Brand It

As our first solo project of the term, we were given the task to brand and then package a word. We had to choose between one of the seven sins or seven virtues. I chose the word 'greed' and began to look at its meaning as well as visual associations with the word.

Definition: Excessive desire for wealth, power or food.

I created a mood board showing all the visual interpretations and associations with the word. I decided that I wanted to brand greed as a positive despite it having a negative meaning as I felt this opened up a more interesting side to the project. I originally started to experiment with money trees which I felt were a strong representation of the word. After showing my work to others, I received feedback suggesting that the tree is seen as a positive leading to the idea of branding greed in this way.

 

Experimentation of my logo

Brand Pillars

Final logo and colour scheme

I defined my brand pillars which really helped me to create a logo that would reflect the idea of my proposed product. This also helped me to choose the name of 'Greedy Goods' which was a play on the term 'Greedy Guts'.

As the second part of the project, we have to package our brand as a product, service or experience. My brand was going to be a food stall that would be located at a station and would sell a two part product including a 'greedy' and 'good' part to it. I had shown this within my logo by illustrating the two words in the relevant way and needed to show the two sides to the product within the packaging of my idea. 

Initial ideas

Final Idea

Final menu idea

I created the design for my pop up food stall which would based on the theme of a barn/shed. I continued the natural theme which I had adopted within the logo and used the same colour scheme to ensure coherence. When creating the menu, I showed the two sides to the product by splitting it in half and using the logo to distinguish between the greedy and good part.

Freedom of Speech

Our first second year project was a group project and although I usually hate group projects, I found this one really enjoyable and helpful to get back into the swing of things with uni. I did not know any of my new tutorial group who I would be working with for the 3 week project however after getting to know them, we all worked really well together. Each group was given a different topic and told they would have to argue either for or against the subject. We were given 'Against the Freedom of Speech' which originally stumped us completely however after a lot of research we decided to narrow down the subject and base it on the freedom of speech within social networking. This lead us to the matter of cyber bullying:

We researched existing cyber bullying campaigns all of which we felt were dull and uninspiring. We felt that we could create a more exciting campaign raising awareness of the problems involved with cyber bullying. This would link to our original topic of the freedom of speech in a convincing way. After brainstorming potential ideas and ways in which we could build a campaign, we decided that doing it digitally and using the power of the internet would be the most successful especially due to the nature of the campaign. 

We decided upon the theme of Pac Man as we felt that it was accessible to both children and their parents and therefore would hopefully not be dismissed like many existing campaigns. We created a 'Google Doodle' which would then link to an edited version of the original Pac Man game. 

Our Google logo in situ

Our edited Pac Man board

Once we had created the game, we decided that we needed to promote it in some way. We considered posters however as the rest of our campaign was digital, we felt that advertising banners which could be placed on relevant websites would be the most effective. We created a banner for Twitter, Facebook and Ask.fm

Link to the animation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_bXG_AptMI&feature=youtu.be

Glass Painting

Although I have never considered myself to be very artistic, I have always felt that I am creative and I always love to do 'arts and crafts' (even at almost 20). Me and one of my friends from home decided to paint wine glasses as we had several birthdays coming up and thought they would make good presents. After going to hobby craft (my favourite shop in the world) to get paints etc, we had a really fun day painting our glasses and I was surprised at how well mine turned out!!

Work in progress 

My finished wine glasses

Card Making

My summer at home has been 4 months in total and although I spent 3 weeks at the beginning Interailling around Europe, my saturdays working at my old job, Topshop, and the majority of the rest of my free time babysitting to earn some extra cash, I have found that I miss being creative and having projects to complete. Looking back, I now realise that I should have found myself some work experience even if it only meant a weeks work however I am going to be more proactive this year, and hopefully secure an internship for next summer. Whilst tidying out my room, I found all my card making stuff which I used to use when I was younger. I decided to get creative making loads of cards which I knew would be especially useful as two of my best friends birthdays were coming up at the end of August. 

It began with the sound of breaking glass

In a small group, we created a stop frame animation after being given the title of 'It began with the sound of breaking glass'. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgKPh6dWG3o

Advertising Campaign

Safe Sex Advertising Campaign which we created as a group project. We filmed each scene and then used After Effects to edit the clips and add the music and sound effects. 

Penguin Book Cover Competition - The Big Sleep

As the Penguin Book Cover Competition has now been judged, I am able to post my book cover online. Unfortunately I did not get shortlisted however I was very pleased with my final outcome. 

Penguin Book Cover Competition Brief

For the last 3 weeks of term we all took part in the Penguin Book Cover Competition. As it is a competition brief, I am not going to blog any of my work until I have submitted it. 

Website Design

This was a four week project in which we had to design a website for a hobby or interest of our choice. As I don't have any specific hobbies, I decided to think outside the box and create something a bit different. I chose to design my website on the theme of 'things that annoy me'. Although this sounds quite miserable, I wanted it to be light hearted and amusing. I firstly created a mood board.

As I didn't have a specific theme as such, it was difficult to decide on the imagery that would be on the website so I started designing some logos.

I then went on to create the final designs for the website. I designed 6 different pages and transferred some of them into an tablet and phone format. 

For the home page, I chose to create a small clip in After Effects that would be played on loop whilst on the page. I used cartoon images of flies as they are in keeping with the 'annoying' theme and making them cartoon keeps the idea light hearted and humorous. 

After Effects Workshop

This week I had an After Effects workshop in which we were to complete a short kinetic typography movie. I chose to use the well know quote from Forest Gump - 'My muma always said, life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get'. This was the first time I had used After Effects and at first I thought it was quite challenging however as the day progressed, I found that the program was a lot simpler to use. I would like to use it again however and use the more advanced effects that I was taught later on in the day.

Saul Bass - Design Hero

As I mentioned below, we were given a design hero which we had to research and present to the rest of the group with an accompanying mood board. I liked my mood board as I think that it showed Saul Bass's style well as well as giving many examples of his work and the sort of things he designed. 

Our task was then to re-brand the designer creating a logo for them which would be reflecting their personality as a designer. I originally looked at him initials and then moved on to the things that made him stand out as a person. 

After choosing my final logo we then had to create a product that we felt was suited to them. I chose to create a moustache growing cream and moustache grooming kit. When presenting them to our group, we had to have them displayed on a concept board along with our final logo. 

Saul Bass Quotes

As our next project, we were each given a 'design hero' which we were to re-brand through a set of tasks over the 4 weeks of the project. I chose Saul Bass from the hat who I originally had not heard of however after a bit of research, I was familiar with his work. He was an American Graphic Designer who was best known for his design of film posters and film credits. I found a quote of his which I found very inspirational and something that I can definitely relate to.

"Learn to draw! If you don't, you're going to live your life getting around that and trying to compensate for that."

After reading this, I decided that it is probably time for me to learn to draw. I am definitely a culprit of this and always find myself trying to create designs using anything but drawing when it would really help me. People say that the only way to learn is by practising so I am definitely going to do more drawing in my spare time. 

Snow in Notts

On Monday we woke up to a sprinkling of snow in Notts and then it snowed throughout most of the day. Although it did not settle very quickly, it has stayed below freezing most of the time and the majority of Notts has turned to ice. I went for a walk in the Arboretum and Grave Yard yesterday afternoon to take some photos of the snow and ice that was remaining. 

Frozen pond in the Arboretum 

Waverly Building - My uni building

Grave Yard