OUGD502 // Module Evaluation

 1. What skills have you developed throughout this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
In this module i have learnt a lot about professional practice. Before this year I didnt really know a lot about the idea of being a designer in the industry and what it took to set up a business and even the smaller things of contacting studios and talking to people in the industry. I feel that throughout this module i have gradually got better and got more confident in talking to studios and contacting them about placements etc, which has led to me getting two, two weeks placement throughout the summer, which i am proud of myself because this time last year I wouldn't have the confidence in myself and my work to go out and approach companies.
In terms of learning about businesses and how they run, i have learnt a lot through the workshops and lectures that we have had with john and fred. This has taught me more about the business side of things, which i havent got a full 100% grasp of, but i now know a lot more about the business and how i would set up my own business.

This module has improved my presentation skills both with myself and actual presentations and presentation boards through the PPP final presentation we had to do. Within this again i had the confidence to show my work and say what i thought were my strengths and weaknesses about myself.

The other skill that this module has improved is my collobaration and being able to work in group. Before coming to uni, i was a designer that liked to keep my work to myself and liked to work on my own because i knew exactly what i wanted and when i could do it. With the brief of setting up our own studio and putting the business theory into practice, i was working in a group of 4. In the end we decided not to carry on the studio group after the brief, but during it i was exposed to working with 3 other people, this improved my skills of being a team player and having to work along side other people. Not everything went really well, but overall it was a positive experience and something that i have learnt from.


2. What approaches to methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
A lot of this module was about blogging and doing the tasks were set to achieve certain things within the professional practice. This came down to a lot of reflective writing within my blog and evaluating myself and other peoples work.
Before doing this module this year, i felt that my reflective skills werent the best, i could reflect about my work and say what i had done, but not in a analytical way, which is what i needed to start to do. Doing this this time round has improved this skill and i now right much more about the design and break it down to the reason why i have designed it that way and how it helps communicate the message. Also i can talk about other people work much more efficiently and i feel more confident in breaking the work down to strengths, weaknesses and what i would change.

The other design set part of the module was designing our own personal branding. This to start with was really hard, as i found it difficult to try and brand myself and create something that i was happy with. But when i sat down and thought about it more it became easier and i began to enjoy it. Through doing my own branding, i have improved my branding skills, which includes logo design, layout and packaging. I feel that my promotional pack is very strong, and reflects me as a designer. Again through creating this i have used the idea of focussing on stock, format and making it interactive, which is something i have adopted throughout my own practice. I think the layout and use of colour of the identity is strong as works consistent throughout all the products i have created.

3. What strengths can you identify within your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
I feel that my strength within this module has been the reflective writing. I have concentrated on this a lot through the year and tried to be as analytical as i could, improving this skill has helped me through this module and the other modules too.

My other strength i believe is my branding, I really enjoyed doing this and think i have created a good platform for me to carry on working from for my own personal branding. I think the promo pack is interesting and shows me as a designer, which i am going to send out over the summer to studios, so hopefully this will help me get more placements or even just to start talking with more studios.

I think my presentation skills have improved and think it was a strength within this module. I was a lot more confident when i did my presentation and knew what i wanted to say. I think my presentation was designed well and again communicated the information well. I was confident in what i was saying because i believed in my work a lot more and i was happy to show it everyone.


4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how willy address these in the future?
The weaknesses of this brief was probably my blog and time management. I havent kept on top of my blog throughout the year which has meant it has built up with what i needed to post and do, this has led to certain points throughout the year having a lot to do with my blog. Also i could of maybe blogged more about work that i have been getting interested in and just things i found interesting within the world of graphic design. But mainly it comes down to time management.


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

Keep up to date with blogging - this will stop the build up of more and more posts and ask needed to be completed, it also will keep me up to date and knowing that i dont have it to do. It takes away time from other areas of my work also.

Blog more regular and more things - I feel as though i could of blogged about the things which i have become more interested in throughout the year and maybe more about work i have found etc online, just so i had it there as a scrap book / reference which i could look back on.

Time management - This module has been one which has run throughout the whole year, at certain points its the one module which gets pushed to the back and forgotten about - i think if i planned it out more then it could have been stronger and i would have been able to do the things which i spoke about above.

Put myself in a collaboration more - I think as i found this collaboration within this module so vital and useful for me knowing what i want to do when i finish the course and the sort of studio i would want to work in, I could ask peers within our year to do more collaborations and try out different things within this, this again will give me more experience and maybe inform me more about where id want to work after uni.

Keep up with contacts and networking - Throughout this module we have been told about networking and contacting studios, which i started to do fairly early on, but after contacting the first couple, i drifted away from this and stopped doing it. I think if i had kept up with how i had started i could be in a position with more contacts and being able to put myself out into the industry more.



Attendance - 5
Punctuality - 5
Motivation - 5
Commitment - 5
Quantity of work produced - 4
Quality of work produced - 4
Contribution of the group - 4
 

OUGD502 // Study Task 10 // PPP Presentation

This is my PPP Presentation which reflect over the last year of being on the course.

OUGD502 // Personal Branding // Final Images

After creating both the promotion pack and my personal branding i have taken images of both the elements to show the content and my branding.

Promo Pack.

Personal Branding.

I am really happy with the outcomes of both the elements of this brief. I think i have branding myself well and done something which represents and communicates me as a designer. I think everything i have designed here is very consistent across the whole product range, which i think i have pushed and shown a large amount of products for this. 

I am really happy with my promo pack and i think it is something different from what i have looked at online. I believe that it should do well and hopefully get me some more placements / studio visits with other studios that i send them to. I would like to think that the two i have got i got them without this or any business card, now i have the promo pack and everything else, it should put me in good stead. 

With the business branding, the main accent colour - orange has printed differently to the business card and other elements i printed earlier because i used a different printer and not the ones down with James in the digital print. This was a shame that i couldn't get down there and print them out as everything would be exactly the same, but i can always reprint these. This shows the idea of my branding, which you can see how i am representing myself and communicating myself as a designer.

OUGD502 // Personal Branding // Promo Pack

The promo pack is the last design task that we have been set within the PPP module and looks about creating our on branding and promotional material to use to send out studios and clients to get placements and studio visits throughout the remaining years of university. 

When it came to designing this element of the brief i was well on my way because i had already started to design elements of this for the previous interviews and studio visits i had been on earlier in the year. 

The pack is going to contain a lot of the branded work i have previously shown in last posts. It will contain:

Digital Portfolio and presentation  

This element of the pack is going to be the presentation that i have used within the studio visits i have been to. This includes my most up to date projects and the ones in which i most proud of and confident is showing what i am as a designer. 

The idea of doing it digital is because a lot of work nowadays is taken on this digital aspect, also with contacting many studios is saves on cost of printing more and more samples of my work, it also is good for when i need to update it after doing more work as i can simply insert more slides and re format the whole portfolio. If this was printed it would mean re printing the whole document which isnt very cost efficient.

Creative CV - The cv in which i have just designed will be included to show the studio / company my design education, skills and more information about me as a designer. 

Business Card - Including a business card gives the studio / company the first look at my branding and something they can see the rest of my branding through and maybe recognise me online. It is also something they can keep hold of that has all my contact details on.  

Print Samples - As part of my practice is about print, and i do use print techniques and other various techniques within the work i complete, i thought including some prints of work i have done would be good to give the studio as a gift and an insight into some of the print work that i can do and use within my own work. 

These 4 elements make up my promotion pack, which i am simply going to package in order to post out to studios. The different elements will be packaged within a branded envelope case, which will then be packaged within a metallic black bubble bag to protect it within the post, but also works aesthetically with my branded material and will become part of my brand stationery. 

Print Sample

In order to collate the print together i am going to create a wrap for the content. There are going to be three A3 screen prints and a letterpress hot dog booklet within this print sample. The work is going to be bound with a belly band which is two mount boarded piece of stock with the contents between, this will be held together with elastic bands. 

I think this aesthetic will be good for my promo pack because it something different to a normal package, but is still relevant to the design needs - as i am packaging it in this way i can add or take away the content of this without having to re print everything. 

The front of the belly band is this design above. Even though the pack does contain some of my work this is only like a sample or taster of it, so this front panel of the promo pack is talking about showing them my work in person - trying to hint about giving me a studio visit or interview. I have used the speech bubble aspect within this design and used it to direct them to get in touch with me. This is wrote in a comical way and meant to be light hearted, but at the same time hint and put thoughts into the audience about contacting me. 

The back design of the belly band is my contact details and logo. This is laid out aligned to the left and equally spaced throughout the design. Again i have used the speech bubble and the information displayed within this, once again is meant to direct the user to contact me, or to direct them to view more of my work online. 

This will simply be held together with two elastic bands, i will cut notches out of each panel for the elastic band to sit in and tie everything together. 

Photos

Main promo element

The main elements of the promo pack is the remaining three products - business card, cv, portfolio. 

The res of the pack is designed around the size of the portfolio cd case - in fact all of the pack is, as this is the largest product of the pack - keeping it to this size again will save cost on posting as it can still be sent as a letter. 

I came up with the idea of the pack from seeing a way of packaging a CD online:

The idea of this packaging is to use the mount board as a strong sturdy stock which can protect the CD still and creates an alternative and interesting way of packaging a CD. 

I didn't want to use this as the direct packaging for the CD which will hold my portfolio. This idea of the use of the grey board will be backbone to the design of the promo pack, and i had the idea of building the elements up on top of each other which everything is then held together by the elastic bands. This will create a stack like design aesthetic and be something that is more interesting than a folded booklet or folded down publication. I think this is more creative and fun and the user will be more interested in the idea and having to un package it all to get into it.

Design of Promo Pack 

For the design of the promo pack it was a pretty much hands on project, there wasnt that much designing for the actual packaging of it all. 

Firstly i started by creating the greyboard at the right size, i measured this to the size of the cd wallet, then added extra room round the edges, to allow the notches for the elastic bands to sit in. 

This was the back plate to the whole pack. 

From this i started to add the other products onto it. 

For the CD wallet i used a pre-cut wallet design which i made up to make the CD wallet, this was pure white card, to add my branding to this i created a label that wrapped around the cd wallet, this had my name and logo on it, which i printed out orange to match the main branding accent colour. 

From this i added my creative CV, in order to make this fit within the pack i had to fold it down from A4. When i was folding it, i wanted to have the main title as the first thing you see, so this had to folded to the front. In order to to this i had to fold it in half length ways, then into three to create a small folded sheet. After i did this i un folded and found that it stood up on its own and sort of lent towards you with the title facing you, this looked good on its own and turned out to be a good way which i can display the CV. 

CV added to the promo pack

How the CV would be displayed on its own. 

The final product to add to the promotion pack was my business card

This gave a final result of:

This is the inside of the promo pack, which i am really pleased with. I think it is something different and interesting which the studios i send this to, will be intrigued to see whats inside. The whole idea of it was to make it interactive so the user had to physically undo everything and look through it all. I think the overall aesthetic of it is very strong and i am happy to send this out and let it represent me as a designer. 

In order to send this out to studios i needed a envelope to send it in. As i have branded everything else, i thought i might as well make the envelope, which can incorporate my branding too. This also meant i could custom design the envelope and make it fit the promo pack snuggly within it. 

The envelope turned out to be more of a case for the promo pack. I originally made it out of the orange stock i have used throughout my branding, but after making it i realised it would be too weak to be used as a envelope, so to strengthen it i used mount board which i mounted to the net to strengthen it up. This still gave me the same colour as the stock was still used and it was alot stronger now and able to use as the envelope. 

As you can see the promo pack fits snuggly within the envelope which is made just to the right measurements for it fit nicely within it. The drop in the design of the net of the envelope near the top allows the user to be able to pull the promo pack out of the envelope to view it. 

I wanted the envelope to be more of stronger case which it has turned out to be, in this case it was a good thing because now the user can use it as a case to store the promo in and keep it nice and tidy, maybe even save it to show other creatives that they see or could recommend me to. 

This whole promo pack and envelope will then be put within a black metallic bubble bag to be posted. This will protect it throughout the post and keep it in pristine condition when the user receives it. I decided to use the bubble bag because of the extra protection but also because aesthetically it fits in with my branding and it looks a lot nicer than an ordinary post bag.

Postage Label

For posting the package off to the various companies, I have designed a postage label to stick on the front of the bubble bag. 

The idea of the postage label is for it run with the rest of my branding, this is used by the colour and the 'hi' speech bubble. I have used the speech bubble again to make it more personalised to the receiver of the package. When there name is wrote on the label, it will look and read as though I am saying hi to them. 

After designing the first label, i then thought about adding my logo to the label, this will carry my branding on further and have give the package my identity. 

I have set up the page to be able to print out onto pre-cut sticky labels. This fits to the design and layout of the labels. I will then simply cut around the outline to get the sticker shape. 

This is the sticker stuck the outside of the package. 

OUGD502 // Personal Branding // Website

As i was on with designing all the branding products for my personal branding, i wanted to design a website for when i was going to the studios that i had contacted about placements. I thought it would be good to be able to direct them to my website and having something there about myself. 

When i came designing the website, it was very close to the studio visit and interview that i had with one of the studios i had contacted, so i didn't have time to code a full website with all my work on. Instead i decided to build and code a holding site, this would display me as a studio / practice and redirect the users to my behance, cargo and tumblr to see my current work. 

To start the design of the holding page i created a scamp, this is a to scale version of the website and shows me how it will look when live on the web. I have used elements form creative cv and invoice and quote sheets to create the main title of the holding page, which as a holding page i think it the sort of thing i needed for it. 

As you can see i have carried through the 'hi' speech bubble which again welcomes the user and makes it more personal and more approachable to contact me. 

The holding page displays that the website is coming soon, but the user can view my work on the various networking sites. These are displayed as icons and the user simply clicks on them to be redirected to the websites. 

Website scamp to give an overall view of the website and i used to work up the relevant elements of the design so they could be produced for the web. 

The icons for the following networking sites, which display my work were created in illustrated and i made simple icons to display these. 

Behance

Cargo Collective

Tumblr

By creating the icons myself i was able to keep them consistent with the main accent colour of website and with my branding. This again ties everything together and makes it a full body of branded products. 

Coming soon section, this was the initial wording of the body copy, but i later changed it to the one below because this identified it was going to be the website that was coming soon and just made it clearer to the user about it. 

The main title area and design is taken from creative cv and displays my name and the area of design that i specialise in. The 'hi' bubble is again worked into the design to make it more personal and approachable. 

This is the final design of the holding page and how it is displayed online. When creating the website, i have centered all the elements of the design, this makes it better for viewing over different sized screens, as which ever screen size is used the design will always be scaled and centered within the screen. 

For the time being i am going to leave this as the website design as it directs to websites which have all my current work on so clients and studios can still access these, i am going to work on a full website over the summer when i have more time to take my time over it and make it the best i can. 

I have the proposal of the design ready and know what i want to create for the website, so when i come around to designing it, it should be easier as the idea is already there. 

Website Proposal

For the design of my website i want to keep the style of the holding page above running throughout the website, as i like this aesthetic and it is in keeping with the branding material too. 

The homepage of the website. When the user first goes onto the website they will be greeted with this screen. This is the same which i have used on the holding page. It introduces me as a designer and what disciplines of design i do. 

The website is designed around scrolling down or clicking the arrows to navigate through it, i thought this would be more interesting and a little different to use as a portfolio website. The user can also click on each link at the top of the page to access each section of the website without having to scroll through it all. 

The next screen which the user will see is the about page. This displays information about me as a designer. It informs them about the design work that i do and my work ethic. It is only brief, but gives the key information about myself. At the bottom of the screen there is a link to download my CV, this will provide the user with further information about me and something they can keep or send to other people. 

The project screen displays all my work. This will contain around 6 different projects, which i feel best show me as a designer and my abilities. At first the user will be able to scroll sideways through the different projects to get a first look and description about it. I have included the disciplines that are involved within the project. At the bottom of the description there is a link to view the project. 

Once clicked on that link, the images of the project will be displayed full screen on the website. The user can then scroll through these images by using the arrow buttons. To get off the images and view the project screen again they can either click the close button in the top right corner or click on the project link again. 

By having each project displayed like this on the website, it takes full advantage of the screen space and will display the images in the best quality and as large as they can to show them off and make it as best visible as it can be for the user to view. I think this looks aesthetically better being full screen too. 

The last page of the website is the contact page. Here the user can view my contact details. On the email address they can click on it and it will direct them to their email program to send an email straight to me. My contact number when clicked on can be downloaded as a contact card to be loaded onto any smart phone. 

There are also the links to my other sites to view my work this includes: behance, cargo and tumblr. 

At the bottom of the screen there is also the links to download my CV or request a promotional pack. 

I feel that this page is vital to the website as it holds all the information for the user to contact me, i have designed it simple so that the information can be easily seen and accessed, to make it clear what my details are. 

I think as an overall design, this website will be in keeping with my branding and communicates me as a designer well. I think the design of it and the way in which it works, is different from an ordinary site and makes it more interesting and interactive to look through - the idea is that it represents the way in which i like to design and produce products - I tend to do interactive products and use different formats and sizes etc. This website shows that but through a digital format. 

I like the idea of the full screen images for the projects, which i think will show off the work to its best potential and having it so big on the screen takes advantage of the screen size and makes it the image communicate to the user as they can all the smaller details and get a good view of the work. 

Over the summer i am going to try build and code this website and hopefully have it up and running towards the end of the summer ready for third year which i can then keep adding to and always have an updated portfolio which anyone can view. This should put me in a good position for getting myself out into the industry and being able to hand out my business cards to clients and studios knowing that the website is there and shows my work at the best possible way to them. 

Im looking forward to start building this and get back into the flow of web coding.