SOMEWHERE SLOWER This Somewhere Slower research actually started as a range of other briefs. I looked into things that interst me such as Alfred Hitchcock, his films, his direction however I really struggled with where to take this and would just be creating a publication of his work for no reason. However after scrapping this idea I turned to another interst of mine which is bloggers I follow on instagram. One particular blogger I love following is Courtney Adamo, knowing her life and her adventure on family gap year, I knew this would make for an interesting research topic. A few years ago she decided to pack up everything and take her family on a gap year, something very unusual. This research was quick to turn into a visual outcome. Editorial design is something I’ve swayed away from in previous years but since my work experience, I’ve really enjoyed designing for layout. The layout was determinded by the style of the family. I really enjoyed this brief as it turned it to be a big project with a 60 page perfect bound book, something I haven’t done created before and am really impressed with the outcome. I managed to stick the time scale for this project and planned to print at the run up to the deadline as with perfect bound its glued and felt the earlier I did it the more time it had for the pages to fall out. This all worked out perfectly.
THIRSTY PLANET This brief really put me outside of my comfot zone, in terms of deisgn. I had wanted to do this brief since the owner had come and given us a talk in January. The brief sounded interesting and engaging in a style that I’m not used to. This was a concept brief, something I really struggle with. Eventually I decided to team up with a friend who was also struggling with the brief. The collobaration was productive, driven and motivating. I felt we really pushed each other to step out of our comfort zones and this resulted in us working realy well together. We allowed ideas to bounce off one and another and develop in a way that we can’t have done alone. We were aware that as a YCN brief this would be challenging and needed to push ourselves to stand out and be different, especially with it being a concept campaign brief with limited design. I pleased I got to work with my partner and feel proud with what we created in a short amount of time. We managed to fulfil this brief in a much shorted time then we had orignally planned, also sticking the YCN deadline in March.
UK GREETINGS UK greetings was a great oppurtunity to explore a brief that is very open in design. It gave me as a designer a chance to explore handwritten type. This is something I’ve become really interested in over the past year since buying an iPad pro and apple pencil. I struggled to produce content for a while, having already visulaed colours and type I wanted to use but this soon came to me after exploring a range of research. I was really impressed with the designs I was able to create on my iPad pro and felt they were transferred well onto adobe illustrator to create into gift cards. If I was to do this brief again, I would have liked to take more time and created a bigger set of this design. I would have also liked to have explore more stock and this stock I printed on had a texture and slightly faded the design. Although this happened, I did like the how the pattern on the inside of the card reflected through on the front. I managed to stick to my time scale for this brief.
ESSINGTON FARM This brief turned out to be my favourite of them all. It was a chance to explore my preferred specialism of graphic design which is branding but it also created an oppurtunity to explore pakckaging, editorial design and website design. I felt I tried my hardest with this brief to create something I was really proud of. Everythign designed has been informed by something else and feel the packaging, branding and layout design work strongly as a set. This brief really brought out my style and strongest skills in design whilst pushing me to try new things like website design. I feel the final outcomes for this brief are really succesful and feel very happy for this turned out. This is the brief I would like to take forward and expand for the end of year show.
JUST GRAND Just Grand is the first brief I completed of final year. It was a branding brief as this is what I feel is my strongest graphic design specialism. Looking back and writing this evaluation towards the end of the year I realised how much my design skill have grown and improved over the year. At the time I felt it went really well and the outcomes were succesfull but now looking back I wish I had spent more time working on the layout design (however I didn’t know the design skills that I do now), and expanded this to further specialisms of graphic design. I stuck to my time management plan for this brief.
PENGUIN BOOK AWARDS Penguin Book Awards is brief I love doing each year. It’s a totally different brief from the others I have created. The whole design is very informed from the book and found it a challenge to design for a specific teenage target audience. However this is one of those briefs where I thoguht I’d finished and come back to it a few weeks later and have a totally new relm of ideas. I’m glad this happened because I’m very happy with the design of the book and it pushed me to use bright colours which is very rare. Although I did stick to the original time management plan, I did extend the time when I had new ideas.
SAM PHOTOGRAPHY This is a live brief I completed at the very beginning of the year. It was a very small brief as it only required a business card based upon the clients requests. I really love working with clients and for them to require the design that suits them rather than creating it from scractch. This was a really great client interaction oppurtunity and felt it worked well and turned on successful. The client was very pleased with the design having been dissapointed with a previous designers work. If I was to do this brief again I woud explore having a go a designing a website that works with the business card.
CREATIVE PORTFOLIO This was a brief given to me by an illustration student to create a “creative� protfolio. The emphasis was on creative and it was my job to produce a protfolio that relfects the illustrator but also make her stand out from the crowd. I was extremely happy with the outcome of this brief but trying new layouts and folds allowed the illustrations to flow and tell a story. I went out my comfort zone and used bright bold colour as the background to produce emphasis on the design. This collobaoration/live brief worked really well and I managed to stick to the time management plan.
CREATIVE INDUSTRY This originally started off as an extra PPP task as since I discovered I want to work in a graphic design studio, I want to gain as much advice as I could before enetering the creative industry. As I got more and more replies, I decided to produce this into a publication of quotes and information. This was another oppurtunity to test out my new found editorial skills. This was a really fun brief for me to deisgn as the content was fairly easy to collect. I was really happy with how this brief turned out and will be using it throughout the summer for the advice and tips. I wouldn’t change anything if I was to do this again other than to gain more advice if possible.