monarchyofmusic

[monarchyofmusic]

L4 Enterprise of Graphic Communication Reflection Essay

1000-word essay – 

Looking back at the module I can clearly see that I did enjoy this project. I started off the project by doing a mind map of famous festivals to give me an idea of who my competitors are and what kind of names they have. Majority of the festival names are either names of places or a play on words. Then I wanted to delve deeper and investigate the history of festivals, so I found out origin of the first music festivals in the uk and around the world and just picked up other general facts. Furthermore, I looked into “The wonder of Woodstock” and “The glory of Glastonbury”. Basically, finding out the pros and cons of each festival and what could benefit or worsen my own festival. I then went on to look at competitor festivals more in depth. I chose Reading & Leeds festival, Download Festival and Godiva Festival. I just did a general fact search on each one and then looked at the logos, compared them to each other and spoke about each one in detail.

Secondly, I went on to make another mind map of everything related to a festival to brain storm an idea for a festival name. Listing things such as music, crowds, pyrotechnics etc. This helped me to think of a few ideas, so I started to make a list in my sketchbook of potential festival names. I narrowed it down and down by asking friends and family. Until it came down to two. I was going to use one as a slogan but in the end, I scrapped that idea as I just wasn’t feeling it; it didn’t really match the festival name. I chose to go for the “Monarchy of Music”. A few reasons for this. Firstly because I honestly liked the sound of it, secondly because straight away my mind blew up with ideas and potential designs. Furthermore, I wanted to host the festival at War Memorial Park which is where Godiva Festival is held. I felt like the name of the Festival and park worked well together. Especially as my festival will be donating all proceeds to charitable causes; stated on the ticket/invitation. With all this in mind and after careful analysis, I now know that my target audience will be as following: taking the name into account – Monarchy, so royal, formal, upper-class, mature etc. This gave me the idea of using the crown image in my designs. I can see that my target audience will mainly be focused for 16 and above but all ages are welcome. I only suggest 16 and above because it’s a charitable event and with music more suited for the older generation. Furthermore, I went on to make a mood board to inspire me, to give me ideas before I put pencil to paper. I also looked at various artists and designers across many of the visual communication fields. This helped me a tiny bit, but I already had ideas set in mind. Paul Rand as always though is a massive help and gave me tips in a sense to design an eye-catching logo. Therefore, I started to pencil out a few designs and already I was hooked in one design, but it had very little text, so I came to the conclusion that I would sort of use two logos together. I then experimented with font but that normally doesn’t work well for me as I like to try various fonts when I’m there designing it digitally; my final font is Futura bold. Now came the experimenting with colour and I kept it simple and just looked back at various festivals and taking the colour and patterns from them and simply putting them on a page and seeing what caught my eye. Red was used a lot for reasons which is clear, bold, eye catching, can either mean love or anger. Then gold, when you think of Monarchy, you think of royalty…the colour you think about when you think of either of those words is the colour gold.

Lastly, I took my designs onto photoshop and started designs my own corporate identity for my festival

What didn’t go so well

Firstly, my time management, always a downfall of mine; left things to the last minute. I would have liked to do a lot more research and designs, but I was limited in the end. Also, I spent ages trying to make a gif for my festival, for it all to crash and then delete it self once I was nearly done.

What could be improved on & what could be taken into the next module

Looking back at some of photoshop designs, I notice a few flaws here and there which I wished I cleaned up at the time because as the deadline furthered I didn’t give myself enough time to do those checks I normally do. I believe I will take punctuation and time management into the next module, more research and experimental design ideas. Using various media. I want to take a step outside my comfort zone and make something practical to not just wow others but to wow myself and hopefully build up my portfolio of skills.

[monarchyofmusic]

[monarchyofmusic]

[monarchyofmusic]

[monarchyofmusic]

[monarchyofmusic]

[monarchyofmusic]