OUGD203 Evaluation

This module has been my most successful to date, I have produced a body of work that I am finally proud of, without an incredible rush at the end. I have finally managed to get on top of my time management and I think that this shows through the work that I am presenting.

The collaboration brief was an eye opener for me. Working with two people increased the pressure to perform and really put the work in. I feel it was this that made my work ethic turn around. I was in a group with two strong students and I wanted to impress them with what I could do…with my input and the amount and quality of work that I produced. We worked very well as a team, we collaborated as we should and put together a strong body of work that we were proud to send to YCN.

At the beginning of ‘Product, Range and Distribution’ I was somewhat undecided as to what to do…who I was, in effect. This brief was meant to be the first real opportunity to really get to grips with what we wanted to specialise in both third year and then in our careers. For some reason, this really pressurised me and I got a bit worried about whether I was going to pick/write the right brief for me.

The competition briefs and the sessions with Fred helped a lot to define what exactly it was I wanted to do. I had a vague idea… I knew I wanted to incorporate merchandise design and mixed media, but I wanted a definitive brief to work to.

Two briefs amongst my five chosen ones really stood out to me, the D&AD ‘Diesel one, and the ISTD ‘78rmp –mp3’ briefs. This was probably because they were both focussing on music, but there were other aspects of them that drew me to them. Such as the similar target audiences; ‘fans of the band’. These were briefs that were not making people aware of something, this was, in effect, preaching to the converted. This gave me the opportunity to be creative, to work for an audience who already appreciated the subject matter. Finally, a brief where I could focus on the aesthetic value of the product.

I set myself an extraordinary amount to do. Producing a range of merchandise for 6 separate songs. In hindsight, this was very over-ambitious. I set about this task by analysing the lyrics of these songs, and then experimenting with mixed media. I put a lot of time into illustrative type experimentation, which I didn’t even end up using.

My tutorial with Fred was a real eye-opener and really helped me focus my idea down. This was when I decided to produce a very strong body of work for one song, and then proposing the other 5. This was when things really started moving.

I produced a 12” vinyl cover for the EP and then a range comprising of a poster, a 7”single cover, a CD single cover, 3 t-shirts, 2 tote bags and packaging for each of these. My distribution method was designing them a website and logo.

If I had more time I would go about printing the t-shirts and totes, and following that, produce the ranges for each of the other songs.

I think all in all it has been a real learning curve for me.  I put the work in – I get the results. It is as simple as that. I have learnt an incredible amount about software and different methods of idea generation, analysing and both image and type production. This module has really got me excited about 3^rd year. 

DLKW Lowe - Evaluation and final day

As we walked in on our final day, there was definitely a feeling of sadness and nerves for Sadie and me. We'd really started feeling at home at this agency, recognising people, knowing people's names... being recognised and smiled at as we walked past. These are all things we normally take for granted, but the fact that these were all professionals we were trying to impress over such a short time was a good sign. 

We went around all the people we worked with over our time here and thanked them personally for the time we took up, also asking them for their e-mail addresses for future contact, and each and every one of them told us to keep in touch and that they would be more than happy to give us feedback on anything we send them.  This will be incredibly useful in my practice... and correspondence will help me with future placements, I am going to try and keep a constant flow of emails going, so they remember who I am. 

I was most sad when we went down to say goodbye to Richard and Remco, who had been so good to us in the first week, who took time out of their busy days to give us briefs, to catch up and give us feedback and to organise all sorts of meetings to get our ideas into reality. They seemed genuinely impressed with our progress over the two weeks saying "I hope you come back here, you're really cool and you've really got 'it'" and then telling us that our ideas will be going to the clients next week and they will let us know how it goes. 

For Natalie, the creative services director who organised the whole thing, we bought a huge orchid to put on her desk... we decided to do this rather than a bouquet as she can keep it... and subsequently remember us whenever she looks at it. She then told me that I could come back in the summer because we had done so well. THEY WANT ME BACK FOR THE SUMMER FOR A LONGER SPELL OF WORK EXPERIENCE!!!! We are going to organise this formally in the next week or so. She also said that she had received brilliant feedback from everyone who had worked with us and that they were all very impressed with us. 

Safe to say, we left with a glow. 

I am so happy I did this. I now have a much better idea of what kind of career I would like to pursue. I very much enjoyed the conceptual part of the placement. Coming up with ideas. And it seems I am actually rather good at it, this gave Natalie a much better idea of what I would like to do in the summer. 

I have also come out of this a much more rounded designer, with a lot more focus on what I want to achieve out of the course. There is a finish line and I am now so focused on getting there, that hard work is the answer. I was feeling a bit disenheartened in parts of last term... really not feeling any direction coming out of the work I was producing. A little lost you might say. I have not had one day on this 'break' where I haven't worked, both for the agency and for the course. I am genuinely happy with how much more focused and excited I am about it all now. I have the world ahead of me and this has been a brilliant boost. I have a completely new outlook. I really needed it. 

Typogateaux - DLKW Lowe style

So we were sitting at our desks getting on with our WHSmith brief... when Richard Holmes came upstairs to tell us that there is a royal wedding themed cake competition at 3.30 and we have to vote for his 3 tiered pork pie wedding cake wonder... with Wills and Kate formed out of pastry. 

We immediately name-dropped typogateaux and that they had stolen Amber's idea... that went down well. 

Slightly different vibes around this cake competition... lots of champagne. 

But there were some brilliant creations. And it was a really good opportunity to mingle and meet other creatives around the company. 

Some photos.

Not quite up to the standard of LCA, but a lovely afternoon nonetheless. 

The last day!!!

Today we are finishing up the WHSmith branding and advert layout brief. I've been here 25 minutes and I've already learnt things about type I didn't know. 

Guy really is a brilliant typographer. Everyone in the office keeps talking about the fact he is the best they have encountered in their time in the industry. I feel really privileged having him give us so much of his time to help explain things.

So we had a little progress crit where he gave his opinions on which one of my logos to use and what little things I could do to them to make them look better. 

So he chose the one which looked more sophisticated, but at the same time friendly. 

He taught me about spacing, and how, even though it may be right, the way it looks is deceiving and should override this. He also told me that it is easier to edit the spacing if the logo is upside down, as we don't read the letters... just see them as objects. 

My final design is the bottom one. Slight alterations have been made to make it perfect. 

I also learnt that certain letters have an ink well... little dents in the character which allows space for ink to spill out, making the curve better in print. 

The make the character look very strange close up. 

Now it is time to find the perfect type for the body of the advert. 

These are typefaces I like and am going to show Sadie for her opinion. 

This is my final advert.
We used a typeface called 'Corinthian' for the body type. It was one that we both chose due to both it's readability and because of it's respectable pound sign.
I think, for my first real piece of layout and branding - not too bad.
Guy said it was brilliant what we both came up with in our day and a half of working on it. He seemed genuinely impressed. Which left us with a very gratified buzz.

DLKW Lowe - Day 3 in the studio - WHSmith type & layout brief

So today we have been set a type and layout brief. To re-vamp WHSmith's magazine and newspaper campaign. They want to take a leaf out of Waterstone's books and make their logo and campaign a lot more modern and appealing to a younger audience. They liked the fact that Waterstone's simply turned the hmv 'm' upside down to create the 'W'. 

Guy Sexty, the head of type, told us that it would be better to use a serif typeface if we are making the whole name lowercase (which he quite liked the idea of) because changing to a serif and changing the case would be too much of a change... or make it sans-serif but keep the change in case. 

He also introduced us to new web-based font tools. 

www.myfonts.com - The World's largest collection of professional fonts.

www.fontscape.com - Typeface directory, can identify fonts by mood.

www.identifont.com - To find and identify fonts and similar ones.

A few points I picked up...

Headlines in Impact instantly look old-fashioned. 

2 typefaces across an ad is ideal - one for logo, one for content. We need to find a typeface which works well small and has good numerals. 

So on we go. 

We have also been given access to about 5000 fonts on their server. The choice is mind-boggling!

These are some of the companies that WHSmith want to base their designs around.  Contemporary companies who use modern design in their branding.
Quick mood-board.

So I have decided to focus on re-working the logo using both uppercase and lower... like it is already, just re-vamping it by using a sans-serif typeface.
So I have been trawling through and these are some of the ones I have liked.

Obviously I am going to change and adapt certain aspects of these fonts that I don't quite like.
I showed this list to Guy and he spent a while trying to identify the ones they had on the server... and if not, either buying them, or matching them up to similar ones they have.
He also showed me how to do more character alterations than I already knew how to do... which is going to be very helpful in my own practice.
Guy is incredibly quick on illustrator and knows his fonts off the top of his head, amazing to see someone be able to find ones that are similar instantaneously. He will be amazing to have in my address book if I ever need help or feedback on my own work.


After this I decided to alter one of the typefaces which I liked called Variable but which they did not have on the system. I was advised of a typeface which was similar called AGBookRoundedBQ and play around with the parts which were different. This is my first time actually adapting type on Illustrator so I quite enjoyed the little induction that Guy gave us. It is going to be very useful.

Playing around with the 'm'

The two separate typefaces, one is a screengrab. 

The finished product.

After showing Guy, he noticed some more problems with the 'm' and showed me a nifty little way of solving it.

Make a single stroke through the character.

Fatten it up to the desired stroke size. 

Expand and fit it to the character. 

Copy and reverse the image and place together. 

Go to the path finder and make it into one single object. 

This is another one which I liked. I like the way the little serif on the 'm' follows the 'S'

Some more ideas...

We now have to choose a font which will go for the body text. Considerations for this are... the '1' needs to look different to a lower case 'l'... and the £ needs to be nice (there are some really ugly ones out there!!)

Also, a font family which has a good medium and heavy weights for different parts of the body. 

More trawling through typefaces for me now!!

Heads of State

I came across this design studio when I was looking for interesting music industry design for my new context brief. Their work really struck me. Immediately from just looking at their website and it's layout I knew that I would like the work they produced. After all, web design is incredibly important, I am noticing this more and more recently. Poor design and I turn off straight away, it's bad, but I don't even give it a chance. 

Jason Kernevich and Dustin Summers have been working together in one form or another since 2002. After graduating Tyler School of Art’s militant design program, Kernevich and Summers began making silkscreen posters for Philadelphia’s independent music scene. The graphic and conceptual simplicity of their collaborations made an immediate impact on the burgeoning poster revival in North America. Local clients and small projects paved the way to international acclaim and assignments from the likes of R.E.M., Wilco, and The New York Times. They now run a full-service design and illustration operation, applying their graphic elegance and visual wit to a wide range of clients and projects. They’ve won awards from Communication Arts, American Illustration, Print Magazine, Graphis, and the Society of Illustrators.

Client list

• The New York Times
• Starbucks
• BBDO
• Ogilvy & Mather
• The School of Visual Arts
• The New York Public Library
• American Express
• NPR
• Nickelodeon
• Penguin
• Vintage Books
• Random House
• HarperCollins
• The New Yorker
• Esquire
• Wired
• The New Republic
• Metropolis
• Los Angeles Magazine
• The New Republic
• R.E.M.
• Wilco
• Iron and Wine
• The National
• Idlewild
• Modest Mouse
• Insound
• Sony/EMI
• Jade Tree Records
• Drive-Thru Records
• Capitol Records
• Louisville Actors Theatre
• Virgin Mobile
• The Boston Globe
• The Washington Post
• The London Guardian

Very impressive list. 

A couple of campaigns they have done. 

This is very interesting to me. It reminds me a lot of one of the ISDT briefs we have been looking at for the next part of the module where we have to visually represent a song using its lyrics. 

POSTERS

These are some of the music/band posters they have produced. As said copious amounts of times, I would love to create work like this. Both because it looks nice, and because it is brilliant at drawing people to shows. Eye-catching work leads to people reading the posters. 

BOOK COVERS

These are very interesting to me as personal design is very much something I would like to try out. One's own interpretation of a book's content, visually represented on the cover. 

I have stated a lot that this is an area of graphic design that I am very much interested in. 

LOGOS

OTHER

This is a design studio that I am very much going to keep and eye out on. 

They have a very distinctive style which I love... and very much work in areas that I am interested in. 

Very inspiring as I embark on the next part of the course!