OUGD301 Self Evaluation

Final Design Boards

LCAD Christmas Card Ammendments

Today, as I have been ill  I have been emailing the marketing team from to design the inner Christmas card design. This has been rather frustrating as I wanted to talk through it with them face to face but I guess this is a taster of what occurs in the real design world.

LCAD Christmas Card inner

As asked by the marketing team, I have designed the inner card insert for the Leeds College of Art Christmas card

Meeting with marketing

Despite me having pointed out that the college would need to order the reindeer poo paper asap due to low stock as the seasonal period is coming to an end, it turns out that the manufacturers have in fact ran out! The marketing team spoke to the company and it turns out that another marketing and graphic design company purchased the remaining paper to produce their own Christmas cards too. It was also discovered that the lady who owns the company actually visits safari parks to collect the elephant, reindeer and rhino poo herself.

Anyway, this loses the concept my design without the poo paper insert. Nevertheless, Rose was prepared to propose that we still used the lasercut design and plain paper to the dean. However, the dean wasn't keen on this idea, so the college have now, unfortunately, going to use a different design.

In order to keep me involved, they are going to sew a paper insert into the chosen card design and have asked me to design the type on this insert. 

UT:: Website/App design

Photographing Products

Francesca and I took out lights and set up our own photography studio today to take pictures of the products I have produced for each of my briefs in order for these to then be put onto my design boards.

RSA: In-Store Presentation

As I am going to propose that my cards designs are sold in the National Trust shops across the country, I had already taken a picture of this when I visited, but I now need to mock my card designs into the image.

I also wanted to propose that the card designs are sold in the National Trust online shop, so I have mocked my design into a screen shot of their website too.

Final Crit

All in all, my crit feedback was very positive. There were a few changes suggested but they will enhance the presentation of my work, so I am going to ensure that I make these changes.

This crit was also a good opportunity to see everyone elses work and boards, so I can use inspiration from these to improve my own work.

To Do

Week Plan

Inpress Event at Dock Street Market

Unfortunately I was ill and could not attend the opening event on the Friday. Nevertheless, we had the boys of 'Form & Writing' and 'James Murphey Illustration' as guest designers, so they we able to help out with the others and get the event up and ready. We also had the Crash Blossoms playing live. It was a successful night and I am told we had a lot of interest.

Meeting with marketing

Today, I had a meeting with marketing to discuss putting my card into production. I talked through with Amy about ordering stock from the sites I had used to make my cards, I suggested that they do this sooner rather than later though as the Reindeer poo paper was a speciality paper over the Christmas period and would therefore more than likely run out in the build up to Christmas.

Amy gave me the option of printing and lasercutting a run of 100 cards myself, which they would pay me student ambassador rate for. Or, I could work alongside a student ambassador to create the cards.

She is going to order the paper tomorrow so that we can go into production as soon as the paper gets here, which should be the beginning of next week.

I need to add the logo onto the card somewhere. Amy and I spoke about this and decided that under the merry Christmas somewhere, as a kind of signature would be appropriate.

UT:: making the inner label

Using the fabric I printed earlier today, I have cut out around these and a plain panel of a similar size from the back (the fabric is too thin on it's own). Using a little help from fashion student Lavinia Rowland, I have managed to stitch the two together and attach it to the tshirt. We tried two different ways of stitching the two pieces of fabric together; one create a pillow effect and the other a concealed edge. However, when we stitched the concealed edge the fabric began to pucker (no good). So I opted for the other option as this has much more potential. When the pillow had been stitched together, it was a little wonky so we cut the outer edge to leave a raw edge but as it was close to the fabric, it didn't matter too much. We then tacked this into the inside of my tshirt.

Open publication - Free publishing - More label

UT: Packaging construction

I made up my packaging that I laser cut a while ago. I have had to leave some bit clipped to set over night but all in all it has come together well, the sizing is now correct and I even managed to find some colour toggles to match the inner sleeve of the packaging design.

UT:: inner label printing

This afternoon I dropped in at screen print to print the inner label of my tshirt design. The fashion shop didn't have any cotton fabric, so I went and got an XXL t-shirt (more fabric for my money, why not!) and used this to print on. I will then cut this up to produce my inner labels.

 I began printing this in one colour to see how well the screen worked; it started off fine but it slowly began to leak the more I used it and the emulsion was washing off the screen. This meant that I had to tape up the screen so that the ink didn't protrude onto my clothing, this worked for some of the pulls, but often it would the squeegy would get caught on the tape and let the ink through. Annoying.

I wanted to use 2 colours on the label (to keep in line with the rest of my branding for the tshirt line) black for the 'urban' part of the type and fluorescent red for the 'tease', I also wanted to use black to highlight what size tshirt was being purchased. I managed to line the type of the two up fine, but it seemed that the black ink leaked through the screen far more than the red and just made a mess. One of them print okay (ish) with a few marks but the screen was getting worse so I had to stop.

I also tried printing onto the hanger, however, after two attempts I realised this wasn't going to work. This ink wouldn't sit well on the hanger, I think this was because the hanger had a white gloss finish and the ink was too thin. Also, the hanger was curved so it was difficult for the screen to work with this. I am going to propose that this be done by pad printing on my boards.

Hope:: Pressing the plate

Today I went down to Vernon to press my copper plate into my Hope business card designs and swing ticket. Before I went, I pre-cut these to size so that I could simply position them onto the plate and press them in the correct place. I took one of design with the black type on it and one without. The one without would be blind embossed and I had the tricky task of lining up the type correctly to the design with the black type present. On pressing these, I became evident that the blind embossing was much more effective; it was clearer to see compared to the black and I didn't have the problem of lining the type up within mm of accuracy. The cards with the Hope type printed were incredibly difficult to embossed in the correct place and did not look as professional as the blind emboss.

I think I am going to use the blind emboss, however, I do not like it with the 'clothing' type written beneath it. So I am going to remove that type, a write 'Hope clothing' on the reverse of the business card instead. I am going to print the reverse type on the same stock as the front and mount both onto white mountboard to create a duplex effect. Hopefully, this will give it a much cleaner finish and look far more professional.

Back to the hydraulic press in Vernon tomorrow then.

inpress:: stock difference

I managed to get hold of the 2 pieces of the stock we flood printed our colours onto for the front of our business cards, I was going to print our collateral onto this stock, however, it feels far too weighty to do this. So, I have compared the stock colours to the colours I am already using and am going to use what I have already done but propose they would be the correct colour as they are currently only slightly darker.

To DO

inpress:: at Dock Street Arts

As our event was coming to an end at Dock Street Market, another event was beginning in the same place which we had been invited to have our work at too. Dock Street Arts is an exhibition and sale of an array of arts, which we are now involved in.

 
Our work will be in the exhibiton for the next month as the work changes on a monthly basis.

UrbanTease:: in-store presentation

This has been particularly challenging for me, as my Illustrator skills have become a little rusty and this is the first time I have tried to create something of this nature. However, I stuck with it and managed to create an mock-up which (with written explanations) will hopefully convey my concept.

Hope:: open/closed sign

As part of the Hope print collateral I am design an open/closed sign to be positioned in the shop window.

Within this, on the closed side, I wanted to include the opening times so that people know when they can come back, which should give Hope more business.

Hope:: Business Card reverse

I have been playing around with the type for the reverse of the business card. I am going to go in and use the hydraulic press down at vernon street on Monday (as long as im not still ill) to emboss the front of my Hope business card. I will test different stocks, but I am hoping to use white mountboard for the front and cream stock for the reverse. However, this is all going to depend on how well the different stocks press.

Nevertheless, I need a design to print the contact information on for the business cards.
I have considered the information which needs to be present for a small clothing boutique to be::
(in it's correct hierarchical position)

Logo, Name, Telephone, Email, Website, Address and Opening hours.

This will allow the customer to contact the boutique by any means necessary to them.

I am not entirely keen on this yet, but it is the basis which I can now work upon.

Drop shadow

I have added a drop shadow to the product images. I want the images to have a white background to give the sense that they are fresh, clean, high end products. However, in doing this I wasn't sure if the white box would sit better against the neutral tones with a drop shadow behind it.

This effect makes the products seem to become 3d (ish) and more prominent. This could mean that the customer is more drawn to the product and that Hope gets more sales, result.

HOPE:: 'clothing'

Although I do not want the 'clothing' type to be above the 'Hope' type in it's heirarchy, I do need to make it more prominent as it seems to get lost quite a bit into the background. To highlight the 'clothing' type a little more, I have added a drop shadow to the type...

...this seems to have done the job and given the type a subtle uplift.

Hope:: App

I have altered the size of the logo on the first two pages in order to make it bigger and more visible. I think previously it was too small and not obvious enough. I didn't want the 'clothing' part of the logo to be as prominent as the 'Hope' type, but somehow they both seem to get lost against the other components so making the logo bigger will hopefully eliminate this problem.

Hope:: App design

I have been working on the Hope app design, as before I had only applied the logo to show how it would work on the device. I have now created three different pages, I have tried to keep these pages in line with the branding of the other Hope products....