Kingswood Kid's Page Drafts

Having met with Rachel and gone through mood boards and example sites from the web I began to get a good feel for what she was after. I am much more prepared for discussing such issues with clients and now have a number of strategies for eliciting key information including some of the questioning suggested by the Jim Krause 'Design Index' book. I still struggle around the issue of costing; I want to be fair but at the same time don't want to sell myself short. It's difficult as a fledgling designer with limited experience, knowledge and skill to feel comfortable in this area.

Rachel established the site plan by way of a flow diagram as I had suggested. A key feature will be areas with quite different identities; one for adults, particularly teachers, and another for children. There is a great deal of potential within the site for further interactivity - games, puzzles etc. - but that's for the future; for now the site's main focus is on the transmission of information. It also needs to incorporate minimal animation to support end users who may not have state of the art equipment.

Having said all that I couldn't resist having a go at a Flash based web page for the kid's section of the site. It's the kid's part that I have been able to make a start on as I'm still waiting for content to arrive from Kingswood. I have also carried out research into fonts that may be appropriate for headings and titles. Kingswood have a logotype which Rachel and I consider to be a little stiff and formal - it's reminiscent of a prep school logo. At the moment, due to budget constraints and other logistics, it is difficult for her to embrace a full rebranding so we decided that I would look at ways in which to soften the look to make it less formal. I have already started to experiment with this.

Rachel and I met to look over the progress on the kid's page. We were both of the opinion that while the vector based Flash page appears cute it is perhaps just a little to young for the core audience - 6 to 8 year olds. We both like the 'magazine' type look of the other dummy page and I need to work to develop this. The child characters need a little more work and I'm still not sure whether to go with children or an animal centred character. I was intending to use Image Ready to slice it ready for HTML editing but Adam has pointed out that this route creates accessibility issues due to all of the text being presented as images. I think there are ways round this, for example creating text-based links as a footer on the page, but in just underlines my current state of understanding in terms of developing web pages. I need to learn more about the techniques, pro's and cons of page design, particularly the technical issues that impact on these. It's one of those instances where technical know-how can inform creativity. Without that level of understanding it becomes difficult to appraise sites that appeal as a stimulus and to see ways forward for planning my own sites. I feel like I need to take time out to learn more about the technicalities but also feel that I don't have time to do it. Catch 22.

Creative Futures

I was contacted by Neil Pritchard, Glyndwr Careers Service, to take part in the marketing strategy for Creative Futures Week. The organising committee want to include a student in the process and are keen to devise a strategy that engages all art and design students in a way that last year's poster campaign failed to achieve. The time scale is fairly tight in that the design has to be created and produced within 3 to 4 weeks, with Christmas plum in the middle. If possible the strategy is also to operate in a number of formats; print, phone text, web and electronic flyer.

I played around with symbolism and metaphors relating to the future and its prediction and tried to combine or manipulate symbols to witty effect. I produced four draft ideas to pitch to Neil.

The strongest, in my mind, and the one that Neil and I are most interested in pursuing is shown above. Here's the rationale:

All students face choices surrounding their futures, and choice is at the heart of the concept here: you can take a considered and constructive view of future plans or you can leave your future to chance.

As one part of a direct marketing strategy all eligible students will be offered an A6, folded to A7, card containing a tea bag. The message contained plays on the idea that you can either take a kind of mystical approach to the future, or you can take control - by engaging in Creative Futures Week. You can also have a cuppa too.

The artwork supplied is by no means in finished form and will need to carry additional information such as Welsh language equivalents. I would also like to illustrate the six stage process using ‘first aid’ style diagrams. The campaign could be further enhanced by an animated web link, electronic flyers and guerilla style tea bag stickers placed in strategic locations.

The strategy is quirky, direct and personal. It also avoids reliance on poster advertising where there is fierce competition and a tendency for it all to become ‘wallpaper’.

Neil and I also considered the use of a tea bag with string and tag as a means to reduce materials and costs but considered the amount of space available for text on a tag prohibitive. It could be a nice teaser but would require further marketing materials to then place the idea in context. There would always be a risk that the audience would become too perplexed or wouldn’t then be exposed to the following stage that started to make sense of it all.

Anyway, when you put your mind to it, tea has lots of possibilities. It’s the future.

Alternative ideas were essentially poster oriented. The above plays on retro ideas about the future and the image of a stylised robot holding a paintbrush is mildly amusing and quirky. Below is an illustrative solution that I really enjoyed creating and which plays on the idea of being creative with the future - the characters are engaged in manipulating the calendar to their own chaotic ends.

The final idea is a metaphorical representation of the future, the gently blurring dots indicating a kind of succession or passage onwards. This is possibly the weakest of the presented ideas.

The problem with all these poster related ideas is their indiscriminate effect made worse by the competition they face from a multitude of other posters. The tea bag idea is direct and also promotes a fairly serious message: if you want, you can be proactive when it comes to your own future.

I can't say that I'm really enjoying this, I think it's the intricacies of dealing with a committee and also the target audience being my peers -  a savvy and demanding lot.

Glyndwr University Christmas Cards

Having had my designs chosen to be used by the university this year, the arrangements for their printing has been incredibly rushed, and laced with a number of complications. The most difficult of these was Marketing's stipulation that the cards should be produced in bilingual form with the Welsh always preceding, and having equal prominence to, the English. For two of the cards, where the design plays on the substitution of the Glyndwr g into English seasonal phrases, this proved considerably problematic. I could kick myself for being too anglocentric but this constraint was not part of the written brief.

I also assumed that there would be time to rework the designs to bring the fonts and CMYK colours into line with those used in the actual branding. However, due to the 24-hour turn around time, this was a misplaced assumption. As a result of all the to-ing and fro-ing between the in-house design team, Marketing and myself, plus the deadline at the printers, I ended up surrendering complete control of the final design adjustments. The result is a compromise that I am not entirely comfortable with. I am not proud of the results. I think the integrity of the designs have been compromised.

All this highlights the need to be certain about restrictions from the word go and to approach the appropriate people to elicit all necessary information early on in the design process. I need to be much more proactive in this area in future. The penalty you pay for not taking these steps is work that you are not that keen to attach your name to.

Personal Christmas Card

Decided to design our own personal Christmas card based on the Peskimo design seen earlier. Their piece had a loose Christmas feel to it that I wanted to develop and personalise. Their are also undertones of Airside in the lozenge-style character design. The whole idea was in part prompted by work on the Bren Project's Christmas card which is being printed by I Will Print in Telford. At £15 for 50 A5 cards, with envelopes, it was too good an offer to ignore.

I was pretty pleased with the results particularly when you see the nature of the printer's premises. It also gave me a first opportunity to deal directly with a printer on a brief over which I had complete control.

Glyndwr University Christmas Cards

I wanted this to be a minor short-term brief to run alongside the lengthier more demanding work that I've undertaken.

I knew from the beginning that due to the university's recent zesty re-branding, I wanted to try and incorporate it into the design. I brainstormed and researched the extent of Christmas symbolism and came up with a number of designs - probably 10 in total. I also reviewed images of the types of Christmas cards that appeal to me.

I wanted the cards to reflect the clean dynamism of the new brand and incorporate some of the style found in the products of Paperchase. I was also influenced by the work of illustrator/designer Laura Ljungkvist.

Where I could, I also decided to make a play on the stylised g of the Glyndwr logotype, using it to embellish seasonal phrases such as Season's Greetings and Glad Tidings.

I think the cards, while not particularly pushing any boundaries, hit the client's needs and objectives fairly square on. I'm sure that given more time I would have reworked the designs to offer them further depth but who knows, in doing that, I might have wrecked their simplicity. I know some people might say that as a degree level art student I should be playing with installations, light projections and barbed wire, but part of life as a design communications student is to respond to the needs of the client. It's a commercial skill worth developing. Besides I've yet to hear a coherent and logical argument that explains why the Christmas card is a lesser art form.

In submitting the designs for consideration I also presented the notion, originally suggested by Pauline, that the university might, in future, like to consider producing a series of designs for general sale aimed at generating funds for the university itself or for charity. I need to consider ways of developing extended strategies like this more spontaneously myself.

Sand Rose Project - Map & Directions

The Sand Rose Project commissioned me to produce a location map in two forms to use with clients and other interested parties. I produced a vector-based scaleable version that can be used by the charity in a variety of formats.

One version is aimed at beneficiaries about to use the facility, the other is more specifically targeted at those invited to public events organised by the charity.

Bren Project Christmas Card

I was commissioned by the charity that I am involved in to produce their corporate Christmas card for 2008. The organisation's logo features nine circles and all of the presented designs made a play on this. The image selected is reproduced below.

Bren Project Website

I recently undertook a redesign of the Bren website. The original site was created about 18 months ago long before the charity had really got off the ground. At the time my experience of building sites was zero and I had taken the opportunity to essentially teach myself Dreamweaver. My understanding is a little more advanced now and we have just taken the first photographs of the charity's projects in action.

Time was right then to move the charity's web presence on a bit. I'm quite pleased with the result. The new site is clean and positive and reflects the character of the charity more closely. One of the trustees described it as being 'more our own'. I think the handwritten type and personalised images help to create this effect along with the addition of new features such as case studies and opportunities to work with the charity.

Once the new site started to take shape, I found that I was much more capable of planning ahead and organising elements of each page. This makes everything much more time effective. I still don't know enough about the technical side of site building such as HTML and CSS. What I have learnt so far has been by feeling my way but it concerns me that I'm attempting to create things where there are huge gaps in my knowledge.

I also find it quite difficult to visualise designs on paper before building. I sketched out a rough layout in advance but much of the design was realised on the fly as a result of play. Maybe looking at and considering the structure of more websites might help in this respect.

Kingswood Nursery and Infant Centre - Character Commission Research

The Kingswood Centre, a residential environmental resource for young children located near Wolverhampton, would like to promote itself and develop its environment through the use of a sympathetic child oriented character.
I was initially commissioned to design and build a new website for the centre but during informal discussions with the client I suggested that the development of a character might be a possible strategy for not only developing web presence but also a means to a unified child-centred identity that could incorporate printed communications, signage etc.


Aims

• to design and develop a character or characters that promote the centre in the eyes of its young target audience
• to develop a character that offers a sense of identity and security to young children, that can be used in a variety of media and formats, and develops the centre's overall brand identity

The centre is closely associated with rabbits, both wild and tame, and an initial idea is to explore the potential for a rabbit as a character. This is an initial trawl through existing characters of varying quality and suitability.

Portfolio Feedback - Springetts

Creative Director, Roger Bannister, gave me an hour of his time to go through my portfolio as it stands.
Roger made many comments about portfolios generally, often, then, relating them directly to my own. He started by saying that he personally liked portfolios that held great variety and that to his mind a portfolio should ebb and flow. His view is that many students assemble a portfolio from 'off the shelf pieces' completed at various points in the past with very little attention being paid to the depth of variety, right down to fonts and colour schemes being presented. His message was to consider the whole and avoid repetition of styles, genres and details which indicate a 'one trick pony'.
He was of the opinion that mine avoided this pitfall.
Roger's second piece of advice was to treat portfolio creation as a 'tick box' exercise, after all this is what busy creative directors will inevitably do. As far as my own went he said that it ticked the boxes for use of illustration, typography, ability to conceptualise and use of layout.
He suggested that a short statement to accompany each piece, to place it in context, would be useful. In the absence of the creator there is nothing else to provide this information, it sells the piece without you being there. Include, what the brief was, your thinking and what you actually did.
To Roger's mind my portfolio is varied but appears to be driven by illustration. In terms of Springetts his concern might be that I would become frustrated by the nature of their work. Much of it is tweaking or in a sense 're-creative' and there is a possibility that it would not offer sufficient creative outlet for me. He felt that my work might be more ideally suited to editorial layout.
Roger declared my work 'nice' but gave a number of suggestions for adding further dimensions to it.He talked about some focused self-initiated work demonstrating the ability to tweak existing designs that I might feel don't fully work for one reason or another. Packaging or identities would be ideal subject matter but the caveat is be absolutely sure that the existing design is not working as well as it might.

Another idea was to offer two solutions to a brief; one that is safer, more conventional and the other more conceptual and challenging.

Furthermore he suggested looking at social/cultural shifts that are impacting on products or services e.g. the move away from dinner parties affecting the sale of after dinner mints, and seek design solutions to bolster business; in this instance a more informal mint Springles product.

Roger finished by saying that it was only wise to tailor a portfolio to a specific job market if you are really sure and interested in working in that sector. Otherwise be true to yourself, submitting a portfolio is as much about finding out whether you would want to work for them too.

Christmas Card Mood Board

Peskimo

Laura Ljungkvist

Paperchase

Charitycards.co.uk