The 3rd years have been given the opportunity to take part in the D&AD New Blood Awards, so I’ve decided to write a bit about the brief I chose and take you through some of my research process. The brief I selected was set by an organisation called Key4Life and Landor and challenged me to “harness the power of typography to make a difference in knife crime”.
Key4Life is an organisation committed to ending knife crime and reducing the number of kids reoffending in the UK and they do this by offering a seven-step programme focusing on those children in prison, those at risk of going to prison and those already caught up in knife crime. I chose this brief because I think it’s a very powerful topic that needs to be talked about sooner rather than later as knife crime is still on the rise. Another reason I chose this brief is because I have a strong interest in typography, and this would be the perfect opportunity to really explore it and develop my typography skills a little more.
I began my research by looking at Key4Life’s website. Through their website I learnt that that organisation was set up after the 2011 London riots, they’ve reached out to 4,000 children in prison and 400 offenders and that the national reoffending rate is 64% compared to Key4Life’s 16%. I then moved on to do a bit of visual research and began looking at typography trends for 2021 to try and gain some inspiration. There were definitely a few trends that would work for the project like the extra sharp angle trend and the dynamic lettering trend, however a lot of the trends felt quite fun and playful and given the seriousness of the brief, I didn’t think they would be suitable.
One of the deliverables the brief requires is a “static element” e.g., a billboard or a poster at a bus stop. Because of that I decided to do a bit of research on outdoor advertising for typography and through that I learnt what fonts work best, what size they should be, the space and alignments and good contrasting colours to help the type stand out.
I then decided to add typographers that inspire me into my research. One of the typographers I really like is Charles Williams because a lot of his work gives the impression of movement even though they’re static images. I also like how he uses colour in his work because it’s never over the top or too in your face, it’s always just the perfect amount that works together with his unique typography designs.
Deconstructed type is a style I’ve always really liked as I think it looks quite modern and unique, so I knew I wanted to include a bit of research on that as well. The type has a lot of visual interest as it can be very bold and eye catching, but it might not be suitable for a billboard or poster as it can sometimes be difficult to read from a distance.
However, the brief asks for a “non-traditional touchpoint” and my initial idea is to create a kinetic type animation that tells the story of one of the Key4Life programme attendees and I think the deconstructed type trend could work for that. So, I then began some kinetic type research to gain a bit of inspiration, and through that I’ve found some ideas that could work but again there was a lot of designs that just weren’t legible.
I’ve now began doing some sketches for the billboard and posters and I’m really excited to see where I can take this project.
Thanks for reading.
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