DAY OFF!

We have a day off Uni, but me, James, Luke, George and Vicky are all in working on the Ink Bar project to try and take further.

Let's hope it goes somewhere! Below are a few fonts I found which I really liked :)

NEW BRIEF // ANIMAL.

Yesterday we were briefed on the next part of the module and seems pretty interesting.

We have to design the packaging for a watch by Animal. To get the ball rolling we split up in to groups of 6 or 7 and spent the whole day researching and putting together a pdf presentation ready to present to Neil and Claire at the end of the day.

My group consisted of Lianne, Emily, Martin, Dan, Milla and myself. I think we worked really closely as a group resulting in a good presentation which we were really happy about, and received positive feedback from Neil and Claire giving us the confidence to run with our idea. During the day we split off into pairs to research specific elements before reporting back ready to progress on to the next stage. Each stage required a moodboard, below is the moodboard me and Dan made about the target audience:

 Working in this way meant we got a lot done quickly and also resulted in an amazing idea!

I think we are going to continue to work closely with this project to bounce ideas around and push our idea forward, however we all need to produce something different, but that will shine through with the variety of styles we all work in.

MORE INK BAR INFO.

Success! I'm so happy to be told today by Chloe that 'The Office' has been rejected! Looks like our persuasion tactics worked :) 

The name is now between Ink Bar and ninety.five (by James Ramsay). Apparently there is a bar up north with the name Ink Bar so we need to consider rewording it, for example Bar Ink...a name that James McMorrow had previously thought up.

We have been asked if we can progress with our ideas and push them to prove to the 'big boss' that they work and will look effective to a wide target audience. This includes the promotion material and names for the happy hour etc.

This is definitely a result!

EMAIL.

It's only been a few hours, and already Chloe Parmiter has contacted us which is great news.

Really promising for future projects for our Ink Bar team! 

Hey guys

Thanks for all your work to date, the ideas and the debates are very 
inspiring. As I mentioned to you I am having a meeting at 10am 
tomorrow to discuss, I will let you know following that. I do have 
some other projects on the go, so if you are interested in getting 
some live briefs to work on, then let me know. These are much more 
specific with content and far more brand identity and some you maybe 
able to incorporate into your units for uni.

So keep intouch and catch up soon

Chloe Parmiter

It's great to know we have a contact already for live briefs. Hopefully this will become more frequent :)

THE INK BAR.

After having very little time to put anything together for this brief I think our group did pretty well in producing the work that we did. 

My group; George Russell, Luke Bonner, James McMorrow, Vicky Martin and myself; decided to completely step away from 'The Office' and run with the idea of the Ink Bar. So since Monday we have come up with a short presentation of a few pdf slides which we showed Chloe Parmiter today. As we knew it wasn't to the level of design that we could achieve with more time, we were a bit hasty to present what we had, however to our surprise the feedback was really positive and she loved our ideas!

Through talking to her for about an hour after that we pretty much convinced her that 'The Office' was rubbish and that they definitely need to go with a different name, and broaden their target audience beyond office workers. Below demonstrates our presentation which we showed Chloe:

With her now on our side all we need her to do is convince the 'big boss' that we are right! She has taken our presentation and other work and brainstorming to back up our pitched ideas.

We all now have her contact details which we can keep for future reference for other work, and to have direct updates on how our ideas are working out. 

All in all, really successful and I found it really useful to see how the working world works with tight ever-changing deadlines and sketchy briefs. It was challenging and hard work but we pulled through as a group and all worked really well together.

RESULT! :)

I found my old work from last year for my work experience and PPRD! Thought I had lost it :(

Just had a quick flick through, and can really use my old PPRD as a guidance for this year.

Every little helps!

Still need to decide on an ISTD brief to do and start working on it, time goes faster than you think!

MY INITIAL IDEAS FOR THE OFFICE/THE INK BAR.

I worked with James for an hour to produce a few ideas for 'The Office' logo:

And below are some quick ideas for the Ink Bar which I produced today:

This is just a starting point, now that we have joined together as a group, the ideas will pour in!

INK BAR PROGRESSION.

We had a meeting with Matt Desmier today about the Ink Bar brief and have been told to continue with any initial ideas we had previously. Through the meeting with Chloe about the whole brief, I feel we were all left confused about what they actually wanted. 

We split into smaller groups and began work on a few ideas for names and designs for logos, later to be e-mailed and informed that 'The Office' has been approved as a name, and they have ideas for the logo (but still not yet e-mailed them through so we can work on). As a group, we didn't feel as though this name worked and preferred names such as:

-Bar Ink

-The Ink Room

-The Ink Bar

-Just Off The Square

-Ink

Each of these names have so much scope to work on. Plus why would anyone want to leave the office...to go to The Office?

Luke, James, James, Vix, George and myself have had our own meeting now and decided we are going to take 'The Ink Bar' forward and produce some decent portfolio work, which will hopefully convince Andy Price that his ideas won't work!

We have decided our theme will be ink dropped in water, as shown below:

We need to produce a type sheet and a selection of images which will compliment each other together and individually.

Once this has been approached, we then need to put our designs in to perspective through:

-Business Cards

-Intranet Advertisements

-Flyers

-Menus

-Window Graphics

-Beer Mats/Coasters. etc.

We will present as a group, all of our ideas as we have come together to strengthen just one final idea.

Deadline is tight, we have until Wednesday!

FINAL CRITIQUE FOR GREETING CARDS.

A bit like yesterday, I didn't really receive a lot of criticised feedback for my card designs. I don't know whether this was because all I was doing now was extra work towards my collection, or because I had hit every target I needed. So I took this as a good thing. There is always room for improvement, I just don't quite know where that is yet.

My cards were originally aimed at kids, however witnessing the feedback I had received, they appeal to our age group too. This is good as immediately my target audience is broadened and a result, is more likely to sell. Due to the simplicity and the size of the designs, the production costs would be low, therefore making it easier to mass produce.

I showed my design sheets, original characters, finished product, and elements of my sketchbook in my critique, all of which really helped to explain my work and gave everyone else a much better understanding of where my idea came from.

Comments made at the critique by my peers are:

- "I prefer seeing the whole character on the front, unless you show a bit more on the cropped cards."

- "I like the fact you can only see a bit of the monster as it would encourage you to buy the wrapping paper as well."

- "They appeal to me, and I'm not a kid."

- "Despite the simplicity, they hold a lot of character."

- "I can see this working as a much bigger collection than what you have made."

- "This would look good as a badge."

I took these as positive comments and may adjust the cards slightly, however I am extremely happy with the work I have produced :)

On top of this I need to produce some print specs and consider paper stock, although the card that I have used, works well especially as it is aimed towards kids.

Overall I am really happy with my feedback and results. 

QUICK GROUP CRITIQUE.

Quick feedback from everyone today in my critique was basically to think up a personality and name for my monsters. Also to produce a set with writing and without. So basically I have done all I need to according to the brief. :)

Plenty of ideas to push these characters further, for example, a kids party theme on plates and cups, right through to magnets, postcards, notebooks, cups, and so on.

I would love to see if this range would sell!

MONSTERS!

I have mocked up 6 blank cards and 3 with text on the front...

Check out the wrapping paper on the right of this picture too :)

Gift bags to follow... could use this everywhere such as plasters, paper cups, plates. I love it!

PROGRESSION :)

Today I have managed to push my idea yet again, and in doing so, have become torn between 2 ideas as per usual!

One thing I am settled on is my logo for my 'group' who designed the cards 'Monsters'. Alongside this I feel as though the wrapping paper idea is pretty successful too, pictures will be up soon..

Progressing from yesterday with adding text to my designs, proved a good idea, however brought along a split choice. Right now I am wanting to make 12 cards; 6 plain, 6 with text. Hopefully I'll be able to have a casting vote on Thursdays critique.

Here are my designs with text.

I chose to hand draw the text as it looked a little more child-like, but also goes with the designs themselves. My cards are only going to be 10cm x 10cm so I think they are the ideal size for invitations or thank you cards [displayed above]. However they are also ideal to come as a set of blank cards for any occasion for a much wider target audience. 

This is what they look like without text:

Whilst I was debating on which set to put forward I started designing a logo for my card group. Here's my finished outcome:

I am really pleased with how they have come out! Now all I need to do is make them properly and decide my 6 to put forward, otherwise I'm turning up with 12 :)

ISTD MEETING.

I don't know if I'm biting off more than I can chew, however despite the Ink Rooms live brief, I would really like to tackle an ISTD brief too.

I still need to read through and decide which brief I would like to take on, but from what I gathered in the meeting with Sally and some of my peers, the briefs set are really interesting.

Although we have until March to hand this in, I still need to be careful with my time management to make sure I'm working on this brief at the same time as my other projects!

INK ROOMS LIVE BRIEF MEETING.

First group meeting on this brief and was really productive and loads of ideas were discussed. The more interesting ideas people had the better this brief sounded! Only bad thing about it is, is that we have 2 weeks to produce ideas in visuals ready to pass on and be printed ready for the opening of the bar on the 20th November! Tight schedule!!

From here we are breaking off into smaller groups to come up with ideas to put forward to Chloe on Wednesday afternoon.

I am working on two of the ideas we had for names:

JUST OFF THE SQUARE: Myself, James, Luke, George, Vix and Leanne...

INK - : Myself, James, Luke, George, Matt and Lewis.

Will update when it's progressed a little further! :)

GOT LOTS DONE TODAY :)

Today I've been a proper geek 8)

Yesterday I was debating which way I should go with my greeting card designs, so after I finished at the Institute I went to Wilkinsons to buy crafty stuff to help me on my way. I ended up with lots of googly eyes, a furry pencil case and corrugated coloured card. Out of these materials I managed to produce these:

I think they've turned out really well :) however I'm a bit stuck on my target audience as everyone I've asked said they would buy a card with these on...Maybe kids and kidults? 

I was able to scan these at the Institute today which enabled me to experiment with cropping, different background colours and different sizing of my characters to see the full potential of my design.

There are so many things I can do with these designs because they are so simple. I think the cropped monsters would work well as a set of greeting cards on white or coloured backgrounds. After this I applied colour to each monster to demonstrate how they could look.

Following this, I decided they could work with or without text. If I was to include text I think it should be hand drawn to portray the child-like image my designs give. I also have an idea for my 'brand' name :) Its all going well today!

I've also had the time to produce a possible wrapping paper design, looks alright I think... Opinions please?!

Can't wait to see the final outcomes :) Still a bit further to go but I'm happy I stuck with monsters now!

To have a break from all this I designed a brief identity for myself which you can see at the top of my blog, I have also decided to link this with my design sheets and anywhere else I can to tie my work in together.

Good times!

TUTORIALS & FEEDBACK.

Today has been a pretty productive day in terms of feedback and idea generations.

Sally and Neil have been talking to small groups either about their poster from the last mini project or about their ideas for the current project on greeting cards.

First up was Neil. I went in to the tutorial confused and indecisive about my ideas and came out with ways to make them work. 

I was torn between monsters with googly eyes, aimed towards kids, and a more photographic/collage which could be aimed at slightly older people. I was then given the idea to combine both ideas which could potentially broaden my target audience, however am a bit unsure as to how this would look good and appeal to people. I am aware it would have to be done well in order to target my chosen audience. This can also be helped in the language that I use too.

Can you imagine these two combined? 

I found Claire really helpful in this tutorial as she seemed to notice how confused I was and gave a few pointers to nudge me in the right direction. For example, I can't get the images in my head down on paper, so she suggested an alternative to use fabric, stick on the googly eyes, and that was my monster designed. This boosted my confidence a little - I now need to go buy some kids craft things :) should be fun!

However, I still like the other idea as no-one has really done that.

I have a few designers/artists I need to research but hopefully I'm on the road to a solid idea.

Next up was the feedback from Sally from our A3 posters from last week. I was interested in what she had to say about everyone's as she didn't know who had done what. I feel I received positive feedback and the only thing I was really told to make slightly different is to come away from black and white and try to introduce colour. Other than that I was told it was a good piece of work and the type used reflected my message well too.

All in all a positive day so far..

Now I need to make this happen.

MIND BLOCK.

I thought this next brief was going to be really good! Friday was a productive day with ideas and today I can't seem to reproduce what I'm imagining in my head! All very frustrating.

I know I have ideas, I have a clear idea of how I want things to look, however, it is not going to plan right now.

I have three possible routes in which I could take this brief. Although I need to work hard to produce something different and eye-catching to my chosen target audience (which I haven't yet worked out).

First idea was to produce a photographical series of greeting cards, although my images need to be appealing and become part of a series of 6.

Second idea was monsters. I can imagine them in my head, but now found I can no longer draw the way I used to. But looking at Juicy Lucy Designs, they are childlike illustrations but the target audience is chosen due to the language used. This was another possible direction I could take this.

My third idea is collage. Something I really enjoyed in first year for our editorial illustrations, and may actually be able to bring all three idea together. I don't want to over complicate my designs though, as they need to be reproduced easily and at a high standard.

So yeah, this is my mind block, I don't know where to take things from here. Help!

NEW PROJECT // GREETING CARDS.

Today we got briefed on our next mini project, greeting card designs, which went really well. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in to some designs. We currently have a visiting tutor working with us for the duration of this project and have found her views and ways of working really helpful and will hopefully influence the way in which I work too. We have to produce 6 different cards to make a set, these can range across different occasions or all belong to one occasion. We have two weeks to do it. Let's start the planning!

An idea that I currently have is a card range with illustrated monsters on the front. These drawings could appeal to a wide target audience of both children and adults and is influenced by the language in which I use. I got this idea from 'juicy lucy designs'. I need to get designing on my characters and depending on how well that goes, depends on what occasion I will produce these for. I want to experiment with different props to symbolise the occasion, try some without for blank cards and if all fails I have a back up plan.

My back up plan consists of using my photographs from our first summer project last year. For this I took close up photographs of everything along the beach front and the textures and colours shown in each photo and think they could all potentially work really well as a greetings card set.

I'll try both, and put my strongest designs forward. I'm looking forward to this!

 

EVALUATION OF 'LOOK AGAIN/THINK AGAIN'.

I found this project really difficult to get in to and really struggled to get ideas, however through talking to my peers I was soon able to focus and begin working. 

I think the idea about having nothing sentimental and convincing people that you don't need objects to remember things, is a strong argument and can relate to everyone. I didn't know how to portray this statement through imagery so chose to go down the route of typography. I think the way in which I presented my background made good use of the white space and also gave another element to draw the attention in, as you look closer, the small print reads all the memories that relate to most people.

I used century gothic for my text because of its shape, style and simplicity. Although I experimented with other typefaces, I still believe this works the best. Although I was happy with my final poster, I found the critique very useful. I received a lot of positive feedback which gave me great confidence in my work. I took on board everything that was said and made the necessary changes in order to improve my poster. I think the strap line sounds a lot stronger now despite it's simplicity. As I had to make the final decision on the overall look of the poster, I believe that the white and grey background works and looks a lot more professional and crisp than the black, although I know people will disagree with this, I found most people agreed with me.

Overall I am very happy with my final design and if I were to change anything I would possibly experiment with colour to make it more appealing to people of all ages. 

CRITIQUE DAY.

Today has been a really good positive day :)

I actually surprisingly enjoyed the critique today and felt that I was able to give my opinions and ideas towards other people's work constructively. I was also happy to hear I got positive feedback for my poster and some suggestions on how to improve it.

Since the critique I have taken note of everything that was suggested by both my peers and Neil and made the changes to my work to see for myself whether I would be happier with the final outcome.

Changes that were suggested were as follows:

• Work more on the strap line. Simple and straight to the point.
• Try reversing in to black to see if it stands out more.
• Play with the size of the text - make it bigger?

Overall I had really good feedback and I was told by everyone that it was a good strong idea, put across well. :)

This is my poster after the changes:

Here I have just changed the strap line to something a little more to the point, and made the text slightly larger. 'You can't replace your memory, but you can replace your objects'. I think it is a lot simpler and better to read than 'You can't have an object of your memory, but you can have a memory of your object'.

Following this I reversed the white to black to experiment with how well the text stood out and if it still gave the same message. I did a quick survey with a handful of my peers and it was a split vote between the black and white backgrounds.

In my opinion I prefer the white, as it's more crisp and has a softer feel to it. To me, the black background portrays a sense of 'memories after death' and doesn't seem quite as appealing.

However, my peers who voted on the latter of the two feel that it looks more classy and eye-catching.

All in all I feel that the white background works best with the new strap line. This will be my final piece for this project.

Roll on greeting cards! :)

FINALISING IDEAS.

Woke up this morning feeling a little more confident about my ideas after working on my laptop with various layouts last night. Continued to work throughout the day alongside my peers bouncing ideas off one another. I spent the majority of the day experimenting with different layouts, and ideas, each time collecting opinions until I produced an idea I was willing to settle with. Once we all had an idea we were relatively happy with and ready to put forward, a few of us lead our own mini critique amongst ourselves by pinning our work up on the wall and expressing our opinions and ideas to help push the designs that little bit further.

It was really good to see what other people had done and how everyone had approached the brief. Having positive feedback about my work boosted my confidence especially after I had been stressing out so much about this brief!

I found today really useful, and hope that tomorrow will be a useful and constructive day too. I still need to print my final design out and get on with some sketchbook work but other than that I think I have finally relaxed and am satisfied with my work! :)

WHAT A RUBBISH DAY!

I kind of feel as though I'm stressing out about this project a little too much, but I really want to do my best. I have spent most of the day talking to my peers, friends and family asking for opinions and ideas to help progress what I have already produced. As you can see below, my visual so far, consists of the word memory being made up of actual memories. This still needs a lot of work done to it though.

I am still in the process of working out a suitable strap line to support it, as well as experimenting with various type and positioning.

My day has been full of ups and downs, unfortunately more downs than ups but I'm hoping as time goes on I will get more and more settled in to this way of working.

I managed to have a bit of a breather from all this at work tonight however am back thinking and planning to push my idea further ready in time for Thursday's deadline. 

I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO GO FROM HERE.

Ok, so it seems as though my good day on Friday wasn't going to last as long as I hoped..

I have a basic idea, but it's not enough to produce something amazingly good right now. I'm completely aware that we only have 2 and a bit more days to go before the critique and I still have no visuals planned out or even remotely in my head! I went from having nothing sentimental to trying to persuade people that you don't need objects in order to remember things as your memory can't be replaced.

In order to present this, I need a 'clever' caption, or image or something to kick start me! Any ideas? I'm finding this section of the project really difficult to approach and extremely challenging. I went in to the Institute today to do some research and found a few adverts but have still yet to come across anything that will really help me settle with a solid idea.

I found it helpful talking with a number of my peers as they gave me their input on my ideas but also suggested some of their own which I much appreciated!

I'm starting my sketchbook today so I'm hoping my ideas will begin to flow and I'll be on a roll soon to produce my poster.

TODAY IS A BETTER DAY :)

After a pretty unsuccessful day yesterday I am feeling a lot better about things today. We started off the day with a group tutorial/ideas generation critique which I found quite useful as it helped push me in the right direction for an idea. I was quite surprised at myself really as I have never had much input into group discussions and found myself putting forward questions and my ideas to other people. Hopefully I can keep this up!

The rest of the day was spent researching and talking to my peers about how I can push my idea to achieve a high standard. So far my idea is about how I don't have a particular 'thing' that is sentimental to me. I personally have never really had anything like that as pretty much everything I own can be replaced nowadays, even photographs which are usually on facebook or backed up on the computer. I'm basing it on the fact that you can't replace you're memory. You may not remember things all the time, but it's always triggered by reminders such as smells, de ja vu, feelings, things you see, things you hear, and so on. You don't need objects for reminders. So far I have a baseline which is 'The only things you can't replace is your memory'. However, there is still plenty more work to be done for my poster to reach it's full potential! I still need to consider the graphics and possibly a back-up sentence in small print, so the ideas generation must continue for now!

I feel like I have come quite a long way since yesterday where I was panicking about having no ideas and having no clue in which direction I wanted to go.. especially as I was pretty sure I was going down the social issue route. Hopefully I will have a solid idea by the end of the weekend to work on next week before the critique.

INTRODUCTION TO OUR FIRST BRIEF

Well, today was a very unsuccessful day. We had our introduction to the first brief and it took me a while to break down and work out what it was we had to do. I just couldn't concentrate. Eventually I relaxed a little and knew what it was we need to produce by Thursday next week for our first critique of the year.

The first section, titled 'Look Again/Think Again' proved quite a challenging brief when it came to ideas generation. I feel like I have wasted the day away although I've been thinking and trying to come up with various ideas all day. I even went to the library and took out two books, something I did very little of last year. The books; Communicate:Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties and Creative advertising; were full of really clever ideas but didn't really give me ideas I wanted to pursue in. 

We have to produce an A3 poster either:

Choosing a social issue that in your opinion has been overlooked and needs addressing...

OR

An object that will often carry values that go beyond its intended purpose or everyday use; it may evoke certain memories or feelings that give the object a sentimental significance.

 I found both sides of it difficult to approach and am going to spend part of my day tomorrow in a group tutorial where I hope to get involved in some ideas generation to help give me a kick start.

Tonight will be a case of more mind-mapping to bring something to the table in our tutorial and continuing to organise myself. I'm hoping tomorrow will be a far more successful day!