Exhibition branding OUGD406 - research

We decided a good place to start for this brief was with the name of the exhibition, our initial ideas included...

• re-design
• new designs
• cover to cover
• perspective

In the end we decided on PERSPECTIVE, the idea behind the name was that each student has approached the same or similar brief from a completely individual angle and their designs show their personal perspective. The name also provoked a lot of initial thoughts on linking this to a strong concept and design style for the exhibition.

Our first thoughts from the name choice included...

• Optical illusions
• Impossible typeface (Macula)
• Anamorphic type
• Negative space
• & general ways of provoking people into looking at things from an alternative perspective

For initial research we decided to gather a group of images that inspired us and provoked more ideas. We looked at existing exhibition branding and general design that incorporated this initial idea of bending perspective.

We looked at some existing examples of exhibition branding that used anamorphic typography. This form of design is site specific which makes each piece really original and personal to that exhibition. Its a great way of engaging and making the space interactive with the audience which guarantees it being memorable. Looking into this further told us how this process is actually done, it can be done quite easily using a projector and paint so we considered this as a possible design decisions.

This next image shows overlaid type, you can read each colour when looking through red and blue acetate. This is really effective as you can have two hidden messages or perspectives, this was an idea we wanted to apply to our invites.

Another example of changing images with coloured acetate is on this sagmeister book cover.

More examples of site specific exhibition design. We wanted our design plan to be site specific as it makes the exhibition original and really different compared to your average.

This is another great example of the red and blue colour split illusion.

Brilliant example of anamorphic typography.

Example of using negative space to express an unusual perspective of type.

An example of using the site specific benefits around the environment to your advantage to create an alternate and interesting viewpoint.

Another inspiring split colour design. I liked that their was a lot of examples of this kind of design as it made it easy for us to find out the design methods. Its accessibility and success suggested this was the kind of design attribute that would give the exhibition attention from social networks/bloggers.

We looked at ways of placing type in unusual and interesting ways to appeal to artistic and design minded people which is our main target audience to get publicity for the students and the course.

Example of a sleek and minimal exhibition space. We liked the idea of keeping the space pretty clean looking, we wanted to use sans serif fonts and white/transparent backgrounds on all our designs to fit in with this spacious theme.

  Another example of anamorphic typography in an exhibition space environment.