentives. The entire album focuses on "Everybody" and the album cover features everybody, even Quentin Tarantino who has played a influential part within his life. I find this interesting as the artist can use the design to display both his life story and the meaning of the entire album on the front cover.

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I wanted to use quotes from the artist themselves to help spilt up the pages and contents of my study. So, for example for Logic, I used the words found within the trailer for the album which I then combined with the colours used on the single track cover. This being red, white and blue. This probably would stay the same throughout the book, with colour being allocated depending on the artwork.

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I then decided to take the project a little, further and found that the album cover was actually inspired by a painting that has been around for many years.  From here I would go on to compare the aspects and look into the background of the painting. The Human Condition, a album from another of my favourite artists known as, Jon Bellion. This album, every single song had a dedicated album art even if the song was not available to be bought separately and it was not until I was watching the Disney film "Up" that I started to notice how similar the style of character illustration is on the cover. 

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I decided to do some research and found that the album was actually a business proposition aiming towards Pixar and the album was designed to appeal to the same audience so that employees of Pixar would see the cover and respond with "Hey, that looks like our movies but its not and then pick up the album and play it.". The whole idea of this was to score a movie at the company. This was confirmed in an interview with "iHeartRadio" back when the album first released in June 2016.

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Next areas for development?

To develop this further, I will be researching into various genres of music to find iconic album art that has importance and can be seen in a symbolic way. My main goal is to finalise the design aspect of my study over the summer which then gives me plenty of time to write the essay but it is crucial that I remember to keep all the links used for quotes, images and anything that is used to correctly reference them within my final essay.

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Working with clients.

During the summer, I plan to continue working with clients similar to the past year, using the work to build up my portfolio as a designer and featuring it in both my PSP and WRL module's. Over this summer I will be rebranding a charity called "Creating4Charity"

twitter.com/Create4Charity_ which is a brand ran by the owner of StreamerMarket another project I had completed in the past year. This will be used in my WRL module, showcasing development and annotations.

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Redeveloping my portfolio will allow me to gain newer clients, especially when giving a better first impression compared to what my current site does.

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I will reflect on these targets in one of my first posts after the summer in PPD2.