{"id":3049,"date":"2020-08-17T15:46:57","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T15:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/?p=3049"},"modified":"2020-08-17T18:15:56","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T18:15:56","slug":"ou-design-summer-school-2020-week-2-and-mostly-3-if-im-honest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/ou-design-summer-school-2020-week-2-and-mostly-3-if-im-honest\/","title":{"rendered":"OU Design Summer School 2020 \u2013 Week 2 (and mostly 3 if I’m honest…)"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, so in the best traditions of being an OU student: life got in the way of what I wanted to do; I realised that what I wanted to do was probably a bit, and I failed to meet my own deadlines…<\/p>\n

But part of being an OU student is that with these difficulties come a load of benefits: if you keep in contact, you find out very quickly that you’re not on\u00a0 your own (others are having the same problems and it’s OK); there’s always help available to you; and it really helps to share all this and just talk about it.<\/p>\n

So epiphany #1 this week is that the weekly meetups have been really useful for me to keep me going and to keep trying things (even if they’re not perfect).<\/p>\n

Anyway, to pick up from my learning plan from last time I did keep playing with different tools and got quite familiar with almost all the ones I’d wanted to try. Unfortunately, I now have a really good idea of what I like and dislike about all of them (and really want a product that puts this all together!).<\/p>\n

I did get a bit more drawing and cartoon work done but I totally failed to take it to a 3 frame.<\/p>\n

But, it turned out this might have been serendipitously useful – because the thing that got in the way was a new project that happened to need a quick visual identity.<\/p>\n

So, I opened up my sketchbooks (physical and digital – I use both now!!) and started to design for this.<\/p>\n

Here’s the story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Brief<\/h2>\n

It’s a self-written brief for a group of researchers who are all part of 4 groups (special interest groups, or SIGs) part of the Design Research Society (DRS), which has its own (very strong) visual identity: https:\/\/www.designresearchsociety.org\/cpages\/home<\/a><\/p>\n

The 4 groups also have their own identities (based on the DRS one) and these all use a particularly strong colour palette (Top Tip – if you know you have specific colours like this, stick ’em in your library or make them easy to access in your work:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Colours: Check.<\/p>\n

The groups want to do more work together and they plan to explore what’s common between them: what the boundaries are; how they might work together; what’s different.<\/p>\n

So that led to idea 1: using celtic knots to show interweaving of the groups visually, but also how they are separate too. A quick google pulled up loads of images.<\/p>\n

Some starting idea: Check.<\/p>\n

Process<\/h2>\n

I’ve used knotwork like this before and it’s good fun to play with (you set up basic rules for under\/over and work to larger geometries). So I fired up my Go To sketching\u00a0 app Autodesk Sketchbook and scribbled a few.<\/p>\n

The first one I did freehand but this was quickly replaced by better ones when I remembered the symmetry tool in Sketchbook!! Saved me a LOT of time :<\/p>\n