Paper Stone Scissors: Postcard Brief
Tractor Design School — Industry Mentor Program
In my previous role at Tractor Design School I was given the opportunity to take part in a series of challenge briefs developed by some of Melbourne’s best design studios. Here is the second brief: PSS Postcards by the Paper Stone Scissors.
Background
Paper Stone Scissors have been producing a monthly printed postcard for years as an effective way for their business to stay in touch with their friends, people they know and those we are yet to meet.
These are produced each month by a different PSS designer as a chance to show their creative strengths and have fun in the process. They range from the simple to the elaborate and until recently have primarily been a printed execution, but increasingly social channels have been important to extend its reach. Their China office occasionally designs their own in conjunction with the Melbourne effort.
The Brief
Paper Stone Scissors wants a design for a postcard for August 2016. We need a printed and digital solution. The goal is to increase effectiveness of the medium using all available PSS social channels to increase reach and share-ability.
The outcome may help inform how we approach the postcard moving forward. Remember to consider both local and international audiences and be relevant for our friends in China.
The Deliverables
PRINTED VERSION
Size: A5 double sided (148mm x 210mm)
Format: Portrait or landscape
Colours: CMYK
Production: Offset or digitally printed (avoid embossing, foils and elaborate die cuts)
DIGITAL VERSION
- Suggest an effective digital solution for the printed postcard
- How would you maximise it’s distribution and share-ability
- Consider the PSS social channels
Restrictions / Challenges
The restriction of this brief where that it had to be completed within 6 hours. Also needed to avoid any special inks, foils, or elaborate die cuts with the final outcome.
Development
To start off this brief I began by first doing some research into different events that happen during the month of August which, didn’t really lead me down any real paths of something that could be produced. As all of the possible events just felt a bit too region specific or season. Instead I thought about the current struggle of design and its current argument of the time (back in 2015). That print was dying out and digital was completely taking over (this had been an argument that had been going on since the early 2000’s). I wanted to turn this on its head as I felt both mediums had their place in the design world. There was always going to be something or some job that required print, and there was always going to be some job that required digital applications. This is where the phrase “Digital Beats Print” came to me. I then thought about it more and came the the conclusion that for certain outcomes or requirements needed by your client this would be true, digital does beat print, but in other cases “Print Beats Digital,” especially when your client needs packaging/clothing/stationary developed. This lead me to come up with the idea of creating a ambigram. Though not a true ambigram, instead the idea would be depending upon what angle you read it at would depend upon how you read the message. With this my guiding direction for this brief I began doing some research into typographic design.
I also conducted research into how ambigrams are constructed by looking at how others have constructed their ambigram designs.
With all of this research in mind I began developing my ideas by first creating them on grid paper.
Then once I was happy with the grid paper roughs I moved onto developing the type within Illustrator.
Additional style tests where conducted after choosing the first version of the type.
Initially it was tricky to get all the words to be legible regardless of whether you read it right way up or upside down. This was mainly due to trying to have two different phrases layered over each other. Further development was needed remove this issue.
Another issue that was encountered was how far should I push the visuals? If I pushed too far the artwork became hard to read, and if I left it too simple it became too minimal and felt unfinished. So I continued to develop the design further by developing some textured backgrounds for the type to help lift it off from the page and not make it feel so flat.
Final Designs
Overall I am happy with the final outcome of the printed version of the postcard. I liked having 3 possible options to send out as this would give flexibility (as you could choose which design best suited the intended client). It also meant that the cards had a more collectable value to them.
This was then set up so it could be used for Instagram and other social media channels.
Moving Forward
With the limited timeframe of 6 hours to work on this project there where a few areas that I would personally like to explore further and refine:
- I would like to explore refining the structure and legibility of the type a little further. As though it can be read I feel this could be refined further. This would also be great so that I could be able to replicate this style with multiple different messages.
- I would like to explore developing an animation so that it could be applied to the Instagram version of this. As I feel it could be quite interesting
