Project Two: YCN Awards Brief

The Brief

YCN is a design agency, which describes itself as 'Producing work across all media and representing the finest creative people for commissions and collaborations'. They say of themselves that 'YCN today produces advertising, design and other creative communications n all media; both for its own projects and ventures and on behalf its various clients'. They are a 'group of designers, art directors, developers, writers, illustrators and project managers work together at 72 Rivington Street in London'. They also run an annual competition which offers students the chance to fulfil creative briefs from a range of high profile clients and enter that work in a competition. 'The YCN Student Awards shine a light on new creative talent and centre on a collection of live creative briefs'. (http://www.ycn.org)

Winning a competition such as this one often results in the work being commissioned commercially and is a good career starter.

We will be visiting YCN to discuss the briefs and the competition on Monday 14th January. This trip to London is a required part of this assignment, so make plans to be available and able to travel that day.

For this assignment you will choose from a list of YCN Award brief. The internal deadline for your degree assessment is in advance of the YCN submission deadline, which is March 14th 2013. It is recommended, but not compulsory, that you enter your work into the competition.

Sketch book and Blogs

You are required to keep a sketchbook/ visual diary to record the generation of ideas and the progress, development and evolution of your project.
In addition you should set up a process blog to hold idea, techniques and examples of any contextual references (art and design styles) that you have researched, together with links to media sources used for inspiration.

You are expected to bring your sketchbook to every session for viewing by your tutors and to update your blog at least weekly.

Requirements

Your research, design and planning needs to be shown in a combination of sketchbook and blog showing three initial ideas designs then full deign development for your chosen brief (eg. further sketches, storyboards, animatics, mock ups, flow diagrams).
You will pitch your designs in development as a prepared presentation.
You will develop a pdf document based on the guidelines set by YCN which is ready to submit as part of your YCN Award submission.
You will submit your finished digital products in suitable formats on the Hercules server.

Deadlines and Key Dates

Mondays 14th January - Visiting YCN in London
Wednesday 16th January - Put forward three initial ideas in response to your chosen brief for discussion
Wednesday 6th February - Full pitch of idea
Monday 25th February - Crit
Wednesday 27th February - Hand in project