The Brief

The brief for this was to design a logo and set of business cards for an IT, information security and auditing firm.The firm wanted a clean look to their business cards but they had to look professional and serious because of the industry they work in.Other than that I had creative freedom to design as I wished, this was a plus to the brief as I could advise the client what I thought would be the best designs, also the client was my Dad so this is why the brief was fairly open design wise.

To help me I decided to define a set of deliverables for myself and so that I could push the brief a little further:

- Logo ~ to be used across print and screen- Business Cards- A set of related stationary that the firm could apply the identity to ~ I thought this could include a portfolio for clients, envelopes, letterheads and CD’s used for back-ups of the firms data.

Experiences

This brief was a brief I enjoyed working on because I had virtually no creative restrictions on me apart from that I had to use the colour blue.

The logo was designed in two elements, the icon and the type. The icon represents a flow of information from a central point (Indicium Consulting) to outer points (Clients) in a secure way with the lines making a secure square.

The brief gave me a chance to use produce work in a short period of time, this was something I really liked about the brief, and the module as a whole. As it pushed me to work hard and get work done to a high standard quickly, I think the shorter print based briefs I have done on this module have been my most successful briefs because of the fact I didn’t have time to over think them and keep going back and forth to them.

Skills I Learned

During this brief i developed my skills in creating a piece of branding/identity that can be easily and effectively replicated onto a range of different products across print and screen. I think this is something i should be thinking about all the time when doing briefs for the rest of this year and on into third year. Because a successful design should have scope to be used on and for a lot of different products and media.

On this brief i learnt some priceless and invaluable Photoshop skills to mock up my concepts and designs for boards or proposals. I think the mock ups look highly professional and show the idea extremely well. The only problem with them is you cant show any special processes.

Processes to be used in production

- Business Cards ~ Logo to be embossed onto thick stock and type on the back to be embossed. With the use of the blue the embossing with give the cards that extra bit of impact, quality and professionalism

The Brief

We think our pack designs look good. The designs are simple, colourful and impactful on shelf, the brand name is clear and most people get the fact that we are offering tasty, healthy drinks.

However there is a risk that we’re being a little modest with our communication of some the main reasons to drink Feel Good e.g. no added sugar and 100% natural-ingredients. We also want to ensure that we strike the right balance between the communication that our drinks are healthy and having label designs which makes people smile and feel good. We’re big fans of simple, uncluttered pack design, we like what we’ve got but recognise that the best designs are constantly evolving. The supporting information included in our project pack shows how our designs have evolved over the last 10

years, we’re up for change and would love to see some fresh ideas.

Things I’ve Experienced

For this brief I was tasked with giving Feel Good Drinks a whole new look, something they hadn’t had before. I had the idea to strip it right back and just use Helvetica type printed straight onto the bottle to give it a clean, minimalist aesthetic. But after crit feedback it was said that the designs looked too medical and strayed too far from the existing brand.After this I struggled badly for new ideas and the brief became a bit stale. I left the brief and came back to it a week or so later and decided that I could still use the previous idea but make it more playful by changing the typeface and adjusting the way I used it. I opted for a more welcoming use of the type. I tried to use the colour within the bottles as much as possible as I thought it was a good way to showcase the product.

On reflection, although the final outcomes look fairly decent on the bottles I don’t think I would have chose to do this brief, simply because I didn’t feel it offered me enough in terms of scope and ideas.

Skills I’ve Learned

During this module I have gained some skills in project management and working with different formats.Working with the limited space of the bottle gave me a really specific thing to design to, at times I found this very hard to do and I think you can still see that from the outcomes I’ve produced.

During the brief my time management had to be good because we had a lot of other briefs to do at the time, I think I managed my time fairly effectively but there could have been room for improvement. I feel that if I had managed my time more effectively I could have got this brief done a lot quicker enabling me to concentrate on other briefs for the module. When seeing how far I could push this brief and taking it over to digital I expanded my knowledge on how brands use websites to showcase their products especially within the drinks industry and I tried to take elements of this when mocking up the website for feel good.

The Brief

It’s Nice That’s audience has developed dramatically over the past few years– Reaching everyone from freshers to creative directors. However, students have always been an integral part of the organisation’s DNA, and It’s Nice That now want new and exciting ways to stay engaged with their original audience.It could be a poster campaign, a publication, an event, an app, or something so brilliant that no one has thought of it yet. How can they spread their commitment to showcasing great work in an information overloaded university world?

Target AudienceStudents studying on creative courses, or those studying other course disciplines but who are also culturally engaged.

MandatoriesWhatever your idea, your response should showcase your craft – whether that’s illustration, typography, photography, animation or film-making.

DeliverablesMain deliverable: Upload a presentation film of your work (maxi-

mum. 2 mins) or up to eight images showing your solution.

Things I’ve Experienced

I chose this as my main individual brief for the responsive module, I chose the brief because It’s Nice That is/are something i have followed for a while. They have their finger on the pulse and they produce great things, such as the recent Printed Pages.

I also liked the open endedness of the brief allowing me to do what I felt would benefit It’s Nice That as a student and a designer. I decided that the best thing for them would be a specific app for iPad and iPhone, the thinking behind this was that students spend a lot of time on these devices and I myself spend that time looking at blogs, websites, Behance etc. But the It’s Nice That site on mobile is ok but I felt it would be a much richer user experience if there was a specific app that pulled in all the content in a user friendly and innovative way.

I set myself a time frame of 1 week to do this brief, as I wanted to get on with other briefs and I also had other modules to consider. I think giving myself this structure really helped, it was something i didn’t do on the Feel Good brief for instance and that didn’t turn out as well as I envisaged, so I was trying to avoid that at all costs and also this brand and brief was/is something that im really interested in so I wanted to produce work that was of a high standard and I was proud of.

Recently I have seen myself working within the digital side of graphic design, through co-incidence more than anything, and this was the case again. I wanted to design an app that was extremely user friendly and forward thinking, the idea was to have these circles that got more prominent within the screen depending on the users touch and then they would flip to display the chosen content. I hadn’t seen this anywhere before and thought it was a really good concept. So I designed the app, and I tried to be as coherent with the current aesthetic of It’s Nice That so that the product I created could integrate seamlessly into their current offerings.

When I was thinking of how I could push the brief further I found my self looking back to print, which was bizarre because its normally the other way around. I decided that the best thing i could do print wise would be to create a couple of promotional items for the app. These would include an advertising poster and then a folded version of the poster with a message on the inside to promote the app.

Skill’s I’ve Learned/Used

During this brief i have learned how to manage my time much more effectively, i gave myself a set deadline to finish the brief and planned my time accordingly and i got the brief done to the standard I was happy with within that time frame.

I also applied the concept to a range of products that are relevant to each other with the print complementing the digital and vice versa, this is something that I am trying to do increasingly with all the briefs i undertake as I see, seeing the scope an idea can have and pushing it is a massive step in the right direction.

The Brief

Communicate Ella’s Kitchen as a brand to the internal audience and shareholders of the company. By creating a range of products to effectively promote the company and its credentials to inform and promote the brand.

Background

Ella’s Kitchen is a revolutionary baby and toddler food company that strives to be Good In Every Sense.We make great products providing all the nutrition a little one needs.We instil healthy eating habits to last a lifetime by engaging kids’ sensesthrough all our products, packaging and communications. We give stuff back to our friends, our planet, and our team.

Considerations

Taking into account the brand values and the current style, work with to create a range of engaging products to tell the story of Ella’s Kitchen. Think about how the user will interact with the products and the tone of voice to communicate to them.

Experiences

During this brief i got to focus on using my coding skill and create a fun environment for children and parents to work and engage together. I did this by using interactive elements within the website. I used JavaScript modals to sweep down information from the top of the page when a certain element of a page was clicked.

The brief also gave me a change to explore design for mobile and taking something that is built for a computer and scaling it down to fit a mobile device but also changing the layout to suit and maximise the functionality of the site on a mobile platform.

I was very happy with the outcome of the brief as it was very hard to code and difficult to incorporate certain things in.

Working collaboratively on this brief was really good as Nathan and I got to put together two complementary products with Nathan taking a handle on the print side of things, leaving me to concentrate of the digital and the coding.

We worked well as a pairing because we had the same design sensilbilites and we were both good at managing the time we had and the things that we were both working on, which culminated in us produced a well resolved brief.

Skills I Learned

Within this brief i learned a lot, I learnt how to use Adobe Edge Animate for creating animations. This was a difficult program to get my head around but once I knew what all the functions where it was fairly easy. This could turn out to be an invaluable learning experience in future briefs.

Also within this brief i got to use all the coding knowledge I had built up over the last few modules to complete this site, and I think this shows the progression i have made since the start of the year in this area of design, at the start of the year I had next to no knowledge of coding so to be at the point now where I am confident enough to take on briefs such as this is something i am proud of and happy with.

The Brief

I am looking for someone to produce a website that will display fashion photography work. I need the website to be clean and highly produced . I have a graphic designer working on producing branding, and this will need to be combined.

The above was the initial brief i got from Thierry, this led to a lot of questions to try and narrow down the kind of thing he wanted and the type of website i would need to design & build.

After discussions with Thierry, the aesthetic and concept for the site where a lot clearer. He wanted a clean, minimalist website were the images could do all the talking. I then decided that I would design the site in such a way to fit this.

I also had to have some discussions with Charlie Crosby as he was doing the branding about the brief he had and to sort out getting things to transfer over to the website.

Experiences

This brief was a very different experience than any other brief i had done as the others were competitions and a family member, this was an external client. This involved lots of meetings and discussions back and forth about time scale, possibilities coding wise, the aesthetic, image formatting etc. And this was something i had to manage, I think i managed it effectively and at the end of the brief the client seems very happy with the outcome.

The biggest thing with this brief was the coding and the size of the brief, there was a lot of content to go through and format correctly , then a lot of tweaking to do to the base structure of the code to make sure the content sat right and the usability was seamless. This took up a lot of time on top of the initial coding, which impacted on other work I was doing, but I think this was a underestimation of how big the brief was oppose to a time management issue. It could have been extremely easy to get frustrated with the brief because of the technical nature of it, but im glad I persevered and got it done because the outcome is something im very proud of.

The site can be viewed in browser from going into this CD, double clicking the Thierry Sewell folder and then double clicking the index.html file.

Skills I Learned

This brief pushed my coding knowledge and skill to the maximum although it looks very simple on screen there is a lot of complicated things going on in the code so that it can be that simple and this was something that pushed me; the tiny, tiny things like a 5 pixel difference would make. Also the navigation was something that initially was hard to code as the content had to scroll behind it and this was something that in the end was simple to fix, but highly confusing beforehand.

Another big difficulty with the coding was to get the content to scroll horizontally as naturally when the content is the defined with of the screen or set at 100% it will be placed underneath and scroll vertically. So I had to do so research and tweaking within the code to get this right.

I also learned some skills about dealing with clients, having an understanding of what they want but then showing them and convincing them of certain changes that will benefit the outcome , and also being prepared to show them work and concepts when in meetings or discussions. These are something i will build on in the future and they will become very useful in the future.

The Brief

Task Outline

Create a Logo Design

Task Description

We are an all natural bakery located in Atlanta, GA. We produce a variety of tea breads/quick breads, cupcakes, crumb cakes, muffins, scones and cookies (with other products likely added as we move forward). We make delicious baked treats that happen to be made with really good wholesome ingredients.

We will serve a retail customer base through online sales via local and freight delivery; a wholesale customer base of cafés, hotels and grocery stores, and we also provide catering services around the items we produce (primarily brunches and desserts).

We need a logo that represents our brand and will become the centrepiece of our brand identity with other marketing materials keying off of the logo design and colours. Our name is light and playful and we would like the logo to reflect that, but also be bold enough that it makes an immediate impression while still having a sense of natural and organic whole food ingredients.

The logo will be used on packaging, apparel, printed materials (business cards, flyers, menus, etc.), website, etc. The winning design must translate well in both colour and black and white thereby offering versatility, be easily readable when scaled down to small sizes, and instantly recognizable as we build brand awareness.

We do not have particular imagery in mind...If we knew exactly what we wanted we wouldn’t be here. But, we are quick to know what we like when we see it.

Experiences

With this brief it was a fairly small, short turnaround brief. There was only one element to it and that was to design a logo for the bakery. I set my self the time limit of spending no more than a morning designing for this brief, the worked really well because once I had got the concept of going with a professional, quality feeling logo with an old heritage feel I was away with designing the logo. I knew exactly what I wanted to which was fortunate with the time scale I had set upon my self.

I enjoyed working on this as it allowed me to just take a morning out away from other briefs and other modules and just do something i wanted to design, quickly and with no real restrictions.

I then applied the logo to a range of products that the bakery would use on a day to day basis to show how the design would work within a real setting and I think it is effective in doing this and fulfilling the brief.This would have been a really nice brief too if it was a complete re-brand including the shop and the digital elements I think that would be something really good to work on and something i would look to do in the future.

Skills I Learned

The skills i learned within this brief was the speed in which you can actually design something effective if you set yourself strict deadlines, this again was evidence of me managing my time effectively and productively.

Processes to be used in production

When the brief would go to print the logo would be applied to the business cards and letterhead through the use of a stamp, the would give them an extra authentic feel and represent the essence of the brand and shop in a great way.

The Brief

This brief was for Secret 7”, a competition hosted by Talenthouse and the concept is that you pick a song and design a record cover without using the song name or a direct visual of the artist. Then the covers along with the record get auctioned to raise money for Teenage Cancer Trust.

Experiences

Again i really enjoyed this brief because for one it was for a good cause and two it was another short turnaround brief that I could have some fun with due to the openness of it.

The song I chose to do a cover for was Jessie Ware - Still Love Me; the song had a warped quality to the sound and was about chasing the love of someone and the pitfalls and joys that is has.

So my concept was to create a warped pattern out of circles, the circles represent perfection and the idea that when you find love that is the ultimate perfect moment within life, but then by distorting and warping the circles I created the sense of imperfection representing the troubles and pitfalls.

I was happy with the outcome and thought it conveyed my idea well.

Unfortunately the design didn’t win and didn’t get entered into the exhibition or auctioned.

Skills I Learned

During this brief i learned some new skills within Illustrator on how to use the warp, transform and distort tools to create a series of patterns, this was a useful learning experience as it allowed me to gain another piece of software knowledge and skill.

Also with it being a short turnaround brief i had to stick to a strict time limit to avoid the work becoming bigger than what the brief actually was worth, I think i managed this well and the outcome I feel was effective.

Throughout this module I have taken on a different range of briefs from longer briefs to shorter briefs, from print and digital. This has helped me massively in time management and effectively using my time, I feel like the fact I set myself deadlines within the module to get certain things done helped me too, it allowed me to impose restrictions that forced me to produce work quickly and effectively. I decided that I would work on two main briefs plus the collaboration and then concentrate on doing some quick 1/2 day briefs.

The two main briefs I did were It’s Nice That and a website design and build for Thierry Sewell, the collaboration brief that Nathan and I did was the Ella’s Kitchen brief from YCN. The It’s Nice That brief was really good to work on as it was something I am really interested in, the content they provide is something I look forward to seeing; so to try and produce work for them was great. I decided that I would create a specific app for them, this allowed the extension of It’s Nice That outside of the home in digital form. The design was inventive and aesthetically pleasing it was also coherent with the existing feel of the brand. I am very happy with the outcome of the brief, the app looks good across both iPhone and iPad and works how I wanted it to when I was developing the concept.

The collaborative brief was a great part of the module and a good experience for the future. It was different from previous parter or group work because you could choose who to go with and also it was more of deciding what to do, what needs doing, sharing a workload between you and then just going and doing it; oppose to previous group work where everyone and to have a hand in everything which is unproductive. I feel that Nathan and I worked well as a collaboration by sharing the workload by discipline and utilising each others stronger skills. This will be an experience I can draw on in future collaborations when working in third year and beyond, it allowed me to progress my interpersonal skills in a professional manner.The work we produced for the outcome of the brief was to a high standard and overall we were happy with what we submitted to YCN.

The other big brief I undertook in this module was a website design and build for a third year photography student Thierry Sewell. Initially I thought that this brief wouldn’t be too large but it turned out after some meetings and discussions with Thierry that I would be a pretty large brief, this was something I was initially sceptical about but by the end of the brief I was extremely happy that I had taken it on. The brief was a chance for me to work closely with a client, this was a new experience for me and something that I had to learn quickly about. We set some deadlines of when we could meet and catch up on any progress, changes and gather the content for the site, so this again forced me to manage my time well. The brief also pushed my coding skills to the maximum because to design the really simple aesthetic involved some quite complicated coding, adding to this the formatting of all the images for the site and meeting with Charlie Crosby who was designing the print branding made the brief quite large. Overall, I think the outcomes look really good and the client is extremely pleased with the outcomes too. The site will be going live in the very near future.

The other briefs I undertook within this module were shorter, quicker turnaround briefs they allowed me to use the skills and knowledge I had gained on the longer briefs in this module to put together effective and a high standard of work in a short period of time.

Overall, the module was something I enjoyed massively. Choosing the briefs I wanted to undertake I think was the biggest enjoyment of the module because it allowed me to work on exactly what I wanted to this meant that the work I produced was of a high standard. The other two main things I got from the module was I learned to really effectively manage my time and then how to work collaboratively and with live clients. These were and will be a massive plus for me moving on with the rest of second year and

beyond.