This blog post covers the initial stages of my chosen external brief, Print Social, covering my planning, proposal, and initial research.
Brief
External Brief
"For too many years now people have been aware of their effect on the world around them. At Print Social we really care about our beautiful planet, Earth, and we are sure you will agree it’s in much need of some TLC at the present time. The pandemic has really brought into sharp focus the collective impacts that we have been having on our world. Whether it’s reducing air travel; cycling more; buying less; reducing waste by recycling and reusing; following a meat free diet; growing more veg; using less water or making plastic free shopping choices - we can all do more to help stop the decline and restore it for the future generations."
Your design must reflect the theme: Restore our Earth. How you wish to interpret this is up to you - we want you to feel free to express yourself in your own unique style and put your own stamp on the theme. Your design must be thought provoking (without causing offence!) and reflect a depth of research linked to the theme.
Submissions must:
● Be PNG files with transparency ideally
● 1-3 Colours
● Include a Title and Brief description about your design/idea
● Charity choice - chosen from the list above
● 300dpi high res
● 35cm x 45cm (file dimensions)
● Deadline: Please send by the 15th March
Project Proposal:
I chose this project as I felt the theme aligned with my previous second year project, Consumption, and felt it would be an opportunity to develop my concepts and begin to incorporate my digital illustration within my broader professional practice. Aligning with the brief I will create a design which is reflective of the climate emergency, focusing on veganism
Context:
I plan to create a t-shirt design using digital illustration practices, developing my personal style, and beginning to develop the professional context of my work. I will conduct research into Earth Day, Veganism, and protest art.
Practical Aims:
I hope to develop my drawn digital illustration within a professional practice, considering font and layout when applied to a professional brief.
Research
Who are Print Social?
Print Social are a pre-sale garment platform working in collaboration with the commercial screen-printing company, 3rd Rail, who allow creators to design their own garments.
Print Social have a bold aesthetic, working primarily with minimalist font and colour use.
Print Social designs work primarily with different charity organisations and social justice movements to create design campaigns which both empower artists and challenge perspectives.
Exploring this I want to take the minimalism seen in Print Social's aesthetic and create a bold and powerful design which creates a statement about the climate emergency.
What is Earth Day?
Earth Day is ran by earthday.org with the aim to diversify, activate and educate the climate change movement.
"When life around the globe returns to normal, our world cannot return to business-as-usual." - earthday.org
Earth Day takes different incentives engaging with education, conservation, and communities to tackle issues of climate change, pollution, and ecosystem collapse. Their projects aim to make real difference across the world to create a better planet for the next generation.
Earth Day Org take a proactive approach to saving the planet, citing the current climate emergency with scientific studies and educational awareness incentives. They encourage individuals to get involved in a variety of ways:
Get Informed: Earth Day Org believe that knowledge is power, and encourage individuals to educate themselves about the climate emergency and spread that knowledge to make a wider individual impact.
Hold Yourself Accountable: Earth Day Org encourage an introspective approach to tackling climate change, offering individuals the opportunity to calculate their carbon footprint.
Unplug: Earth Day Org encourage individuals to make small changes to their carbon footprint such as turning off plugs, buying low-energy appliances. They also have an incentive to encourage individuals to record their acts of green on their Billion Acts of Green Calculator.
Travel Smarter: Earth Day cite transport as the largest contributor of CO2 in the US, and encourage individuals to reduce their CO2 producing travel such as taking less aeroplanes, using the car less, choosing public transport.
One Bite at a Time: Earth Day cite eating animal products to be a huge contributor to global warming due to the impacts of mass agriculture. They encourage individuals to eat less animal products and to be aware of their food waste to reduce personal emissions.
Shop Smarter: Earth Day Org encourage consumers to be brand conscious and more aware of where their money is going by getting to know the climate ethics of the companies they buy from.
Vote Earth: Earth Day Org get involved with elections worldwide, encouraging voters to scrutinise and question the climate policies of their governments.
Organise: Earth Day Org encourage individuals to organise their own events within communities to create larger groups.
Artists for the Earth
Artists for the Earth is a campaign led by Earth Day Org aiming to connect artists worldwide and engage the public with climate issues. They run many incentives which encourage artists to get talking about climate issues.
Global Halt was launched in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a street art campaign which asked artists to envision our future as a warming planet. I like the graphic style of this campaign and how the activist context allows for the works to stand alone as pieces of street art. If focusing on activist art, I could consider a similar format.
Benjamin Von Wong is a photographer and Earth Artist aiming to tackle climate issues with striking photography which plays on composition to create wider pictures. This work is interesting as it relates to my IPS photography, I could consider experimental portraiture composition.
Last Chance to Paint connects children to nature and indigenous cultures through art and music. The project allows school students to experience art, nature, and music through interactive videos of Dyer's daily vlogs which document his artistic journey. Although I fint eh art interesting in this project in terms of the colourful and crowded composition, I feel the style is quite far from my own. However, I do find the interactive video element of the project interesting as it relates to the virtual composition of my current project, Curating Queer.
Protest Art
Acting as the method of narratives, illustration allows us to change perspective through artistic practice. An element of this is protest art, from Keith Haring to Barbara Kruger, protest artists have the power to shape public perception by creating pieces which are explicit, unapologetic, and thought-provoking.
Keith Haring:
Donald Moffett
Guerrilla Girls
Looking at these protest artists, the majority follow similar stylistic layouts, focusing on bold colours, block text, and minimalist design. This is an advantage in protest art as it allows for pieces to be to the point and thought provoking, without overcomplicating the concept.
Concept
To create my concept for this project, I thought about the key aims of Earth Day and how this aligned with my past project, Consumption.
Consumption had really strong digital collage work, however I wanted to rethink this project with the idea of hand-drawn and digital illustration which is coming through in my third year practical work. Consumption's themes aligned with 3 of Earth Day's action aims: Shop Smarter, One Bite at a Time, and Hold Yourself Accountable. Thinking about my feedback from the course project, that my digital work is coming across very clean, I wanted to consider how I could incorporate the sketched style of my diaries into my digital pieces.
For this initial design I wanted to create something which used free flowing line similar to that of Keith Haring in my protest art research. I wanted to play on the idea of how meat is consumed in our society with a cognitive dissonance.
The way we discuss our meat consumption as a society allows us to distance ourselves from the reality of eating an animal. This can be seen in how we name meat - poultry, beef, pork - in a way which allows for a distance between what we see as an animal, and what we see as food. In western society our ability to completely detach ourselves from the idea of the animal we eat is emphasised by our ability to buy it pre-packaged, reshaped, and conveniently, with a literal distance being created between how our meat is sourced in slaughter houses and abattoirs, and our supermarket shelves. This idea is something animal rights organisation, Peta, discuss in their protest art.
Forcing meat-eaters to face the reality of their meat consumption is a visual tactic which is often used by Peta, to break down the cognitive dissonance created by meat sales.
Through my own design I wanted to combine imagery of meat as it is consumed, with the animal which many meat eaters are able to distance themselves from.
Exploring how to draw recognisable pieces of meat, I was reminded of old cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes, and The Flinstones and how these cartoons showed food - steak in particular. These cartoons usually use simplistic line, shape, and colour, to create immediate recognisability for an audience. I wanted to play on these traditional ideas of meat being drawn by creating my own mimicry of this.
Creating my own images I focused on a similar simplistic drawing style, combining typically recognisable depictions of meat with typical depictions of the animals these types of meat come from. With a similar concept of Peta, I wanted these designs to destroy the cognitive dissonance between meat and the animal it comes from in my audience. I also began to think about representing dairy also, repackaging dairy products to eliminate a similar dissonance in dairy consumption.
Process and Development
Using a scanned version of my original sketches, I created a digital version of one of the sketches. Thinking of being on a back or white t-shirt I inverted design for a possible colour change. I do feel both images are strong, their simplicity allowing for a strengthened concept, but feel the white on black design is bolder.
I them experimented with placement on the t-shirt, thinking about how the design could be laid out on either the front or back of a t-shirt. Again I feel the white on black design is stronger here as the image is bolder. I do feel the breast design is also stronger, as the blown up image isn't detailed enough for a primary design. Looking over this design I wa not happy as I felt the imagery was too childish, and too smooth for my liking. The cleanness of my work is something which was critiqued in the course project crits, so I decided to go back to my initial sketches to explore how the rough style could translate better into digital pieces.
In these sketches I went for a rougher style, responding to both my own designs from Consumption, and the cartoon food imagery. I also began to explore moving beyond meat (pun intended) to think about other themes such as dairy consumption and plastic waste. I particularly like the steak sketch, and decided to recreate my original design using a similar style.
This design combines the rough style of drawing with my original concept, I experimented with adding different elements such as dripping blood around the steak to add a gruesome element, and the cow-bell to increase the recognisability of the animal.
Creating the digital version of this design I began by creating an outline on photoshop, I wanted to create a more concise image so ended up choosing not to incorporate the additional elements of the drawn design. I originally wanted to keep this design black and white, replicating the initial concept design, yet I feel due to the thin line this comes off as very flat.
Adding colour, I wanted to create colours which were immediately recognisable of the subject, as seen in my cartoon food inspiration, creating a smooth red and light yellow - the yellow representing the thick of the fat.
Adding the text to the image, I wanted to keep consistent with the Print Social theme - Restore Our Earth - adding my own slogan "Eat Less Meat". Liking the handwritten style of text in my Course Project and initial drawings, I scanned a handwritten slogan, and transformed this into a digital outline. This allowed me to experiment with text placement. I did however think when between the horns, the text detracted from the image.
This final design replaces the text to move around the shape of the focal image, which I feel adds to the image itself, enforcing the shape. The choppy unpolished lines allow for an element of roughness which I liked in my initial sketches, whilst the digital print quality with overlaid grain allows for a professional finish.
Realisation & Communication
To explore the communication of my image, I had to establish an audience, how this shirt design would be sold, where it would be sold, and who would buy it. Although this is already set within the brief itself, I felt it integral to think outside of the brief to assess the success of my design. To begin this experimentation I layered my design onto black and white tshirts.
I think the design looks more effective on the white t-shirt, as the black requires a white background which with the additional background detracts from the central image. I like the idea of having 2 placements on one design, the breast pocket design allows for a degree of subtlety, whilst the back design allows for a dual boldness. This layout is also currently popular in men's t-shirt design as pictured below.
I then experimented with placing my design on different commercial t-shirts with different styles, colours, fits, and genders. My favourite design is the top right, I think the placement, style and colour works well. I therefore feel my design would be most suited with a double print, on a white t-shirt, in a unisex crewneck style. I feel this exercise was integral to reaching that conclusion.
Final Design:
I ran my final design through Print Social's T-shirt printing service to give me an idea of how this would be produced through them. I noticed two issues during this process, one being the transparency needed to be set and saved by using a PNG format, and two being the size of the file created issues as pictured despite the focal image fitting within the layout box.
Feedback
After submitting my final design, I received feedback from the external company setting the brief, as follows:
You have responded to the project in a thought provoking and intellectual way.
I also collected feedback in my peer tutorials from both peers and tutors:
It could be interesting to explore how this could be screen printed, by exploring how screen printing works as a medium, this could strengthen your overall knowledge and allow for a further development in future projects.
I like the subtlety of the text and the way it contrasts the boldness of the design, it creates a really nice balance as a complete image. However you may wish to think further about type and how it's quality could be impacted through the screen printing process.
Actions from feedback:
Explore the physical context of how my work will be created in further detail, exploring how to create my design as a print-screen ready piece.
Think about text usage in more detail for future projects - why is font important, how can I make ready-made font my own?