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Year Two starts here, Thank you ByeBye!

What is a line...

I have a separate blog for the brief,  what is a line Here

End of Module Evaluation

What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

During this module i feel i have developed in different areas. Firstly i feel this is the best iv performed all year, carrying on from what was overall a positive module before this, keeping the work flow going and commitment going. From this i feel i have developed skills within time management, and more specifically making most of what time i had, creating more work than i previously thought possible in short amounts of time. This being most effective within the earlier briefs as they had 1 and 2 week deadlines.

I have also not just developed but learnt a lot from the type and grid module, developing on the layout of my work and designs in general and learning about kerning and leading, of which i had no prior knowledge. I believe i used this fairly effectively within my three double page spreads, however i didn't experiment largely with them, using pretty much the same Pt. size for the leading and kerning etc throughout them. This being something i  hope to do the next time i have the chance.

                I have also developed some skills within the world of print. The print room isnt my best friend but im glad i chose to screenprint for the first time, so now i feel confident with how to actually screenprint on my own and am eager to use the process again as from seeing around the studio i know what the possibilities are within this method of print. As it was the first real time i had done screenprinting i wasnt really confident, and  i did leave it a bit late so i didnt use it to its full potential, I also wish i had screenprinted the tee-shirts i made for the How To brief.   

What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

During this module i've actually looked into existing work and design that relates or coincides with my own work or what i plan to do. Thus informing my own design process on how existing products are effective and bringing that into my own work. Specifically for the last brief, i spent what felt a long time on research and very short development on ideas which lead to me changing from one idea to the other which i had never really done before, this helping me show that what i was creating was the most appropriate choice for me.

I also for the first time organized and presented my research clearly and cleanly by buying a cheeky folder thing. This informing my design process as it made it very easy for me to see where i was and what the next step was as my work was all linear.  

What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalize on this?

One thing id like to think is that my work is fairly different, comparing it to others around the studio, As far as i know i  think i was the only one to create a load of stickers for the last project and maybe the only one to create t shirts for the How To brief, capitalizing on this would be to just keep being all different! 

        Another strength i feel i have within my work is the amount i can produce within a short time, this being very useful within shorter briefs as it allows me to work at quite a high pace without it feeling so. 

What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how do you wish to address this?

I think one weakness i have or is in danger of becoming a big problem, is that the work i produce is all quite 'samey', i feel dependent upon illustrator and cant help but keep on using helvetica. I think the problem i have is i feel time is always against me and illustrator just feels a quick way of producing something that looks all proper in a short space of time. To address this i may just ban myself from using helvetica for a project or two, and for not using illustrator, im not overly sure on  how to address, but when i get a brief try and think of something i can make or design without using fully depending on illustrator. 

      Another weakness i feel is that my work all tend to be in the same form of computer printed and i dont experiment enough with different forms of media. To address this i feel i just need to really think of ways aswell as computer printed to make a final product out off and generally just be more playful and open minded when thinking of media, form and even things like size. 

Identify 5 things you would do differently next time and what you wish to gain from doing this?

1. I would screenprint any t-shirts i make. gaining a much more professional and respectable finish. 

2. I wouldnt fail my print elective, twice, gaining more time to work on the projects for this brief. 

3. I would work and experiment more with different media, playing with the format. Achieving a more thorough body of work and development. 

4. I would have done more than one screenprint for my last project, more experimentation with. Getting a possible better outcome by comparing different designs etc

5. I would have kept my blog fully up to date, Not having to do a lot in one sitting, catching up. 

How would you grade yourself in the following areas:

5 = Excellent, 4 = Very good, 3 = Good, 2 = Average, 1 = Poor

Attendance - 5

Punctuality - 3

Motivation - 4

Commitment - 3/4

Quantity of work produced - 4

Quality of work produced - 3/4

Contribution to the group - 5

Communication=virus, Final Boards

Communication=virus, Designs

Before going straight into the designs, i need a typeface or two!

What i wanted for the typeface was something nice and clear to read, but something that looked quite digital and slick. Aswell as this i wanted to find a typeface that represented neon tube lighting! 

My designs...

These designs above being for a phonebox, the parrot being the logo for the company, Parrot Mobiles. Then the phrase being highlighted by having a neon-light looking typeface and also being separated from the logo, this thanks to the shape and format of the phonebox.

These designs are some ideas for the side of a bus, only using the strip in the middle of the two floors of a double decker or the one below the windows on a single bus! Again using the same things as the phonebox designs, just in a smaller format!  At this moment in time i really like the black and cyan colour scheme within the phonebox, i need to take that to the bus designs, out if which my faves atm are the bottom left hand corner, the thinner strips, nice and simple, No blank space lost. 

Communication=virus, message

So we need a phrase, a cheesy warm light hearted phrase, 

the ingredients: 

orange

parrot

free minutes

talk time

hmmmm.hmmmm.hmmmm

DING!

'Talk isn't cheap, It's free, with parrot only on Orange'

HELLO!

Mille was amazed, im that good! hahaha but yeah, so we have a message.

It was around this time where during a crit i believe someone mentioned having Parrot as a separate company, rather than having to use orange and its recognizable stylistic ads and what not. We hadn't really given this a thought, but once the issue had been raised we easily agreed to use Parrot as the mobile company itself, this way we could use whatever colours we want, giving us freedom!

So now the message will be something roughly along the lines of,

'Talk isn't cheap, it's free with Parrot mobiles'

beautiful! 

Me and Mille then went our seperate ways to go and design the posters for a phone box, a bus and a bus shelter, with the instruction of using our phrase! and having a duo-colour palette. 

Communication=virus, Promote and Advertise

So we have our 'product' essentially, what we will actually produce for it however will be the advertising and promotion for this product/deal!

Me and Mille had a lil chat about the possibilities of where we could take this, taking into account whats already out there, what do mobile phone company's use?

Well, 

.Billboards

.TV ads

.Radio ads

.Cinema

.Bus Stops/Buses themselves

.Magazines

.Newspapers

.Internet ads

Theres a wide range of media we 

can design towards, but together we decided to choose three different formats and work from there, seeing how the designs went etc

So we chose, 

.Side of bus/Bus stops

.PhoneBox

.Radio Ad

It was also at this point where myself and Mille, since researching into various phone companies and in-particular Orange, we took notice of how most of their ad campaigns are based around a warming, light hearted message, like so...

'Good things should never end'

pretty cheesy, but you get the jist. So we also knew from this that whatever format our campaign would be made for it would revolve around a single phrase of equal jollyness to this example! 

Anyway, bit of research...

These just examples of what kind of thing is kicking about, out there! and what can be achieved! Taking the bus into consideration, this example showing we can just have a whole bus as an advert! kerazay, but i just like the phone box idea, just like the format and shape of it, the separation, jazzy.  

 

Speaking From Experience, Context

Right, photos to show my lovely product in context!

(please jesus forgive me, i couldnt afford to print off two loads of stickers so these are just paper versions, but they are to scale! and are the final designs!) 

Oooohhhhh lovely stuff!

Speaking From Experience, Instructions

As all of this has started to come together it came to me that the package and stickers will need some form of explanation or instruction, as alone it may not be all that clear what the stickers are meant to do! So i need to design a cheeky little thing that will go in or on the that in few words describes what to do! 

first designs...

Some colour perhaps?

At this point i got annoyed, cus lets not lie, they look bollocks! well i think they do, so cheeky break, re-think! Lets make it relate, logical choice etc! 

So once more i made a cheeky road sign and played around with making it a bit more special but not as outragous! as the stickers! So not to take attention from them like, i really like these, subtle, yet same style pretty much as the stickers! So i think i found a winner!

This when i print it out will be placed on-top of all the stickers so it is the first thing the student see's.

Speaking From Experience, Packaging Seal

So made the package, looking pretty swarve! had a little bit of nice feedback aswell which is always nice. Anyway, i now need a way of keeping the package all closed and stuff and then when i give it to

 someone they can open it up and be like oh stickers how bloody awesome! 

The first thing that came to mind and i re

ally obvious is another sticker! that can peel off and down again etc! 

So initial ideas for the

 sticker...

Bit bright intchya! These are ok but are nothing more than initial ideas, bit mod? which doesnt have anything to do with my stickers or message. taking these further, basically just making it fit in with the message, cause and the stickers themselves...

made sense for these stickers to relate to the ones inside the package, as they are drawn from road signs, these stickers can be a middle ground of a normal road sign and the ones i have 'accessorized'. The Question now? where to put the stickers???

I tried a few positions on the package with various sizes of stickers, out of this process i have nailed it down to those two options. I think im slightly leaning towards the two stickers, looks a bit more even and straight i guess! 

Speaking From Experience, Packaging

Throughout the project i've had in the back of my mind how to store the stickers, firstly thinking of a simple box or something, but for stickers that seems a bit too much, bit bulky like! So what about something flat? 

Certain existing packages out in the real world could be useful however, 

Firstly, Vinyl Record covers, slim, easy to make/print, just a matter of designing a lovely pattern or what not, chance to screenprint perhaps, something i have yet to take advantage of! 

The only disadvantage of this format of package being that part of it is always open, not ideal for stickers as they are very light and could easily fall out.

I have also thought about a simple envelope design, similar to the ones created by Don't Panic for their student orientated packs! Again this being a net plan design, open to screenprint and what not.

From thought such as this i want to create a form of envelope but something a bit more hand crafted and personal and maybe something a tad different to the norm? stand out from the crowd and all that! 

After experimentation with paper, card and design sheets etc! i finally decided on a net plan and a design, which i would both screenprint and also computer print,

(technical difficulties! there will be pics of, 

A) the design for the screen print!

B) the design with the net plan on it!) 

The screenprint took a few days, as it was my first time doing a screenprint i was quite apprehensive about the whole thing, even more so after failing my print elective twice im not the guys down there bestest pal, i received some help but i guessed a fair bit, so it took longer than it really should have!

Never the less i triumphed! hazar! i did a few test prints on white and then moved onto the coloured paper i had previously purchased!

I then took the prints, outlined the net plan thing! and followed to cut and fold it all up! 

Overall i feel the prints were pretty successful, i cant quite choose a favorite colour between them but in an odd way they kind of work well as a group, i think anyway. I think it must be the boldness of the type keeps the colours from mixin not an issue like, if that makes sense.

There was a slight hiccup with the prints, this was that cus iv never done it before i made another school boy error of not having everything as black, the text that goes around the rest of the package is in Helvetica neue had an opacity setting of 80% oh no! 

so basically it came out very fine indeed and didnt print that boldly, however it kind of suits the package, leaving full attention to the front bold title! but i would liked to have done it again to compare the difference!

Speaking From Experience, Final Designs

So having gone through the development stages of designing the stickers and now having a colour scheme to work with i've made what i believe to be the final sticker designs, 

 

Please excuse the print-screen image here, i made the highly school boy error of making all the stickers much larger than they should have been! So doing this s

aved me shrinking this image down so that

 

it would fit into the art-board as if i had done, i would had to have spend time on scaling all the line Pt. sizes down and trying to recreate them to look like how they were!

Besides this, i added two more colour variations to

 the lot, this matching the set of designs as now i have 6 different sti

cker designs and 6 different colour sc

hemes. The c

olours are in all fairness quite similar

 with one another, mostly one colour being changed each time like, This emphasizing the fact that they are a pack of stickers, a family and they need to be in a similar style to appear so!  It is the also the colours that will make the stickers stand out and appear more bold and i feel the ones i have chosen do this effectively.

SIZE ISSUES

When creating the stickers it came 

to mind that size was going to be an issue, im already limited to A4 as that is the only size of vinyl sticker paper i could get my mits on! however some of the objects i am 'pricing' are much larger than others, so i need a range of sizes basically! 

This being a simple method of creating a list of small medium and large objects then choosing which ones to uses! 

So i came to the decision that i will end up with 4 small stickers, 2 medium sized stickers and finally 3 large stickers...

I chose to mix the colours up between the signs, but in no particular order or anything! This also applies for the design of the sticker! But yeah i like the outcome of the stickers and fortunately when i started on these specific designs it didnt take long to find a good outcome, which was nice!

Speaking From Experience, Sticker Research

As im now producing stickers iv been casually looking for stickers being used as a means of contemporary graphic design, i found this pretty lovely exhibition thing which consisted of a big wall of bright orange made of small round orange stickers. The public are then open to take off and or re-apply the stickers where they wish! check the video on this site for a more visual description...

APPEEL

This shows how far interaction can be taken with stickers. Interaction being a big part of my designs as the student audience will decide on where abouts to stick the stickers!

Speaking From Experience, Colour

There's a little matter of colour with my designs, as till now i've just been using CMYK, theres nothing wrong with that but i've used it before and its a bit common and 'passé' in my humble opinion. I do however want to use a tri colour palette, so i need to try some out...

Out of these i have 4 faves! which i shall take and apply to the sticker designs, 

Speaking From Experience, Typeface

To choose an appropriate typeface is my next task...

To begin with i thought it would work well if the typeface itself was a bit broken and distorted, however the ones i found and liked tended to not have any speech or pound sign things! So i cant really use them, It also makes sense to me to have the message as clear as possible, so a more simple straight typeface may be the answer...

Here using more simplistic typefaces, such as Arial Black, Impact and Helvetica. From doing this im swaying towards Helvetica, im quite a fan of it generally and i've used it successfully before, so why not! 

Speaking From Experience, Message

Creating design sheets concerning the matter of how to word the actual messages that will be part of the stickers i have managed to come to a conclusion of what they will say, 

Working through such possibilities as; 

. WALL = £170

. This wall costs £170

. This wall will cost you £170! 

. Got £170? 

.'I will cost you £170" 

Going through these and others i have chosen to make the message be in the form of speech marks so i plan at the moment for the stickers  to state, 

"I COST £170" -This wall, 2009

So to say that the student will know where to stick the sticker and what the price applies to by seeing who has been quoted. (This fitting in with the idea of money and what not, being quoted a price etc) 

With this decided i need to look into typeface and the arrangement of the message on the different shaped stickers, this however will be left till the actual sticker shape designs are fully complete.  

Speaking From Experience

For the final road sign design i will be working from the upside down triangle which i do believe is used for 'Stop, Give Way' on our roads...  

Firstly i went back and used the same techniques to spice up this sign as i did with the original triangle designs. Going a little further, experimenting with layering up the same image on top of each other and stuff! Although they are alright designs i wanted a complete different style for each sign, so this just wont do!

Back to the original shape, play some more... 

Right so dont tell anyone, i used the same tool as earlier on during this development stage to stretch certain areas of the triangle, but in all fairness i have done so to create a different stylistic effect. I think im on to something with these, me likey. 

Again going further, trying the designs with thick/thin lines making it more bold and what not! At this moment in time im leaning towards the designs with the lines around the outside of the shape, keeping it a bit slick and what not. 

Speaking From Experience

Moving onto a different road sign! this time it is the American common road sign in the shape of a diamond in yellow and black! 

With this one i just played around with creating a design that you might find on a fancy rug! But only in lovely bright colours.  Evidently they still need work, and im thinking i need to make them appear to be less basic!

Taking the simple designs further, with these, changing the Pt. size and thickness of lines, playing around the colours and what not, adding black to make it more bold and exaggerate it all to make it more eye-catching.  I quite like the designs, however i think it is the weakest out of what i have already created. Two things to keep in mind however, firstly i need to put the message in the sign so the size of line in the middle area of the sign may need to be changed to allow for this. Also that i have the choice of repeating what signs i wish for the stickers so i can only use this for one actual sticker if need be. 

 

Speaking From Experience, Initial Designs

Some more initial designs here, using two other road signs as starting points, the circular 'No' and no entry sign. 

Again doing the same as before, using a CMYK colour palette and just playing around to begin with...

Here i've moved quite quickly in terms of creating the designs, i made the first 3 and kind of got stuck with where to go with them, went away! came back and just made the bottom bigger two and i think these are the ones i'll take further. 

Then here taking the designs to a further stage of development, playing with different colours and Pt. size of line to a near finished result. I'm fairly fond of them at this time.

Speaking From Experience, Initial Designs

Here starting with the 'Stop' road sign, and beginning to play around with the image and seeing what i can do to it to make it a bit more jazzy and aesthetically pleasing... 

Again using the CMYK palette to firstly play around with, I dont want to use the same techniques as i did with the triangular sign so im just looking at the idea of layers and what not, but as of yet i'm not keen on what i've produced. 

Carrying on with developing the signs...

Here i played around with extending one corner of each line section, creating this rather 'nu-rave' funky little designs, i think when added too with the thin and or thick lines they become more effective as not only does the colour palette give make it all bright and eye-catching these lines make it more bold and even more attracting to ones eye. 

Speaking From Experience, Initial Designs

My first step for designing the stickers was to create a simple road sign and from there experiment with changing and developing it into something that looked a bit pretty basically...

Keeping the shape, playing with two tone text, then to just liven it up with colour, simple cmyk- this giving it more appealing although quite simple method of jazzing it up a bit. But for now i think im going to keep this colour scheme as it sort of suits anything so to just get the general idea of the difference created from several bright colours, eye catching. 

Time has passed and i've played around with making these designs...

Had a little fiddle with some distortion tools on illustrator, i quite like some of the effects i managed to achieve however i need to be careful on not making them look cheesy and a bit 'amateurish' But i feel there is potential within these designs.

Again working more with these designs, being deliberate with the effects and trying to use them in a more stylistic manor than before. From there adding the line detail over the top not in alignment i feel makes the image more bold which is a something i am hoping to acquire.