Brief 2 / Puns For Icons

After creating the initial icons, I didn't feel like what I was doing (re-creating symbols of the internet as iconography) was very creative, and felt a bit stuck with the designs for this brief. 

So after a talk with Andy, he suggested the idea of making the symbols relate to the items they would be placed on in a clever way, with puns. The brief would be about a clever, funny idea, rather than a fussy design. I would be changing the meaning, rather than sticking to the obvious, and this would add humour to the designs and make them stand out more.

Here are some initial ideas. I need to work out how to bring some typography in to the designs to make it obvious what the symbols are representing. [these aren't my icons - just to demonstrate what I mean!]

1.  Refresh symbol - Mug 

2. Waiting (egg timer) symbol - To do list pad

3. Trash symbol - Tip-Ex

4. Eject symbol - Toilet Paper

5.   Type symbol - You're my type - Greetings cards

      Selection tool symbol - I select you - Greetings cards

6.  Power on symbol (switch your brain on)- Notebook 

7.  Battery icons (recharge) - Sleeping Eyemask

8.   Attachment symbol - Gift Tag

9.   Back symbol + Ctrl Z (undo mistakes)- Rubber 

10.  Shopping Trolley - Cash book

11.  Hand symbol (handy)- Handy jotter

12. Brightness symbol (bright ideas) - Notebook

[These next ideas are based on the initial idea to create stationery products that were used before the internet, I will be putting symbols of the internet version on the non internet version now though.]

13.  Gaming Icon - Playing cards 

14.  Kindle Icon - Book mark

15.  Keyboard and Pen/Paintbrush tools etc - Pencil case

16.  Email Icon - Stamp

17.  General tool items in photoshop - Pens/Pencils/Rulers/Pen Pot etc

18.  Speech marks - Letter writing set

19.  Camera symbol (different types) - Photo album

20.  Folder symbol - Folder

21.  Mobile phone symbol - Address book

[These are products relating to the internet that will have a general pattern of icons on or just a random icon.]

22. Mouse mat     23. USB Stick     24. Phone case     25. Stickers

26. Postcards     27. Gift wrap     28. Gift bag     29. Pen Pot      30. Glue Stick (ctrl+v)

Brief 3 / Content for Book

Design Decisions:

After a chat with Andy, I now know what I want the content of the book to include. Here is what I have decided on after a really helpful discussion:

• The book will contain about 10 quotes, which will be featured on a double page spread, including an explanation about the quote
• There will also be end pages, introduction pages, a cover, and packaging
• The book will be A6 or smaller size, as a handy pocket book of inspiration
• Each quote will be presented in a different typographic style, relating to what the quote is about. For example, keep practising could be re-written many of times
• As each quote will look different, to keep the book from looking too much, a simple colour scheme of two colours, maybe just black and white, will be used
• I need to look in to bookbinding, but I am thinking the book will be french fold, to double the thickness, maybe professionally done at: http://www.spinkandthackray.co.uk

Final Quotes & Ideas for how these could be displayed:

1. Break The Rules - This will be in the glyph typeface that I was previously focusing on, as using this typeface is breaking the rules of typography. The content will explain how the rules should be learnt first to then break them creatively!
2. Always Work Harder - This will be in a handwriting, decorative style, to show that hard work has been spent on the type. The content will be about not giving up and keep pushing yourself further.
3. Keep Practising - This will be re-written many of times, in a slightly varied style each time, to show how things develop and improve as you practise. The content will be about not just sticking with your first idea.
4. Try Something New - This will be laser cut to show that you should try new techniques to improve your designs and the content will give a few suggestions.
5. Simple But Effective - This type will be very basic, featuring only what is necessary to make the type readable. The content will make the reader think about only including what is needed in their designs.
6. Get Thinking - This type will be written as if it is a brain storm as a doodle, with some advice about idea generation.
7. Be Unique - Written in the glyph style but hand drawn to show you shouldn't always just use the typefaces and make the choices everyone else does. Quote is shown a few times in the background, originally in fonts that everyone uses.
8. Time Is Precious - This will be really basic type, written in a quick scribbly type to show how quickly it was done. The content will give some advice about not wasting time.
9. Don't Give Up!!! - Written in a bold, stern typeface with exclamation marks as if the type is shouting at you! A reminder to keep trying even when things get hard.
10. Perfect Presentation - This type will include a print finish to show that presentation details like this are key to a design. Could be printed and photographed to show the importance of this stage of presentation.

Individual Progress Tutorial 6/11/12

Today I signed up for a progress surgery tutorial with Andy to talk about a few issues that I was stuck on. I found this talk a lot more useful than the feedback I had been given in the previous crits, as I had been getting a bit confused and stuck due to the variation of feedback I received.

We talked through my ideas and design progress for each brief. I haven't yet started Brief 1.

Brief 2.

After creating the initial icons, I didn't feel like what I was doing (re-creating symbols of the internet as iconography) was very creative, and felt a bit stuck with the designs for this brief. 

Andy suggested the idea of making the symbols relate to the items they would be placed on in a clever way, with puns. The brief would be about a clever, funny idea, rather than a fussy design. I would be changing the meaning, rather than sticking to the obvious, and this would add humour to the designs and make them stand out more.

[Puns for icons] <-- see blog post

• Try creating the icons in RGB or other luminous colours
• Look at The Chase and Hat Trick Design for clever ideas
• Use well known icons people who don't know a lot about computers will still understand, so its easier to get the pun
• What other products would be popular such as recyclable shopping bags

Brief 3.

I now know what I want the content of the book to include. Here is what I have decided on after a really helpful discussion:

• The book will contain about 10 quotes, which will be featured on a double page spread, including an explanation about the quote
• There will also be end pages, introduction pages, a cover, and packaging
• The book will be A6 or smaller size, as a handy pocket book of inspiration
• Each quote will be presented in a different typographic style, relating to what the quote is about. For example, keep practising could be re-written many of times
• As each quote will look different, to keep the book from looking too much, a simple colour scheme of two colours, maybe just black and white, will be used
• I need to look in to bookbinding, but I am thinking the book will be french fold, to double the thickness, maybe professionally done at: http://www.spinkandthackray.co.uk

[Content for book] <-- see blog post

Brief 4.

The logo for MGD was the thing that I felt the most stuck on after receiving quite different comments in my crits.

• Research Pentagram logo design for classical logos and famous museum branding
• Which era is the museum about?
• The logo shouldn't be slanted as it looks a bit cheap and won't be substantial
• Should be sans serif and minimal
• Try designing the logo with just the shapes to make a simple, design led logo
• With the use of caps there would be no issue of leading
• Try bolder text

Design for Print - Workshop I

Print Workshop Refresher Notes

Indesign.

- Book in indesign - series of connected documents, each chapter separate document

- Slug area larger than bleed area outside the page, used to contain printers marks, registration marks, page information etc. Things that are printed but discarded after the trimming process. Option in print dialogue box to print this area. Set slug to about 20mm.
- When printing you have to check this box in the marks and bleed area of the print settings. So would have to print an A4 on to an A3 piece of paper to allow for these marks. Tick which printers marks to add.

- Facing pages for anything thats going to end up in a book format. This changes margin size.

- Primary text frame - Makes every page of your document have a text frame created on it automatically. The size of the text frame will be as specified by your margins. With a multiple page document each frame will be automatically linked. Good for when working with significantly text based document.

- Start page no - Which page the document starts on. Can automatically number the pages later, so would want to start the document on the third page, so the cover which will be designed in a different document is the first two pages.

- Outside blue area is the slug, if you fill the text box with text it would automatically fill the document.

If you set the document up with just one page, but fill the box with a large amount of text it will automatically add pages to fill the rest of the text in with, rather than the text overflow indicator. 

- Make sure images are prepared at the right size rather than shrinking them in Indesign. Place an image file in a frame. Then look under the links column to see the percentage size. 

-Alt and double click the image to open it in photoshop and alter the size to the right percentage, as the files are linked. Change the document size on photoshop from mm to percent and right in the correct percentage and the file will be shrunk to the correct size. 

- If the link is missing indesign will show this symbol

- To get the file to automatically open in photoshop when you alt and double click it, find the file in finder, and click cmd + i, then change the open with to photoshop from preview.

- To change from 72dpi to 300dpi, go to image size, un tick resample image, change resolution, and click okay.

- On Indesign double click warning sign and it will force it to resize

- Make sure document is set up right to print! 300dpi, CMYK, saved to right format, prepare the file to the size you are going to need them

- Image -> mode -> cmyk

- When printing as a .pdf press quality is the best quality

- Font book - can disable fonts without deleting them for when you don't want to use them for a while to make programmes run quicker.

Keyboard Shortcuts

- Cmd+0 - fit document to page or click twice on hand tool

- Click twice on magnifying glass to get actual size

- Cmd + alt + up and down arrows to change the line spacing in 10pt - or without cmd for small gaps

- Cmd + alt + left and right arrows to change the kerning in large gaps  - or without cmd for smaller kerning

Brief 4 / Logo Design Change of Direction

Although I quite liked the logo I had produced for the graphic design museum, after feedback from my crit and asking others what they thought about it, I have decided to rework it. Looking back at it now I do think it looks like it was quite simple to design, and as one of my target audiences will be designers, I want it to look well designed.

In my crit, people suggested using helvetica, but I don't think this is the most exciting font to be used for a logo, but I might use this in other design work. I've decided to play with some more font design, this time, focusing on ligatures, and an elegant, sophisticated outcome. I still want my logo to be all the things I wanted it to be before, especially to be versatile and easy to place on different things.



This was my idea for the logo, which I tried creating by drawing on a graphics tablet, but it was harder than I thought to try and get this right, so decided the best step would be to hand draw it to the style I want it then to edit it.

The logo designs with stars by them are my favourite, and ones that I want to develop further. I want the logo to be elegant, timeless, sophisticated, ligature, soft curves, serif with a fancy 'g'.

In my experimentation I tried going with some things said in crit, such as: make the 'm' bigger than rest of the logo, try a more classic style, make sure the text is not too bold.

I decided to find some serif fonts that I could base my logo design on, as well as still considering the sans serif gill sans mt.

Baskerville was my favourite font choice out of the ones I found, so I printed this out and based my new logo design on it.

A question also asked in the crit was how does it work with white space? After playing around with new logo ideas I realised it doesn't work in box so I will have to abandon this idea. Here is me playing about with how to arrange the information:

I can see a definite improvement in my logo design and finally feel happy with these ideas. My favourite is the logo in the bottom right corner, so this is the one I will develop further.

I have used the scan in of my logo and the logo created with the baskerville font to create a background to trace over, to create the actual logo.

This shows how the font inspired my logo:

This is where I'm up to now... I'm a lot happier with this one than I was with the original one and I've received good feedback on it. Now I just need to work out how the text describing what MGD stands for can work with this logo.

Brief 1 / Which YCN Brief?

After checking the YCN website a few hundred times to see when the new briefs would be released, the briefs are finally up, and I am a bit stuck for choice which one to go for as quite a few sound interesting! 

Here are the ones that stood out the most to me when having a quick look through, so I'm going to go back and look at these in more details and consider the outcomes I could create then choose which one to do, as I want to get started straight away.

Very

Initial thoughts:

- Is the subject to similar to the Peacocks brief I did last year?

- Lots of information given, especially about the brand and target audience

- Clear brand identity but still quite a creative brief...

- But is the brief too open?

- Subject area I am interested in

- Opportunity to work over a variety of channels: print, digital, apps, mobile etc...

- Can be tackled from different angles: product, music, illustration etc..

- Is the amount of work expected realistic to create in the time I have left?

UK Greetings Cards

Initial thoughts:

- Area of design I am interested in

- Something I have done before - is this a good or bad thing?

- Lots of interesting research to be done

- Is this brief a bit too easy?

- Maybe not as challenging as the other briefs

- Brief specifications limit creative process

- Would be easy to get done in the time left

- Possibility for outcome to be used

Plan UK

Initial thoughts:

- Haven't done work for charity before, would be good to design for a creative conscience

- Relates to theme of dissertation (equality for females)

- Subject I feel strongly about

- Purpose for design, outcome is needed

- Can take on any form, print or digital etc so room for experimentation

- Clear concept

- Would be quite a challenge and different to the rest of my work

- Information on brand, values and purpose

Lego

Initial thoughts:

- Fun brief but everyone will be wanting to do it

- Love lego

- Such a well known brand would be good to design for it

- Clear problem to be answered, design for a purpose

- Design outcome doesn't really relate to my design practice direction

- Quite a challenge from what the brief is asking

- Work be hard work but rewarding

Goji

Initial thoughts:

- Is this too similar to what I am doing at the moment with the stationery brief?

- Sounds really appealing, especially with the opportunity for work to actually be sold

- Clear idea of what they want, would be easy to get started with

- Different parts of the brief, keeps you interested

- Is a real brief with a purpose as this brand does need promoting

- Would be the type of thing I would buy so I would know a bit about it

- Does stand out from the rest

Fedrigoni

Initial thoughts:

- Fun brief but everyone will be wanting to do it

- Would love to work with the paper
- Fairly open brief - really creative
- Could create really beautiful outcomes

- Would be a fun creative challenge to answer this brief
- Have been wanting to work with luxury stocks