a concept is considered as a plan or intention. from the latin - conceptum - something received or conceived.
when developing a concept its important to consider a number of things - who is the target audience? what are the clients needs? what is the purpose? will it be aimed at current or potential customers or both?
we talked for a while about how we develop concepts and where we thought they came from in order to then to the afternoon sessions task - in groups we were given 3 pieces of paper - one with a place on it and 3 with things on them.
our group got hotel as our place and match, cloud, and staple as our things.
we began by discussing what we thought each thing was/meant and what was associated with it. to gain a visual understanding we did a mind map for each thing and tried to create as big a relationship between the thing and any links it has.
this helped us to understand each thing by every possible definition so that we were not just stuck on the literal. from this we thought about what each thing could mean in line with a hotel and how a hotel might encompass each thing. we tried to maintain a broad mind to enable us to explore further meanings and gain a wider variety of possible concepts.
having considered each thing in line with a hotel we went on to choose which one to pursure. we did this by vote based on what we thought was most appropriate and best fit the theme of a hotel and after some discussion we decided unanimously that cloud would be the best path to take.
in order to achieve a strong and aimed concept the next step was to determine our target audience. this allowed us to have some focus and be able to design/construct around a target market with specific demands instead of just two words - cloud and hotel.
once again we tried to maintain a broad thought process so we gained more possible ideas. we decided that because the hotel would be based in leeds, and from our knowledge and understanding of general leeds tourism that the most appropriate customer to target would be wealthy, mature professionals and no kids. we recognised that leeds attracts a fair few celebrities and wealthy people and we thought that because there are already a large number of cheap/budget hotels in leeds an up market hotel would suit.
this mind map was useful in defining the hotel to a more realistic and believable extent - to take our concept from a simple idea to a more founded and imaginable one. the left explores the potential inclusions of the hotel while the right tries to define the hotels 'ethos' or delivery. this map was really useful in helping us actually visualise our concept and enabled us to define the hotels identity and aesthetic.
we thought it then appropriate to consider names for the hotel because language and aesthetics are always inter relatable within branding and we thought that having a name at this point would enable us to now become more focussed and work on specifics in order to make our concept more inclusive and realistic.
after quite a long discussion on what name communicated what type of hotel and how the target market would likely receive and understand that name we chose 'stratus'. stratus is a type of cloud formation and so relates in that way. it is also, we thought, the most professional and classy sounding name out of the list because some are quite cheesy and cliche and we wanted to communicate the hotels class and worth.
we then went on to consider the hotel from a design aspect, thinking what things would be used to communicate the hotels identity and aura.
because we wanted to maintain continuity in our concept we thought it necessary at this point to have a founded and relatively concrete idea about the style, aesthetic, ethos, aim, and delivery of the hotel. the most successful brands tend to maintain their identity through continuity and a recognised style and this it what we decided to aim for. we did another sheet that defined these aspects and some of the content of the hotel.
having a founded style of identity enabled us to visualise the aesthetics more easily and so the next step was to consider a logo for the hotel that would successfully communicate who the hotel was, what they were offering to their clientele, and who that target market was. we each worked on some initial sketches of what we thought the logo could look like while trying to encompass all the aspects of the concept we had established already.
jordans designs
roxys designs
my designs
everyone came up with some really good designs which gave us a wide choice to work with which is good. in the end we recognised that roxys designs had a basic aesthetic and structure that communicated up market hotel but with a modern edge and so we all progressed with her idea and she put the design in illustrator to create the final one below.
from the earlier discussion about names and relations to clouds we thought to use the pantone colour swatch to choose the colour scheme for the hotel - the silver and the lowest blue along with greyscale was decided.
having developed our concept to a realistic point we went onto the next part of the task which was to make a 5 minute presentation about our development and concept which we would then show to the rest of the class. because roxy was tasked with the logo design i did the presentation which can be seen in the link below.
the next day we practiced and refined the presentation and then presented it to the class. i thought the presentation itself went smoothly and we successfully explained our progression and final concept. the class and tutors all seemed happy with the work we produced and i felt as though the group had worked hard and consistenly to produce the concept we had. having seen some other groups presentations however i realised that in fact we hadnt worked as hard as we could of and that our concept was not so detailed and realistic as we thought. this wasnt dissapointing, rather i recognised our flaws and realised that with a more committed progression we could have gone more in depth. as a group we were partially unsure as to how deep and detailed we should go into the concept and so sometimes we held off a bit. after everyone presented lorraine explained that the more detailed a concept the more understandable and successful it is likely to be and so for next time i will keep that in mind.
overall though im really proud of the group and think we did make a good effort. i really enjoyed this session because it tought me about how to successfully and logically develop a concept and how important forming a concept is to design. it made me think in different ways about how to produce information and how to progress in an ordered and efficient way from point to point.
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