OUGD603 - EP - Exhibition - Evaluation

OUGD603 - EP - Exhibition - Time Plan

Keeping the Team
Organised

Through the majority of the process, I was in charge of keeping an up-to-date time plan that allowed us to make sure we were equally distributing the work load. Each time we met up or other progress was made, I documented it in the plan. This also helped us gage how long we spent doing each stage of the process. Sometimes we would look at the time plan and realise that we needed to pick up speed as the rate we were going was too slow and the show date was creeping up on us.

Time Plan from February through to mid April:

OUGD603 - EP - Exhibition - Show Night

A Night of

Success 

After having spent all day preparing the venue with posters, lighting, plants and a DJ booth, it was finally time for guests to start arriving. There was a constant flow of people all evening, with it getting very busy at times. There was live music from a few DJs that came up from London, as well as a selection of free drinks. 

The end result was very rewarding and is something I aim to do a lot more of in the future. I learned a lot from the process from the start all the way up to the event night and has been one of my most enjoyable projects to date.

Below are a selection of photos taken that night:

OUGD603 - EP - Exhibition - Vinyl

Vinyl Sticker on

Wood for Exhibition

On the train from Leeds to London, on the way to an open day, I was brainstorming ideas on how we can decorate the venue to strengthen the branding and identity so that it is clear and distinct. I wanted to produced something on a large scale but that was time efficient. I only had three days left until the event night which was just enough time to produce the vinyl.

I purchased the piece of wood from downstairs at uni for the reasonable price of £4.80. The vinyl was printed and cut in the digital print room. It was printed as one long black sticker, I had to then apply the sticker to the wood to then peal away any unwanted material. This was a very long and painful process but the result made it definitely worth it.

The unintentional second benefit of producing this was that, as I left it in the studio for a couple of days before transporting it to the venue, it caught a lot of attention from people using the studio space. The vinyl then acted as another piece of promotional material and ended up being one of the most successful.

OUGD603 - EP - Exhibition - Range of Ideas / Poster Development

Interpreting 
Brotherton House

Colour Schemes
taken from my photos of the building as a starting point to informing the graphic interpretation.

Technical Line drawings inspired by architectural drawings, focusing on the shape and structure.

As Brotherton House is a former police HQ, I decided to draw up a 1950s police car in the same style. This may be used later on to inform viewers of the purpose of the building without spelling it out.

Developing on from the line drawings, and inspired by research into Bauhaus and Constructivism posters, images of the builidng was traced over and represented by outlines of shapes. The compilation of shapes aim to show the form and structure of the building without including every detail.

Colours taken from the tiling of the building were then added to the blocks to achieve a 3D effect, showing the shadows and reflections made by different elements of the building.

Next was adding colour, informed by the previous colour grabbing from the buildings tiles.

To then give the drawing some depth, I used the different shades of blue to demonstrate shade and light.

The end result represented the architectural structure well and each element was well informed, however when considering that these prints will be posters, the next stage was to turn the shapes into a a layout or composition as opposed to a floating graphic.

Other Experiments:

Inspired by the many windows covering the larger faces of the building, the drawings and patterns below were created. Feedback suggested that they were slightly too abstract however, and I should keep the drawings more realist.

Final Designs once they have been framed, ready for the exhibition:

OUGD603 - EP - Exhibition - Venue

First Visit to
The Venue

As you can see from the photos below, the venue isn't exactly picture perfect. We knew that the room needed some work when we chose it, the location of it made it a very appropriate place for the show.

We went to visit the venue to make a list of everything that needed doing in order to transform the venue into a suitable space of an exhibition, of which there was a very extensive list. This included clearing the furniture from the floors and anything hanging on the walls. We are going to use the wall pictured below for the prints as it is long enough to fit 9 A1s in a row. The lighting is very dim and so we will need to sort our own, we are going to find out what is available to us from the photography department at University.

OUGD603 - EP - Exhibition - Poster Design

Pinterest Board of
Inspiration

Focusing on graphic design around the 1950s

OUGD603 - EP - Exhibition - Further Research

Graphic Design &
Architecture

To further my research and gather visuals that will inform my own interpretations of the Brotherton House building I browsed the library for books highlighting the relationship between Graphic Design and Architecture.

Graphic Design + Architecture,

A 20th Century History

Richard Poulin

Modernism and The International Style

1950-1979

- Common movement in GD & A emerged from Switzerland and Germany and became influential

- International Typographic Style, or Swiss Style, emerged during the 1950s

- This was based on order, function, and clarity

- Reliance on geometry, asymmetrical compositions, sans serif typography, mathematically defined page grids transformed graphic design

- In the built environment, the International Style was a major architectural movement that emerged during 20s and 30s

- Coined by architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and American architect Philip Johnson and their 1932 exhibition at the MOMA

- Constructivism, Bauhaus - characterised by a simplification of form, a rejection of ornament, and the use of functional, utilitarian materials such as concrete, steel and glass

- Obvious expression of a building's structure

- Modernism and the International Style provided Graphic Designers and Architects with a unified language.

OUGD603 - EP - Exhibition - Brotherton House

Chosen Building and
Visual Research

Research Notes:

- Former Leeds Police HQ
- 1950s office block
- On Leeds Headrow
- It was was here that legendary CID chief Denis Hoban planned the downfall of the city's criminals
- Has its own rooftop garden
- Seven story building
- Twin circular staircase towers
- Became police HQ in 1965
- Marketing by agents Jones, Lang Laselle
- Opened by the Earl of Scarborough in 1957
- Originally opened for Leeds chemicals and dyestuffs firm Brotherton and Co
- The heart of a new business area at the Westgate end of the Headrow
- It was named after the famous Leeds city benefactor family
- Erected by George Wimpey and Co Ltd, to a design by Leeds and London architect Victor Bain
- It was dubbed as the design of the future with the "latest external and internal structural techniques, automatic ventilation and ceiling heating"
- Building's contemporary elevation was faced with brick, Portland stone, Cumberland slate and Italian quartzite and armoured glass entrance doors
- Around 40,000 square feet
- One of the first buildings with underground car park, and top floor devoted to restaurants and roof gardens
- Ceilings were reported to be "acoustically perfect"
- 1965 - became police HQ

As well as the photos I took, I also decided to find as many images online as I could including interior images. There is a whole range of imagery, shapes and architectural details that I can use as inspiration to inform my graphic interpretations.

other notes:
- Use 1950s/60s Graphic Design styles & techniques, colours, type etc
- Italian Quartzite - use colour, texture?

OUGD603 - EP - Exhibition - Progress/Discussion

Meet Up & Discussion
Deciding on a Name & Identity

Today we decided to meet up to discuss the branding and identity of our exhibition. This is an important feature of the project for both learning outcomes as well as determining the success of the show.

We began by listing words associated with our concept, e.g. structure, architecture, construction, graphics, interpretation etc.

I then googled synonyms of each of these words to see if we could discover words that have the intended meaning but that aren't that obvious or thought of at first.

After an extensive effort at coming up with words, names and combinations, we all decided on the name:

FORMER 

FORM-ER

FORM[ER]

The decision to go with this name is informed by the concept of the show focusing on buildings (form) that were once integral to the city of Leeds (former).

We then decided to word out the concept of the show in a short, snappy sentence...

Graphic interpretations of past architectural forms in Leeds

The next step is to research exhibition branding to get some inspiration and decide on our own deliverables.

The first thing we need to produce is our online presence so that we can begin to spread word of the exhibition.

OUGD603 - EP - Exhibition - Site visits

Primary Research
Visiting Derelict Buildings

As we are still trying to solidify the concept and theme that the content of the exhibition will follow and be informed by, we made the decision to go for a drive and visit the various abandoned buildings that we previously located. We wanted to document them in as much depth as possible which entailed taking photos from as many angles as we could.

Difficulties in accessing the buildings was a limitation to this process. We managed to get up close to all of the buildings in question however it proved impossible to actually go inside. One way we over came the access issue was that we asked permission from a school who's ground the church was situated on. They kindly allowed us on site as visitors if we signed in and showed our University ID cards.

Hunslet Mill

Mount St Mary's Church

Brotherton House