13: Round Table Collective

Work Opportunity

Based on our recent work together for the Leeds College of Art Degree Show, me and Harrison received attention not just from Lee over at Peter&Paul but also from other students around college. The other night we received an email regarding a potential small business branding.

'Hi Sam & Harrison,

Myself and three other photography students (Alex, Flo and Jack) are in the process of setting up a collective and are in need of some help with the branding.

We understand that this is a busy time, but after seeing how well you work together, your professional approach to projects and the contemporary style of your work (which fits with the style we are looking for), we would really appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with you on this.

I've attached a copy of a short brief we have written up, we would appreciate it if you could let us know whether you are interested at your soonest opportunity.

Cheers,

Oscar.'

Below is the brief they sent over with the email;

'Brief

Myself (Oscar Henderson-Pennington) and three other photography 

students (Alex Bibby, Florence Brewin and Jack Greenwood) are in the 

process of setting up a photography based collective and are looking for 

someone to help us with the branding and identity of the business.

Name

Round Table Collective

Ethos

We decided to form the collective due to our mutual interest in the fine art 

photographic practice and print based outputs. Our working ethos is based 

around group critique whilst embracing the notion of shared authorship. The 

concept behind our name developed from this idea, using the fictional story of The Knights of the Round Table.  “They were called the Knights of the Round Table because of a special table that was in Camelot, that was round instead of rectangular. This meant that everyone who sat around it was seen as equal.” 

The Brief

In terms of the branding we are looking for:

Logo / Icon

Business Cards

Invoices

Letterheads

The criteria we would need you to meet:

Minimal

Keep it simple. We want the branding to reflect our ethos, 

not our practice. Although, our focus is on photography therefore 

equally we don’t want the design to overwhelm this.

Playful 

The branding needs to reflect creativity, so avoid anything too 

corporate.

Avoid Clichés 

In terms of photographic design clichés such as; 

aperture rings, cameras, lenses, tripods etc. Focus on visualising our 

name as an icon (graphically or illustratively).

These are our preferences and so should be seen as guidelines rather than 

restrictions. This is a collaborative process within which your creative initiative is valued.'

This is a great opportunity for us to collaborate further and have taken on the task, but both understand that is something that might not be finished in time for hand-in. Their deadline for this isn't until some time during the summer, and so it isn't a high priority at the moment for any of us. 

Development Needed
Although the branding and everything else doesn't need to be done until after we have finished college because it's for a future start up, we received an email regarding development needed so that the photography students could show future plans in their PPP presentations. This kind of put us both on the spot as they needed it for pretty much the next day, so we pretty much had half a day to rustle something together.

'Hi guys,

Hope you had a good easter break.
We were wondering, as we have our PPP deadline coming this Wednesday, would it be possible for you to send over any examples or development work you might have done?
Pretty much anything will do, we're just looking for something visual to put in our presentations. If you have, just send it as an attachment to this email.
We'll arrange a proper meeting for some time next week to discuss any ideas etc. if thats okay with both of you.

Cheers,
Round Table Collective.'

We have already created a Pinterest board where we pin the things we find relevant on our daily internet browsing so we had something to relate to and a starting point. We both agreed we'd send them over some research and some logo sketches and digital development. We just picked a typeface (Rasmus) that was both modern and appropriate and created a very simple logo with some colour variations. This is obviously not our final design but just works as a temporary logo for them to show.

Temporary logo: