Contacting DOPA Solution

I recently e-mailed DOPA Solution asking if I could help them with the marketing and distribution of their product, a pen which makes it easier for people with Parkinson's disease. Unfortunately they never got back to me, and I've since found that their project has been indefinitely discontinued, which is a shame. My e-mail read:

Hi, 

I am a final year Graphic Design student at Leeds College of Art, I found your project on the internet and wondered if there was anything I could do to help any marketing or distribution of the pen, whoever big or small.

My grandfather suffered heavily with Parkinson's for the final few years of his life, I spent a lot of time caring for him before I moved away to university, so it's a subject that is important to me and one which I have experience with.

Regardless of whether my help is wanted/needed or not with regards to graphic design, my grandmother is still involved with a community of Parkinson's carers on the outskirts of Sheffield, and if there's anything I could do to help through this, please let me know.

Thanks for your time, and I hope your good work continues,

Matthew Brewer

Work for Square.One

I recently went and worked with Square.One, a design agency in Sheffield, on a live project to re-design Royd Nursery Infant School's logo. The logo had to be red, blue and white, and be representative of the following qualities:

• Including Everyone
• Hardworking
• Thoughtful
• Sharing
• Supportive
• Kindness

I was also given this pack of documents that SquareOne had produced for schools and nurseries previously to use for inspiration and ideas.

After speaking with Michael (the Senior Designer) and Jonathan (Director) we agreed that my initial ideas weren't really suitable for a school where the pupils were so young as they were more symbolic than pictorial as shown below.

The idea behind these was that the hands and triangles were placed in a structured way to support each other, with the hands being representative of sharing and kindness and the triangles reinforcing the supportiveness. The circle around them is to try and represent inclusiveness, these are made from ribbons and triangles to try and reflect happiness and supportiveness respectively.

I then tried to think a bit more pictorially and ended up with these, but I they thought they were a bit cliche and simple and wanted to avoid using them.

My next set of ideas were much more appropriate. I took forward the idea of using ribbons and the circle shape to make a crest. I then worked on the idea of using the ribbons to form a letter R as well as to try and represent a maypole, something which requires all of the above qualities.

After discussing these ideas we decided that I should run with the maypole idea as it sums up everything the school was looking for and is appropriate as the school happens to have a maypole, but the shape should become a bit more abstract and extravagant.

We found these to be a bit too abstract, which was the problem I initially had with the triangles and the hands. After adding in the children and the pole it became a lot clearer what the image was, and that the lighter tones of red and blue made the logo feel more positive.

The final logo looks like this.

I also adapted it to work in greyscale and monotone

I then adapted these into uniform, a stationary set including letterheads, business cards and compliment slips, and a mock up what their new website could look like with the new logo.

This project took just over a week in total, which I thought was pretty reasonable given how slowly ideas came to me despite knowing that I'd be doing this brief a few weeks in advance of starting it. This was something I discussed with Michael, who reassured me that it's not something I should worry about.

I found the experience as a whole pretty enjoyable despite how slow it was in parts due to my lack of ideas, and was pleased with the outcomes I produced.

Identity Workshop

After discussions in todays workshop about the relevance of certain forms of identity, particularly business cards, I've come to the conclusion that business cards (or at least some sort of physical element that can be given to someone) are always going to be relevant, and so they're something I need to think about in my self-promotion.

I've also learned to think of this as self-promotion as opposed to self-branding. I'm not a brand, I'm a person, and my employability will generally be based upon how well my work aligns with how I promote myself. For this reason I've decided that, given the underlying philosophy of my approach to the whole of this year, my promotion itself needs to be highly reflective of the work I've chosen to undertake.

This means I can't really start work on my self promotion until I've started compiling my portfolio, which, in turn, can't be made substantial until I've done considerable work in OUGD603. However, conceptually speaking, I'll need to come up with a business card design that will fit on numerous shapes or formats, as this may be require in order to best represent my individual projects. This will also need to be translatable into a website of some sort.

I can't see any other format or media being necessary for my own promotion, as I tend to work without gimmicks, and this should be reflected in my promotion.

Encounter with Copyright

Upon wanting to quote and reference Michael Bierut in his new book 'How to use Graphic Design to Sell Things, Explain Things, Make Things Look Better, Make People Laugh, Make People Cry, and (Every Once in a While) Change the World', I read in the inside cover the following statement:

"All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publisher."

I found this odd because the numerous other books I'd read, quoted, and referenced on my CoP blog hadn't had such a message. I looked into copyright exceptions on the governments website and concluded that I was probably allowed to do so on the grounds of 'Non-commercial research and private study', 'Criticism, review and reporting current events', 'Sufficient acknowledgement' and 'Fair dealing'.

The post in full can be found here.

Start of Year Presentation

Me as a Designer

I've realised that design isn't as relaxed an environment as I'd have thought it was going to be, as I was expecting people to be more relaxed given that they're meant to be enjoying their work, but it seems that people are a lot more enthusiastic about design than I am. I also never realised just how much attention and time the commercial side of design needed to be considered.

My main interests are Packaging and App Design, but I don't particularly want to be solely working in these fields, as the prospect of variation and doing something different every few weeks was what attracted me to design in the first place.

CoP 3

Last year I looked at the ethics of fear and guilt and charity advertising, and ended up bashing the First Things First Manifesto a bit, got really into it, and struggled to fit everything in that I wanted to say, so this year gives me a much bigger opportunity to write something meaningful than last year.

I ended up accidentally stumbling across Nietzsche towards the back end of last year, got really intrigued about his thoughts, and after reading his books I found the difference between his thoughts and most philosophy and morality to be interesting, specifically his criticisms of Christianity, which is the base of Western society and established the values that First Things First abides by, so this is what I chose to look at.

Summer Progress

I've read a few of Nietzsche's books this summer, as well as books about him, and books by similar philosophers, YouTube videos and interviews about him, even a film based on one of his theories, so I've made a solid start to CoP.

PPP

Nietzsche's philosophies and thoughts generally advocate individual achievement and self fulfilment, and following your own mind to make decisions about right and wrong. To work in such a way would satisfy these thoughts would require a large amount of Networking, something which has been close to non-existing in my PPP so far.

Last year PPP really helped improve me attitude towards uni and the industry, but even after putting a considerable amount more effort in than first year, my branding was still a but disappointing. I also hope to find a placement that will confirm to me that I do still want to work in this industry.

SquareOne Design

Working in the industry was something I dabbled in over summer, I went to SquareOne Design in Sheffield for a week and worked on a live brief with/for them. I did enjoy this, but finding another studio I enjoy working in will assure me more that I'm going to enjoy working in design.

Level 6 In General

Enjoyment is something I want to focus on in general this year. Given that it's my last year I want to enjoy it rather than labouring through it like I did in first year. I'm going to do this by taking on briefs that I know I'm going to enjoy because I want to enjoy every brief. I'm also determined to continue putting as much time into CoP as I currently am, and to keep improving my commitment to PPP.

Me Before I Was A Designer

To ensure that I picked subjects for briefs that I know I'm going to enjoy working on, I looked back at the summer brief I did before coming to uni, as I based it on things I enjoyed doing. This was the last time my life wasn't completely dictated by the pace of uni work, so seemed like a good place to look.

Self-Directed & Collaborative Briefs

The main briefs I want to do are the Pantone brief from last years D&AD, which I never got round to doing last year, re-design the website for the Cesar Manrique Foundation, an artist and architect from the Canary Islands who was one of my main inspirations for getting into design in the first place, do and augmented campaign for Top Gear or Amazon Prime's new equivalent, and look at re-designing football program covers.

Live and Competition Briefs

In terms of live briefs, it obviously depends on what becomes available and what's realistic, but I've been in contact with some students from Reading University who developed a pen that makes it easier for people with Parkinson's disease to write, and I hope to be able to do something useful for them. This is important to me as it was a problem my late grandad struggled with heavily in his later years. I've also been speaking to a friend at Bristol Institute of Modern Music about what her course requires in terms of professionalism, and so this may lead to me doing something for her.

Given my interest in packaging, Starpack is probably the main competition I'm going to be keeping an eye on, but some of the D&AD and YCN briefs that involve marketing a product at a new audience are interesting too, something Jamie and I did last year with WWF.

Summary

So in short, my CoP will be looking at how the effects of a self-fulfilling approach to graphic design will differ from the traditional idea of "ethical" design, and this is going to be reflected in my Extended Practice by me only taking on briefs that I'm interested in wherever possible.

My PPP will be focussed on developing branding as a freelance designer, or someone looking for a part-time job in design, as this is what will be necessary for me to work in this way in the industry, unless I end up working in-house for a company in an area of my interest, which is probably the perfect way for me to work.