Colin the Umbrella

So, now that this blog is no longer confined to the strict rules of a university brief, I can use it for shameless self promotion! Hurrah! Thinking about it though, shameless self promotion could end up deterring the (very) tiny number of loyal followers this blog has accumulated thus far. So don't worry, I won't be bigging up my own work too regularly here, after all, I have my own website for that. Although that's in dire need of a redesign, so at the moment I'm actually more proud of the blog than I am of the portfolio site (oh dear!) but hopefully that will change if I ever find the time to make it happen.

A piece of work I did want to put up here though, was my response to our One Week Project. For anybody reading this who doesn't attend the University of Leeds Graphic & Communication Design course, or isn't a friend of family member (unlikely that's anybody then), the brief was as follows:

You are required to propose a creative solution for one of the following:

Celebrate the invention of … either, the drawing pin, the zip, barbed wire, cats eyes, the coat hanger, concrete, the credit card, elastic, the lawn mower, nylon, Phillips head screw, scissors, sliced bread, spark plugs, the umbrella, Velcro.

You can utilise any media or approach, you could treat it like an advertising campaign, or produce a magazine article or book, make a video or a series of photographs or illustrations which investigate a particular functional or aesthetic quality of this everyday object. It could be purely typographic or a piece of copywriting. Maybe it’s a Radio ad or utilises ambient media. You decide the best way to celebrate those things that we all take for granted. Create an element of surprise, shock us, make us laugh, allow us to contemplate beauty, inform us, intrigue us do whatever you can to make something that gets our attention and holds it. This is your opportunity, by utilising all your creative energies and abilities, to make the ordinary, extraordinary.

I chose the umbrella as my item, as a sort of gut instinct. I did loads of research into umbrellas (they're more interesting than you might think actually!) and then set to work trying to come up with good ways to celebrate such an ordinary object. I considered making a nice hand bound book, and I considered some sort of umbrella sculpture, even some sort of umbrella based twitter application crossed my mind, but in the end I decided to make an animation, as animation is something I really enjoy doing, and, as Alan Oliver once told me, animation/film has the potential to convey so much more than just one image on it's own.

Although we had seven days to do the whole project, as well as the finished 'celebration', we also had to produce a Creative Log, which took up a good half of my time, and I'd shot myself in the foot a bit by choosing to make an animation, which was by far the most time consuming of all the ideas I could have chosen. In the end the whole animation had to be created from start to finish in just three days. During those 72 hours, I got just 10 hours sleep, and I think the only things that kept me awake/alive were an indispensable girlfriend who helped wherever she could, and a small supply of 'Pro-Plus', although I hate taking those tablets, they really are a last resort. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make, is that I think I probably worked harder on this than I have on any other piece of work in my life.

Did it pay off? Well, I bloody hope so. If I don't get a good mark for this project I'll be devastated. However, when I showed my animation at the crit, it got a great response. I was really worried about it being shown on the big screen, and even more worried about the voiceover being heard at a loud volume ("nobody likes the sound of their own voice"). But thankfully everybody laughed (more heartily than I had expected!) in all the right places, and they even gave a round of applause at the end, which definitely made the sleep deprivation seem worthwhile.

Anyway, shameless self promotion over. The last few posts have been somewhat different to normal, what with the rationale/self-assessment and now this, but I'll get back to blogging as usual about good/bad design again from now on.

Also, last thing I promise. I feel obliged to give credits for the film, as not all footage was mine. Just incase you hadn't noticed, it was all my own work, except for:
- Footage from 'Singing in the Rain' (1964)
- Footage from 'Umbrella' by Rihanna (2007)
- Music from Collateral Damage by Muse (2009) (If you're wondering "where is that?" it's the music at the end when Colin dies)