Upon completion of our own brief template, I was part of a mini crit looking at how we can start pushing these ideas in the right manor and how we can best communicate with these new freshers. I presented my initial idea of a witty poster series almost mocking ourselves and the mistakes we have learnt from this year to John and starting listing the different tips I would actually include in them...
- Obviously the need to plan and structure your blogs and stay ontop of them
- Getting all your inductions done asap into the college's facilities, even for things like laser cutter, etc which are not necessary to everyone. As you never know when you may decide you want to use a specific process but find you have to wait for a group induction into it, but your deadline is in the next couple of days!
- Kerning! Something that scared us all at the start
- Pre-booking your digital print slots as it gets stupidly busy
- A happy concluding one - enjoy it and remember its only first year and things take time to adjust to!
I also considered how I could have an introductory poster to the series, reading "Learn from our MISTAKES" to provide a bit of context for the students.
John seemed to like the idea however the whole negative slant I've thrown on it by mocking all these mistakes we've made may daunt the new students and over-whelm them. Although I stated I wanted to be funny and witty with it I need to reflect this through the whole poster design, through colour, type used and the emotions on the faces for each. He told me to consider how it would sound when they read it in their head and to portray it so they feel like we're on their side. For example, with the kerning example - we were all very confused by this at first and I for one felt very daunted by the thought of having to check width between every letterform, but it is something that comes over time and builds into your practise over time, but it is hard to understand that straight away. Instead he said take an approach like "What the fuck is kerning!?" Immediately the tone of voice would attract new 18-22 year students because you're not used to swearing at college/sixth form and suggesting no-one actually has a clue would support them and hopefully not make them as anxious about this tiny element. At the start of the year I do remember trying to memorise all this new terminology and getting stressed out about it, but they need to understand it takes time and practise.
This survival guide should be comforting for them making use of familiar faces (us on the posters), funny captions and tone of voice used (appropriate for them), approachable and legible type (giving them a taste of what you can experiment with) and a playful varying colour on each paired with the mood created.
How I can word the posters for each to engage them:
- "Learn from our mistakes!" - Yellow
- "Blogger will be your best pal.. Don't put it off!" - Green
- "Get inducted into facilities.. Sooner rather than later" - Orange
- "Avoid feeling blue.. Pre-book print slots" - Blue
- "What the fuck even is kerning?!" - Red
- "But most of all.. Enjoy it while it lasts!" - Pink
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