OUGD603 - Brief 1 - Souvenir Pennies - Evaluation against the brief and Project Evaluation

Evaluation 

The set of pennies are appropriate for the tourist market and for people of all ages, by reflecting the different galleries in a simple and refined way making the designs clear and contemporary.

The designs are both clear and recognisable for people who have visited the galleries. Each of the designs reflects one an artwork or aspect of the building in an abstract way, showing only a snippet of the actual piece making the designs understandable to people who have visited and seen the artworks. Large scale artworks or architectural features were chosen for the designs as these were eyecatching and most likely to be remembered by visitors making the pennies recognisable to visitors. Having the name of each of the galleries on the pennies provides context to the abstract imagery making it easier to work out which pieces are abstractly featured on the pennies.   

The designs are reflective of different aspects of both the collection at Leeds Art Gallery and the building itself, with the pennies reflecting an artwork or aspect of the building from four different galleries and rooms within Leeds Art Gallery making the designs representative of the gallery as a whole.

One of the designs makes reference to the 130th anniversary of Leeds Art Gallery and is celebratory through the use of wording and hierarchy within the text which highlights the age of the place. Using the entrance to the building as the imagery for this coin highlights and celebrates the longevity of the building itself and reflects what visitors will have first seen when entering the gallery over its 130 years. Having the opening date and the anniversary year signifies it as a commemorative coin.

There is consistency across the set of pennies through the use of abstracting the artworks or architectural features within each penny and by having the designs all landscape in format. The use of similar line weight and balance between negative space and fill also creates consistency.

By refining elements from Leeds Art Gallery to simple geometric shapes and lines and by abstracting the aspects they represent, this creates a bold and contemporary aesthetic across the set. 

The process of creating the pennies through the copper etching process made it difficult to have a design on both sides of the penny. Due to this the outcomes do not include the Leeds Art Gallery logo on the back of the penny, however if they were pressed in a machine this would be printed on the back of the designs - in a similar way to other pressed penny examples - to allow people to know where they had come from. 

Project Evaluation

Overall I enjoyed working on this brief as Pressed Pennies are something I collect and have an interest in already. This project also allowed me to design something based on galleries and art which I find interesting because of the varied work which can be seen, providing inspiration and ideas for different ways of working. Designing for such a small format meant ideas had to be simple to represent each gallery / aspect of the building clearly, which allowed me to work quite abstractly to convey a sense of each place, which I think worked well. 

The process of creating a pressed penny within a roller machine or using a metal stamp would be too expensive to do, however with combined knowledge from both print and metal workshop technicians they were able to work out a way of etching the designs on copper to create a pressed penny aesthetic. However the process was quite technical and involved the use of chemicals which meant most of the process of making the pennies was done by the technician. Support from print was incredibly helpful and I was talked through the complete process so I understood how it would be done, with the outcome not being possible without the technician. 

Overall I am very happy with the outcome of the project, which resulted in a set of convincing pressed pennies.