Some Serious Progress

week #8 entry #1 04/05 - 04/12: academic journal
Hello! Some major progress has been made with driftwear.  Some of the things I worked on over break were: a 40-second, stop-animation, brand video, the creation of over 100 paper boats, the final drawing and scanning of all my designs, finalization of my logo, and mission statement.

Stop animation:

Last year in my studio art II class, I learned how to make a stop-animation video using Windows Movie Maker.  I loved the way still images were put together to make motion and it's imperfections, like the shaky camera, were part of the charm.  I thought that stop-animation works well with driftwear mentality.  I also wanted to tie together my guerrilla art/advertising project with the video.

The Paper Boat Project

I have been really inspired by guerrilla art projects and the idea of uplifting a community through art.  I thought that using guerrilla art on campus would be an excellent way to gain hype about the brand.  Monday, I hung up over 100 paper boats around the school campus without explanation.  I put 12 boats in one tree, which turned out to be a beautiful display.  The reason I didn't explain the boats was because later that day, I invited all my Facebook friends to join the driftwear fan page and I wanted to keep the mystery in the boats. I used old notes, tests, and binder paper to make all the boats, staying consistent with driftwear's environmental-consciousness.  People came up with theories behind the notes written on the boats. It worked out beautifully.

The final drawing and scanning of all my designs:

I drew out all of my designs on Bristol board, scanned the designs, and increased the contrast of the designs on the computer.  Some designs developed more with drafts.  For example my logo transformed and I went through 5 different drafts of it. My final draft was a mixture of both the first and second drafts of the logo.  The first draft had very wavy lines outlining the boat.  I liked the wavy lines because I felt they were whimsical and a little dreamy.  The second design has straight lines, I liked the graphic-ness of this design and the sharp lines seemed professional.  Since there were perks from each draft, I sought to mix the two together with less curvy lines.  Additionally, lowering the sides of the boat made it look less like a crown, and more like a boat.

Here are some of my finalized designs:

The Mission Statement:
Finally, the last thing I accomplished over break was the creation of a driftwear mission statement.  This answered my competitive differentiation question. This has been a very important part of my FOCUS project.  I am glad that I did it at this time because I have created the designs and more clearly understand the driftwear mentality.  I could not have written this a few weeks ago.  It was only after I escaped from my project for a week, and re-focused on designs and a brand video, that a mission statement came easily.  I worked on several drafts of it and this is the final edition:

The actual image needs to be edited, but all and all I think it sounds pretty good.  I am so excited for the launch of driftwear.com on April 19th!