28/11/13

Tutorial

Had a tutorial with lance this morning, there was a lot I wanted to talk about and I had a lot on my mind to get out because I was starting to get bogged down with it all. We started off talking about my 3rd year options, I said how De Montfort and Nottingham Trent may not accept me at 3rd year and I didn't really want to go Derby so I didn't know what to do. Lance said how different uni's are different and have different intake procedures. As we went further into the conversation it dawned on me that maybe Derby is the option, its on more year then i'll have a degree which will be more valuable to me in the future when it comes to job hunting. However he did tell me that the 3rd year may go ahead at Burton so if that's the case i'll have until March to apply so I will have to see what happens.

Next I wanted to talk about absences, lately I'd had a few afternoons/mornings/days off due to family commitments and I need more time off next week so I was concerned about having time off and wanted to see if Lance was concerned about it. We spoke about the reasons behind it and the circumstances and he reassured me that it was ok as he knows that I will produce the work and he just wanted to make sure I was coping ok with everything and not getting behind.

There were a few small things we talked about such as I told him that marketing still haven't contacted me and he said as far as he's concerned I've done my part so I just need to keep pestering them to get in touch. We also briefly touched on the design duel, new blood pitch and grades and a few other pieces of work.

YCN

I decided to start and look at competition briefs today, I found one I really liked the look of on the YCN student awards. It was a brief for a company/brand called bear. I downloaded the full brief and pack with all of the relevant information. There were some past examples of the sort of work they were looking for. Straight away I was flooded with ideas and got them straight onto paper and told Lance about my ideas, he said that I had good concept and then I started to go through making some lettering for my designs, I made my own alphabet out of the product which was lettered cereal.

I am very pleased with the way the alphabet turned out, i'm looking forward to developing my idea further, however I have until March for this so it might take a back burner until my other work has been handed in.

Overall today I have been very productive, at the start of the day I was not feeling the best but I felt reassured after my tutorial and I know what I need to do and what needs completing etc. I have sent off my Norwich film festival posters as the deadline was Sunday so I look forward to hearing from that if I get selected. I have also tried to chase up marketing about the Cinderella poster by emailing Jade. I made adaptions to the arts market poster and flyer and I have acquired details of the course leader at Derby uni for Graphic Design so overall it has been a productive day and I'm pleased with my progress at this stage.

Rebranding

To start off the re branding process I have created a selection of new logos. I tried different fonts, shapes, colors and composition. I have selected my final 3 designs, I will then narrow these down and chose my favorite then make a start on promotion material such as business cards, letterhead and compliment slips.

I have now chosen my final logo and developed it. I have created business cards and a letterhead also.

I am pleased with the way my new branding has turned out. It was a quick process but this was a good thing as spending too much time on this would take away time from other projects I have going on which have more priority. But rebranding myself freshens up and updates my portfolio which will be good when I start to showcase my portfolio soon for interviews and jobs.

Paperplane Creative

I have found a design agency in Derby called Paperplane Creative, there is a section where you can upload your portfolio to them so that they can review your work which may lead to employment. This would be great so my task for today is going to be to put together a portfolio and possible rebrand myself as I have gone off my previous branding.



Action Points:
Rebranding
Put together portfolio
Send portfolio to Paperplane Creative

3rd Year University Choices

Getting really wound up about starting my UCAS application for 3rd year choices. I am unsure about where to go now as most of what I hear about Derby isn't great - Derby was my first option but now its becoming a no go however they seem to be the only uni out of my options that will take me at 3rd year. Went to De Montfort open day and they basically said I'll have to apply for first year then in interview state I want to go in at 2nd or 3rd year but they cannot guarantee, it will go on interview and portfolio so I could end up having to do all 3 years! I am not paying for 3 more years when i've done most of the content in my 2 years of this foundation degree. Nottingham Trent was not one of my options but I decided I needed to have a look as De Montfort and Derby were going out of the window, I actually got the chance to talk to someone who is studying graphic design at Notts Trent in her first year - the prospects sounded good and good employment rates by the end of the course - she also showed me a few pieces of her work, she really recommended the course. So I decided to look if they have an open day up and coming which they do, its the 4th December which is next week but it will mean that I will miss another day of uni, I don't want to keep having all this time off so I might not go. I contacted the course administrator saying I may not be able to make the open day so could I have some more info or go in on another day but I cannot go another day and they said I can only apply at 2nd year so I think I may have to go to the open day so I can actually speak to the tutors of the course and see what they say about entry level.

Its starting to concern me that as I want to stay local my only option might be Derby for 3rd year - I don't know what to do! I don't think college are going to set up doing 3rd year on time for the UCAS deadline which is a shame as it would have been so ideal for me to do it at college and it was ideal for may others too so i'm a little disappointed that we have been told it may happen but then nothing has actually happened. Looks like i'm stuffed, i'm in a right pickle.

Do I take a year out and get a job or 3rd year? 3rd year is so valuable but seems closer to home isnt going to work for me. I may have to seek further afield to do my final year.

25/11/13 International Women's Day Work Ideas

After last weeks meeting regarding international womens day I have started to think about some of the shocking statistics that Vanessa told us, I noted most of them down and I was reading through them and I decided I would like to form some sort of infographic out of them. I looked at a few examples of infographics for inspiration:

After researching I started to put together some of my own ideas. i thought about what sorts of things IWD wanted to include for the event, they wanted a magazine so I thought I could create infographics to include within the magazine, as I was working I decided to scrap the whole infographic idea and create  individual posters/pages for each statistic/fact which can feature throughout the magazine between articles etc. I may return to the idea of creating infographics at a later date for the event.

Here are my first few poster designs:

These are my designs so far, I hope to create some more using some more of the statistics. I hope to get fully involved with the event helping with the advertising aspects and possibly volunteering on the day.

20/11/13 Briefing with Vanessa - Chair for International Womens Day Derby

Half way through our Design Duel meeting we had to stop for a briefing for some projects related to the International Women's Day Derby. She told us how the brief is open to all disciplines and she is open to everyone's ideas which is great to get everyone involved.

Some things they require are:
Social media advertising
Posters
Magazine (including timetable, lasting product of the event)
Voulenteers for the day and events leading up to it

Vanessa gave us some very shocking statistics about female related issues such as rape, children  worrying about weight and also ratios of men to women in certain job roles. These could then be used in infographics or within the magazine. The theme for this year is "Generations" - all about bringing all different age groups together. And the keywords they wanted us to include are, festival, community, inspiring, celebration, campaigns and activism. The color scheme will be: Purple, Green, White.

This will be a great opportunity and I hope to get involved within the event itself volunteering and also producing some marketing material.

20/11/13 Design Duel Meeting 2

Today we met up with the photography students again regarding the "Design Duel", as of yet we haven't got an official name for it so we are sticking with that for now. After making a plan and timetable for everyone yesterday I was very optimistic and looking forward to the meeting as everyone would be able to have a copy of this and we would all then have the same information written down. The meeting didn't go to plan from the start, many people didn't turn up and then we go told that the proposed date we had chosen wouldn't be ok with some of the group due to work commitments etc, this was disappointing as we didn't want to change the date but then if we did it on the date we chose not everyone would be able to attend - it was a bit of a dilemma but we have decided to stick with December 12th.

We started to try and come up with a timetable for the day, deciding what events will happen when, when breaks will occur etc. The break in the middle was a bit of a pain as it interfered with timings for events. Me and Becky predominantly led the meeting with input from other group members from time to time. The timetable was rejigged many times throughout the meeting - I was getting a little stressed out as I thought having a sheet we could all work from would help but to me it didn't go as I had planned. It was difficult as not everyone was there so we couldn't allocate jobs and also different people kept popping in and out so we had to reexplain many things so everyone was up to speed with things. To me the meeting was not a success but at least me made a little bit of headway and arranged the events - Becky said she will try and organize the rest of the timetable later on so that will be a help if she can have that for the next meeting. As we also had a few prices for costings we went through this, we went through the prices and added them up to get a total cost then split this between the group which equated to roughly £1.50 each so costing shouldn't be an issue.

I think the next meeting I will step back a little and let someone else lead it, it will give everyone a chance to get involved as it is a group task and at the moment it is clear who are leading it and who is stepping back.

Action Points
For the next meeting:
Have some ideas for advertising the event
Will the event have a different name?
Have a rough or finalised timetable