Our batch got to participate in HearstUK x UAL, a collaboration that brought a real world company’s live design requirement to a bunch of work hungry grad students. We could apply in a teams of upto 5, and submit a proposed pattern design for one of their brand magazines, House Beautiful.
THE TEAM:
I chose to go forth in this with my good mates in class, Ruan McConaghy, Joao Pinedo, Mohamadreza Ramezani and Eiichi Sugiyama. The team stood out as the rest of the groups formed were in a heavy majority female led, and we were tagged by everyone as “The Boys”
THE BRIEF:
The brief was simple, yet so very complex. We had to propose a pattern design that could be used for the magazines across all verticals such as print and digital. Their focus was also to have a brand identity pattern that can be used by licensing in the future. The brief spoke about what the brand is, and what it stands for. These all were cues to be taken into consideration while thinking about the design.
THE CONCEPT:
Our process started by research and idea dumping. We looked through old archives of the magazine covers, went in depth to figure out the audience and thought hard about what the client was actually looking for.
For me, it was essential that the pattern captured what House Beautiful is about; Modern and Accessible (this is also what the brief said). My initial exploration was around using the iconic typeface of House Beautiful to build out patterns, inspired by fabric patterns.
Our initial exploration was tied into the typeface, as we viewed it iconic. To us, House Beautiful encapsuled A LOT, and to tie together a pattern that works for everything seemed almost impossible. Our individual digging expeditions all led us to a similar space, ‘It is the little things that matter’. It was the serifs of the font that attracted all our attention, intricate little details that made the font be unique. And that gave us our core vision: The Little Things.
The Little Things forms a story around how its the small details that make a house a home. It is the first set of plates that they bought when they first moved in, or the first art project that their child drew. Maybe it is her late mother’s hand stitched rug, or the collection of merchandise from all the travels.
We saw this as our key to winning the pitch, the main insight that would lead the project ahead. Yet, creatively we were still struggling to get something that looked good.
OUR FINAL APPROACH:
The last day before submission, we had a final team meet to figure out creative direction. We all were so focused on the typeface we did not pay attention to the logo.
Fortunately, Joao decided to give up on typeface and took a look at one of is approaches using the logo. The idea was to partition the logo in different formats and then use repeat to create patterns that were unique and tasteful, but all fit under one family. AND THIS WORKED!!
THE PITCH VIDEO THAT GOT US IN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq2E4ZvVhMw
Our final submission remained the same, albeit with a few feedback changes from the client. For me, this pattern was quintessentially House Beautiful. It wasn’t just a pattern, but a system that works across every imaginable scenario. Digital, print, mainline, social media, licensing, collaborations. It works in every colour palette, every design requirement. However, we did not win this 🙁
Moral of the story: Sometimes you think you know exactly what the client is thinking and wants from you, and you are extremely wrong xD
Nevertheless, it was a great oppurtunity and personally I had an absolute blast pitching this to the beautiful folks at Hearst UK. It gave me an opportunity to work with screenprinting, dye sublimation and laser cutting. It was hands-on and inventive, and an experience that I feel definitely adds to me knowledge for the future.
CREATIVE CODING:
One of the best things to come out of this was the creative coding workshop. In school, I had pursued computer sceince where we studied Java, a coding language. That was one of the best things I studied in school, and now I got to integrate that into design. The workshop, led by Oswin Tickler (an absolute genius with creative coding) was about the bare basics of using logic and code to generate patterns. That night I was up till 4am re-learning everything I could about java and using it the code out a pattern generator. Ramez had a bit of knowledge about coding as well, and so we teamed up to create something EPIC, and which to my knowledge the clients absolutely adored.
https://hearsthb.vercel.app CHECK IT OUT HERE
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