Cinderella Marketing & Dance Quotes Evaluation

The aim of this project was to build upon skills which I will need when it comes to my chosen progression route. I chose to base the project on working alongside clients in order to build upon my communication skills and to get experience of working alongside clients as before this I felt I lacked this experience on contact with clients and working with them in a professional manner. I ended up with 2 clients from this project – BSDC performing arts deputy Jade Wilcock and Performing arts tutor Tom Berriman. Each gave me a set brief which I could work alongside them on. The briefs required me to produce a poster, cast list and flyer for a BSDC production of Cinderella and also I was required to produce a series of typographic wall installations of dance related quotes to go into the dance and drama studios to brighten up blank white wall space. Overall I succeeded with each brief and met the intended aims and targets that were set for each. I feel that after doing this project I am more competent with dealing with clients and feel that I have gained more experience when it comes to working with clients – I am more aware that it is sometimes more difficult sticking to a strict brief. For the BSDC production marketing predominantly I spoke with Jade Wilcock – she set the brief and then set up a meeting with marketing so that they could brief me on the specific guidelines that needed to be followed when designing for the college. However marketing did not contact me about the meeting therefore the deadline for the project was approaching and I hadn’t heard anything which was a worry. It turned out that marketing did their own advertising for the production so my designs were no longer required – this did annoy me somewhat as I felt as though they didn’t contact me and did the advertising themselves. Jade apologized for that and asked me to still produce artwork because she was impressed with my designs and wanted to use them in the production venue. At least my work was still used in the end and I was downhearted that marketing didn’t give me the chance. The dance quote project was a success, I was given a whole document of quotes to use but in the time I had to produce these I was unable to produce a typographic for each quote so I chose a select few and designed them. I used the quotes which I felt were inspirational, encouraging and appropriate for the use. Jade did not want the designs for the production posters to be influenced by the Walt Disney style of advertising for Cinderella as it was not a Disney version it was a Victorian version. Therefore it was hard when researching to find something not Disney related however after a tutorial I was told to look at work by Olly Moss – I looked at his series of star wars posters and used a similar concept and process on my poster for the production. If I was to do these projects again I think the main thing I would need to do would be to chase things up quicker such as when I didn’t hear from marketing I could have contacted them to ask why or contacted Jade again sooner so that the finalised designs would have not been completed so close to the deadline. Also I would ask for feedback from others in order to see what others opinions of my work are other than my own – sometimes when looking at your own work all the time you can miss things so having others opinion is good. I could improve on my timekeeping skills – I could do this by producing a timetable for myself to manage time between projects, this will help spread the workload and help me work more efficiently. I hope to work on my timekeeping in the next term by doing mini projects with quick turnaround so that I am used to working under pressure and to a time limit – I won’t have time to leave it until a later date. I also hope to work on other skills I wish to develop such as presentation skills and I feel I still need to improve on working with clients even if I have a better understanding after this project.