Concept workshop

This afternoon Phil briefed us on a concept task which will also help us with our design production print brief. We were asked to choose 3 words from a jar and then 1 from the second jar. By then eliminating two of the three we would be left with the two words to use to create our concept.

We had the following:

(Jar 1)

Abacus

Pipe

Ball

(Jar 2)

Hotel

So with these options we then decided to draw a mind map and think of as many words as possible which relate to each object. We were able to explore each word just as much as each other, however abacus seemed like possibly the more intriguing word to use for our main concept.

Once we had come up with our words to use, we then applied them to possible concept ideas. We had so many different ideas, considering audience especially and whether the concept should be focusing on a younger audience or adults, seeing as we are designing a hotel.

Our initial ideas consisted of:

Having slides for children and adults to move around the hotel
Having a hotel for blind people and making it a sensory experience with brail
Making it really chic and trendy in the centre of the city
We considered the fact that the plural of Abacus is Abaci - suggested name?
The idea of incorporating geometric design within the hotel to represent the balls
Perhaps sectioning off the hotel to incorporate the history of Abacus - countries?

Therefore it is clear that initially we were quite concerned about making a strong and obvious link to the Abacus itself. Looking at the history and reflecting it's existence within the hotel.

However, the more we thought about it and discussed our ideas, the more it became apparent that it would possibly be a more successful concept if we were to essential go 'back to basics' making a link to the abacus itself which was designed for children to use in the beginning. This subtle link allows us to concentrate on making our concept more of a simplistic design, driven by more simple ideas as opposed to complicated it and making it too complex.

The concept was to create a treehouse type hotel where each room was a pod on its own tree (the ball on the abacus) and to move between them and the main recreational room was through rope bridges (the stick on the abacus). It's like an abacus blown up on a larger scale and suspended amongst trees.

It was Jamie, Jake, I whose task it was to come up with a logo, we each designed our own interpretation of the concept and then democratically decided which was more suited to the concept. I started doodling onto paper a few sketches but didn't really get any where with them so I decided to take these mere doodles and digitalise them to grasp a better idea of what they would really look like.

Firstly is the simple geometric interpretation of a circular pod suspended in the tree, it's not obvious what it is but once you know the concept it's easy to deconstruct and figure what is what. The font is quite a tall font in stature, there fore I chose it to represent the trees you're suspended in and the surrounding forestry.

The one below looks like it's simply been underlined but in fact the meaning behind it is that it represents a sub section of an abacus and also our hotels being suspended.