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OUGD505 - Module Evaluation

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?


I think the biggest skill that I have developed in this module is conceptual. The workshops that I underwent really made the penny drop that good design is nothing without a good concept. Another thing that stuck in my head was creating a brand with a concept means that it could be revisited year on year and still work in a number of different environments. This is what I tried to achieve when taking on the main What Is Good Brief. I spent much longer trying to build a concept which would work, and one which could run for a number of years and still be innovative.

I think I have been able to be a lot more comfortable with this brief, because I chose something that I was passionate about and something that I had a lot of background information and research in dealing with. This really helped me when it came to idea generation and building my concept. I also feel that it helped me create a set of final outcomes and products that were realistic within the brief that I set myself.

My Research skills have improved, and this might be because i've been passionate about what i'm researching, but if it is, this means that whatever brief I take on, I need to become passionate about that subject, even if its just for the day! More realistically though, I feel that by creating the book, my research was much more focussed and I knew exactly what I had to go on and learn to bring it all together. This was a massive help.

I think that learning to write your own brief is important because it gives you real life limitations and also a solid structure on what you can and can't do, what you need to do and why you need to do it. For example, I limited myself to creating things on a large scale which would be very cheap, because the festival I was designing for, is very low key and low-budget. So being able to deal with a clients need like this is a very important skill to learn.

I have obviously developed practical skills to. With limitations come innovation and making the most of what youv'e got. I learned different paper-craft and peroration and binding techniques that would be able to be created on a larger scale for minimum expenditure, but also leaves a lasting impression. This also goes for the choice of stock and inks. All an important thing to consider.






2. What approaches to methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?


The main approaches to design i've developed had already been looked at in the first question. This is a strong level of research and an even stronger concept. I think by coming up with multiple concepts for the same brief, this instantly makes you see what works and what doesn't. And also spending a little longer thinking about how the concept can instantly grab the attention of your chosen audience is highly beneficial.

As i've already lightly touched on, I feel that I have considered much more stocks, inks and different physical techniques which can make a product or brand stand out. I feel

I've improved my 'mocking up' techniques and this was important particularly for the What Is Good Brief. The reason being, when creating proposals for a festival, I had to demonstrate to the best of my abilities how the wayfinding systems would work, as well as promotion on a much larger scale than what is physically possible. This is why being able to mock things up for clients is important. This could be used to help win a pitch and to also transfer your idea in the best possible way , without spending lots of money on getting it physically made.

I have also touched on production techniques I haven't made the most of before. I've research heavily into innovative formats and considered how user interaction can control the actual product itself. It's important that you look at how people are going to interact with whatever it is you have designed. I used various different folding, binding and perforated techniques which help my products really come to life, and to make the user want to engage with it, be this through design itself, and production, and a combination of both.





3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

I definitely think iv'e developed conceptually. I believe that my work can do much more now than sit there and look the part. I am much more focussed on creating a brand that can make a client come to life and this is not always about design. I feel that I am more aware of how the target audience will come in contact with the brand or whatever it may be and how they can react to it.

I think I am getting better at applying a brand across a whole range of products and not doing it in a way which is just sticking a logo on it and making everything look pretty. I've learnt how you can be playful with what the format and restrictions of the format give you and how you can use it as an advantage, applying a concept to it.

My Web Design skills have developed too. I have managed to look further into areas of web design such as JQuery and other bits of Javascript which help make a website come to life. I'm still at a fairly basic level, but feel that my knowledge in this field of design is growing constantly the more I work with it.

I feel I have a much greater understanding with design for print. I have spent much longer focussing on format, stock consideration and inks in order to get the best possible result for what it is I wanted. I have experimented with different techniques which have enhanced my skill set in this area.






4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?



I think that I left the submission for this module quite late, which meant that I was photographing the products pretty much the day before, then having to rush the final design boards. This is never good because the design boards are probably the most important aspect. I feel that time needs to be organised better, but in this case it was very hard towards the end of the year, trying to not tread on the 3rd years toes. This is still no excuse though and self organisation time management is important when working in this field.

I feel that some of my products are not to the best of quality which I created, and this was because I had to make the finish suffer in order for the stock and concept to work exactly how I wanted it. In photographs, this hasn't really effected anything. The idea comes across strong in my opinion, but when the products are handled close up, they are not the best of quality in my opinion. Nevertheless, when creating these as part of a proposal to be created at a much larger scale, I think they are appropriate for my brief and also for my timescale and money budget.




5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?



1. Towards the end of the year, I will make sure I plan months and months in advance, because no matter what you want to do, it will always be fully booked around this time and this makes it difficult to achieve the final outcome you want. This isn't an excuse, but something that I will have to be on point with straight away next year, planning months in advance, not weeks. This can be hard to figure out when your not really sure what you will need to be doing months down the line, but its something that needs to be mastered.

2. I would have like to extended my brand across further digital media but unfortunately didn't have time. I spent quite a lot of time making the website, and I managed to get an app mock up, but would have loved to have pushed the design further into the digital side of things, because film is moving, maybe creating video, animation or an ident.

3. I would have like to have spent more time on mocking up the way-finding and information side of the brief. A lot of the time obviously was spent by me making the product range across print and web, but with the actual brief I was creating, It would have been nice to really push the way-finding side to the best of my abilities. I feel that with the work submitted, It is enough to give proposal, but it doesn't really cover every area of this particular section of design.

4. I'll probably spend more time getting the quality of the finished product up to scratch next time round. This will be planning time better and making best use of resources. This could be creating a copper plate to emboss, or choosing the most appropriate print method.

5. I was unable to get the vinyl that I wished to use on some products as I had to order it out and it would have taken too long to get here. This sort of comes under planning again, making sure that I have all the material I need in order to achieve the best quality.





How would you grade yourself in the following areas (5 - excellent to 1 - poor)?


Attendance: 4
Punctuality: 5
Motivation: 5
Commitment: 5
Quantity of work: 5
Quality of work: 4
Commitment to the group: 5





OUGD505 - What Is Good - Final Photoshoot

Set-Up





For the Final Photo shoot of all the products, I shot against a mid-grey background. I thought because there was both white and black in the work along with the pink stock, this would be a suitable backdrop for all the work to stand out on. I also wanted the fluorescence of the pink to stand out and photograph well, so I used two tungsten lights with diffusers on to make the light subtle but enough to make the stock shine. I also played around with the camera settings and used a combination of a standard 18-55mm lens and a closer macro lens to get some detailed shots. I'm fairly pleased with how these came out. Here's some of the best images;













And also a PDF of the images which I edited to use in my final presentations;


OUGD505 - What Is Good - Final Boards

Here is the final selection of boards for hand in, In digital format.

OUGD505 - What Is Good - Website, Across Platforms

Website 


Homepage


About


Listings


Blog


Contact 





Across Platforms 

When viewing the website on an Ipad, it won't change much other than the fact that it could be viewed both landscape and portrait, with the option to be flipped with user interaction. The website is designed as a vertical column, so this won't have much effect on the format. Here I have mocked up an example...



Landscape


Porttrait


Auto-Sizing


When viewing on smaller screen sized platforms, the website would automatically alter to change resolution. For example, using the listings as an example, when viewing on an Ipad, there would be a row of four images and films but when viewing on an Iphone, the row would shrink to 2 and become vertically longer  instead. Here is an example of how this would work...



Ipad (3 rows)



Iphone (2 rows)




OUGD505 - Website - Layout, Images, Design, Coding

Basic Wireframe




This is the basic layout of the website how I wanted it to look. There are three basic sections splitting the website vertically. 

The top section (1) included the logo, links tab and moving slideshow. This will say consistent through every single page. 

The middle section (2) contains the black speech box over the right hand side containing information about the Festival dates and this will also stay consistent through every page. The left hand side of the second section and the bottom section (3) will be a container for changeable information for every page. 




Layout 



I designed the layout of the website just in photoshop as I could use the different sliced up sections as images and then just add body copy over the sections that needed it. My layout was fairly simple. I opted for the bright pink to be dominant, just like in the rest of the physical printed branding. The images also relate to this colour scheme and the combination of black and white type. 






This is for the home page. The grey box is where my slideshow images will be inserted and you can start to see the elements how they will actually look as oppose to the wireframe. 



The 'read more' buttons will be clickable and take you to the about page, and the empty sections will be filled with bodycopy. The images will be sliced and coded together. 


I designed the layout of the website just in photoshop as I could use the different sliced up sections as images and then just add body copy over the sections that needed it. My layout was fairly simple. I opted for.




I added various other elements into the different pages and these will be used in combination of images and type. 




Coding

The Coding wasn't too difficult, even though I forgot how to do a lot of things initially, I quickly remembered after some playing around. As I used the exact same layout throughout, and was using lots of images sliced up, It was a lot easier to make every page, once the first had been created.




Javascript Slideshow











As you can see from this bit of code here. This is the Title of the website just underneath inside the head, then the first bit of called javascript. This is something I found online and is a simple slideshow banner. I created every image I wanted to use in photoshop under the exact size I created the banner of '900px x 250px'. I then added the list of images underneath the javascript to make this work. 




Links (rollover images)








This bit of coding relates to my links at the top of every page. I had to included these as images too because I wanted the rollover effect when hovering and I also wanted to use my chosen typeface relating to the brand 'Avenire Lt Std'. The coding shows the right aligned placement and the different images uploaded for rollover. 



Text Boxes & Buttons









Simple code used to create all the text boxes and also the rollover clickable button images. 





Final Working Website (Screengrabs)




Home Page (top)



Home Page (bottom)


About Page 


Film Listings


Film Listings (bottom)


Film Listings (Second Page)


Blog


Contact (Top)


Contact (Bottom)




The website isn't live so there will be a disk included with
submission to be able to view the index file. 

OUGD505 - What Is Good - Laser Cutting Poster

Initial Experiments



My orinal idea was to only cut half of the letter out and then bend the card outwards to cast a shadow across the page and forming the other half of the letter. However, when I tried this on a smaller scale to see if was possible, the letter that weren't symmetrical was really hard to figure out. You can just about see that this says 'We are', but I think if this would have been translated to a bigger scale, then it just would be too difficult to read.

 Instead I went for a straight forward letter cut out idea, with the neon stock shining through. This is equally as cheap to product because there is still no ink used which means that the only things you need to pay for is the stock really, and this can be produced on a much large scale easily. 



Design






The Layout of the poster is derived from my original concept of using straight to the point conversational British phrases in order to cause instant impact, grab attention and to make people proud to be British, so this is what I went with. I altered it slightly in terms of typesetting, and adding more information at the bottom of the poster to give it relevance. 



Finals




I mounted the white card onto the neon pink stock with a really thick border to give it more definition. 




Close Ups







OUGD505 - What Is Good - T-Shirt

Design / Print






I got the final shirt printed using t-shirt vinyl. I was actually planning on screen printing until I found a example t-shirt with neon pink vinyl. I think this colour was the exact same as all my printed material so felt it would be most appropriate to use this. I actually managed to get this printed front and back with the pink heat pressed vinyl with a free white t-shirt for £7.50 which was good, with the possibility for it being cheaper when ordering in larger quantities. Perfect for what I needed.


Finals








I took some photos with a live model, the beautiful Chris Shuttleworth. I added the pink in the background to try and tie it all in with my way finding and interior design. I'm not sure how effective these are of it they look obviously fake so i'll have to get some more feedback before going forward with these images. 







Close Ups












 

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