Monotype brief first long chat and direction of project

Today I finally got round to discussing the typography collaboration with Charlie Hallam. We've decided to go for the D&AD monotype brief for now as it is more liberal in regards to medium and has a sooner deadline so is the best one to start on.

The discussion, of course, started with addressing the target of the collaboration and which community we wish to represent with type. We are keen to work outside of the traditional bounds of the greek alphabet and think in terms of broader semiotic output. The first concept pitched was by Charlie who suggested that we do a series of picograms relating to tricks used in skateboarding. This is an interesting direction but as skateboarding isn't a bigtime passion of mine we decided to seek something with more common ground.

Talking of common interests and features of our lives we arrived on our rural backgrounds and the environment immediately around Bournemouth (where we conducted out foundation studies). We arrived on some kind of semiotic set for the forestry commission or more simply just for promoting forest and countryside exploration. This decision was in part down to initial research coming from an exhibition we both like by SEA telling the story of Roundel's brand identity for Railfreight. The project explores and appropriates old railway markings, that have strong graphic resonance, for an exhibition that coincidentally was hosted by D&AD. As a way of distinguishing trains from specific depots and subsectors of the rail freight network, simplistic, geometric, two colour (yellow and) symbols were made to help identify trains from a variety of distances and speeds. These were in turn inspired by a similar system used on aircraft.

So based on this initial point of references and the focus of the forestry commission or the aim of promoting the countryside to young people we structured a rough mission statement:

"To construct a typographic library using appropriated forestry commission semiotics to encourage and promote rural exploration for Generation Y."  

Grafik article on D&AD exhibition

It's Nice That article on 80's Roundel identity

With only 2 weeks left until the monotype competition deadline it is essential we work quickly and effectively to compile a good range of research and initial experimentation this week and then set out to create our final set of characters next weekend and the following week.