Respect for Animals

After initial enthusiasm, I found this quite a difficult brief to get into. Partly due to the time spent on the Penguin project but also because the more I researched and investigated the area, the more I realised just how far every angle had been covered. It became apparent that as a designer you were in danger of simply recycling old shock concepts or plays on the fashion world.

My initial thinking explored ways of humanising the animals involved, to play on people's guilt and sensitivities. I remembered seeing Ogilvy & Mather's family tree design for the WWF at the D&AD Awards 2007. The family tree was such a clever visual device with which to get across our cruelty and flippant attitude towards animals. I searched for something similar but the best I could come up with was the idea of using the old family habit of chalking up growing children's heights on the door frame.

I also explored the idea of using our cat as a mascot/talisman. The concept here was to present a more positive attack on the fur trade - an approach that I feel has hitherto been under-utilised. I think that the development of a central anti-fur character could be quite rich in possibilities, particularly if pitched at a formative younger audience.

However, the brief indicated that the target audience was to be fashion-savvy 18 to 30 year-olds - it was time to think again.

My mind went back to the D&AD show and Shackleton's 'Sudoku/TV/Football' campaign for Save the Children. I decided to make a similar play by super-imposing the grotesque under-belly of the fur trade over the glamorous outward image.

I think the design pitches itself firmly at the target audience and there is a degree of sophistication about the concept. However, I recognise that it is fairly conventional in approach and I could, given time, have explored alternative methods of attack.

Furthermore, the content of the fake classifieds could be a little more considered - more research here could possibly have yielded more powerful results.

The placement of this poster will be critical. The audience needs time to dwell to realise the layers of meaning at work. It therefore limits its application. It is also possible that I don't have the opacity of the overlayed adverts quite right - they could perhaps be turned up a little more.

Given time, I could also have explored the possibilities of physically layering the elements of the poster, perhaps using perspex, so that the audience could move between them.

Site, City, Place

Team activity where we had to select a place and a moment to develop - very open brief.
I enjoyed the working together element of this brief. I feel that I was reasonably proactive in generating the team members and selected people that I was pretty certain I could work with and who would work well together.

Wanting to enhance the local community, we decided to develop one of a series of Urban Walks promoted by Wrexham Borough Council. At present the aim of these is to encourage personal fitness. However, we felt that several of the sites en-route could be developed visually to inform, entertain and 'lift the soul'.

We wanted to draw upon elements of the past, especially at the more historic sites, whilst also embracing Wrexham's increasingly multi-cultural present and future.

To divide the labour and partially resolve the difficulty of living at a distance from one another we decided to work on a different location each. I took the Dissenters' Graveyard on Rhos Ddu Road: an atmospheric but under-developed site that could become a haven, just off a busy road, where people could sit and reflect.

Research lead me to undertsand the history of the site. 'Dissenters' were a Christian group that emerged out of the Puritan movement of the English Civil War, developing views that took them outside of the established church. In the aftermath of the civil war an eminent local leader emerged: Morgan Llwyd. Llwyd was a preacher, philosopher and poet who published a book titled 'The Three Birds'. The birds in question being the Eagle ( representative of the state), the raven (the established church) and the dove (Dissenters). The book explores a dialogue between the three.

I took the motif of the three birds and developed a series of sculptural screen pieces, incorporating seating, that could be placed within the open space. These incorporate phrases related to dissent and free-thinking and have the effect of breaking up what is otherwise a fairly sparse space. Their construction utilises materials that look both to the past and to the contemporary.

Whilst the installations go some way to develop the site in the direction I seek, they need to be augmented by planting and further structures.

However, this was ostensibly an exercise in team-work and joint pitch/presentaion. I believe that we worked pretty well together, supporting each other in terms of research and suggestions. We met regularly, as necessary, kept in touch via email, and used our time well. Inevitably, some were more conscientious, better organised and proactive than others but this did not impact negatively upon the end result.

I was fairly pleased with my role, taking the lead where necessary to co-ordinate and place deadlines, without, I hope, becoming too pushy and critical.

While our presentation was perfectly adequate, I think that it could have been a little more polished if we had engineered our time a little more effectively towards the end, giving us a chance to rehearse, shape and refine the pitch. But, we were amonst the first to present so time was pressing.

Penguin Brief

The painting of Erzulie is an interesting strand within the story, forming one of the pivotal points between the two families, and, to my mind, is symbolic of a number of themes within the narrative: the contrast in values, aspirations and cultures. Erzulie is also the voodoo goddess of beauty.

On her death, Carlene leaves the painting of Erzulie to Kiki. This gesture, between characters who have only recently connected via a sense of shared emotional values, is in direct contrast to the Kipps family’s own mercenary appreciation of the painting.

With this in mind, I set out to create a contemporary version of the Erzulie image, substituting ‘dime store’ price labels for flowers, raising questions about what it is that we truly value in life.

‘On Beauty’ is a complex read exploring a number of themes as it unwinds. This design features characters, loosely reminiscent of those in the book, who wear ‘dime store’ or corner-shop labels symbolic of the labels that we take on through life but also alluding to the value that we attach to each other. Zadie Smith appears to test the authenticity of such values just as the figures here contemplate the larger framed labels.

The book also deals with how values are affected by age, gender, status, culture and aspiration. The characters here, therefore, reside on different strata within the design, connecting on some levels but not on others. One character appears within a frame suggestive of a kind of abstract intellectual existence that doesn’t quite connect with real life or emotion.

A conceptually rich book, I wanted the colour scheme to reflect this.


‘On Beauty’ deals with, amongst other issues, how values are affected by age, gender, status, culture and aspiration. Zadie Smith makes reference to trees at different points within the story, comparing those in the fall of New England with those of London. This design takes the tree as a metaphor for the cycles and passage of time. Leaves, items of beauty in themselves, have been replaced with ‘dime store’ price labels, raising questions about how time and experience affect our values. The image suggests that some characters appear to endure this process better than others.

While I'm reasonably pleased with the designs, especially some of the colour combinations, I think that the end results could be better in a number of ways. The layout reveals the extent of my skill and understanding in terms of typography - I would like to develop it to be more dynamic and innovative. The designs are a little lazy in that I believe they rely quite heavily on acquired elements and development on the fly. In my eyes they would benefit from a greater depth of preparatory work, allowing them to become fresher and to demonstrate greater fidelity to the initial design concept.