REAL WORLD | Reflection

Looking back at the work we produced and how we got to that point, it was obvious that some people put more in than others. Certain ideas were more developed, and some people didn’t term up to be part of group conversations; this sort of behaviour in group environments cause a lot of friction between members, and the design work can suffer because of it. Working as a group is one of my personal dislikes when it is forced upon me, like within this project, mainly due to the fact that they are randomly put together with people of better and worse performance than yourself along with unknown specialities or interests that could be useful within the project.

While I felt that this was an issue that plagued our team, particularly because of one team member, we were still able to create and pitch an idea to our client that was ambitious and was shown in a manner that allowed for the spaces we designed to come across as we had intended. There could have been a better development in the umbrella branding of the multiple spaces, with tasks being delegated in a manner that may have not been optimum, hence the branding becoming one of the weaker aspects of the pitch.

If this was to be worked on again, I believe the correct division of skill sets after talking about carefully so the finished product was stronger than what we showed in our presentation. Another issue that could be fixed would be having certain team members replaced by more useful ones, though this was something completely out of my control.

REAL WORLD | Bringing it all together

Entering the final week, a sense of urgency began to set in as it drew to the time of presenting our concepts to the client as a whole, and along with the deadline for handing in our dissertation there seemed to be quite a bit going on, and with a sudden post-it note in the form of an email reminding us that there was also a video pitch to make, there wasn’t much time to be sitting down. We brought our ideas to life through use of digital creation and manipulation to bring to life the spaces which we envisioned, allowing our clients to experience our concept as much as we were able to without creating the spaces themselves – if we had the opportunity I would have jumped at the chance to do that, it would have definitely been fun to get involved with creating a whole space in the university.

Before we knew it Wednesday had come to slap us around the face, and we were well on our way to being fully ready to present to our clients as the work piled into our keynote while we wrote the script alongside it. It’s a shame, but Amy was nowhere to be found at the time of our presentation and with no luck in contacting her, we rose to the stage without her. Before we came to the front to deliver our concept to the clients, we were lucky enough to have a short rehearsal with our tutor to get things sorted out, and those small improvements definitely helped to get our point across. It seemed the highlight to the clients was the space used within the stairwells, transforming them into places from across the world such as the rainforest we presented.

Coming together for the final project was the first time we were able to finally fabricate our space within the bazaar that would be viewed by the clients after the presentations. It was great to see our hard work put together into a set of final pieces that we could show to the client and get their responses, which seemed to be overwhelmingly positive as we explained to them the different spaces that would be provided as well as ways to expand the spaces across the university in both the Llandaff and Cyncoed campuses. After the clients and mentor disappeared in a puff of smoke, we explored each other’s work and complimented one another for what went well while we waited for the final verdict…and after what felt like a good hour they told us who the final winner was.

Now I’m not saying we should have won. But we should have won. Nonetheless, Seb and Kieran plus the empty space that should have been filled by the rest of their group was declared the winner with their innovative piece that would get people to realise the difficulties that arise for those who are less-abled, either physically or mentally. Now that sounds like I’m mean, but their piece was something that I could agree was worth the recognition as the winner, as nobody had tried anything that was similar or relatively close at all; everybody’s work was incredible in their own ways, bringing about the Healthy Universities aspirations to light within interactive pieces and I think that is something that we can all be proud of.

REAL WORLD | The Beginning of the End

Our first project for the year, a grand entrance into the real world using real clients, real briefs, and a real deadline. And to be frankly honest, that’s a scary realisation. This is the beginning of the my last year of university and I still feel lost in the world. And so begins the first episode of the season.

So in comes the challenge of designing for the newly created Healthy University program for the University, focusing on promoting a healthy lifestyle to the staff and students on both campuses. The presentation already gave off a feel of what it would be like to design for a real client, with a very broad brief that was never talked about specifically and full information not being disclosed until discussion with specific members later on.

After the overly long presentation, we were split into groups — our team for the next few weeks — along with a mentor from one of the major design companies in Cardiff. Our crew was handed over to the Creative Director of Bluegg, Tom Lloyd, someone we had talked to previously as a year group in one of our AfterLife talks. After a short talk on meeting up for looking over concepts later into the following week, we began discussions with our link to the Healthy University team.

We discussed what sort of aspects we should specifically look at conceptualizing for, what sort of design to focus on, etc. so we could construct a creative brief and get researching for the project. We managed to find out a lot more about the Healthy University program just from having a relatively short discussion over what the presentation glanced over, as well as delving deeper into the topic with back and forth conversation.

This first week began to get the cogs moving of a more resourceful and free creative style after a much more regimented workflow on my internship over in Zhuhai, China. It was a good start to understanding more about working with a real client in a team of designers, just like what we would most likely get involved with in a job.

 

MetSearch

Sometimes you don’t get what you want. Sometimes you enter a competition and plan on coming out in first place. Sometimes you never achieve that goal.

But on the plus side, I made some cool stuff.

Over the past 2 weeks I have been working on a new identity for our newly refurbished MetSearch site, a place to find all books, journals, and any more information that can found in the library and be handy for your time studying at Cardiff Metropolitan.

I decided to create two different concepts to establish the two ideas that I had focused on, one being the main focus and ideas of the library service in a more literal sense, aiming to make it instantly recognisable that it was an online search engine for information.

The second concept focuses on a more futuristic style that originally was to depict the numerous books, journals and overall information available, though the depiction of this caused some trouble at smaller scales and so I decided to create a solid structure and to focus more on making the M look like two bookmarks folded over.

Though neither of the concepts made it through, it’s nice to know that the work was appreciated and I was still able to learn while developing the final outcomes so overall, I didn’t lose out on anything. Except winning. It’s okay, I can cry myself to sleep.

Final Pieces

            

The End of One – Reflection of the Year

1. Describe your working method, how do you approach a project?

When approaching a project I create a large volume of idea techniques to help me flesh out what could become of the project, to define what is within the brief specifications and what is not, after which I go on to create ideas based on these mind maps and lists. When I have narrowed down the ideas to around two or three, I start work on each of them simultaneously to see how they will develop before reaching a final decision on which one I want to go on with to be my final piece.

2. How experimental have you been this year in subject – where have you felt most ‘out of your comfort zone’?

I have pushed myself to be more experimental this year, but have often stayed within the borders of what I know. The workshops I have been a part of have helped me to develop skills within many different fields, and though I stayed within my comfort zone for the majority of the course the final project was where I began to experiment more with woodwork, watercolour and more handmade items in general

3. Where have you used different media and formats effectively and imaginatively in Subject?

When it came to creating the digital book, I was able to create something that I thought was an effective format in which I would have been able to use the animation, that I created in the project following, within the book to make it more unique. While it may of not been the most imaginative, it was the project in which I had used formats well.

4. Which is your most appropriate solution?

I believe the most appropriate solution I have created this year would have to be the specimen posters that I created rather early on in the year. I went back to review these as time went on and we learnt more skills, but it fit the brief near perfectly in my opinion, and I had great fun making and tweaking it as well.

5. Which is the most memorable, interesting idea in your work?

I think the final project for the first year has got to be the most memorable and interesting idea I have come up with thus far. I believe the marriage of graphic design and illustration is one of the most pleasing things to do when working on a project, there is a great feeling after you put effort into drawing and painting something by hand instead of creating digitally. I was able to experiment quite a lot as well and brought about an idea that nailed down some of the aspects of graphic design that I find most fun, as well as talking about the year as a whole.

Type Specimen Posters // Photos

 

An Introduction to – Typography

For the first couple of hours we dived into a mountain of information as we got served platters of Typography.

That’s sounds a bit romantic, but when it comes to type, everything else comes second because I love is too much for my own good. And no, that didn’t actually happen, we were just shown some info about typography on a rather erratic PDF document

For the remainder of the day, we chose a single letter of which were 2 Serif fonts and 2 San-Serif fonts, each having an upper and lower case; we then proceeded to create 6 designs for each of these letter, a total of 24 all together, which demonstrated how freely type can be manipulated to create something new. This was great to quickly think up ideas to freely manipulate the letter forms to get certain areas or to manifest a beautiful design by cloning letters, serifs, ligatures, etc.

Layout

This exercise lasted the whole day, and required us to create 2 collage posters of our own design that allowed us to explore layouts and how they effected the final design of the posters. Each poster had its own rule and determined the outcome of the final image.

My first poster was based on the splitting of a family and how that effected certain people in the relationship, and the whole image is place in a narrow cut-out of A4 in the centre of the page. This was to show how closely knit a families emotions are and will be, no matter what happens to it. The design I used was to force people to look into the centre of the poster to view the image, as well as using a large border to cut out some elements to highlight more important ones.

A Second poster was all about using a single image and displacing it around the page which I first thought as being rather silly, but as we went on I realised that this was to increase our awareness of layout on the page and how that affects the final outcome of the poster.

The Museum

An Introduction

The first proper class of the year began with a visit to the museum, where we were briefed on a team project to find and create images based a random word given to us. The teams consisted on 3 people and were given the tasks to take a photo, draw an image, and write a 200 word (or less) paragraph explaining an image relating to your word.

My teams word was ‘Difference’, which seemed like a rather easy word to base work off of to begin with, but as we wandered throughout the museum we realised that that it was much harder to come up with ideas for the images we were to create; do we create something simple and easy to grasp, or something that requires more thought? But of course one of the most limiting factors was the museum itself as it allowed only work inside of it and itself to be used to craft our work.