2. 8th-10th December – Brand Identity
• Whilst we had already decided on the type of logo to use, the better part of the brand identity week was spent on
creating the backgrounds and forming some kind of house-style to help make our vision for The Grid stand out.
• Aaron was focused on making the ident/sting and the website for the project, meanwhile I spent the week creating
and refining the logos and backgrounds for the social media pages.
• The process of photography was inspired by the city of York itself – I had taken photos of numerous landscapes of
York, mostly the Minster, but also the Ouse bridge and the Bar Walls. From here, I chose to use photoshop and
create a glitched effect that involved moving certain squares out of their original place and adding in some wave
filters on the top and bottom, it makes it look like the image is warped out of place, which is effective for the effect
I had gone for.
• From there, I copied the image three times, on the base version I unchecked the green mark of the RGB settings,
the first copy unchecked the red mark, and the second copy (the top layer) unchecked both red and green, leaving
just the blue mark on the RGB setting. Then I moved the middle layer left and the top layer right to complete the
glitched effect.
• Out of preference for the colour scheme, I then added the purple/blue gradient overlay onto the top layer and
selected the vivid light overlay option, so that there is some blend within it. The final touches involved turning
down the brightness of the gradient layer and adding the logo I created the week before.
• Eventually I would change the logo, following the instructions of the third bullet point to created a slight less glitchy
effect, but it made for a good colour, and we decided on that as the official logo for the brand. This would be
placed onto each of the backgrounds to create the necessary banners for the social media pages we intend to use.
4. 15th-16th December – Theme Investigation
• We initially chose the subject of time – with the hope that we could focus on a sub-topic that has had some
form of impact throughout human history. In the end, we eventually had to change when we realised that
the subject of time was less to do about history, and more to do with the concept of time itself – which we
felt would turn into a broader and more vague investigation which turned us away from investigating the
subject altogether.
• Funnily enough after we made the choice to move on from time, I realised a Rush song titled “Time Stand Still”
reflects on the theme loosely – with the lyrics speaking on living in the moment, trying to wish time not passing by
too quickly.
• In the end, we chose to investigate the subject of nature – which we felt could be an easier topic to look at
compared to time, and noticeably has more to search up regarding our audience.
• As Aaron focused his areas of research on the wonders of the world, my focus was more on how nature and
its sub-topics can relate towards the particular audience we have set for us, as well as how well nature-
based productions have worked in the media.
• Of the aspects I searched up, I found that the two Planet Earth BBC series had done well from an audience
perspective, reaching up to 11 million viewers, and performing better than the 2016 edition of the X Factor.
Additionally, that social media’s perception and spread of veganism is having an affect on younger people,
who tend to use social media platforms a lot more than an average person.
• After research on Greta Thunberg being an example of Gen Z activism over the environment, I then created
a questionnaire to do audience specific research on the topic of nature.
5. 5th–7th January – Planning Production
• After a two week break for Christmas, we regrouped on the first week of
the new year with an expectation deliver a well thought out plan for the
upcoming production weeks.
• We quickly delved into working on three separate aspects of content
creation:
• Print work, to be handled by myself (Kieran) with inspiration from Aaron and mood
boards I have looked at. I agreed to take control of creating a number of posters
highlighting issues nature, such as water levels rising causing the lowering of ice
caps. Initially, I had also planned to create a magazine preview for the website only,
however I later thought it would be a better idea to make a short book regarding
climate issues, with early thoughts on it based on children’s books picture quality
and involving the Earth’s condition as a general theme.
• Work on the video and audio sides of the project will edited by Aaron, and I will be
taking part of the video shooting and podcast creation.
6. 12th-14th and 19th-21st January – Production
• Production started off in the planning week in all fairness – I had made a couple of posters to promote The
Grid’s awareness for climate change and the environment. The first one was focused on the rising sea levels,
where I have taken an image of an iceburg, cut from its original image, and gave it a cut-edge effect to make
it look a bit cartoon-ish. With the image placed onto the blue background, I then proceeded to create a
reflective version of the iceburg image, on a darker shade of blue to represent the water. That image was
eventually stretched by the means of the blue tool, which gives it a good reflective appearance. The font
didn’t need to be fancy, just something that made the point of water rising more straight-forward to the
reader, as well as the hashtag underneath.
• I like that poster for the fact that it’s simple, and makes a clear point. I also think the choice of blue shades was good
to symbolise the climate of the iceburg.
• The other two posters are based on the general preservation of nature, thematically based on the planet
itself, and flora and fauna, with the general concept being that we should look after the world that we rely
on for so many things.
• The book was a fairly interesting task I undertook – I think the cover speaks for itself that it is meant to be a
small fact book about Earth, and we decided to follow the same colour scheme that we used for the
background of our brand. As for the topics we chose to look at, we looked at continental drift in a way that
would somewhat dumb it down for the targeted audience to understand the concept a little bit better.
Additionally, we made a fact page of interesting things about the planet, ranging from different topics from
astrology to temperatures. We simply thought it would be something fun for the audience to learn.
• The video and audio work was mostly left to Aaron. We both made contributions to the actual filming and
acting, but he managed the scriptwriting and editing.
8. Original book cover Book cover with colour scheme
Book back cover – embossed
logo
9. The process of the sketch effect on Photoshop
1. Original photo 2. Black and white copy
3. Inverting the b+w
copy, add gaussian blur
4. Copy original photo
above the inverted layer
– colour blend
I believe the sketch effect may work well for my FMP, given my intention is to do a decades-based album art project
for a fictional prog rock band. The effect may work well for an album based on the 1980s, taking some inspiration from
the 1980 Rush album Permanent Waves (created by Hugh Syme), as an example.
10. The background colour
palette (on the left) and
the beginning of creating
the continental drift
page (on the right).
The finished continental
drift page (on the left),
and the Earth fact page
(on the right).
