Wednesday 30 April 2014

OUGD505 - Design Practice 2: Studio Brief 2 (Action Plan)

Below I have written out an action plan for all of the work I need to produce for studio brief 2. This probably doesn't cover everything I will need to produce, but it is a rough action plan for the time being which I can follow to make sure that I am on track with my work. 


Tuesday 29 April 2014

OUGD505 - Design Practice 2: Studio Brief 2 (Session with Lorraine)

Today we had a studio session with Lorraine. I found it extremely helpful as it helped me to think about the brief in a bit more depth and decide what I need to produce for the submission. I also wrote the brief out again to make it clear to me what exactly I need to produce for the final outcomes. All of the sheets are very self explanatory. 







Thursday 24 April 2014

OUGD505 - Design Practice 2: Studio Brief 2 (Crit)

Today we had a crit on all of the work we have produced so far. As I have my Waterstones stall tomorrow I felt a bit anxious to receive feedback the day before. I had also spent a lot of time over the Easter break cutting all of the work out and constructing it all. I wrote down quite a few different questions, although at this stage, before knowing the event is going to go, I found it hard to write down questions to receive relevant feedback. 


I am quite happy with the feedback I received. I had a conversation with Lorraine as she came over and had a look at my publication and she noticed a few mistakes on my publication which made me feel a bit deflated, especially as it is the day before I am selling all of the products. I have decided that I am going to just treat this as a learning curve and make the changes for the final hand in. 


OUGD505 - Design Practice 2: Studio Brief 2 (Waterstones Event)

Tonight I had my stall at Waterstones. Below are some photographs I took while I was there demonstrating the box with all of my products displayed on top. At the start of the night it was quite busy, as people had already been there during the day shopping, and there is a Costa upstairs where the stalls were located. Due to it being located upstairs, anyone that was walking past Waterstones wouldn't have known that there was an event inside. This was a shame because, with more advertisements, it would have encouraged more and more people to come inside.

Initially, I had been told that I would be situated in the children's area downstairs in Waterstones, so I had the box made and had it all worked out. However, when I got there on the night, I was told that it was on the middle floor which meant that the box had to be carried upstairs. This wasn't too much of a problem but I feel as though the event wasn't very well organised overall.

During the first half of the event, I got chatting to a girl who had an autistic brother, so I was able to give her a car to take home to him which she was really grateful for. I also got chatting to several other people, one being an architect in Leeds. She approached me and was asking about my work and the kind of design I like to produce. She then proceeded to give me her business card for me to contact her and go in and speak to the graphic designers that she works with. I will definitely be taking her up on this offer as I think it is a fantastic opportunity to get to meet even more people. 

Overall, I am really pleased that I had the opportunity to hold a stall at Waterstones. I feel as though this was a great opportunity to get my work out there and I was also able to distribute business cards allowing me to make more contacts. 




























OUGD505 - Design Practice 2: Studio Brief 2 (Setting up Waterstones)

Today I had my stall at Waterstones. I went to the student union to collect my box and prepare everything. We had to borrow some wheels to transport it from woodwork to the Leeds College of Art van. We then took it all down to Waterstones and set everything up well in advance.



It took me a while to organise all of my printed materials. I wanted them to be arranged in a certain way, so that all of the products are on show and are easily accessible by anyone who shows interest on the night. 




OUGD503 - Responsive: Design Process 2 (End of Module Evaluation)



OUGD503 - Responsive: Design Process 2 (Project Report)


OUGD503 - Responsive: Design Process 2 (Final Boards - All Briefs)











Wednesday 23 April 2014

OUGD503 - Responsive: Design Process 2 (Fedrigoni Response)

Today I received an email from a publisher in China regarding my Fedrigoni calendar being published in a book they are currently producing. I am going to ask Fred for some advice before I reply as I think I will need to get YCN's and Fedrigoni's permission before I say yes to them. 


Tuesday 22 April 2014

OUGD503 Responsive: Design Process 2: Voodou Hairdresser (Development)

Over the Summer period I did some freelance work for Voodou hairdressers in Liverpool. I gained a lot of experience working for them. Initially I had a meeting with Emma, who I used to work with before starting college. I had this meeting at one of the hair salons so that I could get a feel for the brand and their colour scheme. It was quite eye opening for me, as I had never been to a salon which uses such bold, bright colours. They also had a large skull at the back of the salon placed on the wall. So this showed me that it is often used as a separate entity to the 'Voodou' text. I have documented some imagery of the salons to help me to have a selection of images to relate back to.

I managed to keep in touch with Voodou in hope that they would approach me again and ask me to do some more design work for them, and luckily they did. I was asked to design an A4 flyer which can be distributed to students in Liverpool. 

Below is the logo I was given over Summer to use on any design work for Voodou. I have this file saved so that I have it stored for future use. 


I decided to experiment with the idea of incorporating scissors into the design. I was given all of the information which I needed to include via email. 




Development of flyer

Once I had been given all of the information to include on the front of the flyer, I decided to try and come up with an idea to start a conversation and allow me to receive some feedback and an understanding for what my client expected to receive. I took quite a minimalist approach to this brief to start with, and tried to create a playful flyer by incorporating eyes and a moustache. I thought this was quite a clever and yet subtle way of hinting at the fact that they are hairdressers. Although it could imply that their target audience is men. 




Below is the email I received in response to this initial design. At this stage I realised that it is going to be quite hard to design something straight away that the client will like and I have to make sure that I am patient with them. 


I then decided to take a different approach and rather than working with the initial idea and trying to improve it, I decided to go back to square one and start again. The good thing about doing this meant that I was able to take parts of the previous design and apply it to new and improved flyers which can only be a positive move in my developmental process.

I was already aware that she liked how their last graphic designer had used illustrations for any of the work they had produced and so I decided to try and think of some new illustrations which could be applied to any of the work that I produce. 




The feedback I received for this updated version was mainly positive. I was just asked to consider the top section as she thought it looked a bit too plain, as well as a couple of other minor alterations. I felt a lot more positive at this stage because I had a better understanding for what she was expecting the end result to look like. It just goes to show that it isn't always worth trying to put your own personal touch on a piece of work (like I had tried to do in the first instance) because it isn't necessarily going to be to the client's taste.


Rather than only sending one option in response to this email I decided that I would send several, as they didn't take me long to do at all. I experimented with the size of the type as well as the image in the background of the skull. I felt quite confident at this stage that the work was positively progressing and was looking forward to receiving feedback as I could then work on the back of the flyer.








In the meantime, I received another email from Emma with details for the back of the flyer. Although I felt like it had taken a while for the front to be finalised, I was still pleased with the outcome and felt happy to be able to take it a step further to being complete. 


I designed a couple of variations for the back of the flyer, as shown below. I wanted to try and use the illustrations I had on the front of the leaflet or at least develop some more which were relevant to the information provided. 

This is the first possible layout that I proposed. I wasn't completely satisfied with the outcome however and when I sent it to Emma I was hoping for some constructive feedback that we would both agree on. 



Final A4 Flyer 

I was then given the following feedback on an email and the final alterations didn't take me very long at all! It definitely isn't how I initially imagined it to look but it is finally finished.




Evaluation

Having worked for Voodou over Summer I was aware that this project may take quite a while to complete, as the previous pieces of work I have done for them always took longer than I had expected. I feel as though I have learnt an awful lot working with Voodou though. They were the first company I worked for and created an invoice for, which was exciting for me! They were punctual when responding to me and taught me a lot about myself. I learnt not to take it to heart if I ever received quite blunt feedback, and instead see it as an opportunity for me to improve my communication skills and the ability to remain patient even whilst sometimes feeling frustrated.

Interestingly, as mentioned on my research post, I have noticed that since completing this work for them as well as the Summer work which included a Facebook banner, poster to use outside the shop as well as a website banner, they have actually used my illustrations on some of their other design work. Emma, who I dealt with at Voodou, has now left and been replaced. My details were passed on and I have since been contacted about more work, however they didn't give me enough notice and weren't willing to pay what I was charging, so this meant that the job was given to another designer (or they have done it themselves since and used the illustrations). 

This brief has therefore also taught me that a lot of the time students are treated unfairly and are treated as being 'inexperienced'. I think this is a real shame because it means that a student designer will either be under paid or simply not paid at all. 

When I was approached recently by the lady who has replaced Emma's position, the way I looked at the situation was, if I don't get chosen to do this work for Voodou because of how much I have proposed to charge, then the job isn't worth doing as I know that the money was fairly calculated against the amount of hours which would have been spent on completing it in the short amount of time allocated.