In studio time we got given a small brief to make 100 'how to?' questions we had to make a list and choose the best 10 from the list we then passed on the list and ended up with one question. our question was.. 'How to understand the UK regional accents of people in our year on our Graphic Design course?' We thought it would be a good idea to make it humorous and choose a couple of popular regional accents and make flash cards with slang on from those chosen regions to help people understand there lingo! The flash cards would have a animated character on with stereotypical things such as essex people have quiffed hair! We had to come up with a solution for the question.
For our 'how to' question we decided to make characters for each different regional accent we chose. We chose really obvious characteristics e.g.. the Scouse girl character has huge rollers in. We drew each character out on paper before executing them on photoshop.We made a story board with speech bubbles and the character together on one card we did this so we could decide how we would place everything out. we did a sketch for initial ideas layout considerations and character considerations this helped us decide what we would choose for our final idea.
For the flash cards we had the regional accent name in a funky font to reflect the character, we found 4 different fonts from a font website.
For our illustrations we were particularly inspired by the style of fromer Graphic Design student Dean Gray.
He creates these from using several different shapes. I think our images are quite child like to go with the flash card idea works really well.
Here is an image of all four of the characters together top left is the yorkshire character with the typical flat cap and corn hanging from his mouth , next we chose to do a geordie with big eyelashes and bright red hair and lipstick! next was an essex boy with a huge quiff and big white teeth and lastly we created the scouse character with big rollers and lipstick. these characters are nice and simple but portrait the typical person from each other areas.
These four flash cards are the cards before the characters and the rest of the slang has been put onto the cards we chose appropriate colours for the cards to go with the characters and where they are from they're bright and pleasing to the eye i think there easy to understand and work well.
These are our final pieces on the individual flash cards together , complete with images and speech bubbles. we will print these out individually with rounded edges just like a childs flash card.
Presenting our ruff work to another group for a progress crit....
In our group crits there was 3 groups we had to listen to someones presentation and complete a progress crit report and another group did the same thing for ours. This is to help us progress and improve our brief and also hear what an outsider thinks of our work..
The questions asked & answers (from another group)....
Comment on how clearly the problem has been identified and understood:-
Problem clearly identified & understood.
Comment on how well the problem has been analysed and research:-
Research on Characteristics / colour schemes. Well researched & presented.
Comment on the proposed solution to the problem:-
Simple, funny with out offending, very relatable & good for freshers.
Comment on the clarity with which the information was presented:-
More clarity on what is on the card , maybe enlarge them for fridays presentation or enlarge aspects of each(quotes?).
Any other comments or suggestions:-
More explanation on were & when they will get handed out.
When doing the crit with the other group they gave us some suggestions that we notes and took on aboard...
- Larger version cards (enlarged quotes) > more information where it will be given out.
- information on the tv programmes(obvious accents)
- more accents as well as slang
- what size would be appropriate
- research different layouts.
What we did next....
I have never had a group crit before and i didnt know what to expect at first. We had to answer a series of questions about a another groups work and give them constructive feedback. following the structure of the following list..
- Prepare
- Present
- Listen
- Clarify OPINIONS EVIDENCE SUGGESTIONS
- Reflect
- Evaluate
- Feedback
- Discuss
I didn't realise how helpful a crit would be and would highlight some of the key aspects of our work that could be improved. I think that sometimes you need an outsiders view because theres things you miss out yourself when your constantly working on the piece of work. We took on board the crit the other group did for us and made some big changes that ended up working for the best.
We decided to change the layout for our actual flash card , someone asked what was going to be on the back of our flash card and we had just assumed we were going to keep it blank. Children's flash cards tend to have something on both sides and we wanted to go with that idea. We decided to have the actual character with the speech bubble next to its head and change the rotation of the flash card to landscape instead of portrait.The name of the specific regional accent will go on the back of the flash card and we will place them together in with string in a little booklet of four cards.
We decided to change the layout for our actual flash card , someone asked what was going to be on the back of our flash card and we had just assumed we were going to keep it blank. Children's flash cards tend to have something on both sides and we wanted to go with that idea. We decided to have the actual character with the speech bubble next to its head and change the rotation of the flash card to landscape instead of portrait.The name of the specific regional accent will go on the back of the flash card and we will place them together in with string in a little booklet of four cards.
Our Final Designs.
