Practitioner Research

BREIF:

Given a list of design-related professions (see next page), each student chooses 3 categories (i.e. art director, animator, product designer)

Each student has to research (via web, personal contacts, etc.) 3 professionals from each of these 3 areas, based in Bristol, the South West or further afield, to create 3 x 3 A4 PDF docs for upload to tutor padlet ahead of week 4 session. Each sheet should display name, short ‘about’ biography, contacts (email/web/ phone) and at least one image. Categories:

• Art Director/Editor • Artworker • Web designer • Digital Designer • Fashion/Costume Designer • Packaging Designer • Set Designer • Production Artist • Lighting Designer • Book Designer • Type Designer • Game Designer • Film Maker • Product/Interior Designer • Architect • Information Architect • User Interface Designer • Story Board Artist • Prepress Specialist • Lettering Artist • Creative Director • Copywriter • Animation Designer • 2D Animator/illustrator • Photographer • Printing Specialist • Food Stylist • Professional DJ • Design Consultant • Foley Artist

APPROACH:

Because of my own personal interest and because it is a large proportion of any professional work that I have done, I wanted to research branding agencies and individuals first. I have friend who has worked for a couple of agencies in Bristol so I wanted to include them.

I also wanted to include another friends Bristol based photography business which then gave me a chance to research new photographers in the area.

Finally I wanted to research web designers as I feel it is a solid route professionally in terms of building a career and it is a perfect blend of being creating and having a solid technical knowledge.

Practitioner Research Continued

DEVELOPMENT:

From this set of different practitioners we were then asked to choose a field that we wanted to delve deeper into. This choice would then lead to the formation of groups which would be the basis for who I would be working with for the rest of the module.

I chose to pursue branding and with that formed a group with fellow branding enthusiasts Cleo Richardson and Rhys White.

We were then asked to research potential candidates for an interview who work in our chosen field, preferably locally.

I spoke with a friend who works at Epoch Design as an Accounts Manager if they could recommend anybody either at their agency or her previous employer, Taxi Studios. I asked as there is very little information about the teams and the individuals at these firms, so it was difficult to get specific names and contact details for designers and art directors. My friend offered a selection of people to take a look at.

As a group we had to put forward 2 creatives each. My chosen candidates for interview:

From this research we then chose 1 primary and 1 secondary creative to contact. We decided on Beatrice Menis as our primary as she has worked with Taxi Studio, a large design agency working with brands such as Coca-Cola and Carlsberg but was now working independently under her own name working primarily with start ups and small businesses. We felt she would have a breadth of insight into the branding world.

Out There Project: Interview 1 Publication.

BRIEF:

Our first brief for the Out There Project was to create a minimum 16 page publication using the transcript attained from an interview with our chosen creative, Beatrice Menis. The publication also required 10 illustrations or photos inspired by the interview content.

SECURING THE INTERVIEW:

Beatrice was suggested to us by my friend at Epoch because they worked together at Taxi Studio so this mutual connection gave us a good start for making contact. My friend asked on our behalf is she was happy for us to contact her, she replied positively so we then set about drafting our first email. Cleo put herself forward to get the ball rolling with the first draft. We used the ‘7 Steps To Write An Email’ workshop as a checklist for the initial draft. Cleo wanted to be explicit that we understood that Beatrice’s time was very precious especially during the pandemic. Once the first draft was put together, we added a couple of personal touches to keep consistent with the contact our mutual friend had already made.

FIRST DRAFT:

Good Morning,

We are students writing to you from The University of the West of Englands Graphic Design course.

Our names are Nathaniel Stevens, Rhys White and Cleo Richardson, and we have chosen to reach out to you in the hope that you will be able to help us in a project. We are inspired by your business basis, and would like to take the opportunity to ask if we can book some of your time to speak with you in an interview style conversation about your freelance company, some of the projects you have completed and some of your opinions on the industry.

Due to the delivery of our course we do not have much time to work on this project and we hope to be able to conduct this interview sometime before the 8th of November, but we understand that these are unusual times, and that time is incredibly precious as a working creative at the moment. If this does not fit with your schedule we would greatly value a response to decline this request.

We hope this email finds you well, and look forward to hearing back from you.

Thank you, Nathaniel Stevens Rhys White Cleo Richardson

FIRST EMAIL SENT:

Good Morning Beatrice,

This is Nathaniel Stevens, Rhys White and Cleo Richardson.

To add some clarification to the contact you have received from Sam Hurley yesterday, we wanted to send this email to you so that you can understand what we are asking of you.

We are students writing to you from The University of the West of Englands Graphic Design course and we have chosen to reach out to you in the hope that you will be able to help us in a project.

We are inspired by the way that you work, and would like to take the opportunity to ask if we can book some of your time to speak with you in an interview style conversation about your freelance company and the way it has developed, your work with Taxi Studio, as well as how you have approached some of your projects and clients and get some of your opinions on the industry. The interview will be centred around the practice and process of branding, but we would like to take the opportunity to explore some of the deeper complexities of this field with you.

Due to the delivery schedule of our course we do not have much time to work on this project and we hope to be able to conduct this interview sometime before the 1st of November, but we understand that these are unusual times, and that time is incredibly precious as a working creative at the moment. If this does not fit with your schedule we would greatly value a response to decline this request, or arrange an alternative date.

We hope this email finds you well, and look forward to hearing back from you.

Thank you, Nathaniel Stevens Rhys White Cleo Richardson

FIRST RESPONSE:

Hi Nathaniel, Rhys & Cleo,

Thanks for your email and yes Sam mentioned you were going to email :)

First of all thanks for your kind words, I'm happy my work inspired you and I'd be more than happy to chat you through my freelance journey and overall experience.

How would you like to have the interview? I'm happy if it's via email, zoom or even face to face, whatever it's easier for you. Would you be sending the questions upfront?

In terms of availability I could do Tuesday 27th anytime in the morning or Thursday 29th anytime during the day.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Best,

Beatrice Menis

OUR RESPONSE:

Hi Beatrice

Thank you so much for getting back to us so quickly. We really appreciate you taking time out to talk to us and we are very excited to do our interview with you.

We would love to conduct the interview face to face (adhering to all social distancing guidelines of course) and we are all available on the morning of Thursday 29th. Would you prefer for us to meet you at your studio and what time would work best for you? I would anticipate the interview taking about an hour to conduct, give or take.

We will send over all questions on Monday afternoon for you to look through prior to our meeting.

From this interview we will be making an online (and hopefully physical) publication plus it will be featured on the Out There Project's website.

Thanks again and we look forward to seeing you next week.

Nathaniel Cleo Rhys

P.S. Great to see that you have a new class on Skill Share, I will have to reinstate my membership and check it out!

SECOND RESPONSE:

Hi Nathaniel,

I hope you had a great weekend.

No worries, I'm happy to help and I'm looking forward to receiving the questions.

My design/business partner Kira will be joining as well, we've been working together since March and planning on launching our new studio collaboration KIBI in December.

It would be best if we met at Society Cafe as it will be more comfortable than our tiny studio :)

Would 9.30am work on Thursday 29th for you?

Thanks,

Best,

Beatrice Menis

On our second response, Beatrice informed us that she would be joined by Kira Gardner, her business partner and ex desk buddy at Taxi Studio. They were launching their own design studio together in December.

This was exciting news as it meant that we would have the combined answers of 2 creatives.

PREPARING FOR THE INTERVIEW:

Once we had secured the interview we started drafting questions.

We wanted to questions about her practice and her experience but we also wanted to ask some wider questions that focussed on the responsibility of branding and design when it comes to representing brands, whether branding agencies have any responsibility to represent companies with honesty and authenticity or if the role of these agencies is to fulfil the wants of the client, irrespective of any moral compass.

First of all we all came up with a set of questions independently, then we looked to see if there were any similarities and started to edit down the questions, either removing or merging any duplicate questions.

During this process we noticed that our questions could quite easily be grouped into 3 main sections:

• Process

• Responsibility

• Moving Forward

Once we had our questions set, we emailed them to Beatrice and Kira to look through prior to the interview.

PREPARING FOR CREATING THE PUBLICATION:

We split the job roles between us and researched how we each wanted to approach the look of the publication.

Cleo was responsible for layout ideas.

Rhys was responsible for colour and typography.

I was responsible for illustrations and images.

I looked through some design and branding books to get some ideas for content, the main texts I looked through were:

Michael Johnson’s ‘Branding In 5 and a Half Steps’.

Aaron James Draplin’s ‘ Draplin Design Co: Pretty Much Everything’.

Paul Rand’s ‘A Designer’s Art’.

And finally a book released by Garage Project Brewing on beer can design and development called ‘The Art Of Beer’.

I wanted the designs to represent an element of process and development, from drafts to finished items.

CREDIT: Rhys White

CREDIT: Cleo Richardson

CONDUCTING THE INTERVIEW:

We had originally arranged to meet in Society Cafe but due to potential COVID infections we had to move the interview online. Beatrice and Kira were more than happy to do this and we conducted the interview over Zoom. With their permission we recorded the interview both through Zoom itself and the audio via Logic Pro X, this meant I was able to edit the audio quickly, cutting out anything that we didn’t want to include in the first draft of the transcript.

Rhys was then responsible for getting the transcript drafted up ready to edit down further before laying out the publication.

The interview went really well, they were both very open and easy to talk to and gave us a really good insight into their work and their views on responsibility in the branding industry.

As an ice breaker, Cleo asked each of them to describe the other in 3 words and offer a colour that represented them.

Illustration Rationale:

CREATING THE ILLUSTRATIONS:

After the interview it gave us a really good idea of what they were both like. I wanted to create fun colourful designs to match their personalities that were based on things that they had said during the interview. We also wanted the colours that they had given each other to feature heavily in all visual aspects of the publication. These were mint green and yellow.

I also wanted to use similar colour palettes to those used by Beatrice and Kira, taking two of the major colours from their own branding. Subsequent colours were taken from other projects that they had work on such as the branding for House Of Pops, and even their office walls. The colour choices gave a nice cohesion throughout the publication and kept them looking relatively clean and simple which was done to further reflect Beatrice and Kira’s own design style.

CREDIT: Cleo Richardson

Initial Layout Planning:

CREATING THE LAYOUT:

To continue the idea of process and development as discussed in the initial illustration ideas, we originally opted to go for a bullet journal style as they are synonymous with a process document. Cleo created a set of layouts based on this design idea. However after further discussion it was decided that a bullet journal approach would look too busy and in order to really capitalise on that style, we would need to create the layout and illustrations simultaneously which would have proven too difficult given the COVID restrictions and Cleo’s health complications making it impossible for us all to be working in a room together. So in the end we opted for a simpler more editorial approach and gave more space for the illustrations. Layout concepts by Cleo Richardson

We created a rough layout, laying out which pages would be text lead and which would contain illustrations. We then came up with ideas for each illustration based on which question the image would be next to.

Once we had this mapped out I began to create the illustrations for the publication.

TYPEFACES:

We searched for a few typefaces that we wanted to use in for the publication, at the time Creative Market were offering the OK Regular font for free. We liked that it was a bold sans serif font that had a soft almost hand drawn finish. We felt this summed up Beatrice and Kira really well and used it for headers, numbers and questions.

SHOP-U-LIKE

NEW-4-YOU!

SHOP

EST ‘20

LAYOUT - FIRST DRAFT:

As I had created the illustrations, I began to create the layout using some ideas that Cleo had put together and the rough sketches that Rhys and I had done.

We decided to use colour and shape to identify who is speaking, using the colours given by the interviewees and shapes chosen by Cleo which are shown in the opening pages of the publication to give an indication. We felt it was a more creative and playful solution rather than just using the names before each answer.

Finally, we created a front cover and introduction and decided to give ourselves the publisher name of Stevens Richardson White. I made a simple logo for this and we featured it on the front, inside and back covers.

During a crit session on the publications, it was mentioned that by having the questions larger than the response text, it was giving more importance to the question and not the answer. So we resized the numbers and questions to fit better with the body copy.

FINAL OUTCOME: https://issuu.com/nathfiction/docs/ branding_20document_20pro_20prac_20single_20pages_

SLIDES FROM OUR PECHA KUCHA PRESENTATION

CREDIT : CLEO RICHARDSON

PECHA KUCHA PRESENTATION SCRIPT

Cleo :)

SLIDE 2: Choosing our field

We had chosen branding as a field to research further into as we all shared a common interest in the field. (Cleo) I have an interest in the field of branding as I find the process of how you can be the person to define an entire company with a small icon or few words fascinating and want to learn more about how it is done. (Rhys). (Nathaniel) My interest in branding has stemmed from my freelance work where logo’s branding and identity make up a lot of my work.

SLIDE 3: Selecting a Creative

To begin with we had to choose our creative. We very quickly decided that it was best in the current climate to try to play on our direct or mutual contacts, and so we selected Beatrice Menis as she was a mutual friend of Nathaniel’s.

SLIDE 4: Securing an Interview

Once we had selected our creative we moved on to drafting our emails to send. We wanted to be very definite with our terms in regard to dates and times, but also remain considerate of the fact that time is incredibly precious to working creatives at the moment. We were lucky to receive a response from Beatrice so quickly, and it was a bonus to be told that she would be joined by her friend Kira who is also a working creative. They are in the process of setting up a company together.

SLIDE 5: Tackling the restrictions

Initially we had planned to have the interview conducted face to face, and had settled on Society Cafe. It however became apparent that this wasn’t going to be possible due to some COVID-19 induced difficulties which meant we had to rearrange the interview to be done online. We opted to use Zoom to conduct the digital interview, and prior to the official interview we trialled our recording methods in order to have a recorded version of our interview to allow for our transcription.

Rhys :)

SLIDE 6: Questions we asked

We had decided we wanted our interview to be split into definitive sections, and the overall research basis was to discuss the field, and some of its deeper ethical complexities. When establishing our questions to ask we each wrote down a few in a collective google document which meant we can work together on the same document whilst simultaneously on a zoom call together.

SLIDE 7: Ethical Discussion

So the ethical discussion idea came from us wanting to add a new layer of discussion to the interview. We were interested in something a bit deeper in the underlying basis of branding rather than what was ‘on the surface’ so to say. We found that from our conversations and question brainstorming the natural direction was to have a more philosophical and conversational direction to the questions.

SLIDE 8: Our Direction

Determining our direction was quite easy. With our question document, when reading through it we found that all of our questions seemed to take the same kinds of direction, and this established it for us. When narrowing down the questions we split them into three sections: Processes in Design, Responsibility and Ethics, and Current Climate.

Nathaniel :)

SLIDE 9: Creating our Content

In order to split the workload, we agreed each to take a lead on certain aspects of the project. I took lead on the illustration, Rhys took lead on type, and Cleo took the lead on the layout.

This means that everyone was able to work on sections of the project independently which was crucial as a change in circumstances meant it was impossible to be able to all work in the same room.

We remained in contact throughout, discussing ideas and making sure we all had a common vision for the end result.

SLIDE 10: Working with our Content

Whilst Rhys worked on completing the transcript, I began producing illustrations which were heavily inspired by the colourful and playful styles seen in Beatrice Menis’ work taking colours from their portfolio and incorporating it into the designs.

Originally we wanted to work on a bullet journal style publication to reflect Beatrice and Kira's love of the design process, with the intention of showcasing some of their sketches and development work. However they were unable to send us any material due to them being extremely busy.

As a result of this we took a much heavier illustrative lead on the editorial taking influence from their answers, and wanted to make something joyful and bright as we felt it encapsulated both interviewees.

SLIDE 11: How we changed our Publication and our conclusion

After a tutorial session with Marco we revised the bullet journal idea as it was too complex, and would take away from the content.

As a result we restructured to an editorial style, streamlined the layout and focussed on 3 main colours and 2 typefaces for the entire publication.

Once we had gathered all of our content together, we were able to finalise the layout and put the publication together.

We learned that delegating tasks and good communication were key to completing this brief successfully.

From the interview we learned that building good relationships with clients was paramount to the work that they do, as some of these relationships last a long time.

We presented our publication and process using a Pecha Kucha, with each of us taking a share of the slides each and talking through our work.

Finally we uploaded the publication to ISSUU, a website that was new to me but looked super useful. I set up an account and uploaded my summer zine project onto ISSUU as a tester before uploading this publication.

I was also one of those that helped with the mass uploading of interviews onto the Out There Project website, I learned how to use the basics of Word Press and uploaded our interview onto the site.

REFLECTION:

I feel I learned a lot though this project, it was incredibly interesting talking to Beatrice and Kira and seeing the energy they have for brand identity, package design and helping companies find their place in general. I think what was most surprising was how busy they had been during lockdown as many people took the loss of their jobs as an opportunity to do something new and positive which was great to hear.

Working on the illustrations and layout especially, gave me a great opportunity to practice, play around with different compositions and push myself further. I am really pleased at the work that we all did as a group, we gelled very early on, had really good and successful communication despite not being able to work all together in one space.

We kept a consistent and unified vision for the publication, making often unanimous decisions throughout the process and I think that shows. I think our publication is stylistically appropriate, visually consistent and reflects our interviewees very well.

Out There Project: Interview 2 Moving Image.

JAMES YEO

For our second interview we had to create a motion piece of about 2 minutes, it could contain anything that appropriately represented our interviewee and what they had to say.

We looked through our previously researched creatives and those suggested to us from Beatrice and Kira however, some suggestions were already featured on the Out There website such as Gavin Strange. We wanted to talk to a single creative rather than another branding agency to get a more specific perspective.

Cleo suggested Dylan Shelton AKA Sir Scrub, an ex UWE student who is working as an illustrator. His style reminded me of James Yeo’s work, an illustrator and product designer for Left Handed Giant Brewery based in Bristol. We felt he matched our criteria perfectly, he is the Creative Manager and product designer for the brewery and is also responsible for their branding and merchandise but is working ‘in house’ rather than for an agency. I also had a personal interest in talking to him as I also work for Australian based brewery Blackflag Brewing and was keen to get an insight into the way that he worked.

Examples of James’ Work:

SECURING THE INTERVIEW:

Once again Cleo was responsible for drafting the first email using the 7 steps technique, I then used that as a basis to develop an email to James. I knew one of the founders of Left Handed Giant and wanted to include that in the email to show we had some mutual friends etc, I hoped that would build a quick rapport and potentially give James more of a reason to allow us to interview him.

FIRST DRAFT:

Good morning James,

We are three students emailing from UWE’s Graphic design course. Our names are Rhys White, Nathaniel Stevens, and Cleo Richardson. We wanted to reach out to you to see if you’d like to be a part of a project we are working on. We have been briefed to produce a two minute moving image pieced based around a short interview conducted with a Graphic Designer of our choice. Once produced, our content will be featured on The Out There Project which is a design database produced exclusively by UWE students.

We’ve chosen you!

We are all big fans of your design work produced for Left Handed Giant in Bristol. We’re researching into the field of Branding and Company associated Graphics and we would like to ask if you would have some free time to speak to us in regard to a few short questions about your works and your experience within Graphic Design.

Our course has an extremely fast turn around, so we would ask if you would be able to help us complete this interview by November 20th. We would greatly appreciate if you would be able to let us know how you feel in regard to this proposal, and would request that you inform us if this is not viable.

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you, Nathaniel Stevens Rhys White Cleo Richardson

FIRST EMAIL SENT:

Hi James

My name is Nathaniel and I’m a second year Graphic Design student at UWE working alongside fellow students Rhys and Cleo on a project that focuses on professional practice. We are reaching out to you to see if you would be willing to take part in a short interview about the work you do for Left Handed Giant, your product designs and your role as creative manager at the brewery.

We have chosen branding as our area of interest and we really love the work that you have done for LHG, I have been following your work for a while, I’m also a big fan of LHG beers and have known Jack since he was manager at The Hare On The Hill.

The interview would consist of a few questions and will culminate into a 2 minute motion piece that will feature on the Out There Project website which is a design database produced exclusively by UWE students.

Our course has an extremely fast turn around, so we would ask if you would be able to conduct the interview by November 20th. We would greatly appreciate it if you would be able to let us know if this something you would be happy and able to do or if it’s not possible.

Many thanks and we look forward to hearing from you. Nathaniel Rhys Cleo

FIRST RESPONSE:

Hey Nathaniel,

I’d be happy to do this with you guys! Fridays work quite well at the moment. Let me know what time you’re thinking of and how you want to do it. Happy to help in any way I can!

Speak soon, James

OUR RESPONSE:

Good morning James,

First of all, thank you for getting back to us so quickly!

That's great, thank you for helping us, we are excited to talk to you. Can I suggest next Friday 20th November at 10am? With the current circumstances I am going to suggest that we conduct the interview via zoom if that works for you? (we will send you a link closer to the time) We would have loved to have come to meet you in person, perhaps when all these lockdowns are over we can catch you at LHG. In the meantime, we will send over the questions in advance of Friday's interview, hopefully on Monday, I suspect the whole interview wont last longer than 30 - 40 mins maximum.

As this is going to be a video, can we ask if you could send us any of your artwork files (any format is fine) that you would be happy for us to use in the motion piece to showcase your work, accompanied with an image of your lockdown workspace? We will also be filming some of the LHG cans as well.

We hope this is all ok, thank you again for agreeing to the interview. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.

Many thanks and we will be in touch again soon.

Nathaniel Cleo Rhys

INITIAL QUESTION IDEAS:

How have you developed your style and who has influenced you along the way? - Did your style develop or solidify when it became the basis of the LHG brand? - How important is the artwork on the can when it comes to selling whats in it? - How do you ensure that you stand out in the craft brewing scene where great can artwork is an ever increasing expectation of the craft beer drinker? - When creating a can design what influences you the most, the name of the beer, the type of beer or your own personal creative process? - How did you approach branding LHG? - As the sole artist and creative manager for LHG cans, did you give yourself brand guidelines or any strict parameters to create within when designing? - Although the artwork is different on each can, how important is it to keep a stylistic consistency? Is this done to create brand recognition? - Do you have a particular subject that you like to illustrate the most? - What's your process when creating each design? - How did the beer can come to be your canvas of choice? - What process did you go through in your Graphic History which culminated in your distinctive design style now? - Do you feel the craft beer scene is an evolving and developing branding opportunity for young designers? - How did you begin designing beer cans? - Are there any specific designers/ illustrators that have influenced your work? - What steps do you go through in your design/illustrative process? - Which beer can design is your favourite and why? - How much have the designs in the alcohol industry changed over the last decade? - If you were a beer which beer would you be? - How do you find your clients? - How have you developed your style and who has influenced you along the way? Did your style develop or solidify when it became the basis of the LHG brand? - How important is the artwork on the can when it comes to selling whats in it? - How do you ensure that you stand out in the craft brewing scene where great can artwork is an ever increasing expectation of the craft beer drinker? - When creating a can design what influences you the most, the name of the beer, the type of beer or your own personal creative process? - How did you approach branding LHG? - As the sole artist and creative manager for LHG cans, did you give yourself brand guidelines or any strict parameters to create within when designing? - Although the artwork is different on each can, how important is it to keep a stylistic consistency? Is this done to create brand recognition? - Do you have a particular subject that you like to illustrate the most? - What's your process when creating each design?

How have you developed your style and who has influenced you along the way? - Did your style develop or solidify when it became the basis of the LHG brand? - How important is the artwork on the can when it comes to selling whats in it? - How do you ensure that you stand out in the craft brewing scene where great can artwork is an ever increasing expectation of the craft beer drinker? - When creating a can design what influences you the most, the name of the beer, the type of beer or your own personal creative process? - How did you approach branding LHG? - As the sole artist and creative manager for LHG cans, did you give yourself brand guidelines or any strict parameters to create within when designing? - Although the artwork is different on each can, how important is it to keep a stylistic consistency? Is this done to create brand recognition? - Do you have a particular subject that you like to illustrate the most? - What's your process when creating each design? - How did the beer can come to be your canvas of choice? - What process did you go through in your Graphic History which culminated in your distinctive design style now? - Do you feel the craft beer scene is an evolving and developing branding opportunity for young designers? - How did you begin designing beer cans? - Are there any specific designers/ illustrators that have influenced your work? - What steps do you go through in your design/illustrative process? - Which beer can design is your favourite and why? - How much have the designs in the alcohol industry changed over the last decade? - If you were a beer which beer would you be? - How do you find your clients? - How have you developed your style and who has influenced you along the way? Did your style develop or solidify when it became the basis of the LHG brand? - How important is the artwork on the can when it comes to selling whats in it? - How do you ensure that you stand out in the craft brewing scene where great can artwork is an ever increasing expectation of the craft beer drinker? - When creating a can design what influences you the most, the name of the beer, the type of beer or your own personal creative process? - How did you approach branding LHG? - As the sole artist and creative manager for LHG cans, did you give yourself brand guidelines or any strict parameters to create within when designing? - Although the artwork is different on each can, how important is it to keep a stylistic consistency? Is this done to create brand recognition? - Do you have a particular subject that you like to illustrate the most? - What's your process when creating each design?

After we had each submitted every question we could think of, we then whittled it down removing duplicates etc. we had also read an interview with James conducted by the website Craft and Slice and were conscious not to choose questions that had been answered in that interview. We worked using google docs to each select our favourite questions in order to get our final 6 questions.

After making our selections and discussing our choices we worked the questions until we were happy with them and sent them to James in advance of the interview so he could prepare if he wanted to.

REVISED FINAL QUESTIONS:

• How did you develop your distinctive design style and what influenced your creative practice?

• What did you do creatively before working for LHG?

• How did you approach branding

LHG?

• When creating a product design what influences you the most, the name of the beer, the type of beer or your own personal creative process?

• How important is the artwork on the can when it comes to selling what’s in it?

• With the craft beer scene now full of products that focus on creative artwork as well as the beer its self, do you feel the craft beer industry is a good and viable opportunity for young designers?

Design Research Presentation:

RESEARCH:

Due to the pandemic it meant that a face to face interview and recording on location at the creative’s studio or workspace was impossible so we had to look into alternative approaches to create the visuals. I was responsible for looking into how we could overcome this obstacle and I put forward 3 directions that we could use within our motion piece. Making sure we had enough material to fill the 2 minutes required.

After discussions we decided that we should narrow our approach to a couple of more manageable ideas. We were limited in the sense that no one in the group was particularly proficient with After Effects and so creating our content purely on the computer would not be the best plan of action.

As James’ artwork is featured as the designs for the Left Handed Giant cans themselves it meant we could get physical products and film them in different ways. We decided that we could use the photography studio to do this.

We also developed the idea of creating our own cans with questions or quotes on them that could be placed amongst the Left Handed Giant cans as a way of introducing a connection between the visuals and the audio of the interview.

Mock up of beer can with question label wrapped around it. The design is based on a Left Handed Giant beer named ‘Sleepy Head’

THE INTERVIEW:

We conducted the interview in the same way that we conducted our first interview with Beatrice and Kira. We knew that audio was even more important this time so while James was giving his answers we were mindful not to make any noise or interject or comment until after he had finished speaking. We recorded the interview via Zoom and through Logic Pro X so I had a copy of just the audio that I could edit.

James was great to talk to, his answers we’re really well thought out and thorough and even though we only has 6 questions, the interview lasted just short of 40 minutes. He was friendly and honest and gave us plenty of great, insightful content to work from.

PREPARING FOR FILMING:

After the interview I got to work editing down the content, taking out anything that we has said that was not needed, any information that we knew wouldn’t be in the transcript and also as many of the “likes”, “kind of”, “sort of” etc that I could so that these wouldn’t come out when we process the audio for the transcript.

It took just over 400 edits to get the interview down from 40 minutes to 14 minutes. After that I began to extract sections that we would use during the motion piece.

During this time Cleo was working on some music to accompany the visuals, she also took the interview and cut sections into the track to illustrate what content she wanted to include. Between the 2 of us we managed to get a cut of the audio that we were all happy with.

We didn’t want to include our questions in this interview, we were aiming to have just James talking throughout without having our questions on screen, this was chosen for 2 reasons, first of all James’ answers for each question were very long with all being over 2 minutes per answer also when editing the clips down we started to merge answers together if we felt the content flowed more succinctly. Second of all was about pacing and flow, we thought that what James was saying didn’t need clarification with questions and by adding them we would be disrupting the flow of the speech and in turn the visuals.

Cleo continued to work on the music piece remotely as her deteriorating health situation meant she was not able to work with us in person.

PREPARING FOR FILMING:

We needed some of James’ can designs to feature in the video so we made a couple of orders to Left Handed Giant and bought cans that we liked the artwork of, in the end we had 9 unique cans that we could feature during filming. We also needed extra beer cans that we could stick our own labels to and place into the shots with quotes from the interview. We bought a few cans from a separate brewery which were printed using labels rather than directly onto the can so we were able to peel the label off and have a blank canvas for the labels.

Once we had the revised audio that we were going to use for the video, we started to pick out quotes that we could use as the basis of our quote cans. We all pitched our preferred quotes and again edited down to the final set.

Once we had these decided I began to make some can sleeves using colours and elements taken from can designs that James had done. • We were trying to go for a more modern, progressive, look.

• Gives people a reason / to pick it up

• "I liked the way it looked"

• A lot of graphic design stuff is pushed to the back so people have to turn it around and actually engage with the product

• There's always tiny little bits

• Ultimately the beer will influence the look of the label

• You wouldn't want to use a lot of colour

• or a lot of flashy imagery

• West Coast IPA: Orange Green

Purple

• New England IPA: Yellow Blue Pink

• outgoing

• Hustle

• Be smart about it

• Free and supported way

• It takes a very trusting person to be / able to give that much of their brand to / someone else, and trust them with it.

FINAL LABELS: Initial design idea:

FILMING:

Rhys had hired a Canon AX30 from central loans for us to use to film the piece, we printed out all of the labels and got them ready to insert into the shots that we wanted. Each quote was created as a sleeve so we could change out each one non destructively and meant we only needed a few blank cans at a time.

Rhys and I wrote out a loose shots list that corresponded to parts of the interview, we then went through each shot making changes and adjustments as we went. We wanted to have shots that showcased the artwork and highlighted parts of James’ process but also had us interacting with the cans to as way of creating movement and illustrating the tactile nature of the product. The final tracking shot was by far the hardest to get right, we had to make a dolly out of a skateboard and any large pieces of wood we could find around the studio, propping it up with boxes and furniture to get the right height.

In the end we were pleased with the shots Rhys and I had created, we are both very meticulous and detail orientated which meant every aspect was scrutinised and worked on, this made for a longer shoot but meant the quality of each shot was much better, this in turn will make editing a lot easier.

EDITING:

As we had filmed the sequence in chronological order, editing was fairly straight forward, Rhys had also been quite strict with what we kept and what was deleted so that also meant there were not lots of shots to go through when putting the clips together.

Once I had edited all the shots down, I adjusted the audio to make sure it all flowed nicely. We wanted to make sure it sounded like one cohesive response and explanation of his process. I also edited the music track that Cleo had provided so that it fit well with the interview audio, this took a few mixes until we were all happy.

I then went through and colour graded each shot, adding LUTs (look up tables) to each shot and adjusting them individually to try and make the shots as consistent as possible. I added stabilisation when needed and added grain and saturation to help the visuals match the graininess of the audio as it was recorded via Zoom. There was a lot of discussion about getting the balance between degrading the visuals using grain and making the audio as high quality as possible so that we had a good balance between the two.

The final touches were adding light leaks to some transitions and adding text at the beginning and then end. Once again we used the SRW logo as used in the publication.

FEEDBACK:

Through a tutor lead session we had the opportunity for some peer feedback as well as feedback from the tutor. Thankfully most of the feedback was positive with only small changes required before our final review.

Feedback for Cleo, Nathaniel and Rhys

Quality of Interview:

Audio is good —> It’s nice to have authentic audio from the actual interviewee.

Technical Aspect:

Really professionally shot.

Nice touch having the cans with quotes on which relate and reflect Yeo’s design.

Accessibility:

Interview audio is good quality

Like the music in the background —> Really nice piece of music that doesn’t get annoying after the two minutes.

Stage of Development:

Nice integration between the real cans, and our designed cans.

Overall Design Approach:

Nice zoom change on the extended shot with the quote at the end.

Clever shots considering the area used to shoot

Creative and entertaining.

Developments:

Wasn’t notable that the audio was ‘rough’.

Keep the actual audio it’s more authentic.

Possible to blend in the graininess on the audio —> Although the audio is a very minor fault and wouldn’t be considered a flaw.

Quality of the interview.

Good insight into the chosen professional. He spoke clearly, however, the recording was ever so slightly grainy. Wasn’t too noticeable and could probably be blended in aftereffects/premier if needed to.

Techniques chosen to execute the video

Simple layouts, clever shots and not too many effects. Was very effective. The transitions to get from one can to another also slotted into the whole video very well.

Recording of an actor or the real professional

Real recording of the professional. He gave a good insight on to his style and where and what influenced him. Left us wanting to know more about the professional.

Easy to hear? Easy to read?

The interview was clear enough to hear and the additions of text on the cans was designed in a clear and obvious way too.

Stage of development. What needs to be done for next week.

The video seemed completed. There didn’t seem to be too many loose ends or flaws to highlight

Overall design approach?

The clean design approach, colours popped against the white background. The music in the background really worked well for the whole 2 minutes.

Marco Feedback:

Add your name at the beginning or the end

Think about creating better contrast in the type at the beginning

Adding a notch of saturation to the video. Be careful about distorting when adding too much.

Increase the sharpness to the sound. Maybe remove some of the dampening on the music?

UPLOAD:

The final task before uploading to the Out There Project site was getting a transcript of the interview. We uploaded the full audio with an image onto Youtube which has an annotation feature. Once it had analysed the audio we were able to copy the annotations for our transcript. We then went though the copy to make sure it had been annotated correctly and catch any errors.

I then uploaded the content to Vimeo and the Out There Project website as part of the larger upload of all content for this years entries to the site. REFLECTION:

This project was really useful for me on a personal and professional level, as someone working in a similar role with Blackflag Brewing in Queensland, it was incredibly useful to talk to him about his process and colour choices as well as how hands off the owners are, allowing him to create what he wants. Because of this interview I have structured a set of questions which will be given to Blackflag before we take on any new product design work to make sure that we can create a brief, as without one there have been several times where owners change their mind on designs and beers and it becomes a nightmare to get any concrete direction. I have included questions about hops and beer colour as this always informs Jame’s colour palette.