Evaluation

Looking back at the module I can confidently say I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience, unlike other modules where I had a negative outlook on my skills and future this module has really made me into the confident designer I am today. Within this module my confidence and enjoyment has grown as I have started to understand where I fit in to the creative industry and what it is I have to offer. This has definitely improved through studio visits, portfolio surgeries and interviews, things that at the start of the module I would have had no confidence to do at all. I am know very proud of the work I am creating and can see how much I have developed not just physical skills but my knowledge and understanding developed through thorough research and investigation into branding. It took some low points in the last module that really made me question myself and my place on this course to make me realise how much I enjoy it and why I am here. So the beginning of this module got off to quite a slow start due to this.

This module has been one of the most rewarding for me, I have gained 2 x 2 months paid work placements with Love – Manchester, Thompson Brand Partners, 2 weeks at Vast and Winning the Sh! Awards and a 6 month paid placement. It has really given me great confidence and the ability to see beyond this course and into my future. This has helped when selecting briefs as I know what I want in my portfolio, a strong branding portfolio fully covering all creative and interactive promotion and experience. Creating an ‘Experience’ for a brand has become the key to my work, story telling through graphic outlooks to communicate the philosophy of the brand to the consumer. I love looking at the detail in promotion, how consumers can engage with the brand and what it can offer them. This was picked up on in my portfolio when approaching companies and is a unique skill a have to offer. I found that I love working with ideas, campaigns and concepts anything thought provoking and highly creative that can break the boundries of the the standard promotion I want to be part of.

Within this module I have made full use of all the facilities in college which was part of my SOI, this wasn’t necessarily intentionally but was a way of creating professional pieces of design which I felt was lacking in my portfolio. Screenprinting, lasercutting, digital print and woodwork have all helped me explore promotion further and has meant my projects weren’t limited to printed media. I loved getting stuck into these workshops as they are so rewarding to see the finished design.

Working with Lauren Carande – Brief 2 Fashion Branding meant that I was in contact with printers, stockists etc which was a great opportunity for me to expand my knowledge on printing for large scale work which has put me in good stead for future work. It was really rewarding to see my branding designs on such an amazing collection of clothing, I feel privileged to have worked with Lauren as we have had a great working relationship.

Working with Jonny on the Crossover brief was excellent and definitely the best brief throughout my time here on the course. We worked exceptionally well together sharing all the work load and this resulted in a fully branded project covering all aspects.

The Waterstones brief was quite disappointing as I ran out of time to expand this futher but my pitch won the 2 month paid placement so it was definitely worth doing and documented my ideas well.

I have also fully branded myself as a designer and got my work out into the creative industry through my own website, Behance site, portfolio and contacting companies. Something I would have previously found extremely daunting but now love showing my work to people.   

I feel that my documentation through blogging has let me down within this module as I got so into the projects that I ran away with the production and lost track of my blogging. Apart from this my time management has improved a lot as I had placements and studio visits to fit in so I had to be very strict with my organisation which has paid off.

Although the last three years on this course has developed my skills and understanding it is this last module that has really shaped me and allowed me to create my own individual practice. I feel prepared and excited to step out into industry with a thoroughly creative portfolio, great advice from tutors, peers and designers and a positive outlook on my future.

Brief 7 - End of Year Pitch EVALUATION

Open publication - Free publishing

DESIGN CONTEXT finished publications

My design context is split into 5 seperate lookbook style publications, each one based on a different fashion brand. The brands that I have chosen are Levi's, Ted Baker, Topshop, Nike & .... I have chosen these brands to show a range of fashion labels, showing the designers and creatives that are part of building their brand. Investigation stationary, packaging, store experience, lookbook publications, web and campaigns. This has been an ongoing investigation and has helped me understand how to design for different brands.

LEVI'S STRAUSS

Open publication - Free publishing

The Levi's lookbook was designed to look like a newspaper, A3 format on newsprint stock, double sided with a red stitch to match the Levi's stitch. I used a newsprint style to reflect the Levi's heritage and show the traditional values of the brand.

TOPSHOP

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing - More dc

The Topshop publication was based on a contemporary design with an A5 publication of images and a smaller A6 publication that intertwines through the book with informattion relating to each page.

TED BAKER

Open publication - Free publishing - More dc

NIKE


 

Brief 5 - Waterstones - EVALUATION

Open publication - Free publishing

This project was for a pitch for Love to win a 2 month paid placement. I had 2weeks in which to prepare a pitch to present to them. Although with the work load I only spent a week on this project. Andy Lodge gave me some good advice on how to make a professional pitch and how Love pitch to clients which really helped to get an insight into how to visualise my ideas. I wanted to extend this brief further for my FMP but unfortunately ran out of time!

Although on a postive note I won the 2 month paid placement :) yey so it can't have been to bad.

Brief 4 - Crossover -EVALUATION

Open publication - Free publishing

Me and Jonny have been wanting to work together for a while now as we both share similar tastes in design as well as having similar practices. Our skill sets were similar but Jonny's ability to create a professional finished product with my strengths in concepts and branding worked together really well.

We found that we both had a go at everything and it wasn't really a matter of splitting up the jobs as we worked on everything together. We had regular meetings and schedueled time in for our project as well as booking in workshop sessions etc. We stuck to our plan really well and managed to produce a strong look very early on in the project as we wanted to submit it for the Yearbook... it definately gave us the push we needed to start the project and be pretty ruthless with our decisions. Me and Jonny worked so well together, it was great to bounce ideas off of each other as we both thought and could picture the project in similar ways.

Deciding what the event should be was probably the hardest part... starting with nothing we through some names / words back and forth before coming up with 'Crossover' we then took this forward and thought how this could relate to the festival and came up with the idea of 'Crossover' resembling Collaborations. Just like mine and Jonny's. The event was based on a mix of 20 creatives from all different aspects of creative disciplines forming 10 creative collaboration where they had the ability to cross their talent to produce new and exciting work.

Everything we created for this brief we took the word 'Crossover' in mind, whether it was the layout, format, how the exhibition space was branded etc was thought about in great detail. To keep the concept strong. Making up our own spot colour helped to secure it's own very memorable look and creating a logo that can be used in a variety of ways meant that the promotion doesn't all look the same. There is something engaging about each piece.

Again like my other briefs we used the workshops and facility A LOT, using a spot colour meant that everything had to be screenprinted then we used laser cutting etc to add another element to the brand.

The feedback we have got from students, tutors and whilst on studio visits has been amazing, it's so nice to think our hardwork has paid off and we feel so proud of our work. We have had comments such as 'The best brief all yr', 'One of our favourite projects', 'Really hit the nail on the head', 'So cool!' from students and studios, I can't wait to get it up onto my website :D.

I hope in a few years time when we're both settled in a job that we could actually get funding and make this festival happening because I think it's such a great idea and visually stands out from any other branding I've seen.

Brief 3- The Story Of Now -EVALUATION

Open publication - Free publishing

I chose to do a Fashion retail brief to contrast with Brief 2 - Lauren Carande Fashion Design as it would show my versatile nature when being able to tackle projects for similar sectors but different brands and audience's. This brief was based more on creating a fully branded experience with interactive elements, creating a really visually strong brand that could communicate the philosophy of the store to it's consumer's.

Thinking about my work and how I like to create stories for brands I used the name 'The Story of Now' which relates to us creating our own stories within our lives, what are we doing with them? The brand captures the essence of travel and adventure in a cool, contemporary manner and encourages cultured individuals 16-40's city goers to travel and see what the world has to offer them through interactive promotional aspects such as the swap shop, app etc. Based on the idea of the Urban Traveller who likes to take in culture from different cities throughout the world the store itself takes on the format of a Pop-up store and will travel and create it's on story too.. it appears cultured just like the image it is trying to sell.

I'm really pleased with this brief as I think the concept and branding is really strong and I really like the creative packaging and promotion throughout that has allowed me to continue and strengthen the brand. I really enjoyed working with different ranges and showing how the brand could change as well as looking into all aspects of promotion. I feel that I explored colour/ stock and format well as well as attention to the details such as threads, buttons, clasps, tags etc. It adds a quality and a personality to the brand.

This brief really allowed me to get hands on with making, using a lot of facillities and workshops such as screenprinting, lasercutting, foiling, vinyl cutters etc. Which I had wanted to do in this module, when showing my portfolio it was these hands on details that studios loved about my work.

I wasn't able to re-print the rolled out Lookbook as the digital printing facility was exceptionally busy but I think it communicates the idea well enough.

Unfortunately I don't think the boards to the project justice, as the project is so large and is split into sections it was difficult to photograph the work all together. Also I was quite rushed for time in the end but would have liked to have taken the store experience further... ALTHOUGH this is hopefully what I will be doing as my End Of Year Show to create the Pop-Up shop so I have shown the mock up for this. I'm looking forward to taking the project further and creating the full range of t-shirts as well as the fixtures etc. After seeing how the Fashion students have set up their show I know how to make it more graphic design based and not to trail off into some Fashion brief.

Brief 2- Lauren Carande - EVALUATION

Open publication - Free publishing

I chose to work on a live brief for an emerging Fashion designer 'Lauren Carande' as I thought it would be a great opportunity to get some freelance work under my belt. To work to strict timetables as I can be poor at time management when I am setting my own deadlines. Also it gave me a great opportunity to work for the Fashion Sector which is part of my rationale and to have my designs representing a brilliant Fashion collection and young designer. I took on all of the branding, packaging and promotion but gave the Lookbook element to Dutch as at the time I felt I wouldn't be able to execute it as well as other people in the group could yet now I wish I had given it a go because I have improved a lot and think now I could have tackled it.

This project has been excellent, I have learnt so much as I have had to work closely with Lauren trying to reflect her Electro Static collection through branding, packaging and promotion. I really enjoyed being inspired by the clothing and feel that I represented her look very well. I'm not usually very good when working with colour but it was great to take colours from Lauren's collection and continue with these into the branding it proved to create a really strong look which definately reflected the clothing. I loved the small details in the shape of Lauren's work such as the collar, pockets and zips which I took forward into the design.

I was a little worried about the 'Ethical' element to this brief as I have never looked into ethical ways of printing or paper stock etc. But it was a good opportunity to see what was on offer and what price we could afford. After looking at the recycled paper back samples we agreed it would be way to expensive just on shipping more than anything so decided to go for the GFSmith carbon neutral Colourplan papers, although they didn't have an obvious recycled feel to them we were assured by printers that they were made with our carbon footprint in mind :) and the bright white stock worked much better with her branding and overall look.

This brief has definately been a big eye-opener into creating specs for print jobs, working with budgets and contacting printers. I have made great contacts with Ian from IST printers and will continue sending prints to him after this module as I am really pleased with the standard of professionalism, AN EXCELLENT QUOTE, and great contact! Having to invoice Lauren and work with dates etc has really improved my time management and organisation and I would feel confident to approach another Freelance project when I leave uni.

I extended this project further into a bag packaging, invites, full stationary and receipt card and although Lauren didn't ask for this I carried on working with her to get her feedback on the other elements so that it was a full working brief.

It's great to hear such positive feedback from Lauren, she's been overjoyed with the work I have done for her and my positive, 'organised' (WOW) attitude to this brief. I found working for a client so much more fulfilling as I'm stronger when working with a given brief than writing my own and the client / designer relationship is something that I really enjoy! Also it's been a great chance to get my work out there as she has added a link to my website / email etc to her website aswell as End of Yr Show space which will be really good to showcase my work to other creatives for work in the culture / fashion industry.

Brief 1 - The Angels Share EVALUATION

Open publication - Free publishing - More angels share

I first chose this brief as I really wanted to explore packaging further and thought as my other briefs were more fashion orientated it would be a good opportunity to expand my portfolio by including packaging for food / drink.

This brief proved to be abit of an unusual one, I found it difficult to get the right balance between contemporary and to suit a female audience. Some of my first concepts I liked best, The XXperiment I feel would have worked very well but crit feedback said that it appeared to masculine and wouldn't attract the female audience so I found myself working through different concepts and packaging ideas.

I hadn't hit the nail on the head yet so I decided to take a step back, unfortunately not submitting the piece for D&AD due to an extension on my dissertation and a radical change in ideas. After further research i found 'The Angels Share' - this is a whisky term for the 2 % of whisky that gets evaporated from the barrels every year and is said to be taking by the angels. I really liked this concept as it gave Whisky a softer look and felt that it would attract a female audience aslong as I got the brand & packaging right as I didn't want to cross into the realms of an 'alcopop' !

I'm really happy with the overall appearence and consistency to the branding, I think the concept has been designed to a professional standard with a strong story told well throughout all promotion. Although I found myself falling into the old whisky style packaging I feel I have given it a contemporary edge whilst still staying true to the Whisky history.

After working on the packaging I found all of the stationary ideas fall into place and by extending the project out in this way it really helped to strengthen and secure the look and feel of the brand. I like the warmth and sophisticated edge it has to the brand whilst it's name will attract the female Whisky drinker very well.

I really wanted to create an interactive quality to the packaging, after naming the brand 'The Angels Share' I wanted to continue the idea of sharing the drink with friends in a social manner, so the drink became socially acceptable and you are more likely to try things if your friends are too. The 3 way packaging throughout the bottles, minatures, tickets and menu's makes the consumer 'Share' and spread the word of whisky.

Overall I'm happy with this brief, although I felt it was alot more hands on crafting and making than computer designs so I feel the documentation does not reflect the brief that well. I have come to learn throughout the brief that I am more interested in the story of the brand and the creative promotion to tell the philosophy of the brand than just packaging ideas.

Making topshop book

Photo's of Crossover project.

 

Me and Jonny wanted to make sure our photo's did our project justice so we used Kim's hot shoe flash which really brought out the best in the colours and detail of the project. Photographing on light grey as I felt my previous photo's on black darkened the whole project.

We took photo's of each seperate part of the promotion and how they worked together.

We're extremely happy with the quality of the photo's and compostitions.