DR.ME Visit/ Briefs

20/10/14

DR.ME came and to talk to us and give us some briefs to work on during the day. 

Background of DR.ME
After university went to work with an illustrator named Mike Perry in New York
Came back after a few months and set up their own studio along with Steve Locket
Now their studio is in Islington Mill, Manchester

Main work= Music Industry based
Record Sleeves
Event Posters
Self-Directed Work

Like tactile design, use a mixture of hand rendered (mainly collage) and digital.

Also said they have produced work for Elephant magazine, and culture festivals (which interested me more)

Their rates of charging are based upon a day rate or a project rate, specifying some work (3-4 days would or can equal £1000) 

They work this out from the clients budget, and asking themselves how long it will take them to produce.

Briefs

For the briefs we where put in to pairs 'DR.ME' style as their names where together on the register at university this is how we where paired, I was put with Sarah Heal, I was a little apprehensive as me and Sarah have a very different style and I think that we work in different ways. 

We started at 11 and had until 4 to do 3 briefs.

Brief 1

The first brief was to produce a 12 x 12 inch vinyl cover for Evian Christ, they'd specified that they'd wanted to some how incorporate the 10hz tapping sound like a duga 3.

We started by looking into the duga 3 and all of the surrounding connotations i.e. it was known as the 'Russian Woodpecker' and it had been suggested to be linked with mind and weather control. 

And so we drew from these ideas, in the initial drawing stage I was looking forward to getting on with the design, I had suggested that me and Sarah split up and come up with our own solutions, but we ended up working on it together, which made me feel quite pressurised and threw me off working. 

However Sarah had had the idea of drawing a head similar to one in dadaism which is the idea of mind control and I liked this, so she went off and drew this on illustrator, which we then put together on my laptop. 

We then added the woodpecker, which I felt should be red (for Russian) 

I just felt that the styles did not match and I wasn't confident with the result. 

DR.ME changed the design to the drawing of the head but reversed, which I was happier with but looking around at other peoples work I felt theres was a lot stronger.

Brief 2

For this brief they wanted us to create a gig poster for the band 'Odonis Odonis' 

The brief was very minimal, and I was confused as to what actually needed to be on the poster and what it was meant to be. 

As well as this by this point I had lost a lot of confidence throughout the day I felt uncomfortable with the style of working, i.e. with someone right beside me and the timescale when trying something new. 

I had a go at sketching some ideas, Sarah came up with the idea of sweeping out the text in black  so the text was in a negative like space and then having a background colour, and so we went with this idea. 

Brief 3 

The last brief which we had left an hour for was a 'self-directed' brief and we could produce anything we wanted, it just had to be certain dimensions. 

Admittedly by this point I felt burnt out by the day and I found it hard to be so open, I like to have at least a word to go from and so I ended up just drawing something on illustrator that I had been working on already. 

I think the day didn't go as I had planned and I think that I would of chose somebody else to work with, not that Sarah isn't good or doesn't work hard, but she is very good at her own particular style and she has a particular way of working which I wasn't comfortable with. Maybe if I'd of been on my own from the start or we'd of done our idea separately I wouldn't of felt like I did by the end of the day, but from the day I will say I appreciate that different people have different styles and different ways of working, and that I should be more confident in my own style, and then I will be confident with others too. As well as this I don't really create work for the music industry this is not my niche.