Our general aesthetic is quite stripped back and organic, basic but with minor interesting detail. In the events and exhibitions we have participated in so far, materials and surfaces such as chipboard, collaging and individual design preferences of each person's practice have produced a broad range of visuals, so the overarching aesthetic of the collective needs to be quite minimal.
Logo
At the start of the year, a few of us within Goat got together to work on the logo, our primary visual icon. Everyone gave opinions and input, but the final design was constructed by myself, doing the lettering and Poppy the outline illustration of the Goat.
Manifesto
One thing we chose to change quite radically was our manifesto. Looking back to the one we originally wrote over a year ago, we felt the large quantity of text and language didn't really represent us as friends and collective artists. Our personalities should be more apparent in what could be seen as the introduction of Goat, while staying within professional ideals.
Goat Collective is a diverse group of young creative individuals who are passionate about instigating positive change. We are creative thinkers, practitioners and friends who provide a variety of artistic disciplines, catering to your individual and specific needs. We work in close proximity with one another to produce new and exciting outcomes that fit together as a consistent body of work. However, Goat Collective is more than this. The income we generate from commercial projects will be re-invested into work addressing current social and political issues. You aren't just our client, you're also our investor.
Dan rewrote a much shorter version which encompassed everything we stand for, taking points from the original manifesto and creating shorter, snappier sentences which helps readers to be less likely to lose interest and gives them an idea of what we're about straight away.
Holla, we are
A collective of visual artists.
Socially aware with a view to instigate change.
Youthful and passionate.
Professional and driven.
We work closely together to provide diverse creative solutions.
Feed the GOAT.
This was also produced using letterpress to make a printed version of the manifesto, and ties in with our business cards as well.
Business cards
We have chosen to stick with the original designs for our business cards, clean and simple using grey board and red ink. Letterpress type design, 'Goat Collective' and our contact email 'holla@goatcollective.co.uk'. Our website is within the email, and on the line below to separate from the individual email address.
The only aspect we changed was the thickness of the greyboard, dropping down from 5mm to 3mm. We also sped up the process this time round by spray painting the edges red rather than rolling ink on one at a time.
Website
Another aspect of our visual output is the Goat Collective website. This has been live for a few months now, and still only holds our launch Freshers-Pack-in-the-making video as the homepage. We did have bigger plans for the website, so have decided to redesign it as a base which links to our social media pages - the main online presence we uphold as Goat.
After considering only necessary content, we decided a few photos of our work (either cropped or showing only part of a project) was better than displaying a full portfolio. A live Twitter feed would also be ideal, linking our connections on social media platforms (Twitter seems to be most useful and relevant to engage in conversation with other professionals). Other than that, our logo, manifesto and links to other pages is all we need on there.
Each of the links takes you to another website; Folio takes the user to our Behance page, and likewise with each of the social media platforms.
One thing we want to start doing soon in order to bring more money in to boost our careers and support our social projects, is selling prints of our work in an online shop. We think something such as Etsy or Big Cartel would be suitable for selling stuff quickly and easily.
The images in the centre are intended to rotate, with about 5 images playing on a loop, with buttons for the user to switch between them manually as well. Ideally this would display snippets of our current work, and upcoming events or exhibitions.
This is a much cleaner layout, and eliminating the need to scroll gives the user all necessary information at one glance.
Social media headers
The header image on most of our social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, is still the hand painted sign I created at the start of the year to promote and display at the LCA Fresher's Fair. Noticing this, we also decided this was an area of our marketing side that could be updated regularly to keep the pages fresh.
Colour Scheme
Although red seems to have become our primary colour within our existing palette, along with black and greys, this is something we need to decide on as a definite colour scheme we can apply consistently across both print and web.
Collateral
We produced a printed manifesto and business cards using letterpress, brown screen printed folders with the Goat logo and contact info, a Goat Collective invoice, brief template and CV.
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