We began by brainstorming key elements we wanted to include in our promotional material. We then did some market research, which included me going to a fashion show, to decide on the type of promotional material we wanted to create. I thought things like calypso wrappers or refreshment carts etc would be good for the fashion show part however we decided to stick to a more simple advertising scheme with posters, bus stops and bill boards.
We decided to create two formats; a banner format and a poster. From there we went back to the drawing board and each came up with some initial ideas. Abby thought that red and navy were key colours in the most recent Vogue issue so we had ago at creating some work following this colour palette. I think this was a really good idea and start however I don't think it worked very effectively with the brand itself and their 'fresh', 'light' and 'fruity' identity. Navy and red seemed to serious; love not lust. So we met up again and decided to create some mood boards for our colour palettes. I was in charge of this and decided to base it on the cocktail flavours as we had both decided that our portraits would have the drinks flowing into ingredients into the bodies/faces- transparent skin. Similar to these artists:
For the colour palette mood board I did a lot of research into the potential cocktails you can make using Prosecco. I split the page into sections for the different cocktails and used water colour and pen to convey the different ingredients. I kept the colours light and vibrant as I wanted to portray this 'fresh' feel. I think this was really useful as it gave us a clear board to go back and forth from while working on our final illustrations. It was really important to both be on the same page for this as we were both doing similar parts in the project.
After we had a clear understanding of the general feel of our project we did some more research, this time focussing on the aspect of a 'girly night out'. I did a photo-shoot using cocktail glasses and memorabilia such as umbrellas and stirrers and used two girls as my models. I also used props such as sunglasses and sun hats to add a fun, carefree summer vibe to the photographs. I used these photographs as a reference and created some initial sketches from them. Abby did the same with her own images and we met up and compared what we had produced. We also shared our reference photographs with each other using a private Facebook Album which was really useful as Abby then went through and chose out of my selection of photographs which ones she liked, which made narrowing them down a lot easier. After we had met up we decided that we would combine our work together by drawing outlines for each other and then filling in the other persons outline.
I found this part of the collaboration the hardest. All the previous decision making had been quite clear as to the direction we both wanted to go with the brief. However, actually working with someone else's illustration felt really odd and I found it hard to know how to combine my own work in with a thick outline as it is the opposite to the way I work - usually I start off with colours or paint to get a general feel- here my outline was already made. I also found it really hard to hand over an outline to Abby to work with as I wasn't happy with the outlines I made- obviously they were unfinished so I wouldn't be - but I still found it a struggle! I decided to overcome this issue by using the light-box to draw a faint outline of the outline I was given and then fill in that page with flowers and fruit etc. I found this way of working a lot easier as I felt much more free. I then used Photoshop to combine these two images. I also worked a lot more on the content (the flowers and fruit etc) by using the Paint tool to add a white line around the images to continue with the 'light' feel. I also edited Levels and Saturation, and added some faces to some of the illustrated outlines. I wasn't very sure about my final work however I knew they were good enough to work with further in a poster/banner layout combined with other images.
Abby then took over compiling the images together into the poster and banner layouts and she did an amazing job by making them all fit well together compositionally and aesthetically. She also linked them together by added paint splashes to the background of the images. We kept our 'fresh' and 'light' colour scheme and stuck to girly colours such as peaches and pinks to stick to the brief of appealing to a target audience of young fun-loving girls out drinking with their friends.
I then took over the work adding logo and the slogan 'Lighten up your day with Scavi & Ray'. This was actually quite hard for me as composition and layout is probably my biggest weakness! I wanted to use a white font to continue with the key element of 'lightness', however this meant that I had to then add a more block colour layer beneath it so that it stood out. I also had to make the font quite large so that it would be visible in context. I used the font that was included in the project pack in order to stick to the company brand image, however during our final peer review we got comments that this did not work with the logo- even though it was exactly the same font. I think these comments were more to do with the size of the font rather than the font itself, however we decided to keep it bigger for practical reasons of the public being able to read it. If we were to do this brief again we could spend longer trying out size combinations, perhaps making the logo itself bigger would have worked more effectively!
I was also in charge of putting our promotional material in context. I had no idea how to do this to begin with as I am not very experienced with a range of tools in photoshop! However I decided to do this part as it is extremely useful to know how to create mock ups. So after learning the complicated step of clicking the distort tool… I began to adjust our work to the contextual objects such as bus stops, bill boards, and general posters. I used Layers to ensure a realistic look and I am really happy with how they turned out- definitely a simple skill I will be using a lot in future projects!
Overall I am really happy with the way that Abby and I worked together as we could have hugely clashed seeing as our work is very similar in the way that we are both illustrators and enjoy doing portraiture. But luckily we managed to give up enough control over our own work to allow each other to have a go at contributing together to create a final outcome we have both put a lot of work into. I am not sure how professional our final posters look; mostly down to the way I have positioned the font and logo etc, yet I feel we have been successful in collaborating and working as a team.
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