Mid-Project Crisis (as per usual)

Yesterday, there was a full class mid-progress critique on the Six Degrees project. Jessie and I have been wrestling with our concept and its form, and yesterday it showed.

book jacket

DVD inside 

poster

While we have found the right imagery, we aren't applying it in the right way. Our message is muddied and difficult to focus on. The type is just plain ugly. The colors also seem to bright and almost playful.

Now, Jessie and I are in the midst of re-formulating our entire concept. All afternoon, we've been tossing concepts back and forth, wrestling with concept, form, and the National Geographic brand standards.

Personally, I've been leaning more towards a minimalist composition, still getting at our main idea without too much extra noise. On the flip side, Jessie believes that photography is a really key component to the Nat. Geo brand. She is in the middle of composing images that we already have into a clean, powerful message, playing off a new element - the house (symbolizing what our energy consumption is doing to our planet).

We have a long way to go and a short amount of time to do it in. The only thing truly locked down at this point is our DVD menu. Everything else is remaining up in the air.

By today or tomorrow, we hope to lock down our true final image and start to place things into templates by Monday. Tonight, we're emailing Tyler to discuss this broad formal change. Hopefully his insight will help us narrow our focus and hammer out this last project.