Mike-Anthony Design

Hey guys, sorry to spam you tonight, but I caved and decided to start uploading my work to facebook. There should be more to come too!

Happy Tuesday :)

For this project I was asked to design the 2013 annual report for Kid’s Under Cover which is an organization that strives to help homeless children with shelter and education.

The core branding colours for this were the yellow and black you see in the logo, but rather than use yellow ink, I opted for a design that can maintain the happy yellow shade through paper with only black ink which also helped lower the cost for printing. The cover is an exception to this which prints the brandmark in it’s true colour on a high quality textured card stock. This of course prints separately to the inside of the annual report, prior to a nice industrial stitching.

I decided the bi-line/theme of this annual report to be “a child’s heart is a playground”. I thought this was an important message which suits both the company and the brand. Kids Under Cover is all about helping under privileged children have better lives so I definitely wanted it to link to the kids they’re helping. It’s also important for kids to have fun and play so I thought it would be a good idea to connect this to a playground.

To suit the theme of this annual report, I set up a photoshoot with kids playing on a playground. I tried to capture moments where they’re having fun and smiling with each other and was pretty happy with the photos I took.

The imagery was tricky to get right. I wanted to just use black ink so all photos would have to be in greyscale, but I wanted the photos to be rendered a little more interestingly than this. I decided to try an acetone transfer technique I learned a couple of years ago. It’s quite fun to do and one of my favourite hand rendering techniques. Basically you laser print an image, turn it face down on top of another sheet of paper, dip a paintbrush in some acetone and paint the parts you want to appear. It’s quite an simple skill to have. The real trick for this is to find an appropriate printer. Acetone works differently on printed material depending on the specific printer. I no longer had access to the printer I used to use for transfers, so I had to try out several print shops before finding one that worked. I then scanned in the best transfers, and used them all throughout the entire annual report which ultimately, I was quite happy with.

This project was a big one where I was to create a toolkit for graduate designers to help them with finding a job in the industry, and present all the content through a past art/design movement or style that young designers could identify and understand.

There are countless amazing art movements that would've come out great, in fact all art movements could've been presented as well as each other. I was originally thinking of doing either something really sophisticated and beautiful with Art Deco, but then I figured for a kit like this, it should be a bit more fun and energetic to make it more fun to explore. The obvious movement for this would be Pop Art, I thought, but then I decided to take it a step deeper and I chose Vintage Comic Books as a style to create the kit in as this is something both young and old can relate to in one way or another.

I wanted it to have lots of bright colour, simple sketches that looked more complicated than they are, cheesy comic book ads, language and slang from the time period, a reference to toys as well as pop culture and most importantly, a designer superhero with a typeface to match. As much as I love video games and anime and all the geeky stuff (which relates to this specific style), I've never really had a strong interest in comics or comic superheroes, but that didn't stop me because I knew this art style would be perfect.

Naturally, I underwent an extensive research project, which included purchasing lots of comics older than I am for visual reference and even playing a Batman video game. I also researched as much as I could about this style including the history of comics, how it's evolved, the artists, typography, toys, products and pop culture from the 30's-80's and how it's all represented today.

From this point on, it became my intention that the toolkit would resemble a popular merchandise item that has everything a child needs to run away with, including food, a toy, a comic book to read and other cool stuff, while still containing all the necessary information.

For this toolkit, I had to design a box/package to put everything in, as well as many ways to presentation information on the art style, a hitlist of great design studios, instructions on how to prepare a folio, instructions on how to write a CV, a list of 50 things that Graphic Designers should know and lastly, a list of 10 inspirational design references. I wanted this kit to immediately have a collectable feel, sort of like a product endorsed by a popular comic book character, so I brainstormed and developed up a superhero named "Daring Designerd". Designerd being the obvious combination of Design and Nerd, and Daring because it gives a bit of alliteration which is always a nice touch. To suit the superhero, I put together a wide palette of bright pop colours, slogans and a typeface to match.

With the actual package, I wanted it to be very impactive, stimulating and retro, so I put together a "utility kit" which contains all the tools you need to get a design job. I gave it a cool red dot rendering and slapped Daring Designerd on the front with a product logo.

For the art style information, I designed a card with four fun badges explaining an introduction, history, artists, and how the style has evolved today.

With the hitlist, I wanted to feature one of the more popular toys from this movement, the Viewmaster. I put together a film reel with a well known design studio and their website on each slide which you must use the Red Viewmaster to read.

To explain how graduate designer's should prepare a folio, I created a mini cereal box with information on the spine. Cereal Boxes are one packaged food item in particular that has commonly been branded with popular characters over the past decades, so I thought this was definitely a great concept to include. However, rather than give it a branded name, I decided to give it a cheesy cereal name that links directly to the content, "Folios" and merely have Daring Designerd endorse it on one of the spines.

For the instructions on how to write a CV, I decided to do a cool fold out brochure with information, branded as Daring Designerd's with a free poster of his head on the back. It starts out seemingly about to explain "How to become a superhero", but when you open the first flap, it changes to "How to write a CV" with a text bubble below saying "Psyche" to feature some slang from the time period the toolkit is based on. You open it up a couple more times to reveal helpful information until you open it up fully to reveal a full A3 collectable poster of Daring Designerd.

Last, but not least, is a comic book that features both a typeset list of 50 things that a designer should know as well as 10 inspiration and helpful resources for designers such as websites, stores, printers and products, etc. With the comic cover, I decided to make a clean and sleek cover with feature the super hero, his catchphrases, his logo and bold text for the title as this would be a special 50th edition. When you open it up, you immediately begin reading the 50 things you should know, alongside cheesy comic book adds that offer too good to be true products for low prices, but with real information about some great design resources.

All in all, this was a big project which I put a lot of myself into and I was quite happy with the finished product and was excited to see it all together.