The brief was to create a Christmas card for DARE ‘The Development, Alumni Relations and Engagement directorate’ from Kingston University and to keep in touch with alumni in and outside the UK.
The request was for a Christmas card including one of the Kingston University buildings and to include an artistic flair. If successful, the design will be printed in C5 and distributed in December 2019.
To begin the brainstorming process, I started by listing possible ideas. I initially thought of including the new ‘Town House‘ university build on Penryn Road, a graduation cap and lots of trees and decorations.
I sketched books, think bubbles and people on top but after some thought I decided not to use those drawings when considering the target audience.
Then I thought about how I could add text to the piece, so I added a book in the centre and positioned the building onto with the graduation cap and trees.
During this process, I played with the idea of turning the buildings into presents by adding a bow on top and transforming the buildings into box shapes.
When working on the final piece, I saw how the buildings were appeared to be too dark. So I decided to add more colour surrounding the book by adding reds and lighter greens in and outside the book. I used shiny pens to highlight the pages and ‘KSA’ on the right.
Overall this task was enjoyable but also challenging when coming to composition. My initial idea ended up being very different from the final piece which I felt was a risk.
If I could do this again, I would make the buildings as the central focus rather than the text, and add some figures of students to create a better connection between the card and the audience.
However, the card shows to be visually pleasing with warm colours reflecting the Christmas spirit, so time will tell whether this card gets through the competition!
KatiesBlog 