Micro Music Genre: Flag Development

Based on tutor feedback I've research different formations within football with the most common being 4-4-2 (see figure 1) which consists of four defenders, four midfielders and two strikers. This formation was chosen for my experiments due to its frequent use within football meaning it relates to all teams. Throughout these experiments I've looked at different different ways to incorporate the teams within the formation mainly looking at going from loudest to quiestest allowing for a visual decrease in noise to be shown. Initial experiments where conducted in portrait in order to visualise the formation more accurately and conduct initial layout experiments. However once I had experimented with the formation I looked to create a more landscape flag based on feedback gained earlier which stated that my more rectangle experiments resembled a flag more effectively. Throughout these experiments I've used the lines within a football pitch to add context to the formations used as well as guide the set up of the teams within the design. Experiments removing the lines create a more abstract representation of football chants but make the flag harder to understand due to the lack on context given to the formation of the words. Furthermore in relation to the layout of the words having them arrange loudest to quietest results in the loudest fans and quietest fans being shown next to each other which heighten the contrast between the two creating more of an impact as Newcastle look so much louder than West Ham United. Throughout the development processes I tried multiple options within the 4-4-2 formation in order to create a more structured layout as when I've flipped the formation some of the teams have overlapped (see figure 3-4) making the flag look unfinished/unrefined. This lead to multiple experiments shifting the two formations to see if this would balance the layout more (see figure 3). However I felt this look too disjointed and also making it difficult to identify the formation used (see figure 3-4). Consequently I looked at placing the second formation above and below (see figure 4-5) the first however when places below the positions of the words in the second formation where wrong (see figure 4-5), therefore didn't correlate to the positions on the pitch. Therefore I focused on experiments which placed each team in the correct position however left aligned the words (see figure 6) within the space to add uniformity to the formations. Furthermore adding equal spacing between each of the formations created a more structured layout allowing the formation to be easily identified (see figure 7). The final design (see figure 7) showcases each team allowing fans to see the difference within their own communities as due to the formation used the most and least loudest fans are positioned next to each other showing the contrast between the two which may encourage fans to chant more and be louder at games.

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