Springetts - Day Five

Returned from my long weekend to find that Jai and Julian had taken the paper boat invitation on from where I had left it on Thursday. The preliminary electronic invitation now has the boat placed upon a very clean wave-tank style wave. Very O2.

My original design is to be used as a follow-up reminder.

Jai and I spent most of the morning placing type onto the boat template and then constructing mock-ups to test for accuracy and style.

Julian is obviously keenly aware that my time at Springetts is passing by and suggested that I try to get involved in other briefs to bolster the number of outcomes that I come away with.

Roger offered me the chance to develop the branding for a new niche market food company called 'Roots & Wings'. Springetts have already worked up two or three designs which the client has considered. However, she has offered an image that she has in her mind, apparently once seen on a book plate, that she is keen to have incorporated into the branding. It is a Mucha style portrayal of a woman executed in the black & white woodcut vein of a Beardsley but somewhat softer and with more flowing lines.

I used the remainder of the day to research further points of reference and to draw up some preliminary ideas. I am finding this a tricky brief because of the client's very specific requirements. It also appears to demand a very particular style and I wonder whether my knowledge and understanding of techniques, and more specifically application skills, are up to it. 

Springetts - Day Four

Researched paper boats overnight and made four or five examples ready for today. Julian and I were both taken by the catamaran sail boat that offers quite a bit of surface area to carry type - he encouraged me to pursue the idea. The concept involves including an image of the paper boat in the electronic preliminary notice, followed by the sending of an actual paper boat invitation, and then an opportunity to use them decoratively on the night.

We agreed a blue colour for the mock up and I spent the morning making and taking images of the boat before importing into Photoshop to work on the visual. Initially I played around by substituting the boat for the bottle in the original invitation. This worked reasonably well but I always had in my mind a version of the image with the little paper boat placed on a glassy reflective surface. This proved to be more satisfying. I coupled the image with strap-lines such as "Can we float your boat?" or "We'd like to push the boat out".

Julian used the terms clean and classy to describe the outcomes but had reservations about it being a little too arty, and perhaps too suggestive of a boat trip. I'm not so sure about this, it creates a little humorous mystery and the true nature of the evening will be revealed stage by stage.

Julian helped to get the typographical hierarchy just right. I then spent the rest of the afternoon playing with another idea where the boat rests on a sea created out of a series of S's drawn from the Springetts typeface.

Roger now has a number of ideas to consider on his return to the office tomorrow.

I felt good about today. It was the first complete day of continuous purposeful activity. Those around me also had time to offer support and feedback as and when I needed it.

Springetts - Day Three

Pleased myself for most of the morning as everyone incredibly busy. Drew a little, thought a little and trawled through some useful tutorials to hone my Photoshop skills.

Towards the end of the morning, Nick asked if I would carry out some research in support of a live brief being undertaken for Bendicks. Armed with £80 I scoured Waitrose on Marylebone High Street and then Selfridges and John Lewis etc for any examples of card packaging that incorporated a warm 'champagne' silver colour. Apparently Bendicks are keen to utilise a colour of this type and Nick wanted examples as points of reference.

Three hours or so later I returned in frustrated mood. At the moment the market divides neatly into gold or steely silver. I managed to find half a dozen examples of the palest gold but even these were too golden. I suggested to Nick that I believed they were breaking new ground.

Julian gave me some pointers for developing the invitation and I worked on that for the rest of the afternoon. He seemed pleased with the final result but as we were about to leave he asked Roger, the creative director, for his approval in preparation for sending it out.

While Roger agreed it was a satisfactory image, he regarded it as very much in keeping with the style of work carried already out for Danone. He suggested using the opportunity to do something a little bit different, to show a degree of greater creativity. Spurred on by his suggestion of sending an invitation that might have a tactile quality that could sit on the recipient's desk, I revealed a further idea that had occurred to me: uniting the ideas of water and a meal in a napkin folded origami style into the form of a boat. Roger saw some merit in this and was further buoyed by Julian's revelation that the meal was planned for The River Cafe. Roger encouraged me to think some more and try to create a kind of 'joined up' concept,  i.e. how might the preliminary electronic contact, the physical invitation and events on the evening itself all be related.

Springetts - Day Two

Victoria and Julian were too busy to look at my invitation piece, so I spent the morning tarting it up a bit and then trawling through Photoshop tutorials on the net. The designers are all busy working on packaging or ads for the likes of Listerine and Young's fish, otherwise they're attending meetings. By lunch time I was feeling very much the spare part, if not, liability. It must be difficult for them to gauge the capabilities of students and to supply a steady stream of suitable projects to undertake. But if that's the case, why take students? What's the incentive?

So, for the morning they were happy for me to amuse myself, and, in a way, I was happy doing that too. However, it leaves me with the feeling at times that the only thing I'm learning is just how much I have to learn. Still, it's early days yet.

Anyway, the afternoon was much more encouraging: I helped Dan, who was up against it on the Listerine account, by cutting out and constructing six mock-up boxes that he'd designed for Twinings tea-bags. It was interesting to see how the cardboard engineering allowed for the lids to click into place (apparently, a feature that customers like enormously) and it gave me a sense of achievement and usefulness. Above all, Dan was very appreciative. Job well done.

Springetts - Day One

Found Springetts - tucked away in a pair of mews buildings off a common courtyard in the heart of Marylebone. Nice setting. The legend outside, 'you are at springetts', left me in no doubt that I had arrived.

Met by Jai who took me on a whirlwind tour of the several floors of each building: directors' offices, accounts, creative teams, artworkers, kitchens, photographic studio etc.

The creative teams, three or four designers in each, tend to handle different client accounts although briefs can be collaborated upon if deadlines are tight or teams have slack periods.

Everyone was very pleasant and some were even interested in my experience at college and my previous work as a teacher. That was nice but I still had that feeling of being 'out of place' in a group that have obviously been together for some time and share a culture of their own as a result. It's quite difficult to break that down when you can't see face to face with anyone due to the barriers of machinary.

Anyway, after a little bit of thought, during which I tried to relax a little, Julian (ex-NEWI, very supportive and known to Pauline Amphlett) came up with my day's brief: to produce an electronic invitation to be e-mailed to Danone asking that they come to dinner and drinks - a chance for Springetts to recognise a valued client. The Danone account centres on their bottled waters so Julian had come up with the idea of a message in a bottle. Very kindly he also supplied all of the images.

I had the opportunity to go my own way on this if I wanted but after a half-morning's thought and research, where I hadn't really come up with anything better, I decided to use his concept after all. Well he had supplied all the images etc.

So I spent the afternoon grappling with unfamiliar equipment and trying to achieve effects that I had never attempted before. The typographical element gave me cause for much thought - unfamiliar type faces, trying to find sweet combinations and composition.

Anyway, by the end of the afternoon it was just about finished to an adequate standard. But, I'd taken one whole day to complete something that an experienced designer could probably have knocked up in a half an hour.

Sand Rose Project Annual Report & Invitation

The Sand Rose Project, a Cornwall based charity offering breaks to bereaved families, commissioned me to design their open day invitation and annual report. I had previously done some amendments to their website.

I enjoyed working on these and found it to be a valuable learning experience both in terms of the design process involved and in working with clients.

It was useful to research other work of this type and forward examples to the client. Sand Rose gave me feedback on the following which allowed me to gauge the style and tone that they themselves sought.

http://www.savethechildren.org/publications/annualreports/Save_the_Children_Annual_Report-_web_2-14-08.pdf

http://www.dogstrust.org.uk/VirtualContent/111926/Dogs_Trust_Annual_Review_2007.pdf

http://www.nspcc.org.uk/documents/nspccreviewreport06.pdf_wdf39721.pdf

http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Documents/Support_Material/About_us/AnnualReviews/AnnualReport2007.pdf

They also provided an example in the form of an annual report published by See-Saw, an Oxford based children's bereavement charity.

I directed the client as to potential sections within the report and also suggested that as a people-focused charity it might be good for their public image to include photographs that show families using the facility - so far all photography supplied had been people-free.

I made a start on the design without having all of the copy. This was OK to a point, it allowed me to give the client a preliminary draft to consider quite early on but I would say that it is much easier to make design layout decisions if you have all of the copy to play with in advance. Start with the copy and build the look around it, the copy tends to govern what is possible visually - well, it does for me.

The other key learning feature surrounds the printing. It can be quite tricky to deal with a remote printer, as was the case here. It meant falling into a triangle of designer, printer and client where, due to location, the client is making key decisions about the type and quality of paper etc. This is not ideal and unless you, as a designer, have the same actual samples as the printer it becomes difficult to advise the client on these issues. It can lead to a situation where it feels like a slightly uncomfortable punt in the dark. Personally, I feel that the choice made here in each instance is not quite right. The invitation might have been lifted by a crisper whiter finish and the annual report needs to be on a slightly heavier paper. I would also liked to have considered a matter finish.

Nevertheless, I am reasonably pleased with the outcomes although in future it would be prudent to ask the printer to send samples of the potential papers.

Kingswood Nursery and Infant Centre Commission

The Kingswood Centre, a residential environmental resource for nursery and infant children, wanted to improve its visual environment to reflect both the work that it does and present a friendly face to its young clients.

I was commissioned to spend two days shadowing visitor groups, recording the children engaged in activity. A selection of the resulting photographs have been used as large canvas prints around the centre. The images also provide a library to be drawn on for future web and print projects.

Here are just a few of the 400 plus photographs that I took.