Flux
The brief requested a complete branding for TUS Athlone’s Showcase 2024, encompassing students of Graphic Design, Animation & Illustration, and Music & Sound Engineering, highlighting the ‘coming together’ of the creative courses.
CLARIFY
Highlighting keywords in the brief helped to recognise the importance of representing each student taking part in the showcase. It also showed that the brand should be imbued with meaning, while remaining fun, eye-catching, and intriguing.
Through empathy and brainstorming, it allowed for the discover of the brands ethos,the student’s journey.
journey. The results showed that no student’s journey was straightforward, it had twists and turns, surprises, fear, excitement, and uncertainty.
IDEATE
Through research and clarification, ideation begins. Using brainstorming, a thesaurus, and word association, the brand name flux arose. It was chosen for its meaning of constant change, representing the dynamic nature of the student’s journey.
Visual research helps to broaden horizons and gain inspiration. This led to fluid type ‘Ofelia’ for the logo and the idea to represent the student’s journey through symbols of their own journey.
DEVELOP
Exploring different methods of documenting the student’s objects and habits, finding photography suited best. Utilising macro shots to pull the viewer in to each student’s story. The images required a container to be easily utilised across the brand, a square shape worked best for its pattern, stickability and ease of printing.
Each photo’s colours were too incongruous, therefore brand colours were utilised to tie all the images together into one cohesive representation of TUS. The logo became an important container for the student’s symbols, imbuing more meaning into the logo and allowing every student to be truly represented in its logo by altercating the images.
Postcards
The brief challenged to work as a group, and individually to create four postcards, three still and one animated, to communicate a message on sustainability.
Collaborating with Hot Press’s David Rooney and leading sustainability printing and graphic design company The Factory, we aimed to use design as a tool to inspire change.
CLARIFY
The group researched the UN’s 17 Sustainability Goals, looking for the most detrimental areas.The focus became deforestation due to it’s negative knock on effect.
During a primary research trip to The Factory, further information was gathered through interviewing. The Factory’s love for understanding the full life cycle of a product and giving products an extra purpose when possible really stood out.
David Rooney attended the class for a workshop, helping with ideation and effective design for publication, suggesting that the overarching topic should be simple but effective. During a group discussion, topics such as Hadrian’s Wall and the heartache caused due to its felling, and the connectivity of trees and a forest led to the group’s overarching theme – Trees.
The book Lanny by Max Porter became a fantastic reference. Written from the perspective of a tree, it’s voice felt ethereal but powerful, with some of the type written in flowing, curvy lines, pertaining to the whispering of trees.
IDEATE
The hundreds of lifetimes trees have witnessed, the knowledge they hold, and the future they will see formed the foundation of the postcard’s message. Experimentation of ideas and methods were an
important part of the process, using illustration, photography, watercolour, oil pastels, paint, scraperboard, rubbings, and different methods of creating handmade type.
DEVELOP
It was important for the postcards to be neutral and fit into any space in order for them to have a second life through a print or gift, so black and white was a clear choice.
Visual research helped streamline the experimentation process, leading to designs which had a personal touch, helping the viewer relate to the works and view them not only as a piece of communicative design but as an artwork to be kept.
Tuath
The ISTD brief ‘Death of the Centre’ highlights Ireland’s dying town centers due to its outdated consumerist model. The brief requests an intervention, encouraging locals to reengage with their locality and bring life back into our centers.
CLARIFY
Rapidly brainstorming allowed for unbiased ideation, finding a sense of community and pride of place was most important, while local histories and the use of augmented reality (AR) were appealing for local interest, touristic opportunities, interactivity, and youth engagement.
Interviewing a man in his 50s living in a small village in Monaghan, it was discovered that he had issues finding out about events in his local area and that events normally did not reach capacity due to a lack of awareness. This prompted a survey, questioning people from a wide demographic about their interest in local histories, AR, and live cultural events, finding a huge interest in these areas. It was also found that the majority of people find it difficult to learn about local events, relying on social media, local ads, and friends and family as their main sources. This shows a huge gap in the creation of events and the awareness of these events.
Creating a brand and app, would address these and the brief’s issues. There are three important aspects of this brand: cultural events, AR-enhanced sites, and local engagement. This led to the brand’s keywords: connection, adaptable, creative, inclusive, and joyful.
IDEATE
‘Connection’ formed the basis of the brand’s name ideation, using mind mapping to search for a name that encompasses the brand’s ethos. Researching Irish words led to the discovery of ‘tuath’, meaning tribe or
people and country, encompassing the brand’s ethos of connection to the people and locality.
Tuath’s logo should bring the past and present together, representing Tuath’s modernisation of Ireland’s localities. Experimenting with typefaces that combined both serif and sans-serif such as Retail Variable, it was still too modern and sleek. Adding ogham elements and carving the logo using lino, gave it its necessary character.
App design was a new experience, research into wireframes and 8-point grid systems aided in the
app’s development and visual research helped with visual ideation.
DEVELOP
To design the app, the most necessary pages to communicate Tuath’s concept were chosen: the landing screen, with animated changing images and full logo and Ogham logo, a map with markers indicating AR sites, live events, and meetups, a community page for users to upload their photos at AR sites, group meetups or local events, a connect page for group meetup ideas and for users to find people in the local area to connect with, a land page to discover AR sites, and a culture page for local events.
As this brand is being displayed at TUS’s grad showcase 2024, it was necessary to create a branding display incorporating all the brand elements. The display should emphasise Tuath’s core personality of connection, creativity, inclusion, joy, and adaptability while communicating its solution to the ‘death of the center’ through the formation of Tuath and its app.
