Portfolio

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Design Strategy Presentation

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Branding

My branding is simple and minimalistic and reflects me as a designer.

Choosing Between In-House Design Team, Design Agency and Freelancers?

Choosing between in-house team, design agency and freelancers?
Jan. 26, 2012
Over the past year Brand Creative has seen a rise in companies recruiting in-house designers. Some employers have suggested that there are many benefits to having an in-house design team including cost and better control over their creative but what is the best option?

Designers work in three main environments; in-house, design agencies and freelance. An in-house team benefits a company by understanding the company and its goals. An in-house designer will have a good knowledge of their customer or product and be able to put this at the forefront of their designs. This will add value and result in a quick turnaround. It can be very time consuming for a client to explain to a design agency or freelancer what they are looking for whereas an in-house design team will have a good understanding of this and be able to come up with the goods quickly. The company will also have more control over the designs – watching them develop throughout the process and be able to make changes quickly.

This does seem appealing but in-house design teams can become a little stale and this is why some employers are searching for designers from an agency background to make the move to client side. Design agencies are renowned for coming up with fresh, exciting designs and their designers are ahead on new, innovative ideas and strategies. Designers from agencies are being employed by in-house teams to provide fresh ideas to a company if the company or brand wants to change direction; a designer who has been with the company might not be open to these changes or not too sure how to do this.

Some clients decide to just work with a design agency but this process can be long, laborious and costly. From the initial brief to the final design it can take several meetings and the Creative Director that you may have initially met with will not necessarily work on your designs. With freelancers it is just the one individual so you know will be working on your designs throughout the process.

Freelancers do have their advantages for companies who are just looking for sporadic design work to be carried out. They are known for their flexibility and working with one individual has its advantages over working with several designers. Freelancers can be costly so if a company is asking their freelance designer to do work on a regular basis than they may have to re-think their strategy.

“The amount of in-house designer jobs has increased significantly over the past year,” claims Ursula Colman, Managing Consultant at Brand Creative. “Clients are looking to bring their design team in-house so they can have control over their designs and cost. Not only are these employers looking to recruit other in-house designers but they are very keen to interview designers who have worked for an agency. This all depends whether agency designers are willing to make the move to client-side but in a tough market designers appear to be open to different sectors.”

SOI - HAND IN

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SOI - Feedback

I have just had a group tutorial regarding SOI and DC with Lorenzo and he helped with my rationale statement, here is a slight update of it but it still is not the final one:

Concept driven type, layout and finish in the luxury retail market with a focus on branding, publication and packaging. 

SOI - First Draft

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Progress Crit

As a whole year we made a list of 5 things that we all need to focus on:

1. Typos

2. Context to brief shown on portfolio online and paper based.

3. Quality of images and relevant content.

4. Consistency of personal identity.

5. Design is in the detail.

This is the feedback that I got from a crit we had based on looking at our online and paper portfolio and also business card and stationary. At the moment I want to re photograph my product shots from all of my projects and therefore I only have an online portfolio of my work. My business card got feedback that I think is very valid. I will be changing these things and will post new ideas for my card on here soon. I would like my business card to have some kind of concept and not just be a simple card to hand out. I would either like it to be interactive or unique income way. I will have to explore how to do this further.

Here are some logo and layout designs for my card so far:

I wanted the typeface for the logo to reflect my design name 'Tiny' and so a sans serif font seemed most appropriate, however I didn't want it to understate the branding. The tallness of the typeface adds authority and power to it making it still seem like a legitimate and trusted identity.

I played around with positioning, scale, weighting and content to see how things would work together on the page. I wanted the design to look sleek, minimal and luxurious. I think I am still half way to completing the final card. I need to take into consideration and experiment with different type of stock and print finishes to make it stand out better.

ISTD Brief 2012

Module 1 - 1st Brief - Layout+Print Finishes+Ltd. Ed.

This is the second draft of the Ultimate Layout brief. And to be honest as I direct my ideas of what I want to design more closely the brief seems to keep evolving. The first draft was about looking at typography skills and trying to create the 'perfect' layout and if there could be anything perfect within design because everything is open to opinion. I thought this was an interesting brief, however it lacked structure and meaning in the real world.


The second draft of the brief is below and focuses towards an insert for Elle magazine. Again looking and layout and typography, but this time it had a meaning and more of a focus.

However, what I would really like to get out of a layout/editorial brief is an exploration of stock, materials, print finishes, and innovative thinking in the tight constraints of magazine making. Having chosen an already well established company there are already man very tight constraints on what can be produced and then to be able to transfer it into mass production.


So...

My updated first brief (and hopefully finalised) is as follows:

Create a high quality in store look book for Harvey Nichols showcasing the wide range of exclusive brands they stock.
To accompany the in store look book a smaller and cheaper to produce book will be made, with the same contents, for customers to take away.

The purpose of the look book is to give the customer ideas as to what they can buy and it could be coupled together in styles, colours, etc to express a lifestyle.

The type of people who shop in Harvey Nichols don't need to look at the price. No prices will be included in the look book, instead it will be advertising a lifestyle 'if you buy this you will be...'

The look book will experiment with print finishes and materials to give an overall exquisite experience to the customers.

The look book won't only have in store clothes it will show what has been on the catwalk, tips and trends. Like a mini 'style yourself' instruction manual.


 

All About Me

Rationale:

An editorial investigation of high end retail with a focus on typography and print methods.

5 statements relating to my umbrella of interests:

1. An experimental investigation of branding with a focus on ‘pushing boundaries’.
2. An innovative investigation of packaging with a focus on its use.
3. An editorial investigation of layout with a focus on fashion magazines.
4. A social investigation of inventions with a focus on helpful products.
5. A typographical investigation of editorial design with a focus on print finishes.
 

Presentation

VERY VERY SKETCHY OUTLINE OF SPEECH (in previous speeches I have read word for word from a script, I think this is partly because of nerves and because I am scared I will forget what I am talking about. This presentation I have promised myself I will not read from a script and instead have a couple bullets points to go from. So here is my initial (very scruffy) outline of what I will say, I will briefly learn this script and then only have a few bullets points to read from on cards when I am doing my presentation to help me engage with the audience more and have an all round more interesting and fluent presentation):

I would like to start by saying how much I feel I have progressed over the summer holiday. I feel I have been able to more clearly see where I want and could progress to in the near future. I have been able to realise WHERE MY MAIN SKILL SETS LIE AND WHERE I need to work on. During the first and through to the second year I was working MORE on experimenting with many different key skills and tried to be a graphics designer in all design areas, however I know this is very hard to achieve and have realised it is so much better to be amazing at a few things and to in turn develop a more personlised and recognisable identity.

Over the summer I was unable to get a placement because of money issues, or a lack of. But as I said in my previous presentation I didn’t let this hinder my personal and professional progress. I managed to visit many galleries, showings and events to help keep my head design minded and abel to keep up to date with my competition. Visiting these places encouraged me that what I want to do professionally is something I am still very excited about and something I feel I can achieve highly in.

I have recently been speaking to someone called liam keogh who has a lot of contacts within high end magazines such as elle and vogue and said he could get me in contact with various people within these companies to help me establish a dialect.

I managed to get some work designing a new logo for a night club in leeds. The logo will be featured on flyers, advertisements and possibly eventually signage.The logo is still being developed with an ongoing dialect with the club and for one of my briefs I have decided to work on the overall corporate identity of the club and two other bars that run alongside the club.

I have also been focuing in on my love of inventing and product design. I have been researching into everyday products that can make life easier. Like a dragons den style product. This research will be furthered as one of my 10 briefs is to design and make a new product.

On to my dissertation which focuses in on packaging and how people buy items because of the packaging and not so much on the contents. My research includes in store observations and relative questionnaires ad looking at the work of............... I feel not only is this a very interesting subject but it will help me with my design work and vise versa because another of my projects is on packaging and its function and importance. Using both academic and creative aspects to packaging will enable a very in depth analysis. The products that I will be analysing will be cans specifically and will be unrecognised brands to help keep the analysis away from bias within loyalty within brands.

Where do i want to be and where do i want to work.
Before the summer I was very focused in on editorial design and type and layout, but I feel my aspirations and interests have broadened and opened me up more potential clients and employers. I am very good at problem solving and thinking out of the box for solutions. With this in mind product design is something I have really enjoyed looking at over the summer. Looking at problems of everyday life and coming up with a solution. Now I just need to find an amazing problem to solve. Having said this I am still very interested in type and layout for editorial use and if all goes right contacting elle and vogue magazine then maybe something good will come from that to help me progress, after all some of the time it can definitely be who you know and not what you know.

Thinking about where I want to be wan what I want to do, I need a portfolio that will reflect and interest these companies that helps me stand out from the crowd. There are still some gaps in my portfolio to fill, but this is where my 10 proposed briefs come in.

PACKAGING - USEFUL PACKAGING NO WASTE - BUYING PRODUCTS FOR THEIR PACKAGING

PRODUCT DESIGN - MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL - EVERYDAY USE

LAYOUT - THE ULTIMATE/PERFECT

ELLE MAGAZINE REFURB

QUIT SMOKING HELP

EXTREME BRANDING

MISSION RE-BRAND

PHOTOGRAPHY - TAKE A CLOSER LOOK MICROSCOPIC

EVERY DAY I HAVE TO EVERY PRODUCT DESIGN

RE-USEABLE GRAPHIC DESIG - LEBELS BOOK MARKS

SPARK DESIGN CONCEPT -

NUS POSTER



PDF of presentation:

PPD Briefing Year 3