OUGD203 Evaluation

Here is my ridiculously long evaluation for OUGD203.

For the first part of the Design Practice 2 module I chose to work with Carl Holderness on the YCN Fedrigoni brief. We chose to tweak the brief a little bit, working out what the problem really was and trying to see how we could fix it. We worked out that the basic problem was that not enough people were using the Fedrigoni London Showroom, and that we had to get more designers to visit and use the space.

It wasn't mentioned anywhere on the brief that we were given, and it took emailing Fedrigoni ourselves to get some additional information, but we finally found out that only Fedrigoni customers are allowed to use the space, and that it is free for them to use. This would have been a really useful piece of information to put on the original brief as it was an important part of how we moved forward. We decided pretty early on, through designs and mock ups that we wanted to create a piece of direct mail sent out to Fedrigoni's existing customers, and that we wanted it to have an element of interactivity, and so went about trying to make a model of the room and something that would pop up into a little model of the room.

We also had an interest in working with information graphics, using all the information that we had about the room and the additional information that we had gotten from Fedrigoni, so the little paper mock up of the room was designated as a business card for the London Showroom.

We essentially rebranded the Fedrigoni London Showroom as 72m(squared - I can't find the glyph on here), which was the area of the showroom itself, and this was what sparked off our interest in information graphics.

Another decision that we made pretty early on was to use only two colours plus stock, the spot colour blue of the Fedrigoni logo that we were sent and black, on white A2 paper, the first idea was to create a poster representing all of the information that would be sent out to Fedrigoni customers, though during a crit we were told that it wasn't high impact enough, so we turned it into a series of 4 A2 posters that were very high impact and a random one would be sent out with paper orders to the existing customers.

When we requested paper from Fedrigoni, (it was very hard to get anything out of them) they arrived in a nice sleeve with a selection of paper inside, we decided that the poster needed to be sent with the sample packs as well to appeal to potential customers as well as existing ones.

The boards and the posters were printed out downstairs as well as the Business cards, although they kept printing out the wrong shade of blue until we changed printers and they came out just fine. I was really impressed with what Carl and I produced between us and I feel that we shared the work out evenly. We had no disagreements or fights and so I think that it was the perfect collaborative project.

This was the first time we had to do design boards that were being sent out, so we had to get them absolutely spot on and I learnt a lot about what needed to go on the boards when designing them.

I also kept on top of my blog throughout this project, with images and writing about them throughout and I think that this was a really good idea and I intend to keep on top of my blogs in the future.

What I would do differently:

- Make sure my files are saved int he right format when going to print.
- Spell check first, and not have my computer set to American English


For the second part of Design Practice 2 module I chose to write my own brief to repackaging Homebase's 'Grow Your Own' product range. I chose to work on this brief because I am greatly interested in Design for Print and packaging and so wanted to do some more work in this area and create a nice portfolio piece.

I started by doing research into the previous entries to this finished D&AD brief and by going to my local Homebase to have a look at the existing product range and see what needed to be done. I also conducted a small interview with a Sales Manager to find out which products were the best sellers and which ones didn't sell so well, and what seemed to be the problem. The answer came to light that the problem was that the range looked too much like all of Homebase's other products and so didn't stand out from the rest. The audience of the Grow Your Own range is novice gardeners, and another problem was that they weren't sure what other equipment they needed to go about growing their own fruit and veg, so from this I decided that I needed to create kits that included everything the customer would need to make it easier. This was a decision that I made very early on in the project.

The best selling products ended up being strawberries, tomatoes, carrots and peas, so I decided that I was going to make a starter kit for each of these products.

I really got into the idea of sustainability during this project and started to explore it and see what I could do with the packaging and how I could make it as sustainable as possible. I went through several ideas of how I could do this, including instructions for how to make your own little plant pots out of newspaper and making the actual box itself something that could be planted in the garden as a plant pot. I started to make mock ups as I couldn't really get my head around how it would work when just working on paper, I had to start working in 3D. I had several ideas of how I could do this and started to discard them once I had mocked them up and realized that it wouldn't work, or it wasn't the right size and such. It was a case of trial and error.

I finally settled on the idea of making the box out of cardboard, which is biodegradable and helpful when growing plants as it generates heat, and having the box as something that will be planted in the garden. I decided that I had to have the size and shape of the box before I began designing something to go on it.

I went through a long process of designing the graphics to go on the box. I decided that I wanted to focus on a mixture of type and image for this, trying to adapt a typeface to the shape of a seed/a leaf to link it to the subject matter. I also wanted to keep with the sustainability side of things and try to print using only one colour, using one colour per product. This turned out not to work so well so I had to revert to using two colours plus stock, which was cardboard.

The original idea was to include a bag of compost inside the kit so that the customers would not have to go and buy an additional grow bag, I wanted to try and put everything needed inside the box, though it eas proving to be difficult to package this without the use of plastic. I finally managed to create a seamless box net with no holes in the corners or at the folds.

When I finally got around to mocking the box up properly for the show and tell session, I found that I really didn't like it when it was all put together, it just wasn't aesthetically pleasing to me in the slightest and I wanted to change my design. I had to scrap the limited colour plus stock idea, and I started to experiment with photographs of the product, making shapes with them and experimenting with the colours. I changed the stock from cardboard to recycled card, which was white, and a much better stock to work on, as cardboard woulc have had to have been screen printed in the college because it wouldn't go through any of the printers here.

I put it together so that the sides of the box could be turned into different parts of the product, therefore re-using the box and keeping the sustainability idea going. I also swapped the bag of compost for a set of coir (coconut fibre) plant pots and soil pellets which expand when water is added. This took up a lot less space and allowed me to use a lot less materials when constructing the box. I had several sizing issues and kept making (major) miscalculations and kept having to resize the box, though I finally settled on a smaller one, that was the right size for the product. One side of the box can be split down into marker sticks to put into the soil with the seeds, and the instructions also can be torn off and kept.

The original idea for the digital side of the project was to create a website illustrating recipes that can be made with the fully grown fruit and veg, though during a crit the idea to make an iPhone app was suggested. This is appropriate to my changed audience of novice gardeners aged 20 - 30. The iPhone app is designed to send out alerts to remind the customer when they need to water/repot/harvest their products. It also includes the instructions for in the case of the customer losing them. I feel that the iPhone app was a much better choice than the website and feel that it is really appropriate to the target audience that I chose for the brief.

I am really pleased with how this project turned out, I ended up exploring several ideas and taking them further before I finally decided on my chosen resolution, so I feel that I really exhausted the best of my ideas and experimenting with them before moving on to my final products.

The main problem that I encountered during this project became apparent when I was putting the boards together. They went together just fine on screen though I had issues when it came to printing them and I ended up having to print them twice because I was not fast enough or early enough to get a print slot booked in the Digital Dungeon so I had to print my boards in two halves on the laser printers. The first time I mounted them, I mounted them onto thin card, which flexed as I was laying them down and so they were full of air bubbles and they just looked really bad, so I had to reprint them and mount them onto mount board, which went much better, though took me right up the deadline when I was hoping to be finished a little earlier than I was.

I feel that I really did well with time management during this brief, I was mostly on track and had several action plans and to do lists to keep me going. I'm really pleased with how the project turned out and feel that I managed my time very well and got a lot out of it. I also feel that I have produced a great portfolio piece out of it too.

Another issue was that while I was uploading images to my blog all the time to get them in the right order, I put off writing on the blog posts until later on.

Things I would do differently next time:

- Get a print slot booked early.
- Write on blog posts when I put them up.
- Blog things regularly instead of loads of posts in one go.


WOW that is a long evaluation. Well, I had a lot to say.

OUGD202 Evaluation

For the Design for Digital Print module I chose to work on the Movie Season brief and create 5 ten-second idents on a movie season of my choice. The genre of movies that I chose to work with was Vampire Movies because it is a favourite genre of mine.

I started by doing a lot of research into my chosen five vampire movies, being Nosferatu, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Lost Boys. I looked into the DVD covers, movie posters and film stills to get an idea of the design direction that each was going for. I decided pretty early on that I wanted to have very grungy, dirty look to my idents and wanted to have a consistent theme of shadows in all of my idents, and started to create textures and look into effects such as boiling and the distortion effects used by Len Lye. It was soon apparent to me that I needed to simplify my design direction as upon attempting to make one ident in the style that I had planned, it was a lot more complex than I had anticipated and took a lot of time. I revised my design direction and limited my colour pallet to black, white and grey; this helped to give my idents a consistent feel as I started to put them together. The idea of basing my movie season on the Sci Fi channel came to me quite early on in the project and the logo I designed to go on the end of each ident really gave them a feel of consistency. The original idea was to have music on each ident, but this was proving to be difficult to find music that worked and that could be shortened to ten seconds was difficult so I decided to stick with sound effects instead.

This project gave me the chance to learn how to use new software, such as After Effects and DVD Studio Pro. I struggled to get to grips with After Effects at first but after a while I seemed to get better at it and in the end it didn’t take me all that long to create my idents. I spent so much time on my idents that I didn’t leave myself a great amount of time when it came to doing my DVD interface, and so that has come out a little pixelated in places. But overall, I’m pretty pleased with how the DVD turned out; I didn’t think it was too bad for a first attempt. I also wish that I had left myself more time to properly work on the packaging of my DVD. While I like the packaging that I created, and think that it works and is consistent with the content of the DVD, I feel I could have done a lot more with it.
While I feel that I have learned a lot during this module, I also feel that it has helped me to realise that motion graphics is not my forte, and is definitely not where I want to go in my career.

I got so caught up in this project that I made the same mistake that I made in OUGD201, and that was to neglect my other modules that were running at the same time in favour of working on this one.
I feel that I have really gotten to grips with my blog over the course of this module and that I have used it well to record my work. When trekking through my blog, while I cannot say that this project was my favourite, I can say that I have done a lot of development work to get to my final resolution. I am pleased with the outcome of this project.

What would I do differently next time?

1. Leave myself more time to work on DVD Studio Pro
2. Leave myself more time to work on the packaging.
3. Learn to be more selective with my work when it comes to the DVD content.
4. Be more critical about my work.
5. Not neglect other modules running at the same time.

End of Module Evaluation OUGD201

For my 'What is Good?' brief I chose the statement 'pyjamas are good' and quickly did some surveys and questionnaires to get some primary research to get me going, as well as looking into the history of pyjamas both in books and on the internet. Through doing this, I quickly discovered that pyjamas are definitely more of a female thing, and this helped me to move foreward in my project.
I really got into this project and quickly through myself into experimentations and investigations, including fashion illustration, where it was quickly discovered, that I'm not very good at it. I chose to look moreso into information graphics and pictograms, using books such as 'Neubau Welt' as inspiration.
The idea of having a blank product for the individual to customize came to me quite quickly, and while I looked into making packaging that would pursuade men to wear pyjamas, I decided that the 'diy pyjamas' were a better idea to go along with, as surveys suggested that this would be fun and exciting to our age group.
This project allowed me to try out new techniques that I had wanted to before, but hadn't the time nor the need for, such as foil blocking and screen printing. I have been wanting to do more screen printing and this project certainly allowed me to do so. Had I been a little better organised, I would have also tried my hand at embossing properly, though I did have a go at doing it by hand.
I am incredibly pleased by the outcome of this module and feel that I have done well. For documentation, I produced almost 3 whole folders of design sheets, though obviously this has been whittled down for the PDF, while the majority remain on the blog to go into a little more detail. While I did not have to create the mock up of my packaging, I am very pleased that I did and I think that it looks very professional.
My final product related to the brief in the 'Packages and Instructs' section because within the product there is an intstructional guide that tells the owner how to use the product and how to care for it. Also, in a way, the fact that the cover is a visual representation of what's inside, it relates to the 'packages and informs' option. I believe I have utilised my time well.

On the other hand, while I thoroughly enjoyed working on 'What is Good?' I let my 16 page print booklet slide and only completed it once I had finished the other project to the best of my ability. I wanted to keep my 16 page booklet quite simple, and I feel that I have employed the used of layout quite well as well as the information within it being quite helpful. Several of the processes covered were personal to me as they are techniques that I have discovered a taste for, such as foil blocking and screen printing.

In the future I know that I need to:

-Give equal attention to all of my projects.
-Turn up prepared for any workshops.
-Read the brief properly and realise I didn't need to get carried away with design sheets.
-Not ignore other modules happening alongside.
-Not forget to change images from RGB to CMYK when designing for print.