Responsive: GAP

I chose the YCN GAP brief because I thought I would be able to produce some work which I am interested in already; fashion illustration.  The aim was to produce a promotional campaign that lured students into the GAP shops. Currently this age range doesn't have GAP on their radar.

I know that as part of advertising it is more about selling the lifestyle/ the person than the object/garment itself. I started this project by brainstorming key words and mantras that the company holds in high regard; the project pack held useful information about the company too. My main focus was to keep a simple content; ideally the final image would have been really simple however my work involves a lot of detail and pattern and mark-making so even though I started off with a simple idea, my work evolved into a final image more complicated. This is something I need to work on in my work- it worked best for the company's brand image to keep it simple!

So, with my simple, uncomplicated and relaxed mantra in my head I decided to begin by using water colours to paint two blocks of navy, with a gap in the middle. (Navy being the company's signature colour.) I then began to sketch out a few ideas of young people on top of the paint in pencil and pen.

After my first experiments I decided the gaps between the colours weren't clear enough so I painted some more strips of navy paint with a narrower gap between to  make it clearer. I then thought about what the context of the characters in my images needed to be to attract their target audience. I decided that basing it on lust and relationships was the most likely to attract a young audience particularly students during freshers week. With this in mind I found images from a number of sources that reflected a diverse range of relationships/situations e.g. the LGBT community.

The process of creating the illustrations was quite complicated as I started off by drawing onto the paint with white pen, then adding silver and black pen in specific places such as the eyes and jaw line. I didn't stick to my reference images but I used them as a basic guide line to poses and positions of features. It was fun to create this work as the majority of it was imagination led. I chose to use white against the navy as this contrasted more so would stand out most in a design such as a shop window or poster. Once I was happy with the analogue images I scanned them and began working them on Photoshop.

Unfortunately I made a huge error by working on these original images in my sketchbook because it was not watercolour paper so when I scanned them in the paper was not flat. This meant that when adjusting Levels in Photoshop my work did not have a stable background; instead having large patches of shadow and highlights. I decided to fix this by getting rid of all the outlying marks on the white, then by selecting the navy strips and adding more dark blue colour to the dark patches to get a more stable overall block colour. The project pack included the logo so I used the colour from there to ensure my images stuck to the brand image.

However, once I started painting the background colour it obviously began to erase the white line marks of the characters. In order to ensure these were not lost, before I started painting in the navy, on another layer I drew over all the white lines in a white paint brush tool. I decided to make this brush slightly smaller than the original lines as I thought the effect of a light blue with a thinner white line in the middle would create a cool luminous effect. I was actually really happy with this effect however the patterns themselves weren't executed as flawlessly as they could have been as I just used a mouse due to the Wacom tablets being occupied in the studio.

If I was to do this brief again I would definitely select fewer final images to work on as I think the quantity of work I decided to create gave myself a larger workload than was necessary. I would also make the image simpler and the message clearer. Although I am happy with the aesthetics of my final work and I think the 'Bridge the GAP' slogan works really well with the characters. My slogan was meant to highlight the importance of simplifying everything; relationships and clothes. Freshers is a confusing and complicated time so this mantra should attract students looking for some calm and simplicity.