RESPONSIVE REPORT
GRACE BUCKLEY - OUGD503 - RESPONSIVE
CONTENTS
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NORWEGIAN FISHCAKES JUMP OFF THE SHELVES
3-6
LCA CHRISTMAS CARDS
7-10
SECRET 7” - KARMACOMA
11-14
DIALOGUE
15-18
TIGERPRINT - THE COLOUR OF LOVE
19-22
GOOSTREE DESIGNS
23-26
NESCAFÉ AZERA COLLABORATIVE
27-30
SUMMATIVE EVALUATION
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NORWEGIAN FISHCAKES JUMP OFF THE SHELVES
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The Brief Fish (especially salmon) is one of Norway’s main exports. The Norwegian Seafood Council wants a brand that lifts Norwegian fish out of the ordinary to ensure that it is not a commodity. The NSC wants customers of main supermarkets in the UK to choose Norwegian because they believe it to have the best flavour, they find its image appealing and they know that it has been responsibly sourced.
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This was a Starpack Student Awards brief to create a new brand with a strong Norwegian identity and then produce innovative packaging for two premium Norwegian fishcakes to make them ‘jump off the shelves.’ The packaging had to use sustainable materials where possible, have good shelf presence and use food safe materials.
Evaluation This was my favourite brief by far. I think I took too long to get started however, because this was the first brief I started for this module I didn’t really think about how to manage my time correctly. I chose a Starpack brief because I wanted to do something different to YCN or D&AD, especially as I knew I would enter one of them for the collaborative brief anyway. I still don’t know which area of Graphic Design I want to specialise in which is why I wanted to try out a few different areas for this module. I had enjoyed making a 3D structure for Context of Practice last year so I wanted to explore 3D and packaging further. The method I used was to draw and paint the visual elements of the branding and then use software to tweak and change them. I work well by doing this as it creates a unique look seeing
as I did it originally by hand. I really improved my software skills, especially Photoshop in this brief, mainly by using different adjustment layers. I also improved my crafting skills as I had to make a decent mock up of the package to send off to Starpack for the submission. I found it most difficult trying to choose a suitable material for the packaging as it had to be sustainable if possible whilst also being food safe. I did add to my design after one of the crits to include a plastic wrapper around the fish cakes to keep them fresh, as was suggested. I had to compromise as I couldn’t print onto plastic at college so I used true-grain which also proved to be a problem because it didn’t fold very well.
Lightroom. All of these new skills will come in handy for future briefs to make my final designs look professional. I won a commended award for my package which means that I have been invited to the awards ceremony in London in September. I am very pleased with my outcome for this brief and I am considering doing more packaging design after this success. To extend the brief I could have made more promotional material, extended the range and even created a website for the new brand. Unfortunately my time management wasn’t brilliant and I didn’t get round to doing this.
I learnt how to set up the lights in Photography and learnt more about how to use a DSLR. I then edited my photographs using
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LCA CHRISTMAS CARDS 7
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The Brief The brief was to design and make hand crafted Christmas cards to mail out to key college contacts of Leeds College of Art. The card design had to communicate the values of Leeds College of Art alongside Christmas imagery. I had to submit my design(s) to be judged and then if they won I had to produce 75 of them for mailing out.
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Evaluation This was the first brief that I finished for the module and I think I managed my time well, fitting in exposing my screen and printing when I could after studio sessions during the day. I decided to screen print the cards to practice my skills in screen printing as I had only done it once before and not for a final submission. I also wanted to give it a hand made feel to fulfil the brief. I felt that although it wasn’t obviously hand finished like a painting would be, I can still prove that I spent time perfecting it by hand.
courses at Leeds College of Art in a wreath shape. I hand drew the wreath and then scanned it and adjusted it in Illustrator.
with this brief, but I enjoyed screen printing and learnt not to use certain sponges to clean my screen! It gave me more practice screen printing and I will definitely The screen printing took the continue to use the method in longest, as I chose my idea and future briefs. drew it out quite quickly. I had a few problems when printing as I began pulling the squeegee with too much force which caused excess ink to come through so delayed the printing as I had to clean the screen. I managed to get screen stripper on the screen whilst washing it which caused some of the photo emulsion to come off near the type for the inside of the card. This meant that I only had a few to choose from. If I had had more time I would have re exposed the screen.
The main imagery was inspired by Christmas items such as bells, robins and holly and this was combined with objects to illustrate the different creative Unfortunately I wasn’t successful
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SECRET 7”
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The Brief Secret 7� combines music and art for a good cause. They take 7 tracks from 7 of the bestknown musicians and then invite creatives from around the world to interpret the tracks in their own style, resulting in a one-of-a-kind sleeve for every record. The best ones are selected and then exhibited for one week in London. You don’t know what song or artist it is until you buy it and play the
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record - that is the secret. The money raised is then donated to a different charity every year, this year it is War Child.
Evaluation I chose to design a cover for Karmacoma by Massive Attack. It had to be image only, as any words would give away the secret of which song the cover is for. I chose it based on the lyrics as I wasn’t getting much inspiration from the other tracks. I struggled to think of a concept so I instead decided to draw ideas based on the lyrics of the song that I interpreted in my own way. The lyric I chose was: ‘Money like it’s paper with faces I remember. I drink on a daily basis.’ My idea was that the drink is causing the man to hallucinate and see horror versions of people
that he used to know in the bottle he is drinking from. I used watercolours, pen and white acrylic paint to bring out the faces in the glass, and then used a gradient map to alter the colours in Photoshop. Unfortunately my design wasn’t selected. I was pleased with the outcome I came up with but I feel that I could have developed it more and produced some alternative designs based on the same theme.
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DIALOGUE
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The Brief Dialogue was an exhibition held in the Corn Exchange, curated by Yoke who were Eve and Nathan from third year. They invited creatives to submit work based around the theme of Dialogue and then they combined different people’s work by screen printing them on top of one another to create a dialogue between the two pieces of work.
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Evaluation I decided to give myself one night to complete more than one design to submit for the Dialogue exhibition. I made some quick decisions to work with image and to keep the illustrations simple and vectorised so that they could be reproduced easily and clearly.
bees do to communicate to each other the direction to the best nectar. I remembered that I had seen a David Attenborough documentary about this before and I found it interesting then.
doing more animal communication methods as it was a more interesting subject than paper cups, and I think this was reflected by the fact that my cup designs weren’t featured in the exhibition.
I submitted all three designs to give me more chance of being featured in the exhibition, and the bee design was featured. I thought the exhibition was really well designed and organised and I thought it was interesting to see the different ways in which people’s work was combined.
I originally thought about different ways that people communicate, and alternative, maybe primitive methods. This led me to designing two variations on a cup and string theme, one portrait and one landscape. I wanted to do something a bit different however, so I researched unusual ways that If I had had more time I would animals communicate, and came have tried to develop the bee across the ‘waggle dance’ that idea and maybe looked into
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TIGERPRINT: THE COLOUR OF LOVE
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The Brief Tiger Print are the sole supplier of over 5000 greetings products to Marks and Spencer, making them the fourth biggest retailer of greetings cards in the UK. Every month they launch a competition brief with a theme.
of love but appeals to men and women. I could use red and pink, but I had to consider how they could be used differently or in combination wit a wider colour scheme. Then I had to design up to five card designs using the palette I chose in a love themed The competition I chose to enter surface pattern. was the Colour of Love, a Valentine’s Day theme. I had to decide on an exciting new colour palette that captures the feeling
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Evaluation I enjoyed doing this brief a lot. I in so I think it was a good only spent just over a day doing opportunity to try something a it, but I had an idea of what I bit different. wanted to create. I submitted five designs as that I thought about what would was the maximum number to appeal to both men and women give myself more chance of and decided that everyone likes doing well. Unfortunately my food. I researched food that you designs didn’t get short listed, might eat on Valentine’s Day and but I was still happy with what I then into aphrodisiacs. I wanted had done and I think it was one to work with texture more to of my most successful short improve my Photoshop skills so briefs. I scanned/photographed jam and icing sugar. I used these textures to make the vector shapes that I made of strawberries and biscuits more interesting and lively than flat objects. It was a way that I wouldn’t usually work
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Gardening
Professional Inn
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g Services
novative Reliable
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The Brief Goostree Designs is a new gardening business set up by my friend Jess who does gardening jobs whilst studying BSc Landscape Gardening at Reaseheath College. The client wanted a logo to establish herself and her work.
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Evaluation This was a quick turnaround brief to design a logo for the client, so I decided to extend it to include some mock ups of what the logo could look like when applied to other branding collateral such as business cards, letterheads, uniform and a car.
were appropriate and fonts etc. Because I did this brief over the Easter break I didn’t benefit from any crits on it, so it meant that it was pointed out to me fairly late on that I should include ‘Gardening Services’ in the logo to eliminate any ambiguity over the name. The client agreed on I found this brief really fun and this to avoid confusion. exciting to design for a real client. I established an effective working It was good to work on a real live method by sketching out a few brief, but this was quite informal ideas first in pen, then deciding and the client didn’t want me to on the font and exact positioning change much in my design work in Illustrator. I kept in contact with so it wasn’t much of a challenge Jess throughout, sending her to work with the client. I hope that pictures of my work in progress I can gain more contacts to start so that she could tell me which working with clients that I don’t colour combinations she thought know to challenge myself further.
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COLLABORATIVE: NESCAFÉ AZERA ON-THE-GO 27
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The Brief This was a brief set by YCN to improve the perception of NescafĂŠ Azera by creating a new product innovation, a social media campaign and an in-store campaign. NescafĂŠ Azera was introduced so that people can drink barista style coffee as easily as instant coffee. It is a blend of coffee granules and ground coffee to create a smooth taste.
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Evaluation I worked with Jane Hansesgaard on this brief. I thought we had an effective way of working because we worked separately and met often to discuss each other’s progress and make decisions on what to improve or cut out. We came up with the concept ‘Nescafé Azera On-The-Go’ with the idea that the target audience of 25-35 year olds would be able to make a cup of Nescafé Azera as easily as buying a Costa as they go about their busy days. Originally we were going to make a set of new products for on-thego and a set for home but we decided to cut out the home selection as we didn’t think that
it had a selling point. Despite this, designing and making the products (sugar, milk sachets, the coffee shot dispenser and the biscuit packaging) took longer than it should have done. I felt that we should have worked more quickly at the beginning of the project so that it didn’t leave so much work at the end. I felt that we focused too much on the products, which caused the POS unit and social media campaign to be left until last. I wish we had spent more time on that part as I think I could have developed it more, especially the in-store campaign. I think that it could have had more of an interactive
element including digital media and tasting events. I would have also liked to develop a website separate to the normal Nescafé website to promote On-The-Go Azera. This was difficult to do however, as I felt that I was doing most of the design work throughout. As Jane was not too confident with her software skills, I did all of the digital designs for the packaging and the social media campaign. I also redrew one of Jane’s designs for the instore campaign. Despite this, I was happy with what we submitted as I think it was a strong concept, but I would have liked to have developed it further.
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SUMMATIVE E I have found this module enjoyable and it had definitely improved my confidence in my skills and handling briefs on my own. I thought this was especially apparent in the collaborative brief as I felt that I took control and managed the project fairly well. I enjoyed the freedom to choose my own briefs so that I could do things that I am interested in. I particularly enjoyed designing for the Tiger Print cards and the Norwegian fish cake packaging as illustration and packaging are emerging as areas that particularly interest me. My software skills have improved as I had the opportunity in this module to try different things such as using textures in
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Photoshop. I also used the Photography studio for the first time and the knowledge I gained from experimenting with different lighting and using the DSLR camera will be useful in future briefs in order to make my work look more professional. I feel that I really improved the overall look of the Norwegian fish cake packaging by photographing it well. I also learnt how to manage my time, by setting myself time limits on some of the smaller briefs to make sure that they were finished on time, without cutting too much into the time I spent on work for other modules. There is quite a lot that I would have done differently with the benefit of hindsight. I feel that I spent too much time on the collaborative brief and the main
individual brief for the module when I could have done a lot more briefs in the amount of time that we had. In that sense, I didn’t manage my time that well as I found it difficult to adjust to getting on with the work under my own time limits especially when there were periods when we didn’t have a studio session. I think that for all of the briefs I could have developed them further. I didn’t have any experience of working with a client apart from for Goostree Designs but as that was for my friend our exchanges were quite informal. I wish that I could have worked for people that I don;t know, especially as my chance to design wedding invitations fell through when the client decided that they wanted to go with
EVALUATION someone from their family instead. I felt that I had been messed around somewhat and wasted time that I could have spent on other briefs.
Jane is not that confident at using software so I did most of the design boards and the visuals for the in-store and social media campaigns.
I found the collaborative brief the most challenging because I had to compromise with and sometimes rely on someone else which I am not used to doing, I think that we worked fairly well together and produced good work in the end with a clear concept. We both played to our own strengths, with Jane focusing on designing and making the new coffee dispenser innovation and me concentrating on the digital design for the packaging and the social media. I felt that I was put under more pressure towards the end of the project as
Overall I feel more confident after finishing this module in terms of time management and my own work. I now know how I can manage my time better and be more independent in terms of picking my own briefs and balancing the time needed to finish briefs, which will be useful going into third year. I know that I could have developed concepts and pushed the possibilities further for certain briefs, which I will keep in mind in the future.
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