Summative Evaluation. OUGD503

Summative Evaluation – Laura Tomlinson

This module has been very beneficial to me in a number of ways.

I have improved upon my communication skills with clients and collaborative partner and this is shown through the briefs where my clients were happy with what I designed and I created something that they were happy to use themselves.

My favourite brief of this module was the Body Shop D&AD brief, where I created a campaign for positive body image and promotional posters for products. This is where I was able to use many of my skills to create an overall piece of design that I am really happy and proud of. My skills in painting and pattern design were expanded upon greatly and I would love to carry on improving these skills and using these more in my design work. I am also very happy with my business cards that I made for artist and illustrator Ellie Tomlinson. The cards gave me an opportunity to use my InDesign skills and layout design skills to create a business card that both my client and me were very happy with.

The lowest point of this module was working with my partner on my collaborative brief. It was extremely hard for me to communicate with my partner as she was absent for much of the time of the brief, and the work that we discussed each of us would do wasn’t fully completed. I am not happy with the complete brief that we submitted to D&AD but because of time constraints and my partner not showing when we were supposed to meet, we were forced to submit the work that we had. However, I am happy with the work that I submitted for this brief.  The posters and the competition promotional material I think worked well to expand on the brief and show new ways of reaching the target audience of Purdey’s drinks.

Overall with this module I am happy with how it has gone. If I were to do it again I would have liked to choose more briefs to complete and perhaps one or two longer briefs so that my design work could be sustained over a longer period of time, rather than doing shorter briefs. But what I have done, I am very proud of and am happy that my skills have been improved upon.

Project Report. OUGD503.

Studio Brief 2 Boards. OUGD503.

Studio Brief One Design Boards. OUGD503.

Business Card. OUGD503.

My sister is an artist and illustrator based in Bristol, so she has asked me to create a business card that she can hand these out to those that are interested in her work.
The brief was to create something simple that showcases some of her work on the actual business card, so I created a design that is easily changed to input different parts of her work as it progresses.

The final business card is 80mm x 100mm, which is slightly larger than a regular business card, but I think that the size is a good size to showcase her work.
Mostly working with this client was fairly straightforward and we both communicated well together to create a design that we are both happy with. However, one problem was that she failed to send me any images of her work before the deadline for this module, and so for this submission the work displayed on the business card is there for example only. Once the client sends me the images of her work, I will be able to print the business cards and send them to her to use.

Purdeys D&AD. OUGD503.

This brief didn't start off very well. My partner was absent for the first two weeks of the project and so communicating with her and getting started on the work was extremely difficult. Once we did get started we began by talking about the kind of bottle that we wanted for our design. 
Our audience is people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are health conscious and so look at what they put into their body. They are also probably quite active as this is an energy drink, whether this is active in an athletic way, or active in that they have a busy like with a job and a family.

This lead us to choose a bottle that was resealable so that the person on the move could drink it as they want it.

As part of the Purdey's brief, my partner and I decided that using illustration and pattern would be the best way to convey the brand within the packaging.
While my partner is working on the bottle shape and packaging design, I am working on the pattern design.

I started by looking in to the ingredients that the Purdey's drink has in it so that I could use this kind of imagery in the design.

The idea of using circles in my design came from my research into pattern design and also the fruit itself. apples and oranges etc are all pretty much circular in shape and this would work well within a pattern design.
From here I went on to design some simple repeat patterns using the apple imagery.

I think that these patterns work really well, and would look good on the bottle of Purdey's drinks.
After this I decided to try and work with other fruits along the same lines with repeat patterns, but use more hand rendered techniques to make the brand look more fresh and organic.

After these designs, my partner and I were supposed to meet up and discuss the next step in the designs, however she was absent and so we had to make do with texting and email our ideas. This is when I found out that rather than looking into bottle designs like we had discussed, my partner had also been designing patterns and illustrations for the bottle design. 

We spoke for a while about what designs we would use for the brand, and we decided to use the illustrations that my partner had been working on and so this means that my week had been effectively wasted due to lack of communication. This was quite frustrating, but with only a couple more weeks until the deadline we needed to make quick decisions about everything. 

From here we decided it was best to work on completely different things. My partner was going to focus on the bottle and the packaging designs, and I was to focus on the marketing and promotional side of the project.

This to me was the most exciting part of the brief, that we could expand upon it and propose new ideas to expand the Purdey's brand audience.

At the beginning of this project we discussed the audience as people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are health conscious and think about what they put into their bodies. 

The first thing that I decided to do was create some posters to promote the Purdey's drink that would be put up in bus stops and on public transport routes such as the underground in london, as I think that this is where we are more likely to find our target audience.

Using the illustrations that my partner created I designed these posters to promote the Purdey's drinks.

After these posters we spoke and decided that it would be important to find potential new customers, and also get these customers involved within the brand, and this is where the idea to create a competition came from. 

We took inspiration from the Walkers create a flavour competition and decided to create a "create your own flavour of Purdey's competition. 

For this I wrote the guidelines.

From here I created a flyer to be handed out around the food and drinks festivals to get people involved in the competition, and also a competition entry slip so that at the food and drinks festival stalls, people can enter the competition.

At this point it was almost time to submit our project and so we discussed meeting up and having some peers look at our work and critique it so that we can make any changes that we might need to. However, this never happened. My partner never showed up and I only heard from her by text in the evening. This meant that it was too late for us to have our work looked at by peers and so we would just have to submit what we had as it was.

By the time it came to submit I had not seen any of my partners work and so I was very surprised to see that she had not completed the work that we had talked about. The brief specified that they wanted two different packaging designs, and although we had talked about creating a different colour way of the design, my partner had not done this and so we only had one design. Also, my partner had not used the bottle shape that we had discussed and so I was surprised to see something completely different to how I thought it was going to look. 

By this time it was too late to do anything about it and so we had to submit what we had even though I was unhappy with what we had. If we had been able to meet a couple of days before then these changes could have been made within the time scale. 

Overall, I am happy with my input into the brief and am happy with the work that I created, but am extremely disappointed in how the whole brief came together with my partners work. I think that my partner could have been much better at communicating and could have kept to a much tighter schedule as I think that the brief could have been taken so much further. 

Exhibition Poster. OUGD503.

I was approached by a friend of mine who is curating an exhibition in Bristol, to create a poster for the private view of the show. The title of the exhibition is 'Expectations', and the brief was to create something that pushes the boundaries of the white cube in which an exhibition is usually held.

The most important thing to think about when designing a poster is the placement and size of the information, and so choosing what information is the most important was the main part of this brief. 

The white cube is an obvious part of this design, where the title is hidden and cut off by the cube, challenging the expectation that the art displayed should be within the cube.

The final colour ways that were chosen by my client were as follows.

My client was very happy with these designs and they were used to promote the private view of the show around the university in bristol and within the gallery space itself. 

I am happy with this brief and am glad that the client was happy with my work. It was a short brief, but I think that I fulfilled the brief to the clients expectations and the results were good.