Monday was a massive turning point in our work as we started to hit somewhat of a dilemma. Upon getting into groups and pitching our rough ideas as well as talking to people amidst the studio we realised we got the objective of the brief a little bit wrong; the photo and/or gif we were making had to be based up a physical intervention, happening outside of the studio - which somewhat ruled out the plausibility of doing what we'd originally planned with our dominoes.
We realised that we were going to have to have a dramatic shift in what we'd originally planned, so we went back to the beginning again and started searching for more ideas. I quite liked the idea of elaborating on the plans I had brought up in the facebook conversations - creating mini postcards or 'congratulations!' cards that we could leave on train and bus seats, but the others in the group weren't too keen about this. Our conversation went in about 5 circles before we all arrived on an idea of making posters or picket signs that could be implemented into these environments - each with a message of something along the lines of "Please say thank you" to remind people of scenarios they might otherwise forget to use manners or be rude.
We realised this would work well as an intervention photo, but was slightly stumped as to how we could create a GIF from it. At the same time, Hannah and Tom were still pressing the idea of creating the looped GIF of a door queue, but me and Katie were concerned there wasn't enough to link the GIF to the posters we were planning on creating as well.
At this point, it was also apparent there was conflict in work styles - where Hannah and Tom took a much more open and relaxed research approach, and me and Katie seemed to be more hands on and eager to get things moving. The constant back tracking and re-visiting of our ideas was becoming frustrating and the more and more we seemed to go around in circles, the less inspired I became to want to work or contribute. I was worried we were faffing about with ideas to such an extent the project was losing creative momentum, and I felt that at that point, we really needed to draw a line in the sand and start actually producing some visual work. Because I knew Tom and Hannah we're still interested in experimenting with some GIF work, me and Katie suggested that we would go and develop the Poster/interventional photo, and they would go and create the GIF - allowing time to correspond and let each other know what the others were doing.
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As I was the only one in our group with any typographic or layout experience, I created a first-draft example of the poster, with Katie taking on more of a role as an Art director. The main look we were roughly initially going for was an informational 'sign', looking at using a traditionally 'british' looking font (which ended up being Gill Sans), which we were originally planning to print out onto super bright fluorescent stock to make it eyecatching. Tom pointed out, upon review that this draft of the poster looked very reminiscent of the 'Keep calm and carry on' posters that have horrifically done to death by general media. Worried that it might just end up looking too much like a pastiche, we spoke to matt about ways we could improve the poster in way. He referred us to the work of Anthony Burill, who's work pretty much nailed exactly the sort of direction we were wanting with our posters
As well as the visual look of the posters, matt also discussed the importance of copy for them as well. "Please say thank you" on its one, whilst straight to the point was pretty bland - and Tom raised a concern that the posters could run the risk of sounding too condescending. We came up with a range of alternative slogans we could end up using instead:
- "Don't talk to me #toobusy"
- "I'm too busy checking my facebook to say thank you"
- "Please and Thank you? I have a train to catch!"
- "No manners, please, i'm in a bad mood"
- "Too grumpy to hold a door today"
A lot more of the slogans we had were variations of a theme, and I was worried some of them ran the risk of becoming too situation specific to use - but nonetheless, we took these and started to create a new batch.
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