EXTENDED PRACTICE MODULE BRIEF COVER SHEET
Student Name: Will Jeffrey
Module Code: OUGD603
Module Title: Extended Practice
Level: 6
BRIEF TITLE: Studio Brief 4_ Antojitos Mexicano
Brief: Build the brand and design identity with relevant printed/digital media for a new pop up street food company specializing in fresh & vibrant recipes straight from the heart of Mexico.
Positives and Learning Curves I think the main positives of this brief was that it made me think about ‘branding’ as apposed to just design. I had to think about every aspect of it – what it did, how it did it, what it looked like and how it communicated. The fact that I was thinking bigger meant I considered things that I haven’t really had chance to before – props for photography; the food and drink; what its environment would be like. This project also allowed me to develop my typographical skills – not so much in final solutions but in analysis and sketching. It was also quite interesting to try and bring semiotics into the problem solving equation – thinking about how the design work could identify the brand as ‘Mexican’, but also trying to be unique with it. Finally, it gave me chance to use the vinyl cutter for the first time ever. Unfortunately it wasn’t as exiting as I had hoped.
Negatives and difficulties I faced a lot of difficulties throughout the duration of this project and it is with a sad face that I say the entire thing was a pretty negative experience. Firstly, my project management skills were absolutely horrendous. I had already responded to this brief at the start of the year and pretty much got it to a point where I felt it was complete and was happy with it. Unfortunately, feedback from the interim submission was pretty poor and it made me realise my response was just lacking in substance and not good enough. Because of this, after the COP hand in I decided to completely start again. I now realise this was a really, really stupid idea, as it meant I would miss out on other briefs that I had written to do something I had already done. It was also really stupid because I deleted all of the old work off my blog. I tried to do it properly on my second attempt – spending time researching and really thinking about what I could do – spending all my money on props and wooden boxes, with a clear vision of what the end thing would look like. I was really exited and ready to do an amazing job, but when it came to the design work I just completely messed up. I couldn’t make decisions, I hated everything I was doing, I spent hours just debating what colours to pick and what to illustrate - before I knew it I had ran out of time. This meant I could only produce about a quarter of the amount of work I had planned to – and even then things went wrong. It turns out the colour settings on my mac are completely different to that of colleges. I’m still not really sure what happened, but I basically had a nightmare with printing and colour management. This meant I ended up spending a lot more money than I should have, to in the end have prints that still were completely the wrong colour. Time ran out and there just wasn’t anything I could do. Finally, my photography shoot just topped it all off. I spent quite a lot of time and effort preparing food and drink to use within the photographs, hoping that that, and photo editing, was going to make up for the poor design work. I did struggle in the beginning because I felt the white backdrop in the studio was ruining the atmosphere a bit – they really needed to be taken in a restaurant or real environment – but after about a million close up shots I was really happy with a selection of them. When I got home though and got them onto my laptop, it turned out pretty much all of them were blurry. Luckily there were the odd ones which were relatively clear, but I was really disheartened by the final result.
What would I do differently next time NOT DO THE PROJECT TWICE. Learn from the mistakes I made the first time and move onto a new brief. Manage my time better – be realistic about how long it is going to take me to do things and stick to a time plan strictly! Stop being so indecisive – attend more crits with different peers to get new points of view instead of just frustrating myself staring at the same thing for hours on end. Find out what is causing the problems with my colours before its too late. Take the brief further.
Ratings (1 Very Bad – 5 Very Good) Quality of work - 2 Quantity of work - 2 Attendance - 4 Punctuality - 3 Motivation - 3