phipps

Phipps Project Update #5

Summer Project: Phipps

Hello! This is what I’ve been working on this past week, along with my booklet. I’ve noticed that I’ve forgotten to tell all of you my intended audience for my event poster. I want to attract both adults and kids. I did some more sketching on this event, and came up some more interesting ideas. I decided to incorporate aspects of the Congo Rainforest and Basin. Those aspects not only include trees and flowers, but animals (Mountain Gorilla, Forest Elephant, Bonobo, and Chimpanzee) and waterfalls as well. I want the audience to essentially “enter into the jungle” by looking at the poster. They should get an idea of what kind of habitat they will be seeing in this exhibition, and understand what animals inhabit the Congo Rainforest. Now in this poster, I still need to add a tree bark texture (I found a demo!) to the trees. I also need to draw in a bonobo (the closet animal to us humans!), a chimpanzee, and lianas (vines). I want the poster to scream Congo! As for the booklet, if you could so kindly check back in a day or two, I’ll have a booklet that I’ll be proud to show off to you all.

Screen Shot 2016-07-19 at 12.00.47 AM

Sketches:

Phipps Project Update #4

Summer Project: Phipps

Sorry for this late project update! I know in last week’s update, I said that I decided I wanted to focus on the Jazz in the Garden event. Well, over the weekend, I got some new inspiration for the Tropical Forest Congo event/exhibit. I kept seeing the trailers for the new Tarzan movie, and got the idea of the jungle vines as connections. In my mind, I kept associating vines as an object connecting the wildlife and plants in the rainforest. I started to sketch somethings out, and finally got an idea of the integrating the type with vines. I’ve been looking at some typefaces for this project, too, off of the Adobe Typekit website. As for the booklet, I’m kind of debating what size I want the booklet to be. I’m not going to exceed the 6×6” parameter, but I don’t want to be a square booklet. I’m making some mockup booklet forms to figure out what size I want it to be.

Below, I have three mockups of the event posters with some comments on them, too. I’d appreciate some feedback and comments on them, even on my preliminary sketches from the prior updates as well. To be honest, I got stuck on the Jazz in the Garden event once I started it on the computer. I also realized I that couldn’t find any more information about the event either. With the Tropical Forest Congo exhibit, I found much more information about it and I also went back and saw the photos I took when I was there.

Phipps Project Update #3

Summer Project: Phipps

In last week’s project update, I said that I had three summer events in mind for the poster for the Phipps Project. Over the week, I narrowed down three events to just one event: Jazz in the Garden. I feel like I have a lot visual references for this particular event. I also ended up sketching more concepts for this event, too.

The new additional concepts include:

  1. The idea of flowers blooming out the music/instruments
  2. Still playing with idea of a party
  3. Typography coming out of instruments (like music notes coming out instruments)
  4. Flowers not making up the instruments, but are inside of them (like masking an image)

Now with the membership booklet, I’ve been working on some layout sketches for it. In regard to the booklet, I want to use the images of flowers and leaves that I’ve gathered and recreate them into interesting patterns/textures for each page. I’ve also come up with the idea of essentially “framing” the booklet with the images and the content. I’m also starting to write the content for the booklet as well.

I’m still sketching out my concepts for each project. Below are just some of the sketches I’ve done this past week.

Phipps Project Update #2

Summer Project: Phipps

Happy Monday everybody! I have been brainstorming constantly for the membership booklet and the summer event poster for Phipps Conservatory. In the last update, I mentioned that I was dissecting the membership guide I took from my visit. After I did that, I defined all the benefits of the regular and enhanced membership packages. I took those lists and narrowed down the key benefits. Finally, I consolidated them into concrete value statements.

From there, I started to brainstorm some concepts for the booklet:

1. Playing with images and typography

2. Having content on top of images

3. Having type peeking out from images

4. Images as borders

5. Having content on opaque solid background with image in back

There are a lot of summer events going on at Phipps. I narrowed them down to three events that I thought were interesting: Jazz in the Garden, Tropical Forest Congo Festival, and Environmental Film Series. I did bunch of mind maps on these events. As a result, I came up with some concepts and even started to sketch some of them out.

Jazz in the Garden Concepts:

  1. Dancing vegetables/plants to jazz music/player with an instrument (a garden party)
  2. Emphasizing New Orleans as a Jazz hub, using a garden as the setting
  3. The streets of New Orleans during a celebration
  4. Vegetables/plants/fruits making up/or as an instrument
  5. Vegetables/plants/fruits turning into an instrument (vice versa)

Tropical Forest Congo Festival Concepts:

  1. Emphasizing the tropical forest environment using the reference pictures and dressing them up as if there’s a party going on
  2. Emphasizing the indoor waterfall in the forest and playing with idea of type in the water
  3. Having the typography form within leaves
  4. Highlighting a tropical flower
  5. Having a tree leaves make up a bigger tree and the tree dressed up as at a festival

Environment Film Series Concepts:

  1. Taking forms associated with the environment and manipulating them into film reels/film strips
  2. Trees branches made of film strips
  3. Watching movies in the park/drive-in movies
  4. A play on film reels, film strips, and movie tickets

This first section of images contains my brainstorming and my sketches which are divided up into each project and then each event. The second section of images contains some of my inspirations for the booklet and the poster. Click here to see my Pinterest board filled with much inspiration for this project!

Phipps Mind Map
Mission Statement & Values
Membership Benefits
Membership Packages
Enhanced Memberships
Value Statements
Booklet Sketches
June Events
Jazz Mind Map 1
Jazz Mind Map 2
Jazz Sketches
Tropical Forest Mind Map 1
Tropical Forest Mind Map 2
Tropical Forest Mind Map 3
Tropical Forest Sketches
Environmental Mind Map 1
Environmental Mind Map 2
Environmental Sketches

My Trip To Phipps

Summer Project: Phipps

Almost two weeks ago I drove down to Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. This was only my second trip down to Phipps. The last time I went there was almost three or four years ago with my sister and our cousin. This trip down there really took me out of my comfort zone. I haven’t really driven down to the Squirrel Hill/Oakland area in a couple of years. The last time I drove down there was with my mom in a different car. Prior to going there, I had done some research about Phipps and I had a few questions, too. I wanted to know when it would be a good time for to me visit and if I could take my tripod with me. I found out that Mondays and Tuesdays were the least crowded days and that the Conservatory was the quietest between 3 PM and 5 PM. I wasn’t allowed to take my tripod with me because I had to be member in order to do so. Also, I would have had to call ahead of time, too. So once I got I there, I paid for my ticket and grabbed the membership guide and the general guide that were available at the ticket counter. When I made my way upstairs, I was greeted by two of the curators there. One of them walked in with me and she explained to me how to make my way through here. She also pointed out to me, Romero. She told me that Romero was a corpse flower and that it last bloomed 3 years ago. It didn’t bloom yet when I was there and I’m thinking of going back to check that out again. So anyway, I took some notes along the way and a boatload of photographs as well. I found myself being to drawn to different flowers and the leaves with different colors and textures. I also liked how Phipps integrated their art collection with their plant collection. My favorite places there were the Tropical Forest Conservatory (indoor rainforest!) and the Sunken Garden (couch made of flowers!). After roaming around taking photos and notes, I ended my trip by visiting the indoor cafe there. While there, I looked at my photos and started to sketch some things out.

When I got home, I imported all of my photographs and started tagging them according to my notes and to what I thought would be good visual references. I also created a Pinterest board for this project and started to pin examples of floral typography, brochure layouts and visual approaches/directions. I’m still looking around for color schemes right now. I have been searching for different floral based color schemes. I also have been dissecting the guides and making mind maps based on Phipps as well as the rooms and gardens there.

I took about 428 photographs that day. Now below is just a fraction of the photos I took, but they each are key moments from my trip. I have also included my notes and some of my sketches from that day. As always, click on the images to enlarge them!