The stages of the assignment:
- The brief
- First thoughts
- First ideas
- Research
- Moving forward
The brief
From first look at this brief it reminded me very much of Assignment 1 where I had to design postcards to show who I am. It is a very open brief once again and allows for a lot of creativity. There were so many directions I could go down with this assignment and so many calendar dates/ events I could explore to create a range of greetings cards for!
There are no specifications either for what format the finished artwork should be in, i.e.; digital, vector art, photographic, hand drawn, collage etc.. so there were very few limitations for this assignment.
First thoughts!
I start off this assignment in a very strange and unpredictable time, sitting at my desk in lockdown!.. I did think I had a rough final idea for one of these cards and I actually did some rough drawings and writings for this assignment way back in October when my car went in for it MOT and cost me a lovely little £800!….(*massive eye roll!) I had the idea of a card to remind you of how much of a failure your car is and as a friendly (the least expensive part at least!) reminder for its MOT but now with the current situation and climate I felt that it was more appropriate to do designs relating to Covid-19 or as we all are now too familiar with… our least favourite C- word…. Coronavirus! I think that to try and bring some positives out of the situation might be nice. Everyone is concentrating on the negatives but there are actually many positives there… as Hugh Grant says in Love actually – ” If you look for it – I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that love IS all around”. The fear of change, the fear of the unknown, people sadly dying…. but there is also a lot of good to take from the situation. Children are painting rainbows on walls, hiding teddies in windows for children to find on their “bear hunt” daily exercise, people are posting bright, happy, colourful pictures in windows (even the adults are!.. I’ll get to that in a minute! :P) there is clapping for our wonderful NHS, there is praise for keyworkers and people stop each other to thank them for the work they are contributing. Nature roams the streets once again and rivers are running clear.. Another quote – “Muddy water left long enough will clear again”. These times are not forever, just waves that we have to ride out. These can also be uplifting times that remind us that although we are facing a pandemic like none other we have seen or hopefully will ever see again in our lifetimes.. we are all united and in this together.
Motivational speech done! 😀
and I almost forgot… oh yep… adults posting stuff in windows…
my house currently! – (I am not apologising! ;D)
First Ideas
So what do I miss most other than alcohol?.. and to be honest I am not missing that!.. My insides must literally be like the contents of hand sanitiser.. 99% alcohol! I certainly have not gone without this isolation and also with the weather being as wonderful as it is right now has definitely made isolating in the garden 100 x better! I do however miss my social life, freedom and being able to meet up with friends where and when I can! (although to be honest the majority of them I work with every night!) I have only just this month since the rules have been relaxed more, met up with my family who I hadn’t seen in 9 weeks!
I had a conversation with my best friend down voice note on WhatsApp to what I could potentially do for my greetings cards in the time of the dreaded “rona”.. I have hardly seen her either until fairly recently, usually we would meet up once a week on a Sunday and go for a long walk in the sun, grab some beers and chill out into the early evening at her house with a takeaway but now we are sneaking beer into children’s’ beakers like we are 15 again and drinking along the riverbank outside! Her response was simple… design cards for couples who are isolating away from each other (my sister and her fiancé – who again up until recently were having to have virtual date nights and meals) and design cards for best friends who cannot see each other. The idea she came up with was to create a card to send off to your lover/friend/family as like an invite for a virtual meet up; set time aside to facetime and put on a face mask (not a corona mask – a beauty face mask!) watch a movie together or have a meal together! I thought this was a good idea as many people would do this… however it could be deemed more as an invite than a greetings card…
I had an idea of virtual kisses in my head and the vision of someone wearing a face mask with bright pink lips drawn on the front of them.. (pink obviously is my signature colour!) This is possibly inspired subconsciously in my mind by Vogue Portugal’s April cover I love which shows a model couple kissing through face masks. I love the concept behind it! “Freedom on hold” so much so that I actually ordered a copy of the magazine and a commemorative print to frame in my house! (as weird as that might sound!) It also reminds me a lot of the CK one advert from 2003 that I also have a print of in my house!
I then brainstormed about what have played a crucial part in this whole experience so far.. I came up with:
- toilet rolls
- hand sanitiser
- face masks
- dodgy hair roots
- quarantine/isolation
- social distancing
- washing hands
- stay at home
- 2 metres
- queues
- non hand shakes
- save the NHS
- home schooling
- pyjamas
- alcohol consumption
- virtual hugs
- virtual Instagram clubs (one of my faves is Gok Wans!)
- potential C-19 baby boom!
At the moment I have an idea for one card which at the moment is a MASSIVE problem for me! My hair is platinum blonde and because of the hairdressers closing for the duration my roots are TERRIBLE! My usual 8 week appointment is currently a 12 week colour correction and as my appointment was supposed to be a day after lockdown happened 😦 (worst timing ever!..) I am on the verge of looking like Cruella De Ville! One card that came to mind was “I thought blondes had more fun?…” and inside the message “I’m rooting for you”. It is a play on words and very relevant to a lot of ladies right now who bleach! I quite like the illustrative style I did for assignment one (my Pink Angeleno post cards which I created in Illustrator) so the idea that came into my head for this was something very similar. Obviously the cards would be tailored to girls and women with platinum blonde hair! I thought of having an illustration of Marilyn Monroe despairing at her hair on the front as she was known for the quote “Gentlemen prefer blondes” and “Blondes have more fun”.
With this idea in mind I scoured google for some images of Marilyn Monroe for some inspiration… Just to see where I could go with it! I absolutely love Marilyn Monroe – she was an icon! I am always aware though that her image has been massively over used and dare I say over abused! – There are a lot of cheesy, tacky designs out there with her face on and obviously I would not want my designs to fall into that category! However, this photo I found gives me inspiration for progressing the idea further. In this image she has long hair whereas it is usually short – again, representative of the fact no one can get to a hairdressers! I have a vision of her rolling her eyes and holding a can of dry shampoo (root cover up) just for the funny factor! The perfect heading seems like it could be “Hairdressers are a girl’s best friend” it would be the ideal card to send to your hairdresser in this time of need or with the message “I’m rooting for you” inside just makes it a supportive card to send to that desperate blonde in your life!
I then had the idea that I could make a series of cards using the same theme.. If I found some iconic blondes from throughout the times to feature on the front of the cards with their own message. A few that I initially thought of are:
- Blondie – “You’re hair is beautiful (in a hat!) the lyrics from Atomic.
- Christina Aguilera – “You are beautiful (even with roots)” the lyrics from Beautiful
- Dolly Parton “Jolen, Jolen, Jolen… ” after the song Jolene but “Jolen” because that is the name of a brand of bleach. I would have to cleverly think this idea through because there is a brand name involved and also because the original song was aimed at a redhead not taking her man!
Although I like my illustrative style for these cards, I would also like to explore more around the “swiss grit” idea like what I did for my “Xtinction” poster in the exercise “Too much or not enough information” I really enjoyed experimenting with this style and was really pleased with the outcome! It was different to anything I have designed before.
Isolation cards research
Before I continued with this idea I first needed to establish whether the idea has been done before.. There are a LOT of isolation/quarantine cards online already for people to purchase to send to loved ones and friends during the lock down and also for people who are unfortunate enough to have a birthday during this time. However, so far (fingers crossed) I have not found any cards that relate to dodgy hair roots! I have seen some for dodgy hair cuts but none for platinum blondes who need their roots doing!
I created a Pinterest board for some of the inspiration that I found that helped me with my ideas for my designs. On this board were some isolation memes as well which made me laugh! The idea is that I want to create cards that bring humour to a bad situation!
Where would my cards be sold?
Another very important question is where would my cards be sold? I have potentially found a target audience and a niche or a gap in the market for my cards but now I need to think of where they could possibly be sold. There are so many card shops and stationery shops which appeal to the kind of card that I wish to design..
My three personal favourites are:
- Paperchase
- Scribbler
- Typo
All these shops are at Cambridge, one of my favourite places to visit and everyone who ever goes there with me know that I drag them around like a big kid laughing at the hilarious cards! – especially Scribbler.. their cards are so inappropriate but at the same time funny! Typo is also a quirky shop which specialises in stationery with funky patterns, prints and designs. They also do a range of postcards and greetings cards.
However, in the current climate with the ongoing Corona virus; no one can get to the shops and the shops are not open so the best alternative is online.
There are a lot of online card shops – Love Layla being another hilarious one!
https://www.paperchase.com/en_gb/
https://www.lovelayladesigns.co.uk/
Moving forward
From my initial thoughts and ideas about this assignment, I am now going to move forward to Idea 1 and start creating the design and artwork for this. I am going to start with the Marilyn idea and start creating this in Illustrator. The artwork will be vector, digital art!
pinkangeleno.com 