OUGD602 // Future studios to contact

Once we have submitted all our work and got everything done, I am going to concentrate on looking at more studios to contact and try and get some more placements.

So far I have applied for the placement with Peter and Paul, which sounds very interesting and right up my street, so hopefully something may come from that. Also I have been back in contact with the studio I did my placement at and I am currently speaking with them to set up some visit times.

Other studios that I have looked at and want to contact are:

Modern Designers

Modern Designers

This is the bit where we talk about ourselves. This project and that big client. This award and that thing we won that’s now a doorstop yadda yadda yadda. This isn’t really our style though. This is because we’d rather listen to our clients, instead of talking at them. This is why our ideas never come off the shelf. This is why we work with everyone from fashion labels to charities. This is lovingly crafted print,

advertising, digital, the lot. This is attention to detail and time well spent. This is about finding the best

way for you to engage with your audience. This is modern design thinking.

Project 53

Project 53 is an independent design agency based in Leeds and London. We work with local, national and international clients in a wide range of fields from concerts, events, hospitality and luxury to online, digital and sports.

Mark Studio

Mark is an independent branding and graphic design studio, based in Manchester.

Since 2005, we’ve been producing outstanding work for clients of all kinds and sizes, winning a fair few awards along the way.

We’d love to talk to you about what we could do for your business or brand. But in the mean time, we’re happy to let our work speak largely for itself.

OUGD602 // Creative Review Article

As part of Yoke and the Dialogue exhibition we were contacted by Creative Review on the opening night to feature the exhibition on their blog. Receiving this email when things were proving difficult within the day of putting the exhibition up, was a well deserved relief and spurred us on to get the exhibition up and ready for the opening. We were really happy and over the moon when they asked us to be a feature, it proved to us that the exhibition was being viewed by others in the industry and they thought it was a great idea / concept to feature it online.

We were asked to provide information about the project and exhibition, along with some images to be used within the article. We mentioned the college, leeds print festival and other local printers, to show that it is much more than just a student project. We were later contacted by them again, asking for us to provide them with photos of the opening night and they would feature the exhibition in the next iPad edition. Again we really couldn't believe it, it made me feel like we had created something which was of a really high standard - its hard to evaluate it because we were so close to the project and involved in it, to us it didn't seem that extraordinary because we knew what we had to produce for it and how we were going to do it, but getting things like this happen, just proves that the standard of the event and work must have been high and people were really impressed with what we had produced - the recognition for the exhibition was great.

The article can be viewed here:
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2014/march/a-conversation-piece

Article wording:
Creative duo Yoke bring a week-long, non-profit screen-print exhibition to the Corn Exchange in Leeds from tonight, with an aim to create an exhibition space that spurs a dialogue between creatives through a blind collaboration...

Yoke, made up of designers Eve Warren and Nathan Bolton, asked a variety of creatives and studios to submit work that would be used in a collaborative way, to be showcased in a final exhibition called Dialogue. Each designer consented to this, with the understanding they would not be able to choose their creative partners. "The contributors had to be open to their submissions being manipulated through the use of print and the matchmaking process that paired two submissions together, in order to make a series of screen-printed artworks," says Warren.

Although they had originally planned to keep it local, they decided to through the net wider and ended up with over 150 submissions from creatives and studios around the world. "We're excited to collaborate with studios and agencies ranging from locals The Beautiful Meme, to Two Points studio from Barcelona who will be speaking in Manchester over the next couple of days," Warren says. (Two Points talk as part of graphics event BCNMCR, see more in the April issue of CR and on the CR blog here).

As soon-to-be graphic design graduates from Leeds College of Art, the duo decided to do something ambitious to help foster future opportunities, but the initial idea developed from their mutual love for print. "When it comes down to being emerging print artists, we are thankful for being on a course that takes print seriously, as there is the argument that print is dead. Print is not dead. For example, we have seen Leeds Print Festival grow every year as well as see local passionate printers like The Print Project produce so many new and innovative ways to interact with print. There is something so nice about getting your hands dirty in comparison to sitting staring at a computer screen all day," says Warren. "The North is an exciting place to be right now, especially Leeds as in the past 18 months so many things have started to pop up and we wanted to be a part of that."

For me this was great and showed that the work we had put into the exhibition and the time spent on it had really paid off. Creative Review don't just put anything on their blog, it's all high standard and quality work, so they must have been impressed with the exhibition to feature it. This was the first time I have had any work featured on a external website, which was great for me as designer to be entering the industry soon.

OUGD602 // Personal Branding // Website

After trying to design my website myself for the past year and never being happy with it / it not working the best when put live. I decided to look into alternatives which would create the website for me on a template basis. 

After speaking to people who know more about web design and looking at different variations online, I decided to go with Squarespace. I have seen this being used a lot recently with other designers and studios. It offers many templates which are simplistic, but look great on the web, these can all be customised and be changed using html. 

The main reason i wanted to use sqaurespace was the user interface, it makes it really easy to create new pages and upload images through drag and drop. The images can all be resized and re arranged within the screen to create layouts within the page itself. 

Another reason was the fact that all the templates were responsive. With todays world and the massive amounts phones, devices and computer screens we have, a website needs to work on any device, having this enabled within the template makes it much easier for me as it does it all automatically. 

Creating the website -  

Project pages - 

User interface which works on a drag and drop basis. This is really simple to use and navigate around. You simple upload the images you want to use and you can resize them and reorder them on the page. The images can either be singular and you can add more together into a group, its very flexible and enables interesting layouts to be created within the pages. 

Creating a top heading and project description on the page, this will be consistent across the website and gives a brief description of what the project is about. 

As you can see the images are large within the pages. When images are added to the page, it make them the full width of the website template. This is great to showcase the work and means anyone looking at the website will have very clear images to see the work. 

About - 

The about section of the website includes information about me as a designer. This will be split down into sections within the page. I will speak about my own practice, time studying and information about things outside of my own practice. I also want to include information on experience and achievements, as as a graduate designer I think this is important for employers to see. 

To display the experience and achievements, I have created a column down the right hand side to include all this information. The page also has a image at the top, this personalises the website and makes it more interesting to look at.  

Contact Page - 

The contact page is vital for any portfolio website. This will include all my contact details for anyone to contact me in relation to work. I will also include links to social media website and other ways of viewing my work. 

To create the links within the page, I had to code this section myself. Adding the links was really simple and it was done through a hyperlink section on the template. Again the advantage of using the website, everything is easy to do and create. 

Live Website - 
Once I had designed the website, to put it live you had to sign up for a paid account and choose a domain name. All this came within a one off payment for the year and as a student, I got it at a discount price.

Home page. 

The template is based around creating a grid of square images which act as links through to each project page.

Home Page.

When hovering over the images, it turns orange and the project name is displayed. This is the link through to the project page. 

Project page. 

At the top of the project page there is the project description, giving a brief overview of what the project is. 

Project page. 

Scrolling through the page you can see that the images are large and create a great showcase for each of the projects. Image can be grouped and resized within the page itself, to create a more interesting layout. 

About page. 

With an image at the top of the page, this makes it more personalised. The images are related to the page and show a little bit of personality. The information is split into two columns. The main content area is about me and my practise. The right hand column displays experience and achievements. 

Contact page. 

Following the same template as the about page, this again has a image at the top of the page with contact information displayed below. In the main area is all the contact details to get in touch with me and the right hand column includes link out to social media and other sites to view my portfolio. 

I am really happy with the results of the website. Using sqaurespace was a great idea as it has made creating the website really easy for myself and for in the future. But the main thing is that it looks really professional and great to have to showcase my work.   

OUGD602 // Personal Branding // Stationery

After creating the logo and being happy with the use of the typeface, I could move on and start to design the printed stationery. For this I am going to create a letterhead, invoice, quotation and compliment slip. 

Initially I took the letterhead and experimented with the design and layout of that before turning to the rest of the products. I thought if I could a layout worked out for the letterhead the invoice and quotation can carry that same design and just be adapted to fit the content. 

Sticking with the aesthetic from the logo, I wanted to create a layout which had a simple design and layout so that the content can be clearly visible, as with these products it is very important the client can see the information they need. 

With an approach to doing this I had to think about splitting the information into different sections to clearly divide the clients info, my info and the content of the product. To achieve this, I looked at using columns within the design to show a divide within the information. 

The first layout takes a very minimal approach and uses a single thin stroked line to separate the information in the left hand column to the content. Using a grid which splits the page down into columns, I have taken a 2:1 ratio approach to split the page into two columns. The content of the product is most important so this needs a larger content area. The column on the left holds all the information for both the client and my information. 

I feel that this layout does work in some ways, as it clearly split the information up and having all the details grouped together in one area, works well to identify the information and give space for the main content of the product. But I do think this is too minimal for the design. There is too much white space for my liking and it doesnt feel like a considered design. 

This second design, takes a different approach. Here I have split the information up my taking the top section of the page to display all my information, the remainder of the page is the content of the product and the client information, sticking the 2:1 ratio within the design, the information is clearly split up and doesnt need the line between the client info and content area. 

I don't particularly like the idea of having my information at the top, I think that this creates an unbalanced design as it feel very top heavy and your eyes are attracted to that area straight away. But I do like the use of the horizontal lines, which define the design more, making sense of the space within the product. 

Taking ideas from both the designs, I have mixed them together to create this layout. Here I have the idea of using the horizontal lines which defines the top and bottom of the product. Having the line beneath the logo creates a header area and shows that this is my identity. The main content area still uses the 2:1 ratio, which splits the space up well and with the spacing between the two columns you can clearly identify the two separate sections. With a more defined spacing within the information column, the user will be able to see the client information and my information better. 

I think this design is a good mix of the two above, this feels like a more considered layout, which takes advantage of the format and space within the product. This works well as an overall design and as a template to use for the remainder of the products as the main content area can be adapted to hold the content of each product. 

Taking the final layout which I choose to use, the only adaptation I did on the letter head was taking away the 'nathan bolton design' header at the top of the page. I decided that this was unnecessary, it wasn't needed within the design and the clients know who they are dealing with, it was redundant to the design of the product.  

Letterhead

Using the letterhead as a template I could adapt this to create the quotation product. With the set up of using the 2:1 column ratio, the needed information could be added to the left hand column. Pushing my information further down the page, creates more room for the needed information - this takes the form of job number, descriptions, client addresses. The main content area of the product has been adapted to hold the information of the quotation. Taking the idea of the lines within the letterhead design, I have used these to separate the main content area and create a table within the page. This clearly defines the different job specs and prices of each job entailed, with the totals being added and recorded at the bottom of the page. 

This template has worked really well for this product, the splitting of the information has been easy due to the two column layout and the main content area is large enough to accomodate the information of the quotation. 

The final product to design was the invoice. Again using the template and taking the quotation product as one that I could adapt. The information was very similar to the quotation product. Futher information needed to be added, but with the design it was pretty much identical. The main content area of this product was larger as it has all the product information and prices involved, but with the template being pretty simple, this could all fit in easily and still create a balanced design. 

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The compliment slip is always a strange product to design. Im not entirely sure if you do actually need a compliment slip, I don't particularly like the feel of compliment slips and the wording that most people tend to use within them. They feel too formal and mostly unnecessary for what people use them for. 

I still wanted the idea of a compliment slip and a product which was branded that I can write a quick note or something on when sending out products, but I didnt want it have that aesthetic of a compliment slip. 

Looking at the format of it, I think that the standard size is too big and a massive waste of space, I reduced the size and created a more compact rectangular shape that was more in proportion to each other than the standard size.   

From the letterhead, I liked the line being put underneath the logo and it created a header on the page, but I thought carry that aspect through the compliment slip, would tie all the products together and this defines the compliment slip. The line rules the bottom of the page and gives and area which a personalised message can be added to. 

As I said before, I wanted to take away the idea of the compliment slip and the common identity of one, I don't think that having all your details on a compliment slip is necessary, whenever you use the product it is to someone that you have previously spoken to or that have come to you to ask for samples, so they already know who you are and have your details, therefore I see them as redundant information that is just there for the sake of it. 

With this in mind, I have just added my website address to the compliment slip and thats all the information that will be displayed.