Assignment 5: Seven Days

For this final assignment of the module, we were given quite a lot of liberty to create our own brief and final product based on the title ‘Seven Days’. We were allowed to interpret this in any way and produce either seven separate or one large diagrammatic or a continuous strip illustration. We were also allowed to decide on what media and methods to use and what it would be for.

I first started searching and brainstorming for briefs ideas on the basis of things that come in sevens or in seven days! From the seven wonders of the world, the seven deadly sins, the seven days of the week and the seven colours of the rainbow… there could be a lot of options!

I quite liked the idea of a ‘theme’ for seven days of some kind of challenge or course or something so I then brainstormed around that.

On that basis I then brainstormed around what type of end product these things could be: poster, brochure, for a magazine article etc. and tried to place some of the previous ideas linked to that! I liked the idea of one poster or brochure that could be diagrammatic or simply done depending on the theme.

I then picked my three favourite ideas: (i) a colour therapy course: 7 days, 7 colours!; (ii) 7 days charity challenge of hiking up 7 Munros in Scotland (highest mountains): (iii) a seven days hackathon for brainstorming around how to accelerated progress towards seven (out of 17) key Sustainable Development Goals. I imagined that these could be a series of posters or one poster or brochure to basically capture interest for people to participate as students, volunteers or experts respectively.

I have to admit that with this being my final assignment for this subject before submitting for assessment, I realise how much easier brainstorming and generating ideas and jumping around between ideas, sketchbooks and reference material has become for me with the practice of the previous exercises. I feel much more comfortable and less impatient as I explore and research without having to come to the perfect idea straight away or getting stuck on one that limits my thinking.

So, before making any final decisions, I did more brainstorming around these three ideas in three ways: what the brief could be like, reading about the topic and at the same time noting down ideas and key words and information that would be needed to develop the illustration and then a brainstorming of ideas of what the illustration could be like and some idea thumbnails.

7 days, 7 colours: Colour Therapy Workshop

The idea here was that this could be a brochure to attract students to partake in a seven day intensive workshop to both experience and learn how to give colour Therapy. How I got to this was actually through looking at the fact that there are seven colours in the rainbow and loving the idea of colours and doing something with the rainbow, I came across the fact that colour therapy is actually a thing! So I researched it and as I was reading things, I came up with some ideas in the below brainstorm. This process made it much easier for me to also have ideas, learning this from the exercise on identifying ideas for the magazine editorial earlier on. I think this is because of my more academic and social science background and so working in what is a more methodical way for me comes easy and allowed me to relax as I was reading and taking notes in a way that helped my creativity and idea generation.

I then tried to come up with some ideas for a brief e.g. it could be a brochure for a colour therapy course that uses the 7 colours of the rainbow but reflected the colour therapy idea, not a rainbow, was colourful and impactful and potentially linked to the wavelengths of light or how we see light through the eyes.

I then brainstormed from the basis of the first brief ideas on things that I could use as elements for this as per the below: from colour palettes, waves, eyes, icons, objects of a certain colour etc.

I then did a first brainstorm around potential thumbnails to see what I could come up with:

Bag 7 Munros in 7 Days for 7k for Charity

I then moved on to the next idea to trial things out there too. I followed the same process of first reading and exploring and coming up with some research and key concepts about the topic. I learned a lot about the Scottish mountains!

I then came up with some brief ideas, thinking about a poster or brochure to get people to sign up to the challenge and what the main focus would be e.g. rugged and using Scottish landscape as a the colour and mood and potentially even abstract along those lines while also not making it too dark and stormy but fun and interesting.

I then brainstormed around ideas for the illustration from using pictures of scotland to doing an abstract painting reminiscent of my previous highland cow or based on hiking tools and boots, maps and compasses and potentially having a scale to reach the desired funding total amount or the outlines of the 7 highest mountains etc.

On that basis I trialled out some thumbnail ideas to see if any ideas would work well.

7 days to solve 7 Sustainable Development Goals Hackathon

For a third time, I followed the same process for this idea. I first read and found information and key concepts that would be important for this.

I then tried to come up with a specific brief that would go with this. I decided it would be some kind of brochure again to attract people to join the challenge for a 7-day hackathon to try to come up with ideas to solve seven Sustainable Development Goals (I work in development so this was nice fit to some of the work I do), aimed at experts, consultants, tech wizzes and entrepreneurs etc.

I then tried to come up with ideas for the contents and some sketches noting I would need to use the official Sustainable Development Goals logos and icons but that I would still want to come up with one illustration to bring that together and this could be a kind of diagrammatic thing to illustrate the 7 goals to be looked at.

Final choice

I then went back to all three options and ideas and had to chose one to take to final production. In the end I decided on the colour therapy course since the ideas for that I felt were richer and different from what I had done before and it interested me a lot too. The SDG one would have been really good to but since I would be having to use official logos and icons, I felt that it wouldn’t be as original. For the Scottish mountains, I liked the idea but also felt that it maybe took me down similar things to what I had done before.

So I then I thought again about the brief and came up with the final one:

A3 vertical poster
Containing elements to attract students either everyday people interested or specific to Art Therapists, Psychologists etc.
It had to be colourful and striking and use the 7 colours of the rainbow to align with the idea of the seven days of the course and also allude to the idea of the well-being the course could help bring as well as key information about the course that was attractive.

I then explored more thumbnails based on all the thinking done thus far and ended up really liking the idea of using the eye, where we detect light, and incorporating the rainbow colours into the iris and making everything else black and white for a really striking contrast.

To help me more, I created a moodboard combined with research on colour therapy and what colour therapy can treat or the benefits it can give you in my Pinterest account:

I even found tricks on how to turn photos of real eyes into rainbow coloured ones in Photoshop but I really wanted to create my own drawing and decided to use oil pastels for the iris colour and charcoal and pencil for the rest and so came up with the below drawing which I put into Photoshop to create a glassy effect and so I could then integrate it into a digitally created poster in In Design.

I then started playing around in ID and trying out different positions, types and format of text etc to get something that worked as I wanted it:

I decided that I quite liked the eye at the bottom and the pillar of text and info above, almost like the board you have to decipher when you go to the optician! So I played around more and really tried to give less text and more icons etc.

After playing more also with the space, trying out different text positions etc the size of the eye, I finally came up with the below final version!

Final reflection

I realise that I quite liked doing such posters and that looking back on other such exercises, I realise I really enjoyed them and perhaps was more naturally capable to get a better finished product on things that I was used to looking at and taking in visually and admiring like posters, cards, magazine editorials etc. – very unlike doing logos, strips or abstract things or kids books – while I feel I had to really learn how to read and understand.

I have also come to realise that for something I want to have finished digitally, I really need to experiment digitally and that thumbnails are good to get me started but that I learned and adapted better when trying to actually put pieces together inside a brochure or poster etc. This is why I have documented the stages of the development process as I tried things out and moved things around on the page – allowing myself to go beyond even my favourite thumbnails as I can get more out of it when I see the shape and elements together on screen. I hope this is me coming to realise how my learning and creative processes work best!