Leave a mark review

Leave a mark was the exhibition theme from last year, it was all based around the notion that students had their own creative control on what and how they exhibit their work, Each subgroup of the exhibition had their own logo and were allowed to build up their exhibition space as they deemed necessary with little limitations by the exhibition organizers.

The theme itself has a very solid ideology but the way it was developed design wise doesn't fit my personal preferences. Speaking from personal experience the brand itself was unapparent in most of the exhibition space. I understand that all the courses were allowed to have their own freedom on their section but the other other spaces needed to be heavily influenced by the leave a mark theme in order to create a balance between the subsections and the main brand.

The guidelines which were given out didn't provide anything for the students to work on, this in my opinion backfired in the exhibition spaces, as it further separated the main theme with the sub spaces. It may be a biased opinion but I do prefer some limitations or specific implementations in the exhibition spaces to show that they all fall under one category and that they serve as part of a bigger theme. One thing that was consistent but weak was the way finding where arrows were implemented in the halls of the school. Most of the apparent limitations were mostly on digital marketing and some print media.

The digital marketing was on of the strongest points in this exhibition, they utilized Facebook, Tumblr and even created a website to further enhance the presence of the exhibition online. Furthermore a typeface was created which was well executed in design. It was pasted all over any print advertisement that the school required. The print advertisement lacked diversity in style they used one format and stuck to it which created a very repetitive feel, I would think that 2 or 3 designs could have improved the outcome whilst still keeping it consistent.

The way the exhibition was organized in terms of visitor experience was totally different from the previous years.The most iconic opening was removed which seemed a little off in my books, how else would you officially open an event which would span days without an opening night. The reason for removing it might have been valid in some points but the repercussions were greater than the benefits. On a personal note the opening night used to bring a huge number of people which in turn created congestion at ever corner and hall which no traffic control could solve.

Something else that was changed was the times the individual spaces where open on specific days. This reasoning was lost on me, I can't seem to find any benefits to this mindset. If people wanted to see two exhibition spaces they had to go on different days which proved to be an inconvenience. I would have had it open all the time to give the visitors freedom on what they wanted to see, why limit the peoples choices when the intention of the exhibition is to view all our work.

Overall the exhibition had its ups and downs, it tried new things which proved to be a fundamental learning experience for the years to come.