Barnbrook at the V&A Museum

Initial thoughts

When given this brief, my initial thoughts included these specific subject matters; animals and social issues are of great importance to me therefore I feel that covering either of these subject matters will be best suited to me and my personal opinions. 

Animals
WWF
Hunting/poaching
Climate change
Ivory trade

Social
Body image/media
Body issues
Eating disorders
Drug abuse, such as smoking and illegal drugs
Illness

Political
Human rights
Protests
Current issues in the media at present time
Past issues that have great significance

Ethical
Environmental issues, such as global warming 
Climate change

Studio Brief 1: Product, range and distribution

Produce a body of research that explores the connections between concepts and respective design outcomes.
There are two components to this brief, research and the practical work, the research must be thorough.
Develop a body of practical work that distils knowledge of an identified issue and demonstrates your ability to tap into the market. 
Develop a practical, visual and contextual investigation of a specific subject. 

OUGD504 Module Evaluation

Overall, I feel that my work for this module has developed a lot since the last module in first year. I feel that my designs are informed more by further research, allowing me to create more relevant designs to the specific brief. Despite the noticeable development, I am still unsure whether I am happy with all of my responses; I definitely need to manage my time better allowing me to spread the workload evenly. I prefer some responses to others, and I feel like I could constantly make changes to all of my designs as there is always room for improvement.

I have enjoyed working on most of the briefs within this module; however the web brief was the most challenging. With the both the web brief and the augmented design brief having a longer period of time to develop the responses, I felt that this resulted in me loosing track of time within the working period, because they were extended for a matter of weeks, I feel like sometimes they were pushed aside knowing I had longer to complete them whereas the week long briefs were fast paced, therefore I ensured that a sufficient amount of work was produced. I feel that my strongest brief was in fact the first brief ‘my design process’ in terms of both research and development, however studio brief 4 ‘augmented design’ was another brief I enjoyed creating the work for. The work produced for studio brief four was probably the strongest out of the whole module, alongside studio brief 1, however my research approach to studio brief 4 was definitely not extensive enough. The research stage of studio brief 4 I feel has let me down, and reflecting on it now I wish I would have informed my design decisions more and carried more in-depth research, looking at my blog it is disappointing to see the lack of research shown and if I had more time I would definitely revisit this. Studio brief 2 is also lacking in the research side of things, however with this only being a week long brief I decided it was best to move on to the next brief and not get distracted by revisiting it and trying to complete to a better standard. Again if there was more time I would develop this brief.

Where final outcomes are considered, it is definitely important to take in to consideration the decisions I forgot about until last minute, for example choice of stock and printing methods. When printing my final responses, I encountered some problems last minute such as printing on the wrong stock. If these design decisions were to be made earlier on within the design process, it would make this process run smoother as there would be no last minute rushed decisions as to what stock to print on. This was proved when printing my beer mats for studio brief four, I only realised last minute that I had chosen an inappropriate stock to print on.

Studio brief one was one of my favourite briefs to complete, as the design was oriented around myself, I chose to create something I enjoy doing, and in my very own style. The research and developmental stages of this brief were thorough enough for me to create a final response that I am pleased with. I ended up spending slightly longer than the set week to complete this brief, as I really enjoyed the brief. I encountered no printing problems with this brief, as the majority was a hand rendered style I designed myself, the only printed element was the insert of the poster, which was an easy printing process as I used a thin stock and only needed to print one final indesign document, therefore the hand rendered illustrations were the main aspect of my design, which I enjoyed creating.

Studio brief 2 is not one of my strongest out of the module, however I felt like I received enough feedback and comments to complete this brief. With this brief also being completed within the time frame of a week, I felt like I carried out enough research in order for me to come up with a sufficient response for the brief. The clean minimal design represents the brands identity, therefore I feel my logo design is a success, if we had longer than a week to complete then I would definitely have developed this design.

Studio brief 3 was my least favourite brief, I am not pleased with my final designs and there is most definitely room for a significant amount of improvement. Despite not liking the work I produced, I felt like my developmental stages of the brief were quite successful, as I thoroughly examined existing web pages, in order to inform my decisions. My web page designs changed remarkably throughout the design process, even though I am not pleased with the designs, I do feel that they reflect my research well and what my website is trying to achieve.

Studio brief 4 was a brief that I enjoyed, even though I know I haven’t carried out enough research for this brief, I was pleased with the overall designs that I produced. The hand rendered style is definitely something I want to develop further in future modules as I feel that this has worked well for this specific brief, as it relates to the whole starting point for my website bespoke bottles, the more illustrative style of branding and packaging.

For this module I could have definitely improved my research, and analysis on my blog could have been much more thorough. This is something I will work on in the next module, and to try and manage my time better allowing me to have a concise blog and thoroughly informed designs.

Final Designs

Bottle labels
I have designed and created these bottle labels and had them printed on stickers. I am pleased with the overall outcome of the labels, however there are some minor change that I would make if we had more time. I intend to advertise the website in a bar, or local pub, where the flyer can go side by side with a bespoke candle made with the labels printed on. Hopefully this can encourage people to go on my website. 

Stickers printed and laser cut:

 

Label in context:

I decided to make my own candle that could be distributing in local pubs/bars with the packaging showcasing my label designs. On the label it includes the website, therefore the customer can then willingly decide whether to explore this website or not. However, once my labels were printed, because I made the labels on a much smaller scale than I produced on screen, the website is no longer legible, and there was not enough time to get them reprinted, this is definitely something to consider next time so I wont make this mistake again. I created this candle by filling an empty beer bottle with hot wax, then once this was completely dry the glass was then smashed off, leaving a candle the shape of the bottle. Apart from the text being far too small, I am really happy with the set of labels that I have designed, the colours have come out just as I intended, not to vibrant yet they still have some nice contrasting tones, I also like the quirky style of illustration to accompany the watercolour hops, both the female and male are drawn in the same style, therefore they work as a pair.

 

 Close up of label as packaging:

 

Beer mats:



For a simple yet unique design, I have used the existing logo to create a beer mat. The style differs slightly from the developed bottle label illustration therefor once I had finished the set of augmented designs I came to the conclusion that if I had more time, I would perhaps alter the style of the logo so that it is more suited to the newer illustrative styled illustrations. I encountered a problem when printing these mats, as I intended to print straight on to a very thick mount board stock, so that they were the perfect weight to use, however, the stock did not print the colour very well, they came out almost black and white which resulted in me having to submit an unfinished version of the mat, which was printed on normal stock then mounted on to a thicker stock. If I had more time for this I would get them printed on to stickers then stick them on to mount board as this would give me a perfectly rounded edge.

Mount board prints:

 Prints on normal stock:

Final mat:



 

Flyer:

To link all my pieces together I felt the need to ensure that the audience understand what I am advertising, therefore creating a small leaflet sized a5 with some brief information about my website and what it is about would be necessary. I used the existing hop design I already created for the main design, I lowered the opacity of this and duplicated it. This small flyer is intended to be placed alongside the candles, giving the audience the opportunity to read a little about the website.