Innocent Woolly Hats

Couldn’t resist these little woolly hatted bottles in Sainsburys. Lovely idea from Innocent to raise money for Help the Aged. Find out more.

Learn Something New Everyday

Nice idea for a site. Well presented and interesting.

Liverpool Design Symposium

Wednesday 4th November

D&AD Student Awards Talk Notes:

10.00 am – 11.30 am - The first talk was given by Fergal Kilroy, a member of the D&AD Education team. He discussed what they were looking for in a submission. Here are some notes I took: Entries are judges by 70% industry professionals and 30% clients, your idea doesn’t have to be possible, stick to the brief – think about the client/sponsor, if your working on a digital idea – collaborate and get someone to mock it up for you. To summarise they are basically looking for a Good Idea – Well Crafted and Well Executed.

The second half of the talk was given by Andy Sandoz from Work Club (www.work-club.com).He went over how he felt the briefs could be approached. Discussing the 4 steps he works to when approaching a brief.

1. Insights (truths) – Think about the business objective behind the brief.

2. Audience. – Who are you talking to? Think about trends.

3. Technology.- What can you do?

4. Advertising. – (not always the answer) Appropriate. Unusual setting.

11.45 am – 12.45 pm

DBA Education Seminar

Speaker: Ian Thompson

Creative Director at Thompson Brand Partners (http://www.thompsonbrandpartners.com/), Ian Thompson showed us examples of projects to give examples of the working process. He also talked about the business element of a project talking about the ROI (return on investment) for example. He used the example of Bewilderwood (http://www.bewilderwood.co.uk/) , as a successful project from start to finish.

His listed what, as an employer he would wish to see in a prospective graduate employee: Insatiable desire to learn fast

-       FRESHNESS

-       Skills

-       What can you bring to them?

-       A willingness to work

-       No fear of doing the boring stuff for a while

-       An outline understanding of why people pay us to what we do

-       Be commercially minded

-       Want your work to be effective

-       Able to talk about the world (not just the design world)

-       Demonstrate a real interest in the brief

-       Self sufficient

-       Ask questions about the business

-       Talk about the audience and markets

With regards to a portfolio he said that it should be of a high presentation quality, tell a story/narrative through it, illustrate what was going on in your head and show the brief from start to finish.

 

3.00 pm – 3.15 pm Next was the portfolio surgery. I had mine with Rob Watson from RAW design. (http://www.rawdesignstudio.co.uk/)  He was very positive about my portfolio although I had just thrown together a few final boards from last year. He said that I needed to include more of an explanation about what the brief had been and what my idea was, as quite often you aren’t there to explain when people are looking at you portfolio. We chatted about my dissertation and the way in which he is currently using social media in his studio. His advice was to get a website and more work experience. He recommended just sending nicely worded email, complimenting the company’s work, with a few pieces of your work attached, as personally he doesn’t open mailers. The one question he asked that I struggled with was, what are my influences, so I will need to read up on different designers that I like in order to be able to answer this one knowledgably in a real interview. Overall I felt that it went really well and I enjoyed just talking to him and wasn’t nervous. It has made me more confident about showing my portfolio to people and talking about my work.

 

D&AD President’s Lecture

Speaker: Michael Wolff

Time: 7.00 pm – 8.30 pm

“Michael Wolff, a co – founder of one of the world’s most iconic design companies – Wolff Olins – is recognized today as a leader in thinking on brands. He lectures in many countries including Brazil, Mexico, Singapore and the USA. He’s Patron of the Inclusive Design Challenge with the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the RCA (Royal College of Art), a member of the Government sponsored Design and Technology Alliance against crime, Chairman of the Legible London initiative with Transport for London and a visiting Professor at the University of the Arts in London and a Senior Fellow of the RCA He’s a former President of both the D&AD (Design and Art Directors Association) and CSD Chartered Society of Designers.

Michael now runs Michael Wolff & Company in London. Most recent clients are 3i, Mothercare and Ministry of Sound in the UK – Citibank and Citigroup in the US – and a new bank in Russia.

Michael will be divulging his knowledge and opinions relating to the theme of the symposium ‘Branding the City’ amongst other things.”

Michael Wolff was an interesting speaker and I took a lot of notes, because of his background he had a lot to say on branding as this is obviously his field. Some of the particular points that stood out where:

-       Designers don’t hire the portfolio, they hire the human, and it just illustrates what you are saying about yourself.

-       Don’t be dismissive of language

-       Don’t be a Mac monkey

-       Your only competition is your past performance

-       Don’t be scared to be the best you can be

Overall I found the Symposium a very interesting and rewarding day. I was so pleased that I had not backed out of the portfolio surgery as I had thought about because I felt my work was not good enough for a professional to see. I found that the D&AD advice talks were useful as they showed me how I needed to layout my work and what the standard was. I realize now that I need to get a move on and start creating some great briefs for both the awards and my portfolio.

Collecting research

I am currently looking at this brief from MPA Roses Student Creativity Awards 2010:

7. Save our pubs

“Public houses, boozers, second homes – call them what you will – have been the heart and soul of the British community for centuries. But our pubs are now in peril and actually closing down at a rate of 52 a week. Your challenge: use the power of branding to bring pubs back from the brink and get the beer and good times flowing once again.”

For the research I decided to try this new software I have found to create a survey. I wanted to see what people feel are the most important elements of a pub and using this information to play on peoples feelings and what they would be losing out on if pubs were to disappear for ever.

Click here to take the survey!

Placement Diary

Tuesday 13th Oct: We had some more new clothes in that needed to be photographed and put up on the site so I did this in the morning. Sarah had also been to a nursery show on the Sunday and had secured the supply of several new products. I had to then source images for these new products, size these ready for the site and then create new pages for them. It was quite hard having to write descriptions for products that I didn’t have, as I felt I couldn’t describe them properly but between Sarah and the internet I managed it! Here is an example of one of the new web pages:

Thursday 15th October: We have reached a sort of lull at the business currently as Sarah is just waiting on the shop to be finalised, has decided to leave updating the website till at least Easter and the catalogue is well under way. There was a lot of small maintenance things that needed to be done today so I spent a lot of time just correcting little bits on the website, refreshing pages by updating the images. I find this makes such a big difference as before I came Sarah was saving the images as low quality GIFs so they have a really grainy and not very high quality appearance about them. It really lifts a page and I think makes the product more attractive to prospective buyers if it looks bright and clear in the picture. Unfortunately however I just don’t have the time to go through all images though I have done the majority! I also created the optional assembly graphic below which I was very pleased with. I used a simple image of something I though would be recognisibly related to the topic, in this case the tools required to assemble furniture and altered them so that they fit in with the colour scheme and matched the style of the website:

Placement Diary

Tuesday 6^th October: Today I went through the website and sorted through the categories and how they were ordered properly, we changed a few around so that new ones where created and others were combined. It was all focused on ease of usability for the sight as from looking at orders and some of the telephone calls she was receiving Sarah didn’t think that customers were finding it as easy to navigate around the site as it should be. I also created the new Autumn banners. I experimented with bringing a bit of colour into the banners with an Autumn leaves background and I think this has livened up the catergory pages. I am however not completely happy with how the homepage looks but Sarah seems to be so that is all that matters.

Thursday 8th October: Today I went through the catalogue images and pages that we hadn’t yet done and that needed updating. We have added and removed quite a few products so it was important that we went through and made sure that no products we had discontinued are put i the catalogue. I worked mainly on the Nursery and Maternity and Gifts sections as we had not previously done these there was also a lot of moving around which resulted in a Bed and Bath Time section that we did not previously have. I find it a bit tedious trawling through the image disks to find all the image required when I will not be using them but I realise that it is something that needs doing, I didn’t mind writing the descriptions as I had written quite a lot of the ones for the website so I knew what to write. All the descriptions that I do have to go through Sarah before they go to the print company, I haven’t had any back so I don’t know how much they have needed to be changed but it will be interesting to see when the catalogue comes out.

Bostock and Pollitt: What one tree means to me

Me and Laura found this brief two days before the competition closed. We decided to test ourselves and see what we could come up with. Here is the brief:

“Think about one tree and what it means to you. Then, using our template in which a number one forms the basis for the tree, illustrate what that tree means to you.

It could be the tree that was home to your childhood tree-house or swing when you were growing up. The tree you sheltered under when lost for weeks in the jungle. Your family tree. Or you could even tell us about when you were barking up the wrong tree. The more lateral and abstract your thinking, the better. If your submission is unique in concept and style, it is more likely to be chosen.

We will also require a brief (25-50 word) description of why that tree is important to you, which will be placed alongside the illustration.”

Here is my response:

” My tree is familiar and comforting, like an old woolly jumper. It has holes and smells strange yet I always resort to it when I feel down, I hide in its branches until I feel I can face the world.”

I enjoyed doing this brief and felt i got a lot done in the time we had (see knitted leaves and no. 1!) but I had a real struggle trying to send the image and am worried that it was not in the right format, dpi, the colours have been distorted etc. So this is definitely something I will be working on in order to learn the correct way to email work. I don’t expect to hear anything back and enjoyed the challenge of a tight deadline and it has proved to myself that i can do something with out taking ages to do so.

Placement Diary

Tuesday 29th September: I have now changed my days to Tuesday and Thursday to fit in with my uni timetable. I am finding it quite hard to juggle both this placement and my studies but hope that this will not affect either. Today I went through all the new products that we had got in store that had no images and were not up on the website. I went through all of these and then took photos of each one, trying to make sure that i had got them on a white or clear-ish background in order to be able to cut out the image and have it as a clear and clean product shot. The photographing of products did not take long but I found that it was a slow process cutting out each image from the background to get a simple product shot. I also found that the light on some of the photos was not very good and that I had to do them again. This took me all day, I feel that it was time wasted in one way as the companies should send images or we should have a white background against which we can photograph products.

Thursday 1st October: I carried on with the Photoshopping of images and once I had done them all I proceeded to upload them on to the website. I some how, however managed to delete an entire section of the website, luckily the smallest one whilst doing this so spent the rest of the afternoon recreating this page and then creating a new section in which to upload my new pages.  Here is one of those pages with my images on:

Upgrade Me

BBC Four, 9:00pm Monday 28th September 2009.

Upgrade me, looked at the ‘upgrade culture’ and the way in which technology has moved and advanced so quickly that we have all felt the need to go through so many models of the same gadget in such a short time. Presented by the poet Simon Armitidge, we were introduced to the Samsung headquarters, the bedroom of the future, the pebble MP3 player…all examples of how it has become less about the technology and more about the fashion dictating the appearance and the feel of the object, at one point Armitidge compared it to jewellery or ornamentation. For an example of the speed at which gadgets are currently changing John Lewis gave examples of the stock changes there electronics department goes through and each year they change their computer section 4 times, their cameras 2 times and their tv’s every 6 months and by change they mean complete overhaul. Another startling fact was that there have been 6 generations of Ipod classic since 2001, this does not include all the other models such as the Nano, the shuffle etc. and the difference in appearance is startling yet im not sure the difference in technology is that incredible, just the memory sizes and speed?

Armitidge made a point about how in the past we looked after, kept, valued our expensive possessions yet now we barely seem to take the time to get to know them before we have moved on.

Placement Diary

Thursday 24th September: Today I just went through a lot of images that needed resizing to go up, we also went through the catalogue sections and how we could divide the sections up. It is harder than you might expect because as soon as you start thinking well I’ll just move this section here for a bit more bulk, then the other section no longer has a title that makes sense etc.

Friday 25th September: Today Sarah asked if I could have a go at branding the store that she is looking at renting and thinking about the signage and branding that would be required. I was a little bit thrown by having this sprung on me but I gave it a good go and have decided to take the branding seriously and keep on working on in outside of the placement as part of my professional practice for uni. Here are some of the initial attempts: I know that I need to go back to basics and spend a while going through the typography properly, looking at each letter and the kerning etc before I even move on to creating mock ups. I only created these mock ups as I know Sarah was expecting something look at and would probably not understand the looking at each individual letter and its spacing etc design process.