Speaking from experience.

This brief was something i was looking forward to from the beginning of the year. We had watched a video when we arrived which was really inspiring and all year long i have hoped to create one myself explaining about my experience in the year...

I went off and took a think about what one problem i had with the first year... It came to me that i didn't have a single problem so i decided to start to list things which got on my nerves when i first started. I listed my own and then contacted my friends within different uni's and asked them some questions... the answers i had back from my friends from, hull, sheffield, salford, Edinburgh where:

1. freshers Flu
2. Learning about how to use the Adobe Tools
3. Knowing that just because you have the best and newest mac doesn't mean your the king of graphic design.
4. Blogger will become your life
5. The moment the program shuts down on you and you didn't save your work.
6. Realizing you don't understand half you classmates due to accents
7. The late nights and Early days
8. Sporting the " il do it tomo" downward spiral of working ethics

Thinking of the above and liking each as much as the last i wanted to create a simple flash video, which would show a figure talking through with video demonstrations all the points above... 

I drew out some possible video scenarios and the narration which would follow:

[ insert sketches and narration]

I then made some boards to show at the crit:

The style of the video i wanted to go with would be like this:

I feel it would be easy to replicate and its good for getting the point across. plus i feel it doesn't clutter or come across intimidating. 

Presenting the idea i didn't have very good feedback, with people not really understanding what it was i wanted to do and coming across as an outcast perhaps from the group i was felt sorry for... Perhaps i wasn't meeting the brief or maybe i read it all wrong

So i went back and had a think about what i should be producing... I didn't want to waste my research and i stuck to trying to think of a design which would include all these points but obviously my video was out.

Then it came to me, looking at my past InDesign layout and decided to try use this again:

My plan is, create a set of booklets / brochures to help students read about the parts of the problems with the corse. These could be a bulk pack of books which could just be taken and read to help.

I decided to create one talking about " sleepyness " which is usually the case with the corse and one i wanted to spend some time talking about and researching on how to stay awake.... 

[ design thumbnails ] 

This is how my finished article would look.

The above is the actual item i will be printing and showcasing.

hopefully if i had more time i would have had them perfectly bound and all finished off. for example:

this would be printed on nice thick glossy stock with spot varnishing to help enforce the images .

Conclusion:
i have presented my work in the final crit and unfortunately the printer at uni cut off half of the images on each page. This made my designs look un professional and made the person reviewing it not notice all the points.

If i could do this again i would have focuses on my booklets and not the video as it would have been much easier and probably look alot nicer.

InDesign Brief

This was a quick brief we where given which would run a duration of the module... We had the joy of being paired up via the " RANDOMIZER " and thus giving us a set person to work with...

I was paired up with " Baljeet Kaur Samra " Myself and Baljeet have worked together before and i was really glad to be paired up with her since i already knew some parts about her...

We where instructed to think of questions to form a basis for a section of text about your partner...

1. What is your name
2. What is your favorite colour
3. If you could do anything and know 100% you wouldn't fail... what would it be?
4. If you could rename yourself what would it be and why?
5. What is your biggest regret?

The answers where quite funny and whilst i thought they would be quite involved and lengthy Baljeet managed to make them a one sentence reply. " 3. I would marry batman " " 4. I would be called Mrs. Batman". Whilst these are quite comical it did mean i struggled to make a block text about my partner. But i took it all in the name of fun and i thought it meant i could just make up a story using her quotes.

I decided to go for a comic theme at first, figuring that the double page spread wouldn't have many words on it meant i could be more imaginative with imagery... The problem being communication broke down and i never managed to get a single picture...

I then looked for inspiration of double page spreads:
[ insert double page spread images ]

I liked this one because it didn't use too much text and kept me interested throughout... but it feel having an image passing through both pages would be the best, i want the article to have a sinister feel to it... perhaps abit like batman?...

I like my outcome, although maybe not the best read i did try. And i enjoyed learning the indesign techniques.

I am happy with this outcome and feel the brief has been met.
If i could do this again i feel i would try to keep a more close knit connection with my partner so i could get more info and more questions which would allow my design to look stronger and become more professional.

Communication is a virus

( I have blogged everything i actually did as a person of the group, i will not post up things i had no input with or time spent on.)

This was a group effort for answering a brief. We decided to focus on the public transport " get people to use public transport". We had heard that the free bus service in Leeds which many people use was facing the possible end to the service. This being due to costs and negative reviews about it.

We set out to find out what we could do to sort it out:

Who?

• Everyone who uses/ should use the free bus.
• look into possible ways of noting each stop it passes.
• Business Workers
• 9-5 save on petrol and less traffic.
• Students
• To keep on time etc.

What?

• Mailshot
• Something the business are used to getting
• Info graphics
• Show detailed of the service enlighten people to the uses.
• Statistical Website
• A website version of the info graphics
• Posters and Printed Material
• Get it out in the street let te public see the service they are missing out on

When?

• 3 week long brief
• Week 1 = Discuss Plan, distribute workload.
• Week 2 = Create Items we agree with and have polished up finals.
• Week 3 = Document, Execute and Showcase.

Where?

• Sent to the Council section which deals with public transport and the Free bus.
• Left in Train Station Kiosks and at bus stops.
• Sent to surrounding homes.
• Business' 

Why?

• I believe basing this on the free bus and using this design scheme would work as its simple and quite straight forward along with it being a service which was facing closure and makes the whole thing more fun as if we make a difference. 

The group came together and we decided to create boards to help show your idea and to put everything across to the crit team.

          We present our board to the crit team which went horribly wrong. The idea of trying to make something which is generally just an awful service and a waste of time to the public inviting and friendly wasnt what we should have been doing. As the tutors who crit us are business workers and staff who we said we would aim our redesign at and yet they still said point blank, no matter what its like, it wouldn't work... which after being said our entire group agreed. Buses ( free ones at that ) are generally a not nice and quite awful place to be. . . So back to the drawing board....

The deflated feeling from the past type brief arrived back at the doorstep this time bearing five students rather than just myself and work ceased to happen other than the odd bite of " we need to do some work soon " as one another passed each other in the hallway.

Week two set in and we decided to come together. All of use agreed to think up what it is we could do...
" how to tell a lie convincingly" this struck us straight away... what could we base the lie on?...

• School
• Police
• Age
• Betting

The above where the results we came together with and we where quite up for doing age...

We could tell people how to look older... how to get into clubs create a pack including facial hair etc to aid them in our hints and tips... Problem !... its abit immoral to show underage kids how to get into clubs or buy alcohol... and thus began the tweaking... lets show you how to lie to make you get an older girlfriend... PROBLEM ! our target audience would be hugely slim if not nil !... 

So again... a full restart was in order... we had zero time to go back to the start and thus choose to focus on poker. This game was supposed to be based on lying, bluffing on how well you hold your cards and convincingly show a range of facial expressions mixed with play hints to make your game players believe you hold something better than you do. 

We sat down to design posters. But posters wouldn't do it for this. we needed something which would have more use than a poster...

Myself and olly set out to design playing cards which would include a little hint on how to bluff in the middle and other than that be fully functioning playing cards. The pack would also include a poster which would contain a card playing mat to help players understand and play the game inevitably helping them to use our lying cards. 

The designs we came up with:

These where not our final colours just the design, we wanted to show how they would look like as cards and wanted to have them printed, although we didn't have the time... this is how our cards would have looked.

the above would be how the items would have looked if properly printed off...

We then moved onto creating a presentation.. 

Conclusion...

We all didnt work as a team and thus created something a single person could have produced in a week id not shorter... I cant put blame on anyone because we all didnt pull the weight. I have blogged the only parts which i produced as i didnt see it fair to put anyone else's contributions to this on mine... 

If i where to dot his project again im unsure how it would have been better? as we all didnt really have much input. We started with big ideas and where all very exited about pursuing the free bus idea, the problem being it wouldn't work maybe knocked us down abit and perhaps we should learn to try and take criticism abit better... 

We where given a new brief to create a submission for the new " Letter, Word, Sentence, Paragraph " competition. The work produced, if chosen would be show cased in the new book which was being released. This is a great opportunity to try get some of your work out there and seen in the public.

I started out thinking about what i could do.. We where told it had to be type based and follow the word " Opposites".

I started to think about how i could approach this and remembered back to my brief on typographic terms we did earlier in the year and tried to give the type a sort of constructed approach, the problem being that i had returned tot hat project for inspiration once already and didn't want it to look as though i was a one trick pony so i decided to sketch up some ideas on how to show opposites...

[ insert images ]

looking at the above it shows how the ideas could go i didn't really come up with a definite answer to what id like to focus on... the ones which felt right to me where:

• Rich & Poor
• Paid for typefaces vs Free
• Serif & Sans Serif
• A nice way of showing the difference
• Fancy & Simple
• Script Vs Sans Serif
• Windows & Macintosh
• OS specific typefaces, perhaps abit hard and abit too nerdy to apple.

The above i feel would make a nice poster set regardless of choice but i think i will be going with the:

Serif & Sans Serif

this is because its something i love about type and i feel a outcome worthy of a book that is souly based around the type factor.

I thought a series of posters which best show "opposite" would be the easiest way to get the point of sans serif and serif across. Looking into it i decided to focus on how the opposite could also be known as a mirrored image, the wrong, the way left is right in a mirror and right is left.... Then it came to me, lets make the sans serif fonts, serif... and vice versa. A fun cheeky way of showing the opposite without making it mega obvious.

So hell, lets look Helvetica, possibly the biggest known sans serif font going, noticeable of its square full stop and used in many many things. People who are in the know seem to always know when your using helvetica so lets see how they play if we add the serifs onto the typeface... fun, no?

[ insert development ]

So after working out how to add them to the objects i have created afew alternatives of the design i was looking at using.

some of these i felt looked too comical and lost seriousness. 

I ended up showing these to class mates and explaining how they should be looked at and then re looked at as they notice something is wrong. By showing the serif version of helvetica in blue and the right way it drags your eye to it and the correct way being spelt in reflect underneath adds a sense of interaction with the item, in this case a book could be turned upside down or looked at in the mirror !

this would be the finals

I was really happy with this outcome and felt it was both interactive and still very type orientated.
Showing this in the final crit left me feeling quite deflated as many class mates produced items which looked busier than mine and i feel the way i spoke about my work maybe had people thinking i didn't put as much effort into this piece as i did. I didn't feel good about it and just left it in my plan chest and considered it a failure and looked forward to the next brief... in doing so i missed the hand in deadline which at the time i didnt consider a problem as i didn't feel it met the brief at all and would have saved some time in the viewing process. But then found out it could go against my mark for this module... which isn't great.

Conclusion.
A very fun way to show a live brief, it was short and powerful with imaginative ideas and a sense of freedom to do as we wished. I learnt that less can be more and more can sometimes just look cluttered and not make sense. If i could re visit this brief again i would probably only change the request to hand the item into the competition regardless if i felt it didn't work or would be useful.