A Good Use of Conceptual Design
Conceptual design in graphic design is the process of taking 2 ideas or messages you are trying to convey, and combining them into one piece of work. Sometimes this can be hidden in plain sight or very obvious. The poster on the left is a great example of conceptual design as it does exactly that.
“Visual metaphors offer an opportunity to penetrate clutter and reach an audience”
The food and film poster creatively conveys what the event is about with the use of the 2 pieces of imagery hidden within. The piece of imagery cleverly used, is Charlie Chaplin’s face and a waiter with a serving plate and lid. The combination of the lid and the piece of film on the plate provides us with a secondary subtle image of Chaplin’s iconic hat and moustache combination. The type lockup helps enforce this as the designer has cleverly arranged it in a way where the ‘OO’ serves as the eyes and the ‘L’ serves as a mouth.
The idea of the black suit waiter, Chaplin’s famous bowler hat and how the ‘dish’ is being served indicates that this a classy food film festival, which will include fine dining dishes and some classic historical movies. To further that point, the clean sans-serif and flat colours provide a minimal feel to the poster which shows a certain level of elegance and sophistication.
Although the poster is exceptionally clever and combines the type, dish, film and imagery of Chaplin. The highlighted letters within the type could be kept the same as the rest of the type, which would remove the face hidden within but would add to the overall minimal feel the poster has while also being a great clear example of conceptual design.
A Lack of Conceptual Design
The original poster on the left is a great piece of design, it effectively uses bold type, great composition which directs the eye and a strong colour palette which grabs you in. The thing this poster lacks is any use of conceptual design.
The redesign on the right does a great job of fixing that issue while keeping the beauty of the original. The logo of the event has been redesigned with conceptual design in place of the ‘YO’ letterforms to create 2 icons that represent food and drink. The process of creating the iconography in place of the letterforms was approached by creating a list of different foods and drinks, and then figuring out which pieces of food could work as illustrative icons in the place of food. The sketches below show part of the process of creating a conceptual logo, keyword association and some rough sketches have been used to figure out how these letterforms could work as different pieces of food and drink to solidify the ideas into the logotype.
This was a tricky task as when letterforms are swapped out, there is a chance of losing the eligibility of the type. The redesign avoids this problem by only having 2 letterforms changed and the simplicity of them.
The change in type was used to complement the existing type on the poster and the geometric shapes within the typeface were then used to create the food symbolism. When looking at the new logo we see the ‘Y’ as a martini or drinking vessel. The ‘O’ can be interpreted in multiple ways, a doughnut, bagel or a pizza, but whichever icon you see first they all symbolise food and drink, creating a professional and appropriate redesign for the event.
References
Food Film Festival(2013). Available at – https://www.grapheine.com/en/news-agency/food-film-festival(Accessed on 20 October 2023)
Lyon Street Food Festival(2019). Available at – https://twitter.com/tasteofsavoie/status/1170994018597134336 (Accessed on 20 October 2023)
Wright, M. An introduction to Visual Metaphors, mwrig.com. Available at – https://www.mwrig.com/writingsamples/an-introduction-to-visual-metaphors (Accessed on 25 October 2023)
