Just for a change from my 1st year doodlings, here is another ‘work-in-progress’ [WiP], this time based on a task I set my 3rd year BA students.

First thing in the morning, we played an ice-breaker game whose fiendishly complicated rules I don’t propose to elaborate on at the minute, but which basically involved coming up ideas for logos for a range of everyday businesses, which were different to anything thought up by any of your classmates.

Anyway, don’t try and make sense of the above. Suffice to say that each student ended up with a varied number of types of business to choose from [corresponding to the rounds they had won]. They then had to pick one of those business types and come up with a marketing concept which sold themselves [as a designer / artist /animator / whatever] but using the iconography, styling and language of the business in question.

The thinking behind this is to encourage the students to look at metaphor, pastiche and homage as a possible way of feeding their ideas generation and influencing their design style.

None of us [myself included] got anywhere near producing a finished piece of work within the allotted time, so this is another one which I will have to return to later. But here’s where I got up to by the time ‘rain stopped play’.

My chosen business was a purveyor of electrical goods so, after a bit of head-scratching, I decided to market myself as if I was some kind of electrical device / gadget / toy.

Mind-Map and Bullet List

Looking at various ‘selling points’ associated with technological gadgets and also considering the differences between opting for the metaphor of a contemporary gadget or going for a more retro approach. In the end I decided I’d have more fun with the retro concept as I do have a real soft spot for retro design and retro-inspired design

Mood Board

Trying to evoke a bit of a retro-futurist technology vibe, with a bit of good old-fashioned pre-Womens’ Lib sexist marketing thrown in, for good measure.