virtual art journal

hello, my name is Josefa and I'm an art student at the MCAST Institute of Creative Arts where my chosen field is Graphic Design. This blog is both my assigned online journal and personal showcase of my works.

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BRND WGN

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Stretta

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Spotify

Spotify is a digital music streaming platform. The brand is very fresh and energetic, they make use of a clean, bold, sans-serif font. While their UI is based on dark colours with light text and green accents the advertising is more colourful which communicates diversity and inclusion. The graphical elements are also found in moving image material.

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SDCC

San Diego Comic-Con International is an annual event aimed at pop culture enthusiasts. The event is held in the span of a weekend and includes a huge exhibition space for artists to showcase and sell merchandise, around 700 events including educational workshops.

The brand uses a style that is common in Comic Books. The ben-dot style is used a lot on their promotional items such as tickets and leaflets. The font is a bold thick Sans-serif and like the comic books the colour scheme is mostly primary colour based.

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New York Best

New York Best’s branding is perhaps one of the most successful ones on the island. Their goal is to attract young people to their food establishments and they do so in various ways. The first thing you notice is the illustrations used. They are done in the style of tattoos which is another big thing for NYB which already shows you who the company is aimed at.

The choice of colour and typography is also reflective of youth and energetic environment which is only enforced by the music which is played at the establishments at a louder than usual volume. The restaurants are also furnished with plants which contrast nicely the urban architecture.

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Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has kept their font mostly consistent since the 1900s and established their colour in 1950 with their signature red tone. The combination of the cursive font paired with the red is iconic and easily recognised world wide making the product design and brand, in my opinion, one of the most successful campaigns.

Another aspect of their brand in the bottle they use to distribute their product in, not only in the labels but also the shape itself of the bottle. They changed it a lot throughout the years but it is still recognisable to this day. Currently the company is using flat design which is a popular style today.

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Evaluation

I’m proud of what I came up with at the end of this journey. At the start of it all I felt motivated to work as a team, I came up with ideas and presented them to my peers, they did the same and we discussed them together, picked out what we thought would work best and I think we ended up with a good amount of valid ideas. this was for the first group where I was in the art section. We brainstormed a lot and everyone had a lot of ideas to bring to the table.

When we moved on to marketing we were also pretty enthusiastic about getting started and advertising what our friends in the animation group were going to be working on in the upcoming weeks. We did a lot of planning, we distributed smaller tasks among ourselves and everyone was ready and excited to get started.

For the first two weeks there was a lot of great ideas presented and we were already falling in love with the idea of presenting the project under the name ‘Durella’. I, as well as others, started forming a logo and coming up with a set brand on how we can advertise everything and everything was going good at that point. 

Eventually the problem of communication started to emerge, both from within the group and between us and Valletta 2018. Everyone started working individually or putting in little to no work and to top it off we stopped getting feedback from the clients in regards to marketing so we were essentially working blind. By week 4 we gave up and assumed they didn’t want us to handle anything and all production stopped.

Most of us tried helping out the other teams in animation and filing and rendering but some didn’t do anything at all. Personally I tried helping where I could but since I lacked the skills needed there wasn’t much I could do, especially since I missed a week of school when I fell sick and I had difficulty figuring out what needed to be done.

Which brings us to the last week and a half before the opening. Amii and Justin spoke with Valletta 2018 when they finally got back to us and we were given new instructions of what they were expecting from us. Unfortunately most of the things we created in the early weeks got scrapped and we had to start over.

While we were keeping away from characters as was initially instructed, now they wanted a mascot to be used as a marketing strategy. Since we knew they wanted a robin to be used as part of the projection, Pitu was introduced and things quickly moved forward from there. Most of us put in some work, some took a heavier load to make up for those who disappeared throughout the process but I think that in regards to marketing the final product turned out to be one of the best works I ever was part of.

On a personal note, I do wish I had more to offer but I also believe that I did a good amount of work, most of which unfortunately did not end up being used. I also did work for which I don’t have anything physical to present. I went around Mosta an Qormi posting post card invitations to the event as well as public spaces to hand them out to people walking by. I tried to offer help to others as well by offering to share the load or simply give feedback on what they were designing and any improvements that could be done.

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The Narrative

Valletta 2018 wanted us to create a fictional narrative for Pitu, I wanted something that will grab the attention of our younger audience so I included Pitu as a part of our team rather than a mascot or outsider.

Pitu was on his way South, flying away from the cold weather up North to the warm Mediterranean. As he was flying around he saw a small island and decided to stop there. As he found out later, the island was called Malta and he was pleased to find the people living there decorating the streets and houses with all sorts of colourful things for Christmas. After travelling around Malta to find his new home, he travels to Valletta and makes the palace his home. He helped decorate the city by placing all the decorations, he flew on top of buildings and up the Christmas trees placing ribbons and all sorts of ornaments.

He will have to continue his travels soon, but he promised to join us for the Christmas animation shown in Valletta every day starting on Thursday 21st. He really hopes you’ll make it too so that you can take part in the holiday he fell in love with and to celebrate our country’s culture.

 Eventually Valletta 2018 made a much shorter version of this;

Pitu was on his journey  from the cold south to the warm Mediterranean. As he was gliding about he saw a small island and decided to get a closer look. The island was called Malta and the people living there were decorating the streets and houses with all sorts of colourful trinkets for Christmas time. After travelling around Malta trying to find a new home, he finally settled on Valletta and the splendid palace as his next home. He helped decorate the island with all sorts of decorations, he flew on top of buildings and up the Christmas trees placing ribbons, baubles and ornaments.

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Profile Picture Frame

I worked on this frame to be used as a way to further advertise and bring awareness to the event. It didn’t end up being used because it was decided that there was not enough time to generate a big enough hype through this method.

https://www.isupportcause.com/campaign/pitu-l-pitirross

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Giving a bit of Colour

I used the illustrations done for the colouring sheets that were made for the children. I colored them in to show how they would look like once filled in and the pieces that were distributed to the kids were posted on social media to engage with our audience.

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The Robin

These are some sketches I did when we were brainstorming visuals of the pitirross. I then picked out my favorite design and digitalised it, one with strokes to make it look more traditional and one with cleaner edges.

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coming up with a logo

For the logo I wanted to create something that was dynamic, the design is simply the name in a circle but the circle could be filled in with any image that celebrates Maltese culture.

The biggest issue I found was creating the perfect filter that fits any image so that the text could still be easily read without overpowering the pictures

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Forming the Marketing Team and Strategy

for the first four hours of our first meeting as a marketing group we brainstormed on the initial ideas for what needs to be done by the end of our journey.

Creating a timeline helped put into perspective how much work needs to be done and figure out the smaller groups that would need to be formed to work on individual items.

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this is the storyboard we settled on as a group representing the art section.

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mock up for light animation

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Animation sequences and transitions for the projection

As part of the art group I came up with a few ideas on how we can include maltese artistic culture in the projection mapping. First step was brainstorming what is part of that culture.

paintings architecture sculpting woodcrafting dance lace ċombini presepji u pasturi maltese tiles glass blowing tberfil

Certain elements could easily be used as patterns such as the lace and tiles. the paintings can be either shown as images, possibly animated, or simply create something original or present sculptures and architecture using textures as in the paintings.

the architecture of our canvas can easily be manipulated and integrated as part of our animations, the windows can be used to showcase artwork or maltese doors.

I aslo came up with a few things we can use as a transaction between scenes like having paint dripping down to get a fresh start or have bubbles or glass balls passing by, a small amount at first but then enough to cover up every part of the canvas.

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