Summary
Second Sight is a book publication of Margaret Atwood-inspired works done by Part 3 English Literature students of University of Reading.

I worked alongside Dr. Madeleine Davies – my client – and a student from the Margaret Atwood module, who both edited the students’ entries, while I designed, copyedited, and typeset the entirety of the book. Over 100 copies of the book were printed and published by the University in the first print run. It acted as a souvenir for the students involved, showcased on Open Days, and also sent to staff within the university, staff from other universities, Atwood critics, and Margaret Atwood herself.

A second print run was done due to popular demand, and by request from Margaret Atwood. This was funded by Dr Katja Strohfeldt, the Dean of the school, who was impressed with the whole project. 

 

Restated Brief
After meeting with the client, I was able to gain a better understanding as to what Madeleine’s expectations for this project was. I was also able to ask questions I had concerning the original brief that she provided when I was first assigned to the job. From this initial meeting, I wrote a clearer and more precise brief, detailing what outcomes were expected from this job. 

The restated brief for this project was to create a book featuring the collection of works done by the students in the ‘Margaret Atwood’ module in the English Literature course. This project included designing the cover, as well as designing and typesetting the inside spreads. I worked on this book from initial planning stage to print production, allowing me to learn in different areas and stages. We worked with 30 June 2018 as the rough deadline for the printed books to be delivered to the client. This was to ensure they would be ready for the book launch on 5 July 2018. 

The main aims and objectives of this project were:

• To design and create a book that showcases students’ literary works
• To make appropriate design decisions in presenting the literary works in a book form
• To make appropriate typographic decisions to fully convey the literature

The roles and responsibilities of my client and I were:

• Client – provide relevant text files, visual files and information to be put in/on the deliverables. Provide feedback on time, so that designers can have sufficient time to amend designs.
• Designer – design the entire book, including the cover, and interior pages. Also to make appropriate layout, and type-setting decisions. Provide print-ready files for client.

The final deliverable of this project were the print-ready PDF files, as well as the printed book.

This project had quite a fast turnaround time considering what the project was. Initially, the book was estimated to be around 70–80 pages. However, it ended up being 170 pages, which meant a much longer time was needed to spend on typesetting each page.

 

Research

I did some initial research before I started designing and typesetting.

• Research appropriate book cover designs for this type of book
• Research and gain a good understanding of the kinds of texts and literature that will be    featured in the book, and be able to make appropriate typographic decisions to convey that
• For the cover, research different typefaces, and typographical characteristics that portray the    mood and theme of book contents

The research that I did on these three bullet points all contributed to my design decisions.

 

Design
Cover
The artwork featured on the cover was decided straight after finalising the title of the book, as the client felt that it was the most appropriate piece to reflect the title. This illustration was done by one of the students in the ‘Margaret Atwood’ English Literature module. I decided to frame the artwork by placing it in the centre of the cover, allowing generous margin space, and space for the title and editors names. I thought that this use of space and layout would keep the cover clean and bring focus to the artwork and title, which was what the client wanted.

For the back cover, I wanted there to be a link with the front, so I framed the blurb with a border the same colour as the artwork. This helped create a stronger visual tie between both the front and back cover. This detail was well-received, as the client’s students had noticed it and were delighted to spot it.

Inside
It took quite a while to typeset everything due to the varying writing styles and structures of the English students. I found it a challenge to ensure consistency without altering too much that it changes the students’ writing styles. An example was that there were two pieces that were structured like a recipe. However, one piece used numbers and bullet points, whereas the other one did not. Other examples of pieces that had inconsistent stylisation were the pieces that were written as interviews. In the end, it was agreed between my client and I that we did not standardise said styles, and just kept them how it was written. This was because it was considered part of the English student’s writing personality, so it would be wrong to change it. However, I did tidy up the pieces through in-depth copyediting.

The book is split into different sections relating to the Margaret Atwood book that the students’ piece were related to or inspired by. To indicate the start of a new section, I set the Margaret Atwood book title on a page of its own, allowing for a clear break in between pages of text. Above each title, I also created an illustration of an eye. The open eye motif was to symbolise the start of something, and also links to the title, Second Sight. 

Image treatment
There were six photographs within the inside pages (excluding cover image). These were all printed in colour except one greyscale illustration.

 

Production

We established the paper stocks and paper weights that were going to be used in the early stages of the project. This allowed me to provide a spec quite quickly for the print job. The final spec was:

Inside pages
140mm x 205mm portrait
Cyclus Offset 90gsm
172pp
1/1 + 7pp in colour

Cover
Cyclus Offset 250gsm
4pp
4/0
Perfect bound

The final files were sent to press on 11 June 2018, with intentions of allowing sufficient time for the books to be printed and bound before delivery by 30 June.

 

Reflection
Overall, I found this to be an amazing experience, as it helped me develop my typography, copyediting, InDesign skills, print production knowledge, and time management. I learnt a lot from my supervisor, Eric Kindel, who taught me a lot on typographic details and copyediting. Towards the end of the project, we went through every page of the book to flag up any issues, and he was able to provide insightful feedback on them. This project has definitely made me appreciate typesetting and the attention to typographic details a lot more. 

One challenge that I faced whilst working on this was working to the ‘deadline’. The 30 June 2018 deadline was not originally set, as it was unclear as to when Madeleine and her student would be able to finish editing the work and prepare the copy for me to start typesetting. This led to a bit of a rush towards the end, as there was a rush to send the final files to press before the client’s funding expired. The reason for the rush was due to the fact that I was not notified in the beginning that the client’s funding had to be used by mid-June. When that was brought up to me, I had to rewrite the time schedule, so that the book was ready to go to press as soon as possible. This caused a reasonable amount of stress and added pressure, but I managed to get all the work done on time.

Asides from that, I thought this project was a success, and an amazing experience. My client was incredibly pleased with the outcome, and gave very positive remarks through email correspondence, as well as during the book launch. I was unfortunately unable to attend the book launch, but Eric and James were able to represent the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication. Below are some quotes taken from Madeleine to express her thoughts towards the book, and the success of the project:

“June, Atwood’s approval of the book is a real triumph. I wanted you to know this, to thank you again for all your amazing work, and also to let your supervisor and James know that the project has had such starry impact.”

“Colleagues in other unis are also asking for the book, and Coral Ann Howells (the star of Atwood studies) has listed the book in her ‘Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood’ bibliography.”

The book received a lot of praise and comments from various people. Margaret Atwood herself reached out. Professor Emerita Coral Ann Howells – a predominant critic on Atwood responded to the book as well.

Here are some more responses from people who have received and read the book.

“The volume looks fabulous … I’m really interested in the kind of student project that has produced such a professional looking text, and I suspect I’ll be coming back to you with questions about how it all worked.” – Dr Fiona Tolan, Liverpool John Moores

• shows that it has inspired others to want to do the same

“My CRI groups loved ‘Second Sight’ and several asked whether it is available in the library? Is it? Or could they buy a copy from you?” – Debbie Bark, UoR colleague

“I am so proud that the book is such a success” – Hannah Ralph, student

“There’s even been some sweet Facebook posts saying things such as ‘Margaret Atwood has seen my work!’” – Sophie Harrington, student

• shows the student contributors’ responses to the book

Furthermore, Second Sight was entered for the University Collaborative Awards for Teaching & Learning of 2018/19, and was the winner of the award.

 

Post-project
Though the deliverable has been handed over, Second Sight continues to open up opportunities of mini projects branching from the book. I was contacted by the client again to create poster-sized covers of Second Sight, which are to be printed and displayed in the corridors of the university buildings for publicity, and showcasing our achievements made through this project. 

Background

The client is an Art PHD student at the University of Reading who set out to create a ‘document’ that visually supported and demonstrated his findings on the artist Sol Hewitt. The aim was to create a document that served as an exhibition that demonstrated and mapped out methods that artists could use to create works (like framework/a guide). The document would feature different sections that demonstrated these methods with business logos and material, created by the client. The art works ranged between black and white and colour, as well as larger and smaller dimensions (so quite dynamic).

 

Brief

The brief was to design a document (precise dimensions and materials unspecified). This included organising and compiling the client’s own works alongside written work as well as visual examples of certain methods being put to use. The document was set to be printed on as opposed to digital outcomes and was meant to be adaptable as reading material as well as exhibitory.

Initially, the client and I were working and planning for an A4 format (this later changed to A3). The document was to be printed in colour and able to be put into a ring binder similar to traditional business design specs. The paper stock to be used was traditional business paper also often used in these design specs. Overall, the document needed to look ‘clean’ and minimal in design as it was important for the content to be followed as well as viewed.

 

Research

Due to the nature of this particular project, there wasn’t much research to be done aside from getting to know more about Sol Hewitt. Together, we were creating something new and original, so it wasn’t necessary to look for specific inspiration. I did however have a look through the department’s collection, where we have and keep old business specimens. This was useful as it gave me insight into what we were going for in an aesthetic sense.

 

Communication

Throughout this project, the client and I had regular meetings whenever we were both available for a couple of hours to discuss specific work that couldn’t be done over email. Throughout, the client and I communicated over email equally to meeting in real life. I would personally say that it was more effective to meet up in real life as it allowed for easier communication and direct alteration. I was the only Typography student on the project so that also allowed for a simpler and more straightforward stream of communication.

 

Schedule

The original deadline was not met as we were still working together past that date. This was somewhat predicted by the client as we got to this date. This was due to the fact that from the start of the project, the client made it clear that the document was very much a work in progress. A work in progress can’t really have a timestamp on it due to the fact that it is ever changing and thus, the deadline probably served merely as an estimated time of finishing.

 

Design

Similarly to the research process, the designing process wasn’t a method I was necessarily used to. The way we worked together went as follows; the client would prepare the work in the way that he wanted it to look, then sent it to me to ‘design’ it in a more professional manner (on InDesign by use of a grid system and correct margins etc.), finally it was sent back to the client for approval. This process of working applied to all sections of the proposed document. This method of working collaboratively was different from the work I was used to within the department where I was instead encouraged to come up with design solutions myself. Getting instructed to do specific things (with not as much personal input) although quite relaxing and straightforward wasn’t the most exciting experience in terms of designing. This has made it clear to me that I much prefer being in control and having more of an input into certain projects. However, due to the nature of this scheme and the job that I signed up for, this could be said to be a process that simply ‘comes with the job’ of being a designing within certain industries or practices.

An example of the working process can be seen in figure 1, where the pdf’s demonstrate original examples and work that was provided to me to design. The highlighted pdf showcases a finished design where all of the original prints were compressed to one A3 (the final decided format). This was the process for all sections of the document.

 

 

Feedback

Feedback received from the client throughout the project was constantly encouraging and uplifting. These were always positive exchanges that highlighted the fact that collaboration at this level can be effective as well as pleasant. Some minor feedback received usually was surrounding paper stock and which were more effective, similarly to dimensions of certain art works in relation to each other.

 

Conclusion

Moving forward, I hope that the work I helped the client produce was up to standard and that they can be proud of the way in which their art work looks when organised and designed at larger scale than the comfort of A4. I also hope that work continues to be done and that the work truly reflects the amount of thought that went/goes on ‘behind the scenes’.

 

 

This Real job is aim to redesign Environment Europe website into a clean, fresh new appearance to attract a wider audience and their existing participants to join their education program and consultancy service. The target audiences are the existing partnership companies and universities our client work with, people in the related environment industries and people who would like to know more and involved in environment area.

Deliverables

• Website
• Logo(temporary)

Communication

Through the first meeting with our client, our client wanted to keep all the contents from the original website to the new website as the original website is quite out of date. We did a sketch layout of how the website can be easier to navigate in the meeting. In the beginning, the client did not specify whether he wants a prototype or a website with coding in the real job brief. We restated the brief after meeting our client to discuss the output of the website and was approved by the real job team and our supervisor.

 

The output of this real job is to use a website host platform called ‘Tilda’ to design our client’s website with annual payment subscription to the website host company in order to assign the domain to their original website. We asked about the colour scheme and layout preference in the meeting as well. However, our client does not have a particular interest in mind which we did not have a clear direction of his design approach until we did our first layout draft on Tilda and sent it to him.

Our client was very keen on this project which he sent email regularly to check on the update of the website and we arrange three face-to-face meetings in total. Our last meeting in May was the most helpful. This is because our client did not send us any information about the use of images or infographics for us before which we had some difficulties in selecting which image or tables should be inserted in different sections. As we did not have permission to access their company’s Flickr or photography account either.

 

Design Process

Before the first meeting with our client, we had to know the structure of the existing website, we analyzed the existing website. After analysis, we found some problems on the original website.

 

One of the problems with the original website was that there were too many items on the menu bar. This made it difficult for users to navigate the website. Due to this reason, we made a decision that creating 5 large categories and putting the existing menus into sub-menu.

• Education (Educational program with Publication)
• Research & Consultancy (Projects)
• Art (our client’s fundraising website)
• Network (clients they worked with and the company members including volunteers)
• Take Action (Contact page)

 

 

On the previous landing page, the spacing between the paragraphs and paragraphs was too narrow, these made the web pages more cluttered and it difficult to read the contents. To solve this problem, we had set typesetting for this website.

Secondly, there was too much information on the landing page. In the redesigned website, we created 6 blocks that show each of the six projects, allowing users to find out more about the areas they are interested in.

After meeting our client recommended us to use Tilda to redesign the website. Tilda had a variety of design templates but they were limited in design. This was a challenge because it was limited in design and could not reflect client requirements such as the adjusting image size and adding social media icons. As our client wishes to edit the website in the future, we need to keep the design within Tilda design blocks. So that it will be easier to amend for our client.  Our client wants to fundraise through the Saatchi art, however, Tilda does not have Saatchi art gallery icon. So we decided to design the top part of the header with the zero block feature(free design layout by us which is not limited by Tilda)

 

 

 

 

Another challenge was to connect the Facebook account and twitter stream to the website on the news section. We overcame this challenge by using coding. This stated that Tilda is not capable in every feature to build a modern website. 

 

 

Logo

Although redesigning our client’s company logo was not in the real job brief. Our client asked us to redesign it. We did a mockup of the likely new appearance logo to our client according to his requirements. Our client can keep this as a reference in the future use and open a new real job to redesign their logo if needed.

 

Finalise

When we finalised our design after approval from our client, we will send them instruction on how to edit the website with specification on the type size of the website. So that the website will still be consistent.

 

Learning outcome

Time management is extremely vital in the real job project. We had planned out the time wisely for this project at the beginning. Due to the limitation of ‘Tilda’ that we had to wait for our client to pay for a subscription for us to access those design blocks to fulfil the layout and our client did not give us enough information about the diagram and photography use which slow down our progress. On the other hand, during February and March, both of us was busy with our coursework which we failed to find a balance between this real job and our course. The original deadline of this project was the 2nd of May and thankfully our client was understanding and he postponed this project to the end of May. Through this real job experience, we learnt that we should make a clearer and tide schedule between our course and the project and sufficient communication will contribute to the success of the project.

 

Restated Brief

The aim of this project was to rebrand a charity website, the charity (Signpost) being based in Essex with the aim of working with people who are struggling to find employment and training. This was my first real job project so I must admit that nerves got the best of me and that I didn’t start off as soon as I did, such as with organising a meeting with the client and supervisor, but when I did eventually get there it ended up being quite alright. My first supervisor meeting basically informed me of everything to do, there was a lot to remember going into this project so having this meeting really helped me make heads and tails of the whole process.

After that the next stage was to set up the client meeting and establish the brief, since the client was in Essex it would be more beneficial for everyone if meetings were organised via email and happened over Skype video calls. The client’s old website was hosted on wordpress, so this would be the program that the rebranding would be happening on, and it certainly wasn’t the greatest looking website ever made.

Research & concept

The next stage was to look for inspiration of other websites, Signpost already has its own branding however it was necessary to see what other charity websites were doing with their website and establish a similar look/structure through a moodboard. Websites such as ‘Rainbow Trust’, ‘Action for Children’, and even ‘Freebooks’ all have a consistent design style with appropriate use of the branding colours on the screen making the overall page more vibrant and friendly to look at over a plain white background.

This developed from a moodboard and into a branding proposal mainly because I began to add things such as proposed branding colours and typographic and designed treatments of what the new website design COULD look like, this helped the client visualise the sort of things that the new website could do and feel like once designed and he was pretty happy with it to say the least. There was a lot of back and forth on this document as a branding proposal turned out to be more complex than I thought, there were a lot of considerations to take into account such as making it clear that the type used for the document wasn’t actually part of the branding proposal. Another aspect which I’ve found interesting (and will never forget) was in how I showed the colours, Having them simply in a row doesn’t really say much to the client meaning that it would be more appropriate to make the boxes bigger or smaller depending on much of that colour would be used on the page (such as with green being the most used whilst gold and dark green being the least used).

Design Development & Deliverables

Next began the wireframing, the document for this was straightforward as this was basically a duplicate from the previous document, however the things shown on here were completely different to before. The design for this had to be compatible to show a sort of contents page for the wireframes, so that the client could easily go back and forth between pages from corrections (which was actually what happened, this was also useful for his board meetings), I didn’t go all out with the overall style of the wireframes as I mainly wanted to quickly show where certain elements could be placed. However for future reference it may have been more useful to have had some text prepared for this stage, as later on it was awkward building the page and then realising that the column that was meant to have a certain amount of text on the wireframes only had less than half intended, this was not such a huge issue along the road as I worked with the client in terms of telling him whether or not a page needed text and how much of it/what needed to be said along the lines of.

The next stage would be to actually start drafting the website on wordpress. Admittedly this project had originally began as a pair, however there were problems which caused progress on this project to be halted, from this it was in the end sorted out and drafting of the website could begin

WordPress drafting

This was my first time using wordpress therefore going into it was very overwhelming, the UI seemed very complex to grasp and a lot of the features are there without any explanation as to what it does (leaving the only solution to basically look for online tutorials). However I did find that wordpress’s way of building a website was very groggy, what’s meant by that is that the way in which images and text work on here is very reminiscent to how images and text works on Microsoft Word. This obviously could not do so I delved deeper into what could be done about this issue, I was more concerned as to how the client would be able to work on the website and update it in the future after I’m gone (especially if he or anyone in the charity didn’t know how to code) so anything to make it easier for him would make me happy.

In my research I found that wordpress ran on themes and plugins that were basically like having extensions with special functions built in added onto the website, to explain in brief a number of plugins I used added:

• Image carousel for the home page.
• Contact form, although this is off the client can simply turn this on and it will appear on the contact page.
• Optimised search engine, and so on.

The number one plugin that resolved the problem of maintaining the website for the future was definitely the ‘Elementor’ plugin. It eliminated the tedious use of wordpress’s default way of adding stuff to the page by simply drag-and-dropping elements onto the page, there is a row based grid at work but that’s okay because the website was built using this one plugin which made the whole process fast and efficient especially when compared to coding which would’ve taken not even 5x as long.

There was a lot of back and forth with the client in terms of what was needed on the website and what could be added on/changed next, this was a very lengthy process which after discussing this with my supervisor it basically came down to what was necessary on the website as it had been in a launch-able state for quite some time. However this does not mean that I had to make changes all based on the client’s wishes, a lot of what he said came from members of the board and also funders of the charity which made the changes in a way necessary to be made in order for the website to be able to launch. In the end we sat down together and went through the content on the website one last time before it was finally in a launch-able state.

Reflection

I must confess, this project took a lot longer than it should have taken. There were a lot of problematic factors that occurred throughout sure, but I blamed mostly my inexperience with time management for the client and also pushing people to do things that need to get done. With this project I feel like I’ve gotten confident with talking to clients about projects and making sure that they basically stay on task as well as making sure that I work efficiently by being more ruthless with my time early on so that I have more time to work on things in the future.

Another interesting aspect I’ve learned is about wordpress and appreciating the things that it is able to do, from my understanding it is very good at making posts (such as blog posts or articles) especially since the typo network is on wordpress. Mentioning that, the client did have an idea of having a sort of blog posts for each of the charity’s centres, even though I couldn’t do this I let him know that through wordpress it was certainly possible to do in the future.

Background

The typography applicant gift was a project created to make a more personal means of communication with successful applicants, when congratulating them on getting accepted to the University of Reading. The applicant applying process entails prospectus students to showcase their work in a portfolio, where it will be marked by a member of staff in the Department. After this stage, applicants usually find out soon after whether they were successful in gaining a place on the course or not. The Department of Typography & Graphic Communication sends out two hundred offers a year to potential students, 30% of which choose University of Reading. With such a high conversion rate, the client wanted us to make the applicant’s experience on accepting a university to be more appealing towards the university and ultimately further increase the conversion rate. The best way to achieve this was to make the gift as personal as possible, which we could send out directly to applicant’s homes.

Our aims were to compile consumer research to inform our design decisions and establish user needs, which was extremely useful for finding the best solution to make the gift personal. Another aim was to find an efficient way to batch print around 200 invitations, which proved to be the hardest task of all due to us choosing to use letterpress as the print production. Overall, our main aim was to make sure the applicant knew how impressed we were with their application whilst connecting them to the Department in a personal way.

Restated Brief

The brief of this job was to design a typographic gift, using letterpress printing, for prospering aspects after portfolio day. This is in order to connect these applicants to the department through the use of a personalised gift with notes on letting them know how impressed the department was with their work.

During the first client meeting, we discussed the possible options that we could take, there was a lot to consider with not a lot of time so decisions had to be presented and resolved fast, to help hasten this process it was necessary to gather ‘consumer research’ in order to get a better idea on the content needed for the gifts and also reinforce on the format and other potential aspects not previously considered.

Research

Questionnaire

To get a better idea of what potential applicants were looking for when applying to universities we created an online questionnaire for a class of first years studying the same course. We felt that asking students that have just began their studies here would give good responses in terms of finding out what other universities are doing for applicants and how the department could improve with their application process. The questionnaire was made up of 11 questions, these were structured in such a way as to keep the participant’s answers open but focused as to not stray from the question, these were quite difficult to produce at first as there was a lot of back and forth to make sure that the questions were being asked clearly without room of misinterpretation.

Overall, we learned more than we could have hoped for, the students were able to answer the questions effectively and their feedback was really good. We were able to find out the areas in which the department was doing well in and also where it could be improved, an example being with the personal emails as students said “I literally showed everyone because it made me feel really special and wanted”, “morale boosting”, and “ [it] surprised me as no other uni had done this and it was really nice to receive such personalised positive feedback”. From this we know that students appreciate hearing what the universities they have applied to think of their work. They preferred more uplifting messages rather than being critical, as this calms their worries about whether or not they are right for the course or that they’ll fit in by giving them reassurance and making them feel more comfortable about their work.

User personas

These were influenced from the questionnaire results. Creating personas was useful to us as this allowed for us to explore the different kinds of applicants that apply to this course and create a number of scenarios based on their needs. We created four users with contrasting demographics, scenarios or circumstances for applying to the course. We began by creating goals for each user based on this. Following this were any concerns that they may have, such as if the course is right for the applicant or if they’ll fit in (these also relate to the answers from the student questionnaire that we did), and then the needs of things that would meet these concerns or worries from the user, such as by ensuring that they feel welcome and that they will be supported in their learning.

Ultimately however, these user personas weren’t really used very much as these simulated scenarios were straying away from the idea of receiving a ‘gift’ and leading more towards an ‘informal designed document’ of the department (such as with having a map of the department), which are already done through other means such as open days. However, there was no denying that a lot of these goals were related to the gift and therefore were still used to influence how we handled our design or also be used for another future project.

Design Development & Deliverables

Successful Applicant Gift

We were given a lot of freedom with the design, which we thus explored potential formats and inspiration for the letterpress aesthetic. There were a lot of ideas and concepts presented to the client and after a lot of back-and-forth we finally landed on a design that we were all happy with. To elaborate, there formats had to be of appropriate size so that it could fit inside an envelope and be sent to potential applicants after their visit on portfolio day. The material of the gift was also chosen to be card stock as anything below 250gsm felt very flimsy which wasn’t appropriate for a typographic gift.

We also had to consider how we were going to print in relation to it being letterpressed, so we explored the options available to us from within and local to the department. Our first consideration was to use metal type (small text) with a mix of large wood type (masthead). We did not use either of these as a) the large type has bumps and scratches from use over the years, and b) making the form would be time consuming to test the print quality along with being difficult to store once in a forme. Therefore, this process was made more efficient by suggested a more modern way of creating an impression that comes from a digitally designed document.

Photopolymer plate printing, or post-digital letterpress (p98a), is a technique that takes advantage of a UV light sensitive material to expose and make a plate suitable for letterpress from a data. In short, we can make plastic plates from anything designed on screen and we can letterpress with it, which makes the design process more efficient and really gave us the freedom to explore the appropriate sizes and typefaces (able to keep consistent and use Helvetica typeface.

The final design featured a typographic pun of sorts, a gate fold that when closed read “You had us at Hello” and when opened read “You had us at Helvetica”, which we thought was a clever idea due to both representing the department’s playful side but also testing the applicant’s knowledge (something that only typographers would understand).

The printing process was planned way before we began, as we feared/predicted that hand rolling the plate with ink and creating an impression with the press would take way too long. Luckily the department had a roller press which contained a sort of automatic ink rolling system, which would save a lot of time by efficiently spreading the ink between rollers and also ink the plate evenly ready for printing. The amount of ink we used, as supervised, was recommended that we used at least the equivalent of a 20p coin to start with (a funny but efficient measuring system for inking) which would last for about 6 prints until we had to re-ink another 20p coin again.

Our design focused on doing two things, 1) it had be have a of letterpress aesthetic, and 2) it would contain personalised notes from us for the applicants. On portfolio days we would look at the prospering applicants’ portfolios and make personalised feedback on their work and write them on the back of their gift, taking the feedback about feedback from lecturers making applicants feeling wanted into consideration.

The limitations from this was definitely time, the gifts had to be printed and ready to be sent out asap before the next portfolio day (happened weekly every Wednesday) which meant that we had to letterpress the front and the back of the gifts resulting in two days a week being used up which was very heavy on our schedule. There were times when we physically could not meet the demand and because of this we had to print copies with the masthead printed digitally rather than letterpressed. This was of course very disappointing on our end but ultimately it was the best alternative to no gift at all. Another tricky aspect of this is that the gifts were written on the day, as we looked at the applicant’s portfolios, meaning that if this was a one person job then this task would have been virtually impossible to accomplish especially with a second deliverable.

Portfolio Day Takeaway Gift

Portfolio days are for prospectus students to come to the Department, with their portfolio and piece of written work, to see if they would be able to gain a place on the course. Originally, creating a takeaway gift for the applicants was not a deliverable, however after speaking to our client we agreed it would be a good way of subtly introducing the gift to them early on. Portfolio days for us turned into an all-in-one production day of interacting with applicants, gaining some information from them and then creating a card introducing them to another fellow applicant.

Firstly, we had to agree on what activity we could do with the applicants to understand what piece of design work we could produce. We knew that we wanted the applicants to feel as comfortable as possible and due to our main design using ‘hello’ we thought it would be ideal to do an activity that would introduce who people were. The workflow of the activity included asking applicants to sign their own names so we could scan these in and use on the design to feel as though they personally wrote the cards themselves. It also entailed asking them what inspires them about design and why they chose to apply to our University, whilst also taking a photo of them. All these aspects combined were intended to make the takeaway gift as friendly as possible, with the key feature being that they were double-sided. This meant that each applicant was being introduced to someone else on the day and learning something they might have never got to know.

The design development had a few iterations, as trying to figure out the best way to make it clear that the card needed to be turned over to see the other applicant proved difficult. We came to the conclusion of using an arrow as a visual cue, whilst also asking the question ‘did you meet X?’ to prompt them to turn over. Overall, the design is quite simple as we did not want to overwhelm the applicant or be too intrusive to their lives. However, we did keep to the same identity as the original gift to link it all together.

The successes of this deliverable were that we were able to interact with potential new students to answer their questions or queries and to make them feel welcomed and comfortable. Connecting people together was also a good experience because we were able to make applicants feel excited and less nervous if they were to join, as they had already met someone in the same position as them. However, we did also face some challenges with this deliverable. This included getting students to open up and not be so nervous as well as the tight time deadline of producing a batch full of takeaway gifts within a few hours. Although, after the first portfolio day and making sure the work flow worked, we managed to get much faster with the production flow and leave the gifts in applicant’s portfolios to surprise them at the end.

Overall production consisted of: portfolio day, printing the applicant gifts (either digitally or letterpress), writing the gifts and finally preparing the envelopes ready to be sent to applicant’s homes. This was all done within a week for each portfolio week, which taught us how to work quickly in a tight time frame and was beneficial experience for future projects.

Reflection

Overall, considering the quick turnaround,  we managed to create something really special for the applicants. The feedback from lecturers and applicants have been amazing, it was also very exciting to see their reaction at the end of portfolio day and find the surprise ‘Takeaway gift’ we left for them. It is slightly harder to know how the applicants felt with receiving the personalised gift as these were sent by post shortly after their portfolio day visit, however our supervisor has received good feedback from those that were really impressed and got in touch.

Our client also helped us with printing on portfolio day during gaps when he was free, to both ready the next batch of applicant gifts to be letterpressed and the takeaway gifts to be trimmed and ready for the applicants to find (as these were produced on the day), he was very understanding of the time pressure that this was being put on us and was very pleased with our work by the end of it.

This project also taught us how to letterpress print in an almost production line manner, with 20 good gifts being printed every Tuesday, which has taught the limitations of manual production.

Thinking forward, the applicant gift can definitely become a yearly thing. The idea of having a pun/ play on words definitely has the potential to change through both its terms and design. We are proud to have started something new for the department and are certainly looking forward to seeing how students after us handle this brief.

BACKGROUND

SPVRO is a startup fashion company that take pride in sourcing from ethical manufacturers and promote social responsibility. They provide fashionable items to consumers and also support orphanages around the world; every item of clothing they sell, they donate an item to an orphanage.

BRIEF

The brief was explained to us by our client, Ali, the founder of SPVRO on the 15th February. He expressed he was in need of t-shirt graphics in order to be printed onto clothing. The client explained that there needed to be a range of creative designs that highlighted SPVRO as a fashion brand with a charitable angle, rather than a charity that sells clothing items. Guidelines given around the content of the designs were very brief, and this gave us a lot of creative freedom when developing ideas. The only preference the client stated was that he personally admired oriental design and mentioned how this could be popular in the target market of males ages 18–26. The only rule we had to follow was to include the SPVRO logo on our t-shirt designs. This logo had been previously designed and was supplied to us at the start of this real job.

RESEARCH

The client gave us some competitors that we could analyse for design inspiration and understanding of the product. While researching other clothing companies like Friend or Faux and New Wave we discovered that the ‘Oriental/ Japanese street culture’ ‘Miami Vice’ and ‘Indie’ styles were popular.

These styles typically include a-symmetric designs with bright colours in large areas.

This research allowed us to brainstorm imagery that could be associated with the popular styles. All of the members of this real job made various design choices based around these styles and others also explored the brief by creating individual designs and expressing creative freedom.

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

The first submission of designs was due on the 22nd February, which left members with a week to establish three successful designs. We all had varying design processes which have been detailed below.

LAUREN

Designs were created on illustrator as this software suited the visually complex content. The first design was inspired by the ‘Oriental/ Japanese street culture’ that the client had mentioned in the meeting. It featured an orange circle, reflective of the Japanese flag. This was placed against a dotted, gradient background that provided a frame for the design. In the right hand corner of the dotted background was the Japanese translation for ‘victory’. This design was relatively simple overall but had more detail in individual content, such as the dotted background and the hand drawn Japanese text. The back of this design repeated the dotted background but featured more text content with the English translation of the Japanese text.

The second design was also inspired by Japanese street style. When researching this style I discovered that the use of red circles and Japanese flowers were popular. The second design incorporated both of these things, along with a colourful gradient background. The flowers chosen for the design were Japanese cherry blossom, these were initially hand-drawn and then scanned into illustrator so that I could apply artistic brushstrokes to them, in order to create texture. This was then layered onto a red circle, placed on a gradient square (yellow, orange, red and black). Due to the front of the t-shirt containing a high amount of colour, I felt it important to keep the back of t-shirt simple. This was an opportunity to use the SPVRO logo, so it was placed beneath the neck on the back.

The third design was an opportunity to have a little more creative freedom as I chose to take my own direction and design something different to what had been previously produced. This was a risk, as it did not link to the suggested themes the client had mentioned, however, it was a success and the risk paid off as the client’s feedback was positive. It involved an illustration of two female figures that overlapped, surrounded by words ‘good times’, ‘moves’ and ‘boogie’. This illustration lent itself to high colour. A larger colour palette was used in this design which resulted in an eye-catching design that could potentially fit into the ‘indie’ style category.

I thoroughly enjoyed this real job as it involved a lot of creative freedom and pushed my organisation skills due to the quick deadline. I found that working in a team was effective as I stuck to deadlines and responded to emails promptly. Fenella posed as the leader amongst the designers and made it easy to communicate with her so that we received all the correct information and feedback from Ali, the founder of SPVRO.

 

KYLA

All designs were created on illustrator, this programme allowed for detailed illustrations with high quality. The first design I created was a wolf illustration. A wolf represents strength and leadership which are qualities I interpret SPARO to have, due to being one of a few clothing brands who have such and ethical ethos and production. The illustration started by being image traced from a royalty free image to gain a lifelike basis, this was then highly edited to get a free hand drawing feel.

The second design I created was a bit more playful, creating an illustration of angel wings and placing these on the back of the t shirt to recreate where wings would go on the user. Again I used the tool image trace to create a rough realistic base and edited this until happy with the design, duplicating this for a symmetrical and clean outcome. The design outline is in red as this suggests danger or threat creating a contrast to the angel wings which suggest innocence, this playful juxtaposition means there is no one meaning behind the wings.

The third design created fitted the Japanese style suggested. The boxing gloves show power and strength, drawn in a red colour to stand out within the illustration. The Japanese type between the circles reads ‘ethical and sustainable’ to enhance the meaning behind SPARO, but not make it obvious as Ali emphasised the designs should not reflect the brand as a charity. The design incorporates circles as this was an occurring shape seen when researching Japanese fashion. Furthermore Bright and vibrant colours are used to make the design eye catching and stand out.

This Real Job was a good experience as it had a lot of artistic freedom, allowing us to interpret SPARO in our own way and create designs we felt fitted. Working as a group allowed us to give the client a wide range of designs as we all play to different strengths and have different design styles. As a group we worked effectively, all keeping to deadlines to ensure our client got any work timely.  

FENELLA

I took on the role of client coordinator throughout this job. This including communicating with the client and organising all of the t-shirt designs into one client facing document which meant all t-shirt designs were presented professionally and consistently to the client. (see figure 1 for layout)

All of designs created were using Adobe Illustrator which were suitable for the detail and complexity of the visuals featured in my designs, the Koi fish and zoom in of an oriental dragon. All three concepts have considered the brief providing my the client, considering the style of oriental X Miami and incorporating elements which are minimalistic and relate to these two themes. When designing I had to take in consideration that the client wanted these designs on either white or black which affected my design including colour choices.

My first design concept was based on the oriental koi fish. I created two final versions of this t-shirt, one featuring the full illustrated visual and the other slightly more zoomed in and cropped. This alters the composition of the design and creates different variations which the client particularly liked. I used bright, vibrant colours which can be linked to the Miami side of the brief. By layering the illustration also added texture to the t-shirt. This design is very versatile and will work on both black and white t-shirts.

My second design was based solely on the oriental theme mentioned in the brief. I chose to focus on the Japanese dragon, particularly looking at the details of the scales which were intricate and added texture. After exploring this, I illustrated the scales, on a zoom in of a dragon’s body. I incorporated the colours; red white and black which can be associated with Japan and their cultural representation. I also designed two variations of this, after feedback from the client. I looked at different compositions between the relationship of the illustration and brand logo to produce two final designs of the t-shirt which the client liked.

My third and final concept combined the two themes, oriental and Miami together. I used simple shapes and a vibrant orange colour to represent the Miami theme and incorporated Japanese typography to incorporate the oriental element of the design. The word chosen to feature in this t-shirt translates to ‘everyone’. This was topical as the client placed an emphasis that the whole production process will be ethical and fair. Although the client did not want this to be immediately obvious in the t-shirts, this subtly represented the brand values of the company and also suggests that this clothing brand can appeal and be worn by a range of people within the target audience.

EMMA

The designs I presented to the client were all produced using Adobe Illustrator, which allowed for high quality artwork. I designed a range of t-shirts which each took an element of the brief given by the client; oriental X Miami. The first design featured a Koi illustration, which is iconic of Japanese and Chinese culture. The word ‘koi’ in Japanese, written as 恋 translates to English as love. This I felt would be appropriate to incorporate into my designs. I initially designed the Koi illustration for a dark blue t-shirt, however with feedback from the client, I then altered designs to print only on black or white material. The Koi is created using a combination of gradient and white outline to create the simplistic yet intricate artwork that can be seen in much of Asia’s culture.

The second series of designs I created showed a more Miami-side of the brief, with bright colours and simple shapes depicting sunsets, which are iconic of oriental pieces of art. The first design in this series is based on Japanese cartoon-like illustration, with simple angled lines suggestive of sunset rays. The second of these designs has a pixelated approach, characteristic of both Asian and Miami gaming styles. This design is also loosely reminiscent of Hokusai’s Great Wave; a famous woodblock print based on Mount Fuji, in Japan. These two designs are relatively versatile as they are able to print on both black or white t-shirts and are neither too masculine, nor too feminine.

I also designed two other sets of t-shirts, which can be seen below. The first design imitates a neon sign along with the company name, which is seen throughout both Miami streets and Japanese cities. The second set of designs are bright bold colours that are reflective of the bright, hot weather in Miami, whilst being suggestive of sun and sea.

STEPHANIE

My first design took a more simplistic approach. The inspiration behind it drew  from Japanese rivers. The silhouette was made using the pen tool in illustrator in order to draw the the area covered by the river. This silhouette was then taken to photoshop where I added a noise texture to it, as you can see in the stand alone picture of the river it is no a smooth texture. Initially, I used a neon purple river on a dark red t-shirt, however Ali had stated after the first feedback that he wanted my designs to be on either a white or black t-shirt and the colours to be more duller. As a result I changed the t-shirt to black and changed the river from a neon purple to a more pastel purple. The use of the pastel purple against the black t-shirt gave it a vibrant look without the use of neon.

My second design drew focus on  traditional oriental buildings. I drew out these buildings using a pencil however when I scanned it through it didn’t give me the notion of fine art. It was important for me to carry this through the artwork. I also tried image tracing to no avail. Finally I redrew the buildings in fine liner and when processed through photoshop I was able to get the fine art aspect of the buildings. After this I used the paint tool in illustrator to draw symbols which represented these buildings in oriental culture. These designs were placed on a white t-shirt following the clients feedback of having t-shirts either black or white. I decided that these designs would work best on a white t-shirt due to the use of black lines in the drawings which would be hard to see on a black t-shirt. The Logo was situated only only on the top left, on the front of the shirt.

My final design was the word “wisdom” in Japanese on the front and oriental plant; the Lonicera nitida “lemon Beauty”. The designs again were drawn out by hand and taken into photoshop where I changed the colour to a pastel green on a black t-shirt, as per the client’s request. This real job was very enjoyable in regards to the artistic freedom the client allowed us to express through our design, however it was interesting to see that even though we had artistic freedom we still came across constraints that the client had not previously noted such as t-shirts being black or white.

POLINA

I was inspired by Japanese street style (being one of the referencing points client gave to us) and a growing trend for bright colours, especially among the target market of males ages 18–26 (client specifically wanted the designs to be appealing to selected market).

One of the initial ideas included the words “kindness is cool” as a part of the design, however the client rejected it as being too ‘charitable’, and that is something he wanted to lean away from.

From that, an idea of having the artwork on the inside of a T-shirt was born. The concept was interesting in a way that the person buying a T-shirt was helping the charity, but no-one will know that from the T-shirt design, and that was represented in the placement of graphic element – on the inside.

Second idea has made the use of hand-made marks, the visual look of which can be connected to marks made by the brush as when drawing hieroglyphs or in asian-style paintings. Orange is dominant as that colour is strongly associated with the oriental style.

The last design featured overlapping graphic elements with the SPARO logo being the visual centre of the design. The ‘circularity’ of the design can be linked to oriental style and references client has given to us. The chaotic from the first look positioning of graphic elements represents the contemporary trends in fashion.

Overall, the project has allowed for the excess of artistic freedom, which, in my case, proved to be hard to work with as I failed to understand client needs. In case I encounter the similar project with the lack of restraints (as in more conventional graphic design practice) in the future, I will spend more time than usual communication with the client and trying to understand client’s needs and goals.

FINAL DEADLINE

Feedback from the client was delayed due to his personal schedule, this set us back a little and therefore the final deadline date was amended so that we could make final changes to our t-shirt designs. Fenella also had to communicate with the client to establish the format he wanted the designs sent in. Once it was established that he wanted the designs on a template of W:370mm by H:460mm we individually created print ready PDFs of out three designs and sent these to Fenella so she could compile them into one document, ready for SPVRO to use. This particular task of sending files to Fenella was something we could have improved, as members of the group delayed the process through missing messages or sending files in the incorrect format.

REFLECTION

On reflection, this real job really pushed independent working as the broad brief promoted creative freedom and forced designers to think ‘outside the box’ instead of following strict guidelines. Although we were working as a group, we produced individual designs which meant that members could give impartial advice on designs which was helpful for everyone. As the deadline was tight, it meant that we had limited time to meet up as a group and therefore most communication was over email or instant message. This meant that messages could be lost or misinterpreted which delayed the design process slightly. However, Fenella was an effective leader as she regularly gave clear instructions over instant message to make sure we had all submitted recent amended designs. The issues that occurred in this real job have been helpful in establishing the correct actions to take in future employment.

Our response from our client, Ali, was very postitive and he seemed grateful for the designs we submitted, he expressed that he would love to work with us in the future if SPVRO release any new clothing items. There is evidence of this below in an email we recieved from Ali.

 

Brief

The brief was to design a set of branding deliverables for two groups of environmental science students for a consultancy that they’ll be setting up in two months.

Soon as I was given this project I was given the opportunity to go and meet with my clients for the first time, this meeting was set up by my supervisor and the student’s lecturer making me think that this is something that happens every year and is set up by the two departments. My first meeting with the clients was very brisk as I spoke to each of them one by one, and we didn’t have much time, however I took the opportunity to ask and get as much information from them as possible including contact information (for direct contact and in case anything was missed).

The students weren’t able to answer all of my questions, such as “who will you be presenting to” as they have just been given this brief probably the same as I have, therefore I cut them some slack and asked if they could find out the information and send it to me later so that I could begin to write my brief.

The students also seemed very opened to the idea of me designing just a logo for them and were more than happy to do the powerpoint presentation and word doc by themselves, they were respectful of my time since we’re fellow students however I assured them that I would work with them on the branding and do as much as I could.

Research & concept

Whilst waiting for the brief to be signed off by my supervisor, I went ahead and organised a meeting with both groups to discuss possible concepts and directions to help each other in realising what kind of logo they wanted. To elaborate, we looked at already existing logos and discussed what elements could be taken forward, no sketching was done at this stage as this was primarily a verbal meeting with on screen visuals containing logos of similar concepts to basically make sure that both groups and I were on the same page (I saw each group at different times again).

The on screen visuals shown on screen were literally some quick google searches for logos with key words such as “water” and “leaf” which were concepts that the groups were thinking of going with. This meeting was certainly helpful as this was in a way helpful to again get on the same page, for example one group has a rough idea of doing a very complex illustration styled logo whereas I had to explain why something so detailed would not work on screen or on documents where it would be scaled to be small so this certainly saved some headaches along the way.

Design Development & Deliverables

Once the brief was signed off, I began sketching a number of rough logo drafts to show the students. The intention would be to show these to them, make sure that they are happy with the overall look and direction of the logo, and if not then the concepts will be reviewed and new sketches produced, rinse and repeat until they were happy with them so that I could then move on to digital illustrations.

My supervisor was overall happy with the pace in which I was going at, however concerns were raised with the first set of B&W illustration, the main concern being that because I used various levels of grey that some of the logos were looking a little bit too busy and also potentially losing the focus of the illustration (especially when viewed smaller).

Another thing that I admit didn’t go as planned was when I showed the first set of sketches to the groups, one group were very happy and voting on the best logo was a very smooth process, however with the other group it was quite clear that they weren’t too convinced with them yet as they were set on a concept which I ultimately wanted to avoid (especially since it tends to be overused in these styles of logos). I quickly mended the situation by producing a few digital illustrations that were not sketched out at first but rather I took the concepts that DID work which produced a better reaction from the students.

The stages that followed for the logos were mainly establishing branding colours, which fun and simple to do, and a lot of back and forth iterations and positive feedback from clients and supervisor. With the logos nearing completion I was confident to start creating the powerpoint presentation for them.

This was a first for me and admittedly I wasn’t too proud of the final design for either, it had a similar concept to InDesign as PowerPoint used master pages that acted as “templates” for the entire presentation. What this meant for this scenario was that each group were going to show pages with images, graphs, and tables therefore my responsibility was to create templates that were compatible for what the students wanted to use them for and once the file was sent to them I in a way supervised how they would design it to make sure that the pages were remained consistently well designed with the branding and pages. I didn’t have to do much as the pages mostly did their job, there was just one page that they created themselves which used a different typeface and such therefore I helped them fix that. However, as can sometimes be expected when working with students, there was only radio silence from the other group despite my efforts to contact them, this led me to believe that they were busy at the time as they did indeed reply back to me after their presentation.

Both groups were extremely happy with how the presentation went, there was also some good feedback from other groups particularly with regards to how professional the logo looked, there was no way that I could have been there at the presentation to access how well the deliverable worked but that feedback certainly told me that it did.

Reflection

It was a shame that I was unable to produce a word template for them as time drew closer to the deadline, the priority for them were the logo and presentation slides as the students let me know how they would only need the word document until way after the presentation. However I did offer to stay in contact with the groups with regards to any questions or suggestions they might have for when they did design the documents themselves.

My supervisor was very happy with my designs, particularly with my logos which I tend to be good at, however I would’ve like to spend a little bit more time learning about making templates on PowerPoint as this was the first time that I made a template and felt like it could have been designed better to at least meet the standard of the logo.