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.