Live Brief - Freya Williams Self-Promotion

Freya's print slot is tomorrow, I e-mailed her all the files she needed tonight along with instructions for how to print them as I can't be there myself due to the Elmwood talk. My instructions are clear, below is the e-mail I sent her.

DBA (Hyperloop) - Pitch

After speaking to Jamie about what preparing for the presentation Jamie reminded us that it was a pitch rather than a presentation, and that a full PDF would be needed as opposed to a couple of sheets printed out. We thought it better that he prepare this as he'd designed the logo and the website, meaning the PDF would match these elements.



We didn't feel the need to all go into the pitch, so only Jamie, Ryan and I went in, taking 3 slides each to talk about our proposal. The feedback was very positive on the whole, they thought we'd done well and approved of the way we worked as a group, even though it'd meant that Ryan and I hadn't physically designed anything that went into the final pitch. The main feedback they gave us was that we needed to simplify the logo and make it chunkier like it appeared on the train as the individual arrows get lost at a small scale.

Storm DFX

Whilst looking through job websites I found one at Storm DFX, a name I recognised from home. I looked into what they wanted in an applicant and feel it's fairly well suited to me.

I looked into their work and found it to be mainly packaging and point of sale design, which is what I'm interested in, so it may be worth contacting them with my portfolio when it's completed and asking for a placement as it's in a location I could realistically access easily because of having family that live close by. I feel like if they're looking for a new member of staff they probably could do with some extra help at the moment, so it seems to make sense.

Career Coaching Session

I spoke with Ingrid yesterday about the process of applying for jobs, particularly the 4 at Perform. She said that two of them probably wasn't worth applying for because I didn't fulfil every criteria they were looking for, and that the two remaining ones would probably be assessed by the same person, so I should make different CV's and Cover Letters for both of them to show I'm genuinely interested and enthusiastic about the jobs.

I showed her the CV I sent for the Jaguar graduate scheme and she pointed out week areas and told me how to improve them. She showed me various links to follow for advice on writing CV's, and said that most jobs come from speculative CV's, but it's important to fully research the company and write a customised CV and Cover Letter for each company I apply too, as well as making sure I address it to the correct person as opposed to sir/madam.

DBA (Hyperloop) - Group Meeting

Ryan, Alex and I met this afternoon to discuss where we were with our individual tasks and what we should do for the presentation. We decided it wasn't necessary for us all to go, but Ryan should go because he's the most confident at presenting, Jamie should go because he designed the final logo, and I should go to talk about how the concept has changed as the concept we'd previously used was my idea.

Ryan and I volunteered to prepare the visual aids as our own individual tasks were considerably smaller than Alex's, Liam's and Jamie's, and we could get some input from Jamie tomorrow.

Contacting Perform Group About Opportunities There

On a recent e-mail from LinkedIn with with job opportunities there was one from PerformGroup, a company in Leeds that work with the sports industry. Upon looking into the company further I found that there were 4 jobs there that would suit me well. Not wanting to miss the deadline for these applications I e-mailed the address they provided asking when the deadlines were.

I also asked them about the possibility of going in to visit them to see how they ran the day-to-day business, I used the contact form on their website for this - the full message read:

Hi. I'm Matthew, a final year graphic design student at Leeds College of Art looking to go into find a job in the sports industry. I'd be really interested to see how Perform runs on a day to day basis and wondered if I'd be able to come and visit some time? Hope to hear back soon! Matthew Brewer.

I feel like these jobs might be really suited to me, so I'm going concentrate more time working on my collaborative projects with Joe in the short term in case the application deadlines are in the near future. They can be found here and here.

DBA (Hyperloop) - Group Meeting

We met yesterday to discuss our best ideas for the project going forward based on our current ideas for the branding.

Our favourite ideas were from Jamie's adaptation of the destination marker and Liam's stylized H's below.

We tried combining the two in some way but we weren't happy with how they came out.

We tried making the H out of shapes that were a bit more relevant to hyperloop than the squares. Liam suggested squares for positivity and while this looked good, it didn't really sit well with the feedback that from the interim crit that the logo needs to have a clear meaning immediately. We tried using the destination marker instead but it lost some of the dynamism that it had when the plusses were being used.

We then used arrowheads which are a clear sign of direction, and it worked just as well as the squares but was more appropriate. We found that it worked better as a lighter colour on top of a darker colour and that it was very versatile in its use of colour, this could be important across different uses.

We then tried using half of the destination symbol as the arrowhead to make it even more appropriate, and it worked just as well. It can also be added to other symbols to make them more dynamic as shown below, so we decided to run with this concept. 

We then split up the tasks into who would do what in terms of the collateral that shows how the idea can be applied further. We did this based on our skill sets which meant some people had more to do than others, but everyone seemed happy. The breakdown is:

Liam: Signs/icons for toilets, exits/fire exits, information points, directions etc etc

Alex: Printed tickets and staff badges/lanyards

Jamie: Mocks of websites and apps

Ryan: Mocks of social media

Me: Mocks of electronic boards for arrivals/departures etc

We decided to work on our individual tasks over the weekend to meet up again early next week.

Self-Promotion - Logo Alteration

After having the discussion with John and asking other people about what they thought, I decided to re-visit my logo with an emphasis on making it look like it would work. Over the past few days I've created these alternatives which look at the Newton's cradle from different angles, change the size of the balls, change the positioning of the type, have a different size ratio etc. 

I found that regardless of what the final version would be, I kept going back to the square with text making up the base. I found that having the strings in when the balls were positioned so they'd work made it look too much like a Newton's cradle, and removing them made the reference much more subtle. Making the balls smaller made them a lot less imposing and allowed me to increase the quantity such that there was a ball for each letter. In the end this is my favourite because of the changes referenced above.

Whilst it may not work at particularly small sizes, the smallest it probably needs to be used at is 180x180 pixels for social media profiles. This equates to roughly 45mmx45mm. When I checked how the business card would look with it at 35mmx35mm it worked fine, so I'll be going forward using this.

Progress Tutorial With Simon Jones

I spoke with Simon earlier about the quality and quantity of my blogging as I was concerned that it hadn't been monitored in a while. The advice was that the quantity was fine, and for the most part is useful, although occasionally I can become a bit descriptive rather than explaining why something has been done, and I could occasionally benefit from being more summative. 

We also spoke about the potential for me to go into teaching in the future, and he advised me that in terms of a career path, teaching would probably be a step back at this point in time unless I was wanting to teach design/technology, and that my time and effort would be much better spent doing a masters of some sort if going into teaching is still only a possibility.

Live Brief - Freya Williams Self-Promotion

After speaking to Freya about the outcome of her PPP crit there are changes that need to be made to the folder to make it more reflective of her recent work. This can't be done at the moment because Freya isn't in a position where she can send me any photographs of her most recent project, which is going to delay the finishing of the project more. This was something I hadn't foreseen happening because of how well the project is going, but isn't too much of an issue for me as it just means the workload will be spread out over a longer period of time.

More information about this stage of the brief can be found here on my extended practice blog.

Self-Promotion - Logo Resemblance Survey

Having spoken to John earlier I have some concerns about the symbol for my self-promotion, he brought to my attention the following things:

• The way the balls are hanging would stop them from working
• At a small size the lines the balls hang from may become invisible or look like a printing defect because of how thin they'd be
• The balls are quite large in comparison to the text

Before printing my business cards out I wanted to test out if the symbol actually resembled a Newton's Cradle - this is something I found necessary after the feedback from the DBA people was that the logo we initially proposed wouldn't mean anything to it's audience.

Question

I messaged 10 friends from home who don't study anything in relation to graphic design or physics, and who don't know anything about my work, and asked them what they thought the below image looked like. I removed the text so as not to give a hint that it was to do with my self-promotion.

Answers

There responses were as follows:

Person 1 - "My first immediate thought was a Newton's cradle"
Person 2 - "Newton's Cradle"
Person 3 - "A f**ked-up newtons cradle"
Person 4 - "one of those things where you swing a ball and it hits the others and then it keeps going i dont know what theyre called"
Person 5 - "Balls dangling on strings"
Person 6 - "Newton's cradle or snooker table with lines"
Person 7 - "A newton's cradle"
Person 8 - "Where the strings enter an acoustic guitar"
Person 9 - "It looked like someone f**ked up a Newton's Cradle" 
Person 10 - "Black balls, an arrow, Nibbler from Futurama's poop"

I then asked the ones who didn't say a Newton's Cradle if it looked like one, their answers were as follows:

Person 5 - "Oh yeah"
Person 8 - "Yep it does, I think it's just the fact I play guitar that made me say that"
Person 10 - "Yeah, just a wonky one"

Conclusions

7/10 People immediately recognised it as a Newton's cradle which is good, and of the three that didn't, 2 sounded convinced when I question them if it looked like one.

People 3 and 9 both described it as "f**ked up", and person 10 called it "wonky", which doesn't really represent reliability and functionality as I'd hoped it did. It's clear that I need to work further on it with emphasis on depicting it in a way that it would actually work, as the need for it to show the letter M is secondary to this. 

Live Brief - Freya Williams Self-Promotion

Having decided how her business cards and postcards are going to look, Freya and I met up earlier to discuss the folder itself. I'd done a mock-up of what I suggested the folder should look like based on both our initial agreed plan and the changes it required based on the development of the postcards, CV and cover letter. Freya requested a few changes though, all of which were about reducing the amount of empty space, a difference of opinion we've been having throughout the project to varying extents at different stages of the brief.

This however has been good practice at articulating and selling my ideas, as I've found we've initially found compromises very easily, and the majority of the time Freya's been pleased with the outcomes of them.

We also discussed what text she needs to supply me with for the postcards and what stock she needs to source for the various different parts of her promotion pack.

More information about this stage of the brief can be found here on my extended practice blog.

Self-Promotion - Updated Portfolio

In preparation for "Portfolio Review Week" next week I set up a new portfolio using the new document set I made recently. I decided to keep it A4 rather than A3 because it's more convenient to send in the post when it's necessary, this is something I picked up on when working on Freya's self-promotion.

The simplicity of it means that adding new projects to it will be really easy, as will taking projects out should it become necessary. 

DBA (Hyperloop) - Interim Feedback Crit

Having worked on my initial concepts further, Alex and Jamie had come up with these potential logos which we all really liked. They'd been stylised in a manner fitting of the research Ryan did on futuristic transport branding such as the Segway and Virgin Galactic. They kept the shape of the graph while making the lines resemble a H and we added in an L shape which made the logo resemble the "next scene" button on DVD's and computers - something which suggests moving quickly with no hassle, similar to Hyperloop.

We had some other sketches that had less time spent developing them to show in case the feedback was that our proposed logos weren't suitable.

The feedback wasn't great. They were impressed with the quality and aesthetic of our proposals, but had problems with the concept behind it, these were:

• The shape of the graph is very abstract and doesn't mean anything to people in the context of a logo, so doesn't actually communicate messages of scientific security.
• When it's rotated to resemble a H, the H looks wonky and bendy, which doesn't relay much confidence and security, something important when travelling at 800mph.
• The button it resembles originates mainly on DVD players, which is old technology, not very exciting or futuristic.
• Despite the futuristic aesthetic, it doesn't communicate speed or travelling at all.

Taking this on board it was obvious that our initial logos weren't suitable, so we looked back at our other sketches to individually come up with more ideas to develop in ways that reflect the feedback more. This is essentially another iteration of the same process as we went through to get to this point, but with a more refined focus.

Some things I did quickly to reflect are shown below.

The top 2 are based purely on trying to illustrate speed and dynamism, things which the old logo was clearly lacking and were important based on the feedback. The bottom set adds a sense of destination to this using a map market in place of the P at the end of Hyperloop to try and suggest a destination at the end of a journey.

Premier League Re-Brand - DesignStudio

After seeing the Premier League's rebrand earlier today I looked into who did it as I got the feeling that it was designed by people who didn't have a particular interest in football. This will directly effect the project Joe and I are doing in extended practice re-designing football programme covers.




I found that it was designed by DesignStudio, an agency who's major clients include Air B&B, Logitech and Nokia, companies that air mainly screen based.

I feel like the Premier League made a mistake in asking this agency to do the re-brand for them as an agency that works with brands that are mainly screen-based was likely to produce something that was flat and less characterful and iconic than the previous logo (below).

The difference in the way the rebrand was received between Creative Bloq (here) and Joe.co.uk (here) show the general difference between the reactions and opinions of designers to those of football fans, two groups of people that stereotypically rarely cross over. To me this shows the importance of being familiar with the area industry your work is related to, and is probably why I feel my work has improved so much this year.

DBA (Hyperloop) - My Concept Proposition

I wanted to try and refine my idea to make it more understandable and simple. This was a good opportunity to try and use a proof of concept.

COP Feedback Meeting With Richard Miles

I spoke to my dissertation tutor earlier about my grade and feedback, which was fairly standard. We also discussed the idea of publishing it in a journal after some tweaks, which, having read my essay in full, Richard think is something which wouldn't take a huge amount of work. He suggested I not think about it at the moment and focus on extended practice, but it's good to know that my work was to a standard high enough to consider publishing and that publishing an academic paper may be something extra I get to learn about.

Maraid Design Talk

Maraid are a York-based web design duo, but who's main interests in visual culture extend to all sorts of things such as film, print, music covers etc etc. Richard said himself that he started web design because he predicted there'd be a lot of money in it in the future, but also said that he's glad he still does it despite it not being his primary interest, as if you do what you love for your work you end up not loving it - a problem I had on the course in the first 18 months that's now been resolved by not seeing the course as a job - so I totally agree with him on that.

They said that they like to have the clients in the studio with them as much as possible, something similar to what Chris Sayer said, and when I asked them about their location and the merits of it, they seemed to suggest that having a prime location in Yorks City Centre helped with this as clients could make a day out of it.

With regards to clients, they had the following advice:

• Be prepared for them to destroy good ideas.
• People still think of web design as print design on the internet, so it's important to show clients work in it's proper context.
• Talk to the client as much as possible before starting to work with them in order to establish a comfortable relationship with them - making ironing out any issues with them a smoother process.
• Rather than telling your clients you charge an hourly rate, figure out what they want, how long it's going to take you to do it, and quote them an overall price as it helps build trust. Anything they want doing over what they originally asked for should be done at an hourly rate.

In terms of getting work they said running a blog alongside the website is really useful as it convinces potential clients that the designer(s) are real people, especially if the blog is part of a network of something larger like On The Grid as theirs is.

One thing I found particularly useful was Jane talking about how she did freelance work part time when she first started whilst working part-time somewhere else as a financial safety net. This was reassuring because it's something that I'm considering doing myself.

It was also interesting to hear Richard say that regardless of if you're working freelance, in-house, or at a studio, you're always going to be working late and at weekends, so the culture across the three must be fairly similar.

After the talk I asked them about the design community in York as I'm considering it as a place to base myself after uni. They said it was really close-knit and friendly, which was good to hear. 

DBA (Hyperloop) - Group Meeting

We had a very informal meeting about our ideas for potential logo concepts for Hyperloop. Whilst I struggled to come up with a range of ideas myself, I did come up with one strong concept based on maths and science and the relationship between speed, time and distance visualised in the form of a graph - the lines on which would form the visuals for the logo.

With assistance from Liam and Ryan I mocked up some potential starting points for the logo on Illustrator, using the grid in the background of the software to plot the graph on to make it mathematically correct.

I also looked at trying to incorporate the symbol for infinity into a potential starting point (a sideways 8, similar to two o's next to each other), as well as trying to visualise the doppler effect (relevant because the Hyperloop will travel faster than the speed of sound), but these didn't work very well.

I feel like with Alex's strengths in branding and Jamie's similar aesthetic style to him, my key contribution to this project could well be conceptually, especially given everyone else's struggles to come up with a concept, so I want to really clarify the concept before Monday when we meet again. My background in maths and physics should not only make this possible for me, but could also make this concept something overlooked by other groups, who may stumble across the infinity sign.

Live Brief - Freya Williams Self-Promotion

We managed to come up with business card designs that Freya liked and I was fairly happy with. This happened by a systematic process of narrowing down options from various different ideas, and highlights the importance of having a good system of communication with a client. This is somewhat similar to the "proof of concept" Chris Sayer was talking about on Wednesday.

More information on this stage of the project can be found here on my extended practice blog.

Contacted By Michael Elecho of Zooppa

I received this e-mail earlier today:

I looked into Zooppa and what they do, and didn't really see much of what they did that I'd be interested in, so I didn't reply to the e-mail. However, the fact that I was contacted through my Behance page suggests that a website isn't a necessity as long as you have some sort of web presence for people to find you on.

Reflection on Extended Practice Crit

The crit earlier made me realise I wasn't quite as organised as I thought I was at the moment, although this is to be expected with 3 extended projects on the go as well as the DBA brief and a heavy focus on self promotion, while still thinking about my upcoming submission for the LCA Triptych.

For example, I'd forgotten that the Starpack deadline is only 3 weeks away, which means the fish travel packaging should be my top priority at the moment. The YCN deadline is also 7 weeks away, so I need to start work on the Saucy Fish Co soon.

As of now my priorities are:

1. Get some business cards made and sent down to Bristol for Harri Larkin in the hope of more work to come.
2. Starpack fish transport brief.
3. Freya Williams Self-Promotion brief.
4. Triptych brief.
5. Football Programme Covers brief.

Self-Promotion - Document Set

Between the recent PPP Group Crit and Chris Sayer's talk, I've be thinking about what's relevant for my self-promotion, and came to the conclusion that it should be more about how I present my work and the consistency across it, rather than trying to re-invent the wheel. To address this I've set up some document templates for various uses - these are based upon the same principles as my logo, sturdiness and reliability.

Having struggled with the readability of Steelfish when developing my logo, I decided against using it, and went instead for Gotham because I feel like the two fonts work well together. Using Gotham and having established a set of rules to use when designing things for presentation, making a business card that I was happy with was a lot easier, something I'd previously struggled with.

PPP Discussion With John Watters

I spoke to John this afternoon about my post-uni plans and the relevance or importance of a placement in these as well as the missed William Hill application deadline. 

He suggested that I speak to someone working as an in-house designer to check if the reasons why I prioritise that sort of job hold up in practice, and suggested that it might be more useful to do a work placement in-house somewhere than in a design studio, something which I had't considered.

With regards to the William Hill deadline, he suggested that when I complete the projects I was waiting to send the application for I contact them and show them my work anyway to gain feedback on them.

Curated By... Chis Sayer - Sheffield Hallam University Talk

Chris Sayer is an animator who's worked for companies such as Nike, WWF, Levi's and Honda. Whilst I'm not really interested in animation, my recent thoughts about potentially doing freelance work after uni made me want to go to the talk to see what he had to say about how he ended up working for these clients. The key points I took from the talk were:

1. During his degree he identified which skills he'd need for the future, resulting in him finding a job 2 weeks after graduation.
2. In 2006, 6 years after gaining this job he set up and ran his "dream company" with two friends who's skills complemented each others. They stopped in 2012 because the company wasn't profitable enough to be feasible.
3. One of the biggest jobs his company did was for the Honda Crossrunner, which was a brief he gained after the studio he worked for post-graduation suggested to Honda that they contact him.
4. He suggested that when working freelance you should "go with the flow - until Pixar e-mail you".
5. His main advice while working freelance was that make sure you address amends in the contract, as it makes working with clients easier, if you want your concept to be approved by a client, prove that it works when pitching it, be prepared for rejection, and maintain good relationships with previous employers/business partners as they may pass work on to you.
6. He got his job at Levi's because someone was looking for help with a project on Twitter, and one of Chris's friends pointed them in his direction.
7. Levi's was "the perfect job" because there was plenty of time, a decent budget, and the client was involved in the creative process, which made all communications easier.

In relation to my own practice this advice can be applied in the following ways:

1. If there's a particular field of design I want to work in, try and become accustomed to the skills and processes required in those areas. This is particularly applicable to the process of creating an app interface, so a placement with The Distance would be really useful.
2. Consider the finances of working freelance with some care - something which I would like to think I'd always do anyway, as highlighted in Taking Care of Business last year.
3. Try and maintain contact with Square.One, Harri Larkin and Freya Williams in the hope more work will come from them and their networks.
4. If freelancing is going well, don't feel pressured to take a job until it seems like a good time or opportunity.
5. Get used to doing all these things.
6. See point 4.
7. Try and involve the client in the process as much as possible.

Seeing Chris's presentation also made me think a bit about my self-promotion - despite him not having 'branding' as such, it was clear that his website and his presentation were done by the same person and had the same features. I'm trying to avoid branding myself, and devising a system where everything I produce is clearly from me will be a key way of doing this.

Self-Promotion - Business Card Development

I wanted to stick to the golden ratio as I do in most of my work, but want's to keep things balanced and centralised to match the sturdiness of the logo - the below grid was created to acommodate this.

I looked at various ways of setting the front out to try and keep the balance, but was struggling to accommodate all the information I wanted to include. My favourite was the bottom one, but I wasn't overly pleased with it. Steelfish isn't particularly readable at small sizes, this may be something I look to address in the future.

I wanted an abstract close-up of the logo on the back. I found that removing the lines the balls hang from made it too abstract, so they stayed. Watermarking the logo made it less imposing.

This is how the business card would look, I'd probably triplex it with a black layer in the middle to add an extra dimension to it.

At this point I think it's worth coming back to this another day as I don't some to be going anywhere with this today - hopefully I'll make more progress another day.