Final year project
'Suffragette City' Immersive Digital Experience [Read more]
'Suffragette City' Immersive Digital Experience - Story Page
‘Suffragette City’ is an immersive, interactive website that aims to put the user into the shoes of a suffragette by allowing them to follow a narrative where their choices affect the outcome, giving the user the opportunity to see how life would have been for a woman fighting for the vote in the early 20th century. I have based the idea for the website on the ‘Suffragette City Immersive Walk’ an experience created by the National Archives and National Trust in 2018, an in-person educational event that allowed visitors to see and learn what it may have been like to be a Suffragette at that time. However, as this was based in London the opportunity was limited to those able to travel to the capital, which is why the National Archives created a Twitter thread in March 2021 that aimed to create the same experience, just virtually. This made the experience accessible to all with an internet connection, and proved particularly useful during the global pandemic, however not everybody has a Twitter account, and although the use of a Twitter thread is effective, the impact may not be as great as one with stronger visuals, which is where ‘Suffragette City’ comes in. This particular image is a mock-up of a section of this storyline/narrative and displays how users would be able to choose their own path within the story for an outcome personal to them, making them feel more involved within the experience. The addition of the illustrative scenes assists in visualising the narrative to the user, helping them to further immerse themselves in the story see a physical outcome for the decisions that they make throughout.
'Suffragette City' Immersive Digital Experience - Welcome Page
Heavily inspired by the original ‘Pottermore’ website, where users were able to become part of the world of ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Suffragette City’ guides the user through the world of a Suffragette in an educational, fun way, with a strong emphasis on visuals and sound that work to immerse the user in a unique, engaging format. The image above is another mockup showcasing how the website would look and be utilised, with descriptive elements to provide further information as a static element. This particular mockup focuses on the layout of the Welcome Page of the website, with emphasis on the 'logo' and the style of the illustrative elements as, as the first page users would see when entering the experience, it needed to set them for the entirety of the website without giving too much away so viewers would want to find out more. It was a challenge to make sure that the illustrations and colour scheme set just the right tone of curiosity and engagement, whilst still serving a descriptive purpose to aid with the narrative of the story, as well as providing the right balance between a professional website feel and my hand-drawn illustration style. I feel as though I have achieved this desired outcome with the above image.
'Suffragette City' Immersive Digital Experience - Sign in Page
The website is intricately illustrated, a style that is reminiscent of the floral, ornate works dominant in the ‘Arts and Crafts’ design movement- a movement that was prevalent during the time of the Suffragettes- and that echoes the illustrative design of Lemony Snicket’s ‘Series of Unfortunate Events’ as I desired the website to convey a similar feel. I chose to design the website in this way as most of the existing material showcasing the fight for women’s right to vote focuses heavily on typography and photography, and the use of original illustrations is something entirely new. My aim with this is to evoke the curiosity of the user, effectively drawing them in and ultimately creating a strong, interesting, and educational interactive experience. This image is a mock-up of the Sign-in/Log-in Page, which although still has pretty much the same illustrative elements seen in the Welcome Page, the actual user profile section where you sign up or log into the experience was inspired by an actual WSPU membership card; I thought this would be an interesting acknowledgement to the suffragette movements and groups around at the time, further enhancing the inclusive feel to the viewer of the experience.
'Suffragette City' Immersive Digital Experience - Suffragette Protest
This is a close up of one of the illustrations featured on several pages of the Suffragette City website that I am designing and is heavily based on real suffragette photography that I found through research. I wanted the illustration to have a hand-drawn feel to it, with colours that evoke curiosity, so that it could have the character and personality that I feel the existing, photography-based Suffragette imagery currently lacks, allowing the illustration to stand out. This unique, hand-drawn feel is also a nod to the Arts and Crafts movement that was popular during the times of the Suffragette movement, and which inspired a lot of the artwork on my website. I thought it was fitting this image should use the same illustrative style, in order for it to tie into the images used throughout ‘Suffragette City’.
'Suffragette City' Immersive Digital Experience - 1900s London
This is another close up of one of the illustrations featured within the narrative/storyline in the Suffragette City digital experience; this one, in particular, is an illustration from a London street typical of scenes that would be seen of the time of the Suffragette movement. Again, I wanted the illustration to have a hand-drawn feel to it, with colours and strokes that evoke curiosity, so that it could have the character and personality that I feel the existing, photography-based Suffragette imagery currently lacks, allowing the illustration to stand out. This unique, hand-drawn feel is also a nod to the Arts and Crafts movement that was popular during the times of the Suffragette movement, and which inspired a lot of the artwork on my website.
'Recycle Your Old Phone' giffgaff D&AD New Blood Entry
This is a mock-up of some of the assets I created alongside the 20-second animation encouraging existing or potential giffgaff customers to recycle their old mobile phones and devices in response to the brief set by giffgaff in collaboration with the D&AD New Blood Awards. I wanted the assets and the animation to link together to create unity and flow throughout, so I ensured that the illustration style, colours and typography used were the same in each asset with variation in composition and content. Inspired by the bold style of existing giffgaff creatives, I wanted my animation and digital assets to also stand out; I kept my illustrations fun and bold, with the animation transitions quirky and energetic, but simple enough that the main message wasn't lost.
'The Haunted Happenings of Haworth' Augmented Reality Guidebook
The guidebook shows the haunted accounts and happenings of the village of Haworth by taking the reader on a journey showcasing the locations in which most reports take place. This image is a mock-up of how my book would look; it gives a visual example of the front and back cover, as well as how a couple of the inside pages would look.
'The Haunted Happenings of Haworth' Augmented Reality Guidebook
The aim of the guidebook is for people to witness the ghostly accounts and occurrences that have taken place in Haworth over the years, and where exactly they can find these places within the town. It aims to provide a visually exciting reference to the hauntings by having the viewer physically interact with the pages using their device camera to ‘detect’ the ghosts, as well as simultaneously providing information to the haunted history of Haworth and the Brontë Country. The extra addition of the AR makes the book more interactive and interesting to the viewer and makes them feel more involved within the stories as they are witnessing the happenings themselves through the use of their device's camera. This image mocking up one of the scenes in the guidebook evidences how the augmented reality aspect would work on this page.
Lucy Watson
Primarily a mixed-media illustrator with an experience in animation and graphics for social media.
I am a North Yorkshire based mixed-media illustrative designer currently undertaking the final year of my Graphic Communication and Illustration BA Hons degree at Loughborough University. Although a quiet person by nature, I constantly aim to think outside the box to make my work stand out from the crowd, creating projects and artwork that is original and unique in both style and substance. Described by one of the companies that I gained industry experience from (and who I've been lucky enough to continue to do work for throughout my final year!) as someone with 'a real talent for illustration,' I revel in exploring and creating artworks using various mediums and experimenting with new techniques and styles, though I have recently become particularly interested in a mix of hand-drawn and digital illustration, as can be seen in my most recent pieces of work. This is something I hope to carry into my future career as an illustrative designer, as well as to continue working on improving my skills in animation.
For this reason, I have focused my final year projects on immersive storytelling with strong elements of illustration, exploring new digital techniques such as augmented reality, as well as immersive websites that entice the viewers' curiosity; this has allowed me to showcase my illustrative and animation skills in a fun and unique way.
Final year project
'Suffragette City' Immersive Digital Experience
Work Experience
I took a placement year following my second year at Loughborough, 3 months of which were spent as an illustration intern at Waterside Creative in Blackburn, where I began to gain an insight into what the industry was like and started to see where I could apply my strengths within the real world of design. As someone with strong skills in illustration, I was able to positively contribute to their team for the 3/4 months that I interned thereby adding an element of illustration to their work – in particular, this was beneficial for a candle making company that they work with, as the client wanted illustrative packaging for a new range of candles. The experience I gained here was valuable as I was able to work directly with the clients; Waterside Creative ‘believe working together instead of hiding ourselves away from the client creates barriers and miscommunicates the challenges a brand is trying to solve’ (Waterside Creative, 2020). As such, I was involved in both face-to-face meetings and able to communicate through direct emails with the client, which is a responsibility that you don't really experience within the university environment. Therefore, this experience definitely helped to prepare me for future roles within the industry.
The rest of my placement year was spent as an intern Graphic Designer/Illustrator at UMPF PR Agency in Leeds. The studio team was very small, and responsible for creating various assets towards proposals that the PR team would put together, to make UMPF stand out from the competition and try to gain the attention of potential clients. Over the course of my time there and the campaigns that I was able to work on, I feel that I gained a real understanding for just how much graphic design and creative work went into supporting the initial concepts of the campaigns and the social media assets that were originally put together by other members of the UMPF team. I was able to take part in numerous brainstorming sessions where the initial ideas were hatched and discussed within the team; the main campaign research, initial proposals, creation of the social media copy text and who it would target, and I discovered that it was the role of the studio team designers to work together to bring those initial ideas to life, as other members of the team would provide us with a general brief outlining the assets they would like us to create to support those social posts. It was fun to be involved within live projects from start to finish, as well as working closely with clients and listening to feedback to ensure that the studio provided the creative assets that were desired. As someone with strong skills in illustration, I was able to assist the team with this as they previously did not have someone able to create hand drawn style illustrations within the studio. My added role as a designer with additional skills in illustration and animation must have proved beneficial to them, as they increased my placement from the initial 3 months to the present, where at their request, I continued to do some work for them one day a week throughout my final year. In June, at the end of my degree, I will be joining them as a full-time employee and I cannot wait to be a part of their fantastic team!
Additionally, I have also had the wonderful opportunity to do some freelance work designing/illustrating book covers for an independent local author in the Yorkshire Dales, working closely with her to bring her initial rough ideas and sketches into reality, which can be seen on my online portfolio. She has commissioned me to work with her on her next book cover in the near future once I leave university.