Logo already?

I've been meaning to actually start properly thinking and coming up with early design, but i find it hard at the moment for some reason. However this is how I think the Alight identity should look, obviously in a very early unrefined for, but hay everything has to start somewhere right?

As i mentioned in previous posts i kept the colours simple for now, i like this very early simple log, however i do feel like looks very off but more research and fine tuning should solve that. I feel i have the key colours sorted for my overall identity, i got the font by just typing "alight font" into Google. I do like the font but i think it gives it a Greek holiday look so i will have to find or even design a more appropriate font. The colours themselves from top to bottom represent day, midday and night as that is the layout of the day itself.   

Still havnt recieved any letters to modify

I haven't received and illustrator file letters to change so i feel a bit left out and also stuck as i'm unable to do the workshop. I was really looking forward to this because it would give me an excuse to draw all over someones work and send it off to the next person to see what they would've done, but i'm either incredibly crap at using blackboard or someone before me just can't be bothered to do the work until the last possible moment and if that's the case then it wont end up ever getting done.
 

Crowd Speak Workshop

Today we talked about how getting the opinion of the public is extremely important when designing something for them, it may seem obvious but in all honestly it completely went over my head. With spending 3 years already designing things over and over i really did forget that i will be designing for the public and not a brief. We also talked about how passing on your design to another to change can be hard work if you're a bit egotistical, when it comes to drawing i can be.



We were then given our next task, the task i haven't been able to start or find on blackboard because my internet has been down for the past 4 days, but all that aside it's back now. Anyway we were given the same task as last time, except this one includes my favorite program of all time, illustrator. The idea is to get a ready make letter from A.L.I.G.H.T and then add something to the inside of the letter that relates to alight, nice and simple. The thing we could add doesn't have to be a big thing, it can be tiny. As i said before, i haven't found where these letters are yet but we did start the exercise that same day, seemed easy enough at first but then it suddenly became it little more challenging, there is only so many things i can think up that are black and white and refer to alight. For one thing it is extremely hard showing something that in my head reminds me of bright vibrant colour in black and white. However i see why we have to use only black and white, if we don't the animation we construct at the end would would terribly confusing.

This was the idea behind the workshop, however i am unable to do this myself now because I have nott received any AI files to modify, hopefully i will get some sooner than later. 

My choice/Choices

Depending on how many things you can choose whether that be one or three, i would like to look more into the projection at the city hall and either leaflet or poster design linking them all with a colour code.

Colour choices and the brand

Even though my primary concern is designing and making an interesting and visually engaging presentation/projection i still need to conceder the brands identity, even if not as much as the other areas it is still important. When someone says Alight to me i often think of a sunset, so perhaps some calming warm colours would suit the brand for starters. In my personal opinion i often think using too many colours can ruin an identity i usually set the limit to 3 or 4 colours, it probably is just me but i always thing the best designs and most effective ones are the ones which are the simplest.

I've always loved this identity and it only uses 2 colours that clash making for a very unique and interesting design.

This popular one only uses 1 colour, super cool.... i don't think white is colour.

This ugly logo uses 4, the reason i don't like it is just for that, and it looks old anyway. I feel it would have looked much better if it was red and blue. In fact i will change this logo to see. 

Looks a little like the pepsi logo, but i still think it's an improvement on the original. 

The whole reason i am thinking about identity is because i need a group of key colours i will use to link some of the work together, i don't want to stick a cheap looking logo onto everything and say "jobs a gooden" because that just wont do. The colours i have in mind at the moment are peach, a very washy yellow and dark blue. However these colours may change depending upon what other information i am given in the future or depending on whether they suit the festival/brand or not.

Out of my Hands/Thinking about user made content.

Today we had our first workshop since our briefing, it really helped me understand what the Alright project could potentially be all about and how i could incorporate myself within it. We started off going round the room and discussing who could Alight be aimed at, how old the people were and why they would decide to come to the Alight Festival, most of the conclusions consisted of:

During the day it would be pretty much everyone, men and woman, young and old.
During Twilight it would consist of upper class concert goers with the possibility of other music lovers and family members aged 25+ and their kids brought along for the crazy ride.
During Alight at night pretty much the same as Twilight with the added exception of younger children being out of the equation because it's past their beddy byes.



After this we were introduced to the idea of user made content, this idea being that something doesn't have to be designed completely by the designer, it could involve interaction of some sort. Spore was mentioned which is a semi-popular video game where the player makes an online account and designs a creature, planet, buildings and almost everything else, this content is then put on their database and uploaded into other games creating a very unique experience. If this were introduced into a design for the Alight Festival it could make for a very interesting concept, and idea sprung to mind that anyone could text a service that would change the colour of what was going on behind the orchestra but be held in a que for 20 seconds.

Other user made content is well.... all over the internet, the means of giving someone a website to post their things, such as this website. Practically every website is user made content, the tools to create them are at our fingertips, Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, Wikipedia. They would all be nothing without their users constantly updating their website with new interesting information for them.

 

However this all aside, we proceeded with the workshop, a workshop that turned out to be extremely enjoyable. We were asked to each take a letter of "Alight" then make one change to the letter, have a photo taken of it then pass the letter to the person from the left of us. This task lasted around 30-45 minutes, then all the pictures taken were uploaded to Flickr to be turned into a animation short.

This is Flickr.... hazzar.

The "out of my hands" workshop. We did this to all the letters in Alight, this is just to give you an idea.

We were asked to look at a user produced film called "Life in a Day" a film which captures the lives of many different people and cultures, presenting either their everyday lives, fear, what makes them happy or just what they do to survive but more importantly it is entirely user made. The idea that one day filmed all over the world is to me personally quite magical. things like this are truly one off. If something as simple as this can feel so special then making something interactive for alight would really create buzz among the public eye.

This is more user created content, a site dedicated to making free modifications to existing games. People all over the world work together to design, produce and release new games built on an existing game engion or sometimes creating their own, the reason I've mentioned this is because i think it is a prime example and also a unique one... also i play a lot of games. More to the point, the content on this website is absolutely free provided you own the original games, this opens up for unlimited possibilities for creating new content for 10 year old games.

Looking at leaflet design for Alight

Here are the dimensions for a typical leaflet, however if i make a leaflet i would like to be more creative than just a conventional rectangular design, i would do something based around the olympics logo but as i found out the other day, that's not allowed. 

Information that i think is important for every leaflet

First off, for the front cover I would have all the Stages in order and also whatever sponsors are involved in the Alight project, also the date of the Festival would be extremely useful. The second page would contain all the stages and a breakdown of the events such as who is playing, where and at what time also possibly a recommendation of what age group the event may be for. The third page would contain the same as I imagine the there are many events, i think i recall the client saying over 600 held all over Sheffield. For the back page i would put on a simple map of sheffield to enable people to navigate, also possibly a barcode for people to take a picture of and be taken to an interactive map on their smart-phone.