STUDY TASK 5 - WHO AM I - WHO ARE THEY

Based on the principles that have been introduced so far in the PPP2 module, investigate who you are as a creative in relation to who is out there looking for creative talent.

Write a list of all the possible client groups that use graphic design in the development, production, distribution, promotion and/or communication of their products or services. Identify one client group that reflects your current ambitions within the graphic design area (music industry, retail, publishing, education etc.) and focus on identifying:-

• What skills / interests you have and how they relate to the needs of your client group?

• What skills are needed and what skills do you want to develop?

• What are your professional/creative aims and how do they relate to the needs of the client group?

It is essential that you make references to the ʻ4 Psʼ from the PPP2 Presentation. This is an exercise in applying that theory – it is not appropriate to write about the theory itself. Demonstrate your understanding of it by actually using it.

PRODUCT

The business has to produce a product that people want to buy. They have to decide which ‘market segment’ they are aiming at – age, income, geographical location etc. They then have to differentiate their product so that it is slightly different from what is on offer at present so that people can be persuaded to ‘give them a try’.

PROMOTION

Customers have to be made aware of the product. The two main considerations are target market and cost. A new business will not be able to afford to advertise on national television, for instance and would not wish to because its market will be local to start with. Leaflets, billboards, advertisements in local newspapers, Yellow Pages and ‘word of mouth’ would be more appropriate.

PRICE

The price must be high enough to cover costs and make a profit but low enough to attract customers. There are a number of possible pricing strategies. The most commonly used are:

• PENETRATION PRICING – charging a low price, possibly not quite covering costs, to gain a position in the market. This is quite popular with new businesses trying to get a ‘toehold’.
• CREAMING – the opposite to penetration pricing, this involves charging a deliberately high price to persuade people that the product is of high quality. Luxury car makers often use this strategy
• COST PLUS PRICING – this is the most common form of pricing. Costs are totalled and a margin is added on for profit to make the total price.

PLACE

The business must have a location that it can afford, and that is convenient and suitable for customers and any supplier.

List of client groups within graphic design:

- packaging

- publishing

- retail

- branding

- animation

- music industry

- fashion industry

- identity

- fashion industry

- education

- website design

- print

Currently I am quite interested in Branding and Identity I have recently been branding a restaurant which has been really enjoyable, I have been experimenting with screen print too, this is something I would like to carry on with. I find this allot more fun than sat in front of the mac screen all day. I would also like to look into the music industry more as this is something I have been interested in for a long time now.

What skills / interests do you have and how they relate to the needs of your client group?

Over the duration of this course I have been developing my skills in print production. THrough the OUGD504 module I have had the opportunity to experiment with many different printing process, which has been very beneficial but also fun. I have learnt about foiling, screen printing, embossing, de-bossing, laser cutting and other processes. My interest in experimenting has lead me to undertake personal projects with have developed my skills further. I have been producing products to a near industry standard finish, taking into consideration stock, texture and finish.

I have also been considering promotion. For the ISTD restaurant branding brief, I considered how I could get the establishment noticed. I mocked up a website in order to give the public an idea of what the Company is about. I  also looked into telemarketing for my YCN lego brief, in which I created a animated advert proposal. I have been exploring different ways of promoting from flyers, to billboards, to events etc. In order to create a strong company image I created a series of products for the restaurant such as beer mats, place mats, menus, etc that  would all be situated in the restaurant and available to take away promoting the restaurant.

From the print module I learnt about costings for comercial print, by contacting printers and using online resources I got the basis for printing in the industry this will come in handy in the near future. 

What skills are needed and what skills do you want to develop?

I think in order to work on my profesional design finish I will need to develop my software skills. Although I am fairly comfortable with most of the Adobe programs, there is allot of room for improvement. There are still many tips and techniques to learn in order to become fluent in these programs. I feel that my work sometimes needs that bit of tweaking to improve it, but by skills let me down.

I also need to experiment more with layout, I feel my publication skills let me down a bit, This will come in handy when producing editorial work. I fall down in this area with typography too. This is something that scares me a bit, I dont seem to know wheat font to use or where to put it.

What are your professional/creative aims and how do they relate to the needs of the client group?

My creative aim is to become a better designer. Through practice research and experimenting this can be achieved. I feel my need to better myself will be something a client would be interested in, as I like to keep pushing myself, trying out new things. I also want to develop a business head, and improve on my presentation skills. I think this will ensure that I am working for the right price, and will know how to approach clients and deal with the knitty gritty business end of things. I think by devloping these skills it will be easier to pitch my ideas, and to cover all aspects of design from production to pricing.

YCN LEGO BRIEF

For my Live brief I have decided to go with the Lego brief as this is something I reckon I will thoroughly enjoy. It gives me the chance to get involved with a big part of my child hood again. The brief is quite long, but in summary lego basically want me to create a campaign that distinguishes lego from all its competitors. They want to invent the futre of play.

In freds workshop we ran through an excercise to see if it was worth doing the brief in which we were given 20 odd questions of what we propose to do and why:

Why have I chosen this brief?
Imideiatley I was interested in this brief as I'm a huge fan of lego. I think it would be good to get involved with something I found useful and fun as a child.

What do you want to get out of it?
Creating a campaign is something that I have not done before so this will be a learning experience and it also gives me the opportunity to work in any medium I see fit.

What do you want to do/make?
I am hoping to dig out the lego and show the benefits and also the endless possibilities that lego has to offer. It would be nice to make some kind of gift pack or a stop motion video. It might be nice to work with video as this is something I have not tried doing yet. If i had enough lego I would create some kind of large scale Sculpture or workshop for the kids in town.

What is the problem?
Other rip off lego companies keep popping up that are inferior to lego. This means that if children were to get imitation lego and are disappointed they will associate that with 'LEGO' which could put the child off for ever.

What is it asking you to do about it?
Create a campaign that encourages people to choose LEGO over other imitation building products. Highlight the benefits of lego.

What is it trying to achieve?
Its trying to make the world know lego is the best and most beneficial building toy for children. Its trying to deter parents from buying imitation products.

Why do you want to enter it?
I dont think I will get bored of the brief as its something that interests me, and also the chance to work in any medium gives me the option to experiment and have fun.

What do you have to do?
I need to create a campaign that is porgional and is also apealing to the parents of young children. I need to convince them that lefo is the best toy! to promote its educational values and the other benefits lego has to offer.

What do you need to do?
I need to find out why lego is the best and why children would benefit. I need to sell the product in a way that appeals to the parents.

What can you do?
I can do anything I want aslong as I propose it with good reasoning on why it will benefit the campaign.

What could you do?
I can propose any idea from installations, workshops, mascots, events, advert etc.

What is the message?

• Lego is the ultimate construction game for children
• Lego has many beneficial factors for a childs education
• Lego has sentimental value which no other construction game has
• Superior Quality
• Inventing the future of play

Who is the audience?

• Parents of boys aged 5-10
• Parents of girls aged 5-10
• Boys
• Girls
• Gift Buyers

What is the context?

• Playschools
• Shopping Centers
• Lego Land
• Construction workshops
• Nurseries

What products are associated with it?

• Cars
• Trains
• Toy Box
• Computers
• Buildings

10 Most important words on the brief:

• Parents
• Heritage
• Multi-media channels
• Campaign
• Functional Benefits
• Sentimental
• Inspire
• Creative

What do you already know?

• Target Audience
• Benefits
• History

What do you need to find out?

• Past campaigns
• Ideas
• Design direction
• Choice of media
• Colours
• Fonts

FINAL MOUNTAIN TRIKE DESIGN SUBMISSIONS

We sent off two very different trifold leaflet designs to the client based on the research and feedback from the brief in order to give them a choice of different styles.

Design  1

Design 2

Feedback

The client had already selected a BrandFuel leaflet design previous to our collaborating on this brief, however, we sent off our final two designs to them anyway and received this feedback:

The alternative designs you sent are exactly the kind of thing that I wanted!  Havent sent it to the rest of the team yet, but I think they are really good and really capture the essence ofMountain Trike!

Mountain Trike, the client, ended up selecting one of our designs (design #2) instead to be printed for their new leaflet over the BrandFuel original designs! It was very exciting to know that our work was favoured over a professional design team and would 

be professionally printed.

We received this email (sent to BrandFuel, Emily & I) from the client once the designs were finalised:

I just wanted to drop a quick note to you and your team to say a massive THANK YOU for all your time, energy and patience (!) that you dedicated to our new Mountain Trike leaflet.

The result is great and we are as I type waiting for the printed version to be delivered which I will, of course, send on some copies to you all.

The team here at Mountain Trike very much appreciate all the work you have done and we are sure this leaflet will help strengthen our brand and be a great marketing tool to use when approaching customers.  We have an exhibition next week - The Motability Roadshow in Peterborough so it will be a great opportunity to launch the new leaflet.

MOUNTAIN TRIKE CONCEPT IDEAS

In order to make sure Emily and I were going down the right root we decided to research some different design styles which we thought Mountain Trikes image needed. From here we produced work which had taken inspiration from various extreme sports magazines etc, as we wanted to make the productmore about the fun and outdoors as apposed to a boring product spec leaflet. We mocked up some concept board to send off to Brandfuel in order to get feedback on what works and what doesn't. We didn't want to waste time going straight into our final designs so we thought this was the best option to start with.

We took inspiration from various downhill bike magazines etc.

In order to make the product look more fun and exciting. We needed to

emphasize its off road all terrain aspect of the product.

We put together a series of rough layout ideas using the photos supplied to communicate a range of different ideas so that when go into the final design, we know which style is the most preferred/appropriate, experimenting with fonts, shapes and colours also.

 

We experimented with tyre marks to emphasize the off road aspect.

We also included some graphics and geometric shapes inspired from some of our visual research. We wanted to make the leaflet design more up to date and modern, so we

used bright colours  and bold big shapes to do so.

We created rough mock ups of how we could display information and imagery in a fun

and eye catching way. We also experimented with logo placement and text.

The images and content that mountain trike wanted to include were not exactly exciting or sold the product, in order to try and give the product more life we used a variety of different methods to try brighten things up, mainly using bright colours and reference to imagery in our primary research.

Circles and tyre tracks

Lines and large images

Photo Selection

As we were sent lots of images to work with it was important that we narrowed it down to the ones that we thought promoted the product the most and ones which highlight the capabilities of Mountain Trike whilst also taking into consideration Brandfuels Feedback.

BrandFuel feedback e-mail RE concepts:

Thanks for sending through your concepts.

We really like what you have done and how it has been presented.

You’ve had a good thought about concepts, design elements, font and colour palette before moving along with the designs.

I’ve reviewed with David; here is our feedback:

What works:

- Good choice of reference material

- Page 3 – we like the treatment of font on ‘take yourself further’, the grittiness suits 

the product

- Page 4/8 – trace of tyre is a good graphical element and will work as a divider between images; try to combine to something in between both graphics

- We really love the sun/wheel graphic on page six

- Nice flow of elements on page 7 but try not to use one graphical element (circles in this case) too much, there needs to be a balance

- On page 7 also like the treatment of ‘Mountain trike’ in top right corner

- Page 10 – we really like the graph-like graphic on the left/middle

 - All colour palettes work well, also good choice of fonts

What doesn’t work:

- Page 7 bottom left – a brochure like this will sit in a brochure holder, so only the top part will be visible – ‘Take yourself further’ could mean anything. Branding MUST be on top as in design in top right corner

- Page 9 – too busy, stripy circles don’t work

- Page 10 right side design are too blocky and static

Could you please, based on this feedback, progress to next stage and develop two designs further.

STUDY TASK 4 - THE BUSINESS OF DESIGN

STUDY TASK

- Identify 5 examples professional practice that you have documented on your blog.

- Analyse the work in relation which sectors the work has been produced for.

- List the services that the work relates to.

- Evaluate the success to which the work fullfills its role from a the point of view of sector and services.

NHS Adult Living

Designer: Craig Murphy

Client: NHS

Sector: Quaternary Sector, Public Sector

Processes: Gravure Printing

Services : Health & Education

The NHS have recently undertaken a review into NHS Services regarding Adult Congenital Heart disease. Craig Murphy designed a 20 page document that is bold, bright and full of easily digestible facts and information. He has used a relevant colour scheme that is quite clinical and represents good health I feel. The information is laid out well in a clear grid structure. It has been printed using gravure printing to a high quality. It is in an A4 format which is not too big to carry around. This fits into the Quaternary sector as it has been produced for the government for the health sector. This is a public document for the people rather than a purchasable magazine.

OR Organic Wine

Designer: Pavel Kulinsky

Client: OR Organic Wine

Sector: Tertiary, Private Sector

Services: Retail, Drinks, Bars

The brief was to design branding for a wine company. It was targeted at people interested in Asian culture and likes to travel. Inspired by his travels, especially South East Asia food-markets he decided to define the wines by separations of regions and countries and particularly the species of insects there. This is a very interesting but creative take on distinguishing between the two, this is both unique and makes you want to try the mystery wines. This definitely appeals to the traveller. I think he has created a very strong brand here. This falls into the Tertiary sector as it to do with retail and has been created for profit.

Poliu Paint Brushes

Designer: Simon Laliberté

Client: Poliu

Sector: Tertiary Sector, Private Sector

Processes: Offset Lithography

Services: Retail, Hardware

Simon has come up with a really innovative way of packaging and displaying paintbrushes. He has come up with a series of different faces to match the moustache's, He has dyed each of the bristles to allow for a set of characters, this is a really appealing and eye catching way of attracting customers. Its humorous and practical. and definitely has the wow factor. This fits into the private retail sector.

Saxton Cider

Designer: Bradley Rogerson

Client: Saxton Cider

Sector: Tertiary Sector, Private Sector, Secondary Sector?

Processes: Web Offset, Sticker Sheets.

Services: Retail, Breweries

Saxton is a new range of ciders from New Zealand brewery McCashins developed for fresh food retailer Woolworth’s, Australia. He created an identity and packaging that mixes clean and minimal typography with 18th century botanical fruit illustrations to communicate a hand-crafted sensibility while evoking an earlier time where the settlers of Nelson started Saxton Fields (a local orchard in which Saxton Cider takes it name from). The result is a very elegant and sophisticated looking packaging solution that expresses a genuine sense of detail and loving care. This fits into both the secondary and tertiary sector I feel as it is both for retail and a brewery. I feel the design is very successful and has a very strong concept behind it.

NHS Contract Jobs Website

Designer: Jamie Watson

Client: NHS Jobs

Sector: Public Sector, Quaternary 

Processes: Web Design

Services: Healthcare, Government, Public

Jamie Watson did the Branding and website design for employment service dedicated to aiding workers and employees find each other in the busy UK NHS sector. The Branding was created simultaneously for both the employment site and the parent network to aid visual continuity. The website provides a wide range of candidate tools including profile generation from LinkedIn, market rate tracker, multi-application facilities, timesheet and invoice templates and event calenders. For employers, basic listings were free with targeted campaigns as paid-for options He has covered all the necesary information needed for the site. It has been designed in a very structured way which gives a professional impression. He has used an appropriate colour scheme using greens, blues and whites which suggest healthiness.