603 - Brief 02 - Evaluation

Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed pushing my practise as far as I can in terms of motion and illustration through the AV8 project. I initially set out to produce striking and engaging motion flyers to effectively engage the digital audience, and it is safe to say that I feel I have appropriately fulfilled these brief guidelines, whilst introducing a fresh and unique design approach to the underground dance music industry. I have gone out and above these initial guidelines and produced various interactive content which has been featured throughout all medias and outputs - for example, anything from moving email handles for when in contact with future artist/DJ features, to interactive introductory content for the Instagram page - all has been created in a slick and professional manor which can all be linked back to the developed identity and ethos of the brand.

I have adequately adapted my illustration style - being very vectorised and refined, to make it appropriate to engage with the trendy and creative, young audience associated within the dance music industry today. However I have not restricted myself to just this style as I have allowed for inspirations to be taken from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines, considering what the competitive market is already made up of, but taking this to the next level of possibility. This, in itself, has enabled me to push new ideas and approaches to the weekly event artworks, not limiting myself to one individual style, but encouraging me to broaden the banks and get experimental. As long as I am ensuring I am consistently linking this back to the overall brand and identity of AV8, the ethos of pushing new visual and musical talent supports this notion of original and ground-breaking design which hasn’t necessarily been considered within the industry before.

In terms of what could have gone better and be approved on for the future, I think this solely comes down to time management when rendering video outputs. At the beginning of the project I severely under-estimated how long of a process it can be dependent on the development and process within the output - but this project has definitely taught me how I need to be more considerate of this to ensure I am meeting interim deadlines and client meetings. At the start of the project, this did become very last minute and did effect a few of the early experiments with streams - as the 25 minute long green-screen motion graphics would take up to 10 hours to render. However by the end of the project I had a much better idea of how long things would take as I was much more well-practised and familiar with After Effects, so I effectively adapted my process and planned ahead to ensure I was ready days in advance before releasing the various content to our audience. 

In terms of collaboration within this section of the project, it was more about creating something visually striking for the client to decide upon and then give feedback on. This was easy for some clients, but more difficult for others as they were harder to please and wanted to portray something in-particular through their outputs and flyers. I think I effectively met the needs of each DJ and was able to produce personalised content which got them excited. This was done in-particular through the personalised little touches within the illustrations that I had produced - which especially excited clients when they started getting allsorts of feedback upon sharing the content through their socials, which in turn, effectively exposed me and my good practise!

I can see this project going a long way in the future, especially in the more relaxed and open way I have approached the motion graphics in. It has allowed me to produce artwork as I wish and develop my style naturally whilst not being restricted to one set style - this encouraged me to push my experimentation and approach to each flyer in a new and intriguing way which I may not have considered otherwise; whilst also providing continuous opportunity for collaboration with other visual/motion artists that I am inspired by or want to feature/learn from.