Studio Brief 02 - Raf Simons/Sterling Ruby Spread

For the Raf Simons/Sterling Ruby collection, the aim of the spread is to communicate the recognisable silhouettes of Raf Simons and the chaotic nature of Sterling Ruby's artwork. In this initial design, the layout of the rectangles were done to resemble the pathwork pattern that is seen on the garments. The background colour of each form is taken from the garment shown within. Behind each form are the bleach patterns that Ruby is known for. These were taken from my visit to his exhibition in London. "Fathers" was included because of its explicit feature on the clothing as well as its significance in the collaboration. Overall however this design is too cluttered and visually confusing. There is too much going on and it makes it hard for the reader to focus on each aspect of the spreads design. The idea of forming the rectangles to resemble that of the clothing is notable however because of the multiple offset positioning, it further adds to the overall confusion. The various colour schemes used in the forms are incohesive. They contrast too heavily with one another and clash with the background.

In this redesign, the colours are stripped back and the overall the art direction follows a more structured form. Following the design principles of Müller-Brockmann, the forms are angled at a 30°, this creates a more structured and unified look for the spread with reduces visual clutter and allows for the art and clothing design to better be shown. Along with stripping back the colours and forms, the amount of outfits displayed are too. I chose to feature 3 which hopefully sums up the collection and the nature of the collaboration. The addition of the circle to contain copy is to help it stand out against the straight forms, which was a problem in the previous spread design.