This project was part of the D & AD Competition (New Blood Awards 2019) – Monotype. The objective of this brief was to create a typography-led integrated graphic design campaign, that uses type to celebrate a community of your choice and showcase what makes it unique.
For this project, I chose to celebrate the Sikh community and showcase their history and contributions to the UK. During the time of this project, Brexit was at its peak and received a lot of coverage nationwide which also resulted in a lot of racial tensions and divisions throughout the UK. I directed this project as an anti-Brexit campaign to be produced by the government in an attempt to highlight the Sikh community and how they live and serve the British population.
I created a poster series consisting of three posters on the topics of WW1 & WW2, Sikh settlement/history and Langar (free food) donations. Keeping the illustration of the Union Jack in the background and imagery with text in the forefront to link that connection between the people and the place. Being a type focused project, it was important to keep the text short and informative with keywords and lesser known facts. Also, looking at the aesthetics of the text, a sans-serif font deemed to have more clarity than a serif font when read from afar, hence the use of Montserrat type. The images used in the first two posters were retrieved from old archives and took some time to edit and restore due to the lack of camera specs in early 1900s. Once restored, these were then carefully masked (cut-out) and composed in the forefront, keeping all three images in black & white contrasting against the background but more importantly, sticking to the 3 colour rule throughout the poster. As a touchpoint element to this campaign, I also created a motion graphics video where the type visually moved in the way of what is being explained (i.e. the word ‘globe’ rotates spherically in the shape of the globe). The video also went into more detail to explain small facts gathered throughout this project which couldn’t all be projected in the poster series.
Software used in this project – Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro & Adobe After Effects.
