30th October

Today I was briefed on the packaging project, which is for a Animal watch. We were split into groups and were told to go off and carry out all the general research and present it back to Neil and Clair at the end of the day to get the ball rolling in this project and then I can start developing my individual project from where I left off.  

We started off in the library as a group to discuss/research possibility of who to aim at, possible concepts and styles etc. Once we were all on the same page we split into two further groups and had different things to research.  After lunch we joined back up to present to each other our findings. Then finally researched in more depth together before creating presentation boards with the information on.  We then presented it in a professional manner to Neil and Clair.

I found today to be extremely helpful as it means that now I have a starting point with all the general research done and I now have a starting point to develop on my own. Also i thought that having the presentation in the way that we did in a professional manner helped be to get a better understanding of what happens with presenting ideas to a client. I’m exited about creating packaging, as it is something that I have never done before and I am looking forward to developing new skills, also I look forward to creating it in the style for a ‘extreme’ sports company such as Animal.

29th October

As I had the weekend free of work I felt that it was important that I should carry out a large amount of research and then try to develop a set of six cards which reflect team GB more and which do not rely on the use of their existing logo so much. I had a couple of ideas to run with one was to use the motto and create a type based outcome but I wanted to do a more visual design as my last poster was solely type based.  For this I used the colours of the rings to strongly signify the Olympic ‘s but without relying on the logo.

Since Monday I started to develop this idea and started trying to create a sense of movement with the colour. I also started to include type but I’m not happy with the style of it yet, but I think that the content is working well. I am happy with leaving the cards not as I don’t want to fall behind in the new project I am being briefed on tomorrow, I have got the visual side of the cards up to a standard I am happy to leave them at and the other content I want to include  to hand and I can go back after the next project as I will have a week after the final crit to go back over work.

24th October

Last night as i was trying to create a set of six with the figure as a silo-wet and improve the layouts. After the first one i thought that it was not going to work but after incorporating the rings it helped to define the figure, i stuck with this and created the full set of six in this way. After the full set was done there was one card in particular which i did not like as it just looked like a blob so i retraced another athlete from a book i got out of the library- which worked a lot better as a silo-wet, then i decided to work on another card to get some perspective into it using the rings. i still was not 100% happy with the set - felt that it looked quite unprofessional although it was 4:30 in the morning so i decided to call it a night and get some sleep. 

For the critique i was feeling very frustrated as there was a lot more i could do to it but i had to present a set i was not happy with and try to defend them. Not surprisingly the feedback i got back was not very good and Sally suggested that i went back to the target audience and carry out more relevant research before developing a set. I agreed and i sort of knew that, that is what i needed to do yesterday but i didn't have the time to complete it for today (hence the rushed outcomes). I now know what i need to do and i am happy that i have the weekend to create something and come in on monday to discuss it with Neil, Sally or Clare.

23rd October

When i got in today i went straight to the library to get on with some development in my sketchbook, i had already got six outcomes and thought that i should just wait to the critique and develop them after i had received feed back. I spoke to Neil about them and he pointed out that on a couple of them there were some sketches witch looked a bit dodgy. This is the work i showed in the critique:

I main problems raised, were again what Neil brought up, this was very demoralizing as i spent ages tracing and then rendering them on illustrator although it was a fair point and following the critique it started annoying me more and i felt that that it was important to change. The general feedback in the critique was that i should change the drawings to silo-wets, also try to incorporate the rings throughout the set. All in all not the best critique i've had!

Although the critique was quite demoralizing i received large amounts of helpful feedback and there is a lot i Can get on with, the only annoying thing is that i got out the critique at five and i will need to show a set of six cards for tomorrow morning so i think it will be a late night!

 

20th October

Today was the DreamWeaver introduction which i was excited about as this was software i have wanted to learn for a while. Last year while i was on a work placement one of the designers gave me a quick tutorial of the difference between using a program like DreamWeaver apposed to a HTML based program, and that DreamWeaver is more of a visual way of creating a website. This was the only insight into DreamWeaver i've had up until now 

Today was more about learning the basics as it was our first workshop. We learned stuff like how to save an image for the web, the size it has to be, what format to use when etc. Also about the layout of the page with columns, Adding links to websites and other information.  It was really interesting today although i think it will quite tricky to learn how to use the program properly as it is all new to me and i have nothing to compare it to.

17th October

When we went in today we had another guest to brief us on a live project for a bar in town. The brief sounds very stimulating and it is open enough to do as much as I can do the only thing is that this brief is very short and the client wants it turned around in two weeks, which would normally be fine its just I have this other greeting cards brief on at the same time, although doing this would reflect the schedule of a designer in the industry. I’m going to keep an open mind about attempting this brief as i think it would be an easy brief for me to get motivated about it although I just do not want the quality of my greeting cards to suffer. I’m going to see how much I get done over the weekend and how time consuming they are to develop and then make my decision; I would rather have a very high quality peace of work for my portfolio that I am proud of than two sets of work which are ok!

The rest of the day I was trying to develop my card to have a purpose rather than just a nice blank card, as this would strengthen my overall outcome. After a discussion with Clare she suggested looking into a card for a gift voucher for a sports shop (obviously still nearer the Olympics time) which I thought was a very strong concept as most cards you get with gift vouchers are normally very poorly done, if they come with one at all!  I also spoke to her about media and introducing some to my cards but we came to the conclusion that they probably will not need any. I am now thinking to just look at different printing variations and I might introduce a glossiness to a section of them. 

16th October

At the start of the day I went off with a small group to discuss our ideas with Neil. I had researched into the Olympics and I wanted to design a card, which would be on sale around the 2012 period, I was still not sure about what theme of the card I should do, so I decided that it should be blank. I got some very good feedback, which I was pleased about; firstly that everyone could see this idea going ahead also when I showed the designer’s work I had been looking at and the style I was aiming to pull off. Everyone agreed that it could work very well in the modern illustrative way. I also got a lot of things to research to help push my idea along both Clare and Neil suggested a few people to research into which I found very helpful.

After the tutorial I just got on with researching into the designers etc that I was referred before going of to the library to find a book called Romantik. I want to approach this brief in the same way Clare would if it was for a client so I will not start the development until I have sufficient research.   

After lunch I went off for a critique with Sally about my posters, the critique was slightly different than normal as we were not going to present our posters, Sally had not been in while we were developing our posters so she was unaware of the messages our posters were trying to get across. Which meant that she could let us know if our posters worked and how well they get the message to a realistic audience. The feedback I got was very similar to the other critique (the rips were unnecessary; simplify it.) although she did say that it gets the message across well. I found today very helpful especially the critiques as I felt that I got a lot from them, also I found that today was one of my most productive days in University, and I feel that I right on schedule with the progression of this project and I am getting very excited to where this project is going.

10th October-Greeting Cards

Today we were briefed on a new project – Greeting Cards. It quite existed as we had a guest lecturer to brief us (Clare) and also showed us her work that was very helpful because she designs greeting cards and could share her development process with us. Clare’s work was mainly illustrative but also had a large amount of media included.  After her talk I found it quite hard to settle on a theme because after looking through her work I want to do something which will allow me to involve freehand illustration and I also would like to include some sort of media as I haven’t done anything like that for a while. In the second half of the day I was able to talk to Clare about my ideas and that I was finding it hard to come up with a concept that will allow me to include what I wanted to do. Her advice was to take my time and look through a large amount of illustrations, texture, patterns etc or anything that I can get inspiration from, she also suggested looking through a card shop and recommended one in the centre of town called ‘Scribbler’ as they had a large number of cards which push many boundaries about what is acceptable.  After gathering some materials and research for inspiration I decided to go to the card shop she suggested. I was very surprised with the range of cards Scribbler had from Childs cards to adult ones and some which were very shocking, but it showed how there really aren’t any boundaries to this project as long as it’s a greeting card that meets the brief.

Although I don’t have a idea yet of what I want to do I don’t mind yet as I will go through all the inspiration I collected today and I don’t think that it will be hard to get motivated for this project as I cant wait to get settled on a idea so I can get on with this project. 

Critique

 

As I felt that my last poster was too busy and I didn’t like the yellow background against the rips I thought that it was important to carry on developing the poster. This was the poster I showed in the critique. I used a darker brown as the background as I felt that it was simple enough to allow the rip and the message to stand out. The feedback I got was that the poster did not rely need the rip in it and would probably work better as just the black background and type (like my first one I did!). SIMPLE CAN WORK! I was happy that they agreed that my first style poster worked better and showed me that I should be more confident with showing a piece of work which is very simple as it can work well.  I will now go back to my initial poster and refine the layout as it would have to be perfect if there will just be type. I am now existed to go back and refine my other poster as I think it could work very well.

9th October

Since Monday I have been developing this poster, I started off with this poster although I really liked it I felt that it was to early to settle on it, and I thought that it might have been a bit to simple to show at the critique.

 I wanted to develop another poster, which would have more to it, so I went back and looked at the tag line and I decided to develop a poster around the tag line I designed a abstract poster with ‘one in five adults in the UK is illiterate’, although I felt that ‘what’s the po

int in this poster if people cant read it?’ worked better, so I decided to reflect that tagline and put a rip in the middle of the abstract poster reveling the other tag line. I liked the way that it looked as if someone had ripped the original poster because it was useless to illiterate people, although it did look a bit to busy. Also I felt that because I used a yellow background the white rips blended in and it lost the impact.  

 

6th October

Over the weekend, while I was trying to move my idea forward I found that the more I was developing it the more the tagline (you can’t get aids from a hug) became less clever and I thought that it was kind of patronising and I don’t want my post to be miss red. I decided that I would research into some other social issues and gave myself a deadline that if I couldn’t think of anything better than this by Sunday night I would stay with this and not look back as I need at least three full days to develop a strong poster.

I then looked into illiteracy and I found that one in five adults in the UK is illiterate, I thought that this was a very good starting point to base a poster around, I personally had overlooked the social problem of people being illiterate and after disguising this with my housemates we agreed that this was an overlooked social issue. Along with the fact that one in five people is illiterate I think this could make a very strong campaign.

On Sunday I decided to go round Chris’s house to discuss this new idea with him as he obviously new the brief and I felt that this could help me with deciding what to do. He also agreed that this could make a stronger outcome, which I was pleased to hear, as I was getting more existed about this project which meant that I would be more motivated and therefore I would create a much stronger outcome.

I decided to go in today so that I could discuss my new idea with Neil to make sure that I was on the right track. When I got in just started to further research into this new idea, as it was the one I wanted to go ahead with. However Neil was busy with the first years so I decided to go home about lunchtime, although I didn’t mind to much as we were told at the start of the year that we should be more independent and I was confident enough with my new idea to go head and stick with it. I found today very productive as I went into university early it meant that I was up and getting on with it.  I continued developing this idea when I got back home and I have now decided that I will probably do something typographical. So far I have come up with the main context ‘What’s the point in this poster if people can’t read it?’ which I think is a very strong tagline as I could do something quite symbol and grab the audience with one glance. I have also started to do some thumb nails and layouts, I am very happy with how this brief is moving along.

 

 

3rd October

Today was more about getting on with your idea so I just started researching into HIV/aids. I found quite I lot of relevant information, I then started to look through other designers campaigns on aids/HIV. I saw that almost all of the posters surrounding aids are portraying messages that say to stay away from people with aids and not to interact with them, as it is easy to be passed on. This was when I decided to research into ways you can catch HIV.

I then thought about creating a poster to generate awareness for the other side of the argument, which is often overlooked. I was thinking to look at sufferers of HIV/Aids and (probably children born into it) and make people aware of the fact that they are being unfairly treated differently. This then developed into a tag line ‘you can’t get aids’ from a hug’, I then spent the rest of the day developing and researching in the library. 

2nd October

 Today we were briefed on our first project look again think again. I was excited to get back into creative thinking and the process of designing again. After we were briefed on the project were told to split into groups and generate some ideas-brain storm etc. I found this a good way to get started as we could bounce ideas off each other and get a wider range of ideas faster. I then went off to the library to decide on an idea to develop.  I decided to go with a social issue as I thought it would be more stimulating and I could create a better outcome. I decided to go with the idea of creating a poster for a issue which is in the media quite a lot (Aids/HIV) and advertise that often ‘hope’ is overlooked and try to create an uplifting poster.

At the end of the day we had a critique in small groups with Neil. I had a possible idea which was to look at making a collage of dark images of sufferers of aids/HIV maybe broaden it to poverty and then overlay lighter brighter images which spells out hope; the feedback I got was that the idea to advertise in a ‘happier’ approach to something which is often done in a depressing style was nice, although using the word ‘hope’ could mislead the audience as there is a large amount of ignorance surrounding Aids/HIV. Neil said that there had been some research which showed that a large number of people believed there was a cure, which meant that using ‘Hope’ could be very misleading.  I should now concentrate on research and not try and get ahead of myself and try to think of visualisations yet. I found this way of critiquing work in a small group was a very good way of doing it as it was more of a discussion and I found it easy to concentrate and as I have quite a short attention span I sometimes find myself getting distracted in larger groups.