Sunday 28 February 2010

Wednesday 24 February 2010

Rough Contract

Rationale

Fedrigoni - Chosen Collaborative Brief

Encourage more designers to visit and use the Fedrigoni London Showroom.

Background

In September 2008 Fedrigoni UK opened the doors to its London Showroom, a place to showcase its fine and speciality papers. The purpose was to have a space that would bring the paper company closer to the design community and offer a same-day sample service.

Each month Fedrigoni UK holds various events in the showroom aimed at designers, from talks and exhibitions to games nights and awards. The showroom is also open for designers to use as a meeting space with their clients, exhibition space, sample library or private event space.

The Challenge

Encourage more designers to visit and use the Fedrigoni London Showroom.

Target Audience

The design and creative community, all those that use or want to use speciality papers.

Creative Requirements

This is a very open brief. You are free to come up with anything that can be used to get our target audience in and using the Fedrigoni London Showroom. This could be done in all manner of ways, from designing a poster or moving image piece, to hosting an event in the space. The key is to attract designers into the showroom.

Mandatory

Our only stipulation is that you think about how best to showcase our fantastic range of papers within your idea. This may simply involve printing an invitation using Fedrigoni paper and need not entirely dominate your thinking.

Brand Guidelines

Our logo can be used in black, white, or blue. It is also a good idea to familiarise yourself with our papers, samples of which are available on request (email samples@fedrigoni.co.uk). Alternatively, you can visit the showroom to browse papers. Photographs and measurements of the showroom can be found in the project pack.

A Cynical Approach...

Tuesday 23 February 2010

Collaborative Brief

Me & You Vs. Ninety Minutes

This was a quick-fire brief that had to be completed within an hour & a half. The deliverables were two A3 format posters that had no limitations on colour or the combination of type & image. One had to advertise your own capabilities as a designer & thus sell yourself to a potential collaborative partner. The other had to detail what you were looking for in regards to your own desired partner.


I chose to keep the text to a minimum partly because I was gunning for high impact/easy to read, but also because I was using an old typface that I had scanned in & unfortuantely had the laborious task of piecing each word together letter by letter... my kerning may be a little off as I rushed!

The imagery itself was based on what I commonly like to work with - that being old paper based materials dating back as far as the 20's. This was done to show the approach that I often take to briefs & therefore I focussed on trying to represent myself as a designer in a visual manner that assisted with what the type detailed.

Once all of the posters were up on the studio wall, we had three choices to select a partner that we felt would be suitable based on what the posters conveyed. I do admit to cheating as I selected five, but when the dust had settled there was just me & my one partner: Chloe Galea

Saturday 13 February 2010

OUGD202: Self Evaluation

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

The skills that I have developed throughout this module naturally reflect on the application of software packages such After Effects & DVD Studio Pro; exploring what is achievable within them & how they can be used as a tool within my design practice. Most importantly in my opinion however was the investment of time spent preparing & organising a strategic approach that assisted in navigating the battle between what I would like to produce in the ideal world & what is realistically possible given my skills & the time available.

Of most significance to me was learning how to effectively apply the use of storyboarding in relation to key events that would transpose into key frames within the software. This in my opinion was an invaluable experience as it allowed me to filter my ideas down & produce a clarified direction that I believed to be realistic yet challenging.

Furthermore, one key aspect of this module was the preparation of imagery in relation to the screen based format & in this particular instance the 16:9 ratio. Choosing to work with Photoshop in conjunction to After Effects made this unquestionably important as the opportunity to scale assests up, not to mention maintain a balanced line weighting was often challenging & an aspect that needed re-visiting when preparation within the initial stages of storyboarding was not sufficient or thorough enough.

2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

Unlike most, this module (at least to an extent) for me was not dictated or governed by the software that I was introduced to & nor would I have wished it to have been given what I have achieved upon relfection. In this instance I found it beneficial to learn about the techniques that were available to me & to interpret how the opportunities provided by the software could be used as a tool within my design practice. Beyond this, I was very focussed on looking into how my approach to designing for a World War Two themed movie season could be enhanced in refence to my design practice as well as the screen based distribution received by the chosen target audience outlined within my rationale.

As a result I invested a substantial amount of time into researching, sourcing & selecting relevant materials & ephemera of the era that I could subsequently use within my collage based approach & further analyse in terms of design concepts such as colour, type, iconography etc & tone of voice.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

The main success for me personally was addressing my target audience directly through a use of genuine World War Two ephemera that allowed me to not only produce imagery contextually relevant, but also analyse how the media interacted the public in the period specific to my theme.

Furthermore, it was imperative to me that I was able to achieve a balance between working with paper based collage in context to digital design alongside hand rendered illustration & to not over power one aspect with the other.

I am particularly fond of my selection of type, although at times this was problematic. The alphabet I chose omitted the two letters L & Y, both of which I had to manually contruct & second guess from structures of similar letters.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?

Time management for me in this module was nowhere near as maintained as it was in the previous module & in that respect I feel the DVD side of the module suffered. Most frustrating to me was the fact that I know how to produce what I would have liked to achieved, i.e an animated menu sequence with audio and looping sections etc. I just simply didn't allow myself enough time to see out what I wanted to complete.

As with last year, I firmly believe this was down the Christmas break & my reluctancy to get back into the swing of things again. To address this more fully I most certainly need to keep myself busy over the times spent outside of collage & this is something I am pro-actively working on as we speak over this forth coming reading week.

5. Identify 5 things that you will do differently and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

1. Allow more time to explore & complete the final resolution instead of neglecting visual development for research.

2. Be more A LOT more selective in the materials that I source as scanning imagery is particularly time consuming. I have a terrible habit of over-collecting & preparing imagery whilst working with collage; it's a classic case of the 'just in case' syndrome and I end up not using half of what I thought I might.

3. Balance all aspects of the brief. Within the last module I gave more thought to the What is Good? aspect as opposed to the What is Print? booklet. This module I spent 99% of the time producing my idents and neglecting the DVD construction.

4. Work with vector based graphics. Elimating scalability issues is a substantial advantage that saves times & complications. Bitmap is nothing but a headache if you want to alter something after storyboarding.

5. Again be realistic with my blogging, or more appropriately keep on top of it. Posting a lot isn't always effective or necessary, but I do need to be more organised with this.

Tuesday 9 February 2010

Final Idents

Ident 01

Ident 02

Ident 03

Ident 04

Ident 05

Saturday 6 February 2010

Ident 05: Update 04

Final Test: 01

Ident 05: Update 03

Rocket Explosion

Ident 05: Update 02

Rocket Loop Test: 01

Rocket Loop Test: 02

Ident 05: Update 01

Pipe Smoke Test: 01

Flam Animation Test

Pipe Smoke Test: 02

Friday 5 February 2010

Ident 04: Update 05

Final Test: 01

Ident 04: Update 04

Tank Depart Test: 01

Tank Depart Test: 02

Tank Depart test: 03

Ident 04: Update 03

Tank Enter Test: 01

Turret Test: 01

Turret Test: 02

Tank Stopping Test

Ident 04: Update 02

Moving Letters Test: 01

Moving Letters in Composition

Bullet Fire Test: 01

Ident 04: Update 01

Flickering Projector Test: 01

Flickering Projector Test: 02

Flickering Projector Test: 03

Ident 02: Update 09

Final Test: 02

Final Test: 03

Final Test: 04

Final Test: 05

Thursday 4 February 2010

Ident 01: Update 10

Final Test: 10

Final Test: 11

Final Test: 12

Ident 01: Update 09

Bomb Text Test

Ident 01: Update 08

Final Test: 08

Final Test: 09

Ident 01: Update 07

Final Test: 04

Final Test: 05

Final Test: 06

Final Test: 07

Type 04: Allotment Leaflet & Page Layout





Ident 01: Update 06

Final Test: 03

Ident 03: Update 05

Final Test: 02

Ident 03: Update 04

End Test: 02

End Test: 03

End Test: 04

Ident 03: Update 03

Final Test: 01

Ident 03: Update 02

Text Bomb Test: 01

Text Bomb Test: 02

Wednesday 3 February 2010

Ident 03: Update 01

Propeller Test

Text Zoom Test: 01

Ident 02: Update 08

Bullet Fire

Turret Recoil

Recoil Firing

Explosion Animation

Ident 02: Update 07

Time Stretch Test: 01

Ident 02: Update 06

Final Test: 01

Feedback: 5 Questions

1. I plan to use sound clips such as plane propeller noises and explosions, would you suggest any additional input for audio? If so, what...

2. Is the ratio of animation:collage appropriate to answering the brief?

3. I am aware that my colour schemes haven't materialised as originally planned. I think this was ambitious given my content. Do you think this needs addressing?

4. Are my typeface selections appropriate in terms of audience and context. They are meant to connote the 1940's era with a playful twist for younger audiences.

5. I have continued to omit film stills from my idents as I am not producing film specific clips. Is there another way I should consider tying the films into the animations or do the animations hold up themselves with the iconography used such as: planes, tanks, bombs etc.

Tuesday 2 February 2010

Ident 02: Update 05

Tank Zoom Test: 02

Tank Animation Test: 02

Ident 02: Update 04

Tank Zoom Test: 01

Ident 02: Update 03

Parachutes Test: 03

Ident 02: Update 02

Parachutes Test: 02

Ident 02: Update 01

Parachutes Test: 01

Monday 1 February 2010

Ident 01: Update 05

Full Explosion Test: 01

Final Test: 01

Final Test: 02

Ident 01: Update 04

Bomb Descend Test: 01
Bomb Descend Test: 02

Ident 01: Update 03

Bomb Zoom Test: 01