The Brief
YCN is a design agency, which describes itself as ‘Producing work across all media and representing the finest creative people for commissions and collaborations’. They say of themselves that ‘YCN today produces advertising, design and other creative communications in all media; both for its own projects and ventures, and on behalf its various clients’. They are a ‘group of designers, art directors, developers, writers, illustrators and project managers work together at 72 Rivington Street in London’. They also run an annual competition which offers students the chance to fulfill creative briefs from a range of high profile clients and enter that work in a competition. ‘The YCN Student Awards shine a light on new creative talent, and centre on a collection of live creative briefs’. (http://www.ycn.org)
Winning a competition such as this one often results in the work being commissioned commercially and is a good career starter.
We will be visiting YCN to discuss the briefs and the competition, the date is yet to be confirmed. This trip to London is a required part of this assignment.
For this assignment you will choose from a list of YCN Award briefs. The internal deadline for your degree assessment is in advance of the YCN submission deadline, which is 19th March 2015. It is recommended, but not compulsory, that you enter your work into the competition.
Sketchbooks and Blogs
You are required to keep a sketchbook/visual diary to record the generation of ideas and the progress, development and evolution of your project
In addition you should set up a progress blog to hold ideas, techniques and examples of any contextual references (art and design styles) that you have researched, together with links to media sources used for inspiration.
You are expected to bring your sketchbook to every session for viewing by your tutors and to update your blog at least weekly.
PDF
You need to show your concept, process and product in an A3, 300dpi pdf. You need to pay attention to the design qualities of the pdf document as well as the product you are making in response to your chosen YCN brief. The PDF document is based on the guidelines set by YCN which is ready to submit as part of your YCN Award submission. It should be printable at A3, 300dpi resolution, guideline 8 -12 pages, explaining and commenting on concept, research, process and product. This document can be created using Illustrator or InDesign.
Requirements
Your research, design and planning needs to be shown in a combination of sketchbook and blog work showing three initial idea designs and then full design development for your chosen brief (e.g. further sketches, storyboards, animatics, mock-ups, flow diagrams etc).
You will pitch your designs in development as a prepared presentation.
You will develop a pdf document based on the guidelines set by YCN which is ready to submit as part of your YCN Award submission.
You will submit your finished digital products in suitable formats on the Hercules server.
Deadlines and Key Dates
We will be visiting YCN to discuss the briefs and the competition, date tbc. This trip to London is a required part of this assignment.
You will deliver a full pitch of your idea on Monday 26th January. The content of this will depend on the idea and media you are using, so you may need storyboards, animatics, wireframes, mock-ups, with a clear explanation of your concept and a summary of your research and design process. This must be a fully prepared presentation that ‘sells’ your idea.
The crit for the practical work is on Monday 23rd February and the final deadline for submission of the practical piece is Wednesday 25th February.
My Chosen Brief
Pitch
Final Box Design
Lid
Front
Left
Right
Bottom
Back
PDF
