Wednesday, 30 March 2016

OUGD503 - Studio Brief 03 - Project Report

http://issuu.com/katiebull/docs/project_report

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6bo5RQ7QVxfaWIxSXg1QjNCY00/view?usp=sharing

Project Report

Studio brief 01 individual practice was the perfect way for a young creative to focus on work not just only on a selective creative level but also a higher industry and commercial level. Selecting your own briefs is a way for a designer to be introduced to a real world setting, picking briefs based on their individual preferences and skill sets challenging them to outsource what is best for them to boost their creative confidence and produce a more informed higher quality outcome. It is important for a designer to pick the design brief to ensure that the outcome is not based on the design aesthetics but a representation of the businesses need for a designer and a clear focus on the clients aims and objectives. The designer can then decided whether the brief is suitable to them or not instead of trying to fulfills a brief that isn’t. Where as if they were given a brief that wasn’t suitable to them it can result in a poorly executed design, giving them a bad reputation and compromising their career.

For the reasons stated above I decided to pick the Feel Good Drinks brief, as I have a keen interest in the drinks industry as well as advertisement campaigns I wanted to challenge myself to gain new skills and work on a higher industry level.

The brief wanted to spread feel good and positivity on the radar of young women but after looking further into the business aims they stated that they actually wanted to increase sales targets. I loved this brief as it was a chance for me to use my literacy skills to a higher level of industry design through an advertising campaign, in order to fulfill the aims of a business. I also have a keen interest in branding and identity, I felt I could use my expertise in this area of creating visually engaging design as well as challenging myself to use these skills on a more business related commercial level for example, to fulfill sales targets (the businesses aims). Therefore my response to this brief was based more around the business aims than the actual attractiveness of the design. I researched thoroughly into different ways to engage an audience through literate skills. I researched into slogans, illation and metaphors to show that I am creative on different levels of the industry, not just through how something looks. I wanted to create a direct link quickly to the USP (Unique Selling Point) of the product, of no added sugar or preservatives through the use of a short, snappy and memorable slogan.

After deep consideration and variations I came up with “Free the fruit, from the fruit, feel good.” To ensure that the audience knew that it was all natural ingredients, I placed this slogan on a poster advertising the cloudy lemon juice drink, the least popular juice drink which I felt could be the most successful for the brand. I wanted it to be the main drink in the brand as lemons give of connotations of fresh and juiciness, words I wanted people to associate with my brand. I have learnt that design is much more than just visual appearance and it is important to use other skills to help execute a message to the target consumers. However I felt that I could’ve managed my time abit more effectively on this brief as most of my time was spent researching different ways to engage an audience through English skills rather than more time producing the campaign. It took me a while to come up with the slogan, where as this time could’ve been spend making more variants of posters on the different products, although I do not feel that this time was wasted as I think the slogan was the most important aspect of my poster design and focusing on just the one least popular drink could have had lead to a significant increase in sales of that product, rather than advertising all the flavors.
Working on this brief has also giving me an insight into how the advertising industry works and it has given me an opportunity to head down a potentially different career path in advertisement. I feel that this has evidently been presented in my work through the use of a slogan and not just the appearance of the design.

For my smaller briefs such as Penguin and Secret 7 I spend a little more time focusing on the design aesthesis but also my ideas where based around concept. The penguin brief was a chance for me to be introduced into book cover design. I also decided to pick Caitlin Moran – How to be a woman as it was a personal topic to me as it was focused around feminism. I decided to complete this brief mostly based around the context of the publication rather than what title I thought I could make look the most visually attractive. The books context discusses feminist ideologies something which I have a keen interest in and which I am passionate about. Being passionate about what you’re doing tends to be the main driving force behind creativity, which tends to make you better.  I hadn’t produced a book cover before so I found it quite difficult at first but I soon overcame this problem when I researched into it, teaching myself and improving my skill set and expertise, something I otherwise would’ve avoided and therefore not learnt. I taught myself that it is essential not to shy away from things you are uncertain of yet challenge yourself in order to better yourself as a designer. Self- teaching is the perfect way to become more successful in the design industry.

Despite this, I found that my response had a very strong concept which used a pole dancer as an ironic approach to the sexual gratification of women through the male gaze. A topic discussed within the book. I felt that my solution was comical as well as informative because of the deeper message being sent. I researched the topic in depth so that I was extremely clear on the message that I wanted to send which enabled me to fuel all potential ideas. I also focused on the target audience to create motivation, incentive and emotion to give out visual metaphors which convey the topic through the use of imagery, colour palate, typography and layout. I learnt that research is a vital part of working on a commercial level as researching the topic as well as the clients and their aims. It can make you focus the design around the marketing and promotion of a product via a strong concept, argument and message. In the future I would like to do some more editorial design and improve my layout skills, however I don’t think I would want to work on this side of design as although feminism is something I am passionate about, not all books are written on this and some topics might not interest me as they can be very varied. As editorial/ book cover design is a weak point I think it is best to focus on my stronger skill sets.

The secret 7 brief was a way for me to use my other hobbies and interested to my benefit. The brief wanted us to create 7 x 7 inch album cover design based on one of the seven tracks given. It was also a chance for me to create something based solely for no other purpose than its visual appeal as winning entries to the competition were exhibited and sold simply by the cover alone. The cover needed to be representative of the track in order for the buyer to make a direct link to it however, it wasn’t necessary for it to be completely obvious. Album cover design is integral to the success of an album or track as it is what visually symbolize the sound. For the production of my album cover I based it around not only the lyrics of the song but around the genre, artist, tempo. Key, pitch, melody and tone etc in order to clearly visualize the track in a design context, converting sound into vision. Working on this brief helped me to focus specifically on the design attractiveness rather than for a specific purpose as it is easy to get caught up in the reason for design and making the visual appearance lack in certain qualities as not everyone will think deeply into the meaning as consumers aren’t all graphic designers they focus on how the design looks rather than what message it is trying to portray. Good design tends to give of a message instantly without the consumer analyzing it or even realizing.

Studio Brief 02 collaborative practice wanted us to outsource a collaborative partner who matched our requirements of skills needed for a particular brief best suited to us. Good designers rarely go about designing something in a industry setting without the input of peer-designers. It gives the design a breath of fresh air in order to create a new thinking perspective from someone other than yourself, which in the long run improves the design. This was evident when I designed the logo for Grand CafĂ© Coffee the first logo I designed was reflective of a hotel, however I didn’t see this and I thought the design was sophisticated and luxurious the concept that we were going for. However, after the discussion with my partner it opened by eyes up to new opportunities for the design to steer away from it looking like a logo for something it wasn’t. This improved the design dramatically. Although I was still designing It on my own having this outside view made my design more effective for a coffee brand.

Also our skill sets complimented each other as I created the logo design she created the package design something I lack skills in but wanted to learn about. My partner therefore taught me skills I didn’t know which enabled me to learn as well as grow as a designer. This proved that I had in fact picked the right partner. We also were on the same course which meant time management was easy as we were both free at the same time so we got the work done quicker and to a good standard. I definitely want to collaborate more in the future as it is evident in the presentation of my designs that working with someone else enabled us to do things we couldn’t do on our own as well as better our design dramatically, through the use of accessible useful feedback.  






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