Our brief from ICAD was to design a call for entries poster that would be distributed to the ICAD membership and design and advertising agencies/ studios throughout Ireland to announce the annual awards submission process. Whilst the brief itself was left somewhat open in terms of its graphic design with a number of significant considerations; to deliver it within a tight budget, to focus on the ICAD bell as an aspect of its design and for it to be considered the first building block in a larger identity project for the 2017 awards program.
Down through the years work produced for ICAD has featured the ICAD bell and its inherent colours in a variety of graphic manifestations, whilst we were conscious to adhere to the commissioners request we also wanted to provide a previously unseen graphic take on the bell that would allow us to build a strong visual approach to our designs. Our view of the bell is one of an internal perspective, the main graphic unit is designed to reflect the bell and its actual proportions whilst reminding viewers that the reasoning behind a bells shape is entirely relevant to its function. (To make noise)
This key graphic was created using a simple architectural perspective which was intended to bring a texture and depth to the piece. A symbol that visually invites the viewer to “enter”. Our intent was then to use this symbol as a unit from which we could create a strong yet abstracted typeface that would conform to the typographic grid and division of space we were designing for. The choice had been made early in the project to screen print the poster (in order to add a greater sense of value) this allowed us to further develop the typeface across 4 designs, giving us the ability not to overload a single poster in a numerical fashion and create a series that when viewed as individual posters were abstract enough to stand alone as individual graphic compositions that conveyed their relevant content. ICAD call for entries posters were screen printed using 4 spot pantones over 4 designs on FSC certified curious skin black 140gsm paper in editions of 40.
