Brief 12 - Meeting

Today we had a meeting to move forward with our concept and start working on the posters and other design work that we want to do.

We decided on a definite concept, using a jigsaw as inspiration - putting together the pieces. This references the idea of each city being individual, and that putting them together creates a strength, unity and clarity.

The logo links to this strongly as it is four coloured arrows weaved together. However we did agree that Ewans version of the logo was possibly stronger in the link as it was a bit more obviously weaved with twice the amount of lines.

He had also created two possible patterns which could be used, which is something we are strongly considering using in the branding as it can be used both subtly and prominently.

Posters

We discussed our initial thoughts for the posters, and liked the idea of having the four of them aesthetically connected and flowing. The main idea we had was that of having 'capital north' written over the edges so the posters would piece together to show the text fully.

The thing that we are having difficulty with is the actual written content. Creating consistent and strong content across all posters is hard as we don't know what to make the focus.

We all tried variations of the fitting together the posters and quickly agreed that it wasn't working as well as we'd hoped so another direction was needed.

We spoke about the content and looked over the brief again to discuss the points raised in it. I suggested that we keep the content simple, connected and easy to understand across all of the posters.

It was at this point that we discussed the aesthetics we wanted to use across the posters, deciding that the main aspect we wanted to use was the connection of them and how each poster can work on their own, but be put together to create the bigger picture - linking to the concept and idea of a jigsaw.

We decided on the idea of a landscape, so we would create illustrations for each city - making it individual to each city - and then the whole image would be made up of all the illustrations to show the unity. These would be lined up as the way they go across he country - Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Hull.

For each city we decided on a topic. While these wouldn't necessarily be linked specifically to that city, as they are general points they definitely can be - and when all the posters are together it shows the main benefits of Capital North.

Chosen Topics:

• Travel
• Innovation
• Opportunities
• Culture

To keep a simple execution of these, we looked into words that were similar - such as 'experience' and 'enjoy' etc. We wanted a different word for each.

We decided on the following:

• Experience Travel
• Discover Innovation
• Unearth Opportunities
• Explore Culture

Initial mocked up idea:

I quite like the way this is going, however it obviously needs work and we won't get a full visual until the illustrations are done.

Following this we discussed the other collateral that we wanted to do. We previously decided on 'Train Livery' and 'Environmental'. We have agreed that these are still the ones best fitting to our concept.

We then split off the sections for us each to progress with individually. Sam and Ewan will create the illustrations, poster ideas and possible train livery. Ant will do way finding around the city, staff uniforms and work on creating an animated logo design.

My job is to create the way finding/livery for a train station. With this I already have a few initial ideas in platform posters and general designs to go around the station.