Some of my boards from the hand in on Friday. Overall I am quite pleased with how it turned out. I really enjoyed spending two days last week photographing my work & I think it paid off. It was nice to explore photography in terms of putting my designs into context. I wanted to add a slight design to the boards which would run with the overall branding too.
I have struggled with this final project, mainly due to the fact that I wanted it to be my killer piece in my portfolio. I didn’t want to rely too much on my Giant brief, which is what seems to happen when I’m going in for portfolio surgeries. I went through about four or five different routes when actually choosing a brief to do which hindered me because I didn’t want to waste the time I had, orginally I wanted to do two briefs in this space. When finally settling on a brief the name of the bar was keeping me from moving further. In hindsight I should have asked someone to make me a brief but hey ho.
I am really quite happy with my outcomes ( apart from my invitations) because I feel like I showed how to apply a brand across a wide medium. Having a good concept makes it very easy to spread the brand across. I explored web, & print in this process & got to work highly with typography which I enjoy.
Some amazing work coming out of Tumblr this week can’t wait to see it all at the shows!
Some of the new pictures from today making it look more like a bar than just on white card. Hopefully it works more in context.
I have been trying to document whats been going on these past few days these are some of the background going ons from my photoshoots. I decided to buy some placemats which were made of granite to give more of a bar impression I would like to think they did the job I had some fun in making some fake cocktails, however I think my skills lie in design not food colouring water!
The website looks a lot more in keeping with the rest of the branding now just a few tweaks which were recommended by Andy on Thursday and it should be good, I’m glad I went with a one page site even though I was a bit sketchy with it as my own is a one page site too and it felt a bit of a cop out but it looks good.
Playing around with the editing of the photos here, I have an app which is a lazy way out really but to get a quick idea of what I want is handy too. It’s called Analogue by the way if anyone is wondering. So I had a look at different effects to add to brighten the images up.
It really makes a big difference.
Practise photoshoot.
Today I wanted to have a practise in getting the layout and the look and feel for my bar branding. I have and have not at the same time. They look ok but they aren’t quite there yet. I have been looking at madebyanalogue for the representation of their portfolio photography and it is amazing.
I wanted to make my images appear as if they were in a bar, which is tricky when you don’t have a bar. But they aren’t too bad I am going to keep photographing tomorrow to get the look at feel right.
Some progress in my NMP
I have been trying to capture my workings as I go which is why my tumblr has suffered recently with weird images and not much explanation. As you can see that the changes haven’t been massive but they make a difference. One thing I learnt from my time at absolute was to print out the designs so far it’s much easier to see what’s going wrong when it’s there plain as day infront of you. I also found it’s easier to show people what’s going on too.
I went to a meeting for the Home brief with Tash before the Easter holidays too, the home brief is a lovely little brief really. Which is in two parts, make a mood board to send over to Abu Dhabi for the students over there to understand what home means for me. The other part is to create a poster which signifies home to me.
The trouble with the brief for me is to not get too cliche, and soppy but at the same time I think home is different for everyone. Without trying to be all philisophical I feel that Home is wherever you feel happiest, usually with people you love to be around. You take your home with you. I also think home is past experiences which you build on, the foundations of your life, so to speak. I think thats what I may work off.
Above are some images I made for my mood board which is here.
Although I haven’t been blogging about it much I have been attending the pro con 3 stuff going on and around. I went to the photo touch up session with Andy, who is ace when it comes to sharing his knowledge! He is very talented when it comes to his photography and I learnt a few things on mass editing ( in adobe bridge ) he gave us some images to edit and taught us how to touch them up.
I enjoyed it and really could see a difference compared to the originals, however I don’t really have much patience with it something I should really learn to get better at.
I also attended the setting up your own design company and freelance chat from Shape. Andy talked through how to set up your own freelancing and advice was really useful. Ways in making yourself look bigger than you are was particularly handy as you sometimes can come across as a bit of a student and if you aim big you are more likely to get bigger clients. It also taught me that every opportunity is a networking opportunity and particularly the ones which aren’t design related, at the end of the day who needs a designer when you’re around designers?
I know it seems like I’m talking about shape a lot but they are very useful and did a lot of talks on how to cope after uni. In particular was one which talked us through the process of a job. This was the most useful as it gave me an insight into how to handle clients, it’s all about feedback. You let them know what is going on, and it’s good research to get the best of their ideas and not just your own. They are paying after all. They went through a job Shape are working on at the moment and how they had many changes and tweaks and are still working on the site. Another thing they spoke about was the contract side of a job it is crucial to get the rules laid down before anything goes, otherwise you can get ripped off.
