submitted boards

These boards were put on and handed in on my submission CD but I wanted to finish up by putting them up here as well. I had problems with issuu yesterday but should be working fine now.

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing - More graphic design

creative Networks brief pitch board

I had some comments out of the final crit to expand this brief, but design wise its not really got a strong concept I could run with so I dont see the point in inventing more context for it. It was a frustrating brief so I'm a little disappointed with the end result, the typography on the back is shocking, I was given the final copy quite late and I just didn't care at that point to correct orphans in the text, ah well, it is what it is.

Open publication - Free publishing - More graphic design

Mid evaluation/run down on current status of briefs

This post is to look at where I currently am with my briefs, looking back at how things have changed since my statement of intent was written, and to outline some decisions made about the briefs that I havent blogged until now.

First up, my rationale:

'To produce Typographically driven, concept based visual solutions for layout and branding with a focus on print outcome'


Good news, I am pleased that this is still relevant and accurately describes the work I have been doing since I wrote it.


Now to a rundown on the current status of my briefs: (order as described in SOI)


1) Leeds creative Time-bank
Brief completed, this was the first one I finished this module so it seems a long time ago! I don't think I will re-visit this one as I achieved all I wanted from it.  As a pitch for a design direction it's a credible solution I feel.


2) Exhibitions brief
This brief is well underway and I am planning to finish it before the end of this week, I have an interesting design direction for each exhibition and I just need to push out the brief to explore "what can it be" (© Fred) 


3) Lights camera action (film posters brief)
This brief I started ages ago but it has stuttered to a halt unfortunately, its an ideas led brief and tragically I have had only one really interesting idea for it: the James Bond Goldfinger poster. Even this poster isn't really completed yet as I have some adjustments I want to make. The plan is to spend a day on this brief to finish the bond poster and print it and thrash out some more ideas. I would really like to get something good out of this but if nothing new comes from another day brainstorming then I will drop the brief as I cant afford to waste more time.


4) Its all too much (roses 2011)
This brief was always a stand-by, incase something more interesting didn't come in, but I have done some small live briefs instead of looking at this one, so its officially dropped now.


5) Calendar brief
Another brief currently underway, I hope to have something completed by the end of next week. Its been a long term brief, and although I feel I have some some interesting work for it, its still based around experimental and quite minimal layout and STILL lacks real world context so I get the feeling it wont meet many grading criteria unless I can quickly make much more out of it.


6) Creative Networks brief
This was a quick live brief (but not nearly as quick as it should have been!) with only a postcard as an outcome which wasn't really worth the time invested unfortunately. I could revisit this to push the brief out a bit but I would really prefer to leave it and put it down to experience. At least its a real world job, but I learnt more about client management than actual design doing this!


7) KTP brief
This is a brief that I should have never started, I think I felt compelled to do something for this because I went to a briefing to find out more and found there was only 3 of us in the briefing! To be honest I wasn't really interested in the brief, and the 'pack' as it was originally described to us is a longer term project in planning stages that wont be ready to print anytime soon. A week wasted, brief dropped.


8) 2020 perfect vision
A one week live pitch that came on the back of a week placement I did for the company. I pitched the DVD packaging as they asked, but I can see some ways to make this brief slightly bigger so I may revisit this before hand in to expand the scope of this. I think I have come up with quite a neat solution for this and taken existing branding in a new direction so I am pleased with this work even though its more commercial and client led job.


On the whole I am slightly concerned at the moment about the amount of work done, even though I know where and why the time went, I have been working on briefs (or on placement), just not always doing the right briefs quick enough!

Creative Networks brief, final printed

These have now come back successfully from being printed at www.targetprint.co.uk  They look pretty effective I think, and no nasty surprises. The colours have come back just as I expected, but the stock is quite a dark white so it lacks a little of the punch it would have on a brighter white, but at a (very) budget print job its looks good I think.

Creative networks flyer, FINAL finals! (plus evaluation)

A couple of last min adjustments, (a request to do away with the 'off the wall' on a version of the back, and a couple of mistakes on my part, oops) and these are the last versions. This has taken longer than I thought it would (as all my briefs do) but the results are far better than the first developments so the time spent has been worth it I think. This is an A6 flyer, but I have made it slightly bigger to view here. There is also a 3mm bleed on it so the borders will be smaller.

I forgot to talk about the font earlier, I chose to work in Univers for this due to looking at examples in a book I got out of the library, which I will write about in a different blog post. I like the way all variants of this font work so well together (unlike Helvetica where the bold looks great but other weights are average and the condensed looks squished.)


front:

back:

back (alt version)

Gone to print now and everyone is happy so a successful job I think. I just need to accept I cant yet do this sort of job in one afternoon yet, .....well I can but it would look s**t!

Creative networks flyer, finals!

After a chat to Becky, we decided on some alternative versions as tweaks to the previous design so a final could be chosen:


For the front, versions with solid white and the semi-trasparent, with and without 'Creative Networks' added

For the back, trying the text on the other side and trying one box instead of the two and taking out 'amazing illustrated spaces':

Creative networks flyer, more development

This is the version I sent to Becky and Steve Monday afternoon, hoping the job was just about done....

Unfortunately it came back with a long list of change requests:

The final copy was a lot longer, the front was to revert back to something like the first version with 'Off the wall' as title, The pink colour was considered too girly and potentially off putting to men, the business link logo was not to be used.... All in all quite a bit more work so I met with Becky Tuesday (yesterday) to show some ideas on how these changes would look, to try to avoid another round of revisions.


These are the changes I made using the final copy:

Creative networks flyer, Design development

Using the new image now, still with draft copy. I was told they didnt want to use the 'Off the wall' anymore. To get the text to stand out better I started experimenting with boxes:

I wasny sure about colour, then I decided it might be good to pick colours out of the photograph and re-use them for the boxes:

Creative networks flyer, Final image, colour correction

On Friday, Steve asked me if I though this image would work, I love it and knew this would improve the design loads. The only problem was the colour balance, I think it had been photographed with the wrong white balance because it was looking far too yellow to me.

This is the original:

This is after lots of fiddling by me in Photoshop, I wanted a natural look:

Its such a nice photograph I think it was worth the effort, even if it goes unnoticed (Steve and Becky haven't commented so I don't think they noticed I changed it), at least I know its better!

Creative networks brief drafts

I wasn't given the final copy or photo at the start but I wanted to get some idea of a design direction so I just used a low rez image off Lizzie's website: http://www.lizziemarycullen.com/ I hadn't seen her work before I agreed to do the brief, so I was relieved to see that it's really excellent stuff. I was given copy with the 'Hot off the wall' headline tag that I wasn't completely convinced with, but I decided using a b+w image with this text in red might be quite striking.

Version 1, looking back at this now, its not so good



Version 2, better, but the red text is not really working the way I wanted it to.

New Brief, Lizzie Mary Cullen – Creative Networks

Becky handed me this brief to produce a flyer design last Wednesday. Ive written it up in BAGD format:

Open publication - Free publishing - More brief