Brand Orienteering Workshop

Owen Stevens from Brand Orienteering gave us workshop on branding; he has lots of experience in the design industry working as a copywriter for Y&R, Saatchi & Saatchi, Slaymaker and more.

This to me was a very useful talk about how branding and design works and how it can be effective as a design. I am already using this information about branding now as I am working on product and packaging design with Lisa Baines in my class. It will also be helpful for future design work into branding work and other things areas which work in brand or logo design. It helped me to understand my brief and our brand we were working with. He gave us some really good tips we went though them by getting in groups together to understand branding.

I am glad that I had the chance to learn this process because I have thoroughly enjoyed working with repacking and rebranding products so I will probably be carrying this on and doing something like this in my final major project as this is perhaps what I want to get in to in the near future when I graduate.

We didn't make it!!

Whilst I was in Berlin one of our first visits that had been arranged for us by our tutor was at an agency called Hello Me. We went as a big group and spent about 30 Euros getting to a destination that we had been told to get there for at 14.00. In total there was probably about 10 of us perhaps more that met up outside a building. There were no signs or buzzers to go through to the agency that we found a little weird, however, we got in the building and starting walking up some winding stairs. When we'd all got to the top we rang the bell and a lady came to the door and explained that we had come to the designers house and not the actual studio!! We were all mortified and made our way quickly back down stairs. We started looking at different routes of how to get to the agency. We made our way across a busy road in the pouring rain hoping that there would be another bus running by to take us there, we found that the only bus that was running had already been and gone at 9.00am. I was not prepared to spend any more money on transport as I didn't think I needed that much money and had already spent most of it getting to a place that wasn't correct. Most of us decided to head back to the hostel and save money for our other visits we had planned. I don't necessarily think that this was our fault but in all fairness we should have checked that the information we were given was correct before we went and looked in to taking the tube where it wouldn't have cost us as much. I must admit that I am useless at map reading but when there's a will there's a way.












I had arranged a portfolio visit with my friend Chloe Hollinshead at Smack Communications. We knew that it was about 15 minutes away from our hostel if we were to travel by car. So together we had decided before we even went to Berlin that we would split the taxi fare equally there and back. We had spoken to one of the designers at Smack Communications previously whilst in the UK. Her name was Susan Schutze. She had planned for us to be at their studio at 14.00 on the 19.11.2010 which happened to be the day that we were leaving. As we had previously spent so much money on getting taxis here there and everywhere we had only a limited amount of money left and because we had problems at the airport when we arrived in Berlin as our transfers didn't turn up, we decided to not take chances and save the remaining money in case our transfers weren't to turn up again.

Out of this I have learned that I need to be more organized and not only to let other people down but to not let myself down. Also to sort out transport before leaving. I put a lot of it down to being in a foreign country where I found the German language to be very difficult to understand. But I have taken this as a learning curve and will organize myself properly next time.

Deadline!

Whilst I was at home one evening I came across a television programme called 'rudetube' on channel 4. I saw something that was very inspiring to me and helped me massively in a recent project for I am doing with a friend in my class for Ted Baker.

This short film was created by a guy called Bang-Yao Liu. I looked online to find out a little more about him and came across a blog post that another girl had created where she had asked him a few questions about his animation I was unable to copy the interview on to my blog so here is the link to the questions asked below:

http://www.8asians.com/2009/06/17/8-questions-for-bang-yao-liu-the-creator-of-deadline-post-it-animation-piece/

I really took a shine to this animation as I know and understand how much pressure us students are put under to finish our work to perfection for the deadlines.

As I mentioned previously I have decided to use a similar kind of idea for my work. I have decided to use ambient media in my Ted Baker brief as I think from seeing this it has a big effect on the public social networking sites and can get passed around like wildfire if it is funny and witty enough. This piece of work actually made me say wow.. So I hope to get the same effect when I finish my brief.

Here is the animation below:

Come design with me...

Come design with me was a night that our graphics pathway had put on to invite graduates that had been through the same degree as me at Stockport College graduated and are now in the big bad world.

We decided to invite them to our college at around 6pm until 8pm on the 07.10.2010. We all gave £3 in the kitty to get a couple of bottles of wine and some nibbles. Then anyone who wanted to afterwards could head over to the pub the Nelson to have a couple of drinks to end a good night.

We had discussed as a group during the day what we were going to ask the ex graduates and how we were going to ask them questions. We understood that the people that were willing to come and talk to us would have to literally most of them just finish work and set off to our college , so we wanted to give them a nice relaxed environment so that they didn't feel under any pressure.

We decided to go with the idea of having a tombola with sweets in it. We were going to sit in two circles and bring the couches in so that it didn't feel as awkward for them as well as us. During the day we all wrote down as many questions that we could think of on little pieces of paper for the tombola so that when we span it we all had different questions to ask everybody.

This worked really well and we did this for about an hour and a half. The only criticism I would have about this is that the graduates didn't swap half way through so we didn't get a chance to speak to everybody.

This night really did help me to understand what it's like and what to expect upon leaving University. We got lots and lots of answers that all seemed to be pretty similar... word hard, and never give up. One big factor that they brought up is that they stressed that it was better to make contacts now whilst we are still in college so that when we leave we are not going out there with having no engagement with the graphic industry. I didn't realise how important this was really but I have started E-mailing different companies not necessarily for a portfolio visit but just to ask a few questions so that they become familiarised with who I am. Even though I would say that portfolio visits are a real help in making contacts as you are meeting them face to face, they get to know a little bit about you as a person and likewise and they can give you good critical feedback. It also builds confidence to actually go out there be confident about your own work and to be able to talk about it. I thought it was good to meet these graduates as again it adds to the list of contacts and it was nice to see what kinds of graphics they went in to. Some went in to product design working for big companies Adidas, some went in to advertising, some have even collaborated and made their own company for example last years students that worked with Thoughtful have now created their own group called Lost in The Forest, which to me is very impressive.

Some parts of the talks were quite tedious and scary though because a lot of them had a lot of bad luck with actually getting a job or getting anywhere or having to move on because the job that they liked wasn't for them and that they had to work until early hours of the morning to meet deadlines for not a highly impressive wage. This really has opened my eyes to this course. Since the graduates came the workload has seemed to pile on but it is a challenge. I have to get my head down and work solidly through it and be prepared as some of the ex grads said "to not have a life for a while". I do love what I do and I am prepared to make this happen. I'm just glad now that this has made me realise that everything is not so rosy and it is definitely not going to come to me, I have to grab the bull by the horns and really go for this if I want to be noticed.

Newclear Design

When I came back from Berlin I spoke to somebody who had a friend called Phil that is a director of a company called Newclear Design based in Manchester.

I didn't get to actually go to the offices as he said there was a lot of work lying around that his company are doing at the moment to do with huge canvases they've started creating. So we met at a local coffee shop where I showed him my portfolio and explained the kind of pathway I want to go down when I leave University which is to do something in either advertising, packaging/ product design.

To me this was a different experience to my previous visits to agencies as it was in a much more comfortable environment and had taken out a lot of time to sit and talk to me about his past experiences from leaving University to being where he is now. It was very interesting to find that he started in product design, then did a bit of freelancing and then decided to collaborate with his friend Ben who he went to University with who studied psychology but is also a photographer. He explained that this was good because clients trust their company a lot more as they have knowledge of what works in the industry and how peoples minds work and how we understand different designs.

Phil also told me that there are many stresses and strains of graphic design such as people wanting to change things at the last minute but its all part of the job which is a challenge and if you like a challenge you're right for the job.

He showed me a brochure of the kinds of things that his company creates such as:

Logo Design

Corporate Branding

Advertisements

Brochures

Posters

Leaflets

eShot Campaigns

Magazine Design and Layout

Product Packaging

Exhibition Design

Graphics for Print

And much, much more

He told me it would be worth perhaps E-mailing different graphic companies and do a placement for a couple of weeks for free. This then boosts skills and confidence in the industry and he said that sometimes they may even want to take you on for a job with them. This is something that I will definitely give a go because it's all about making contacts too.

He also told me to E-mail him some of the canvases I paint in my own free time to see what he thinks of them and if any contacts he knows would be interested in buying them. And he told me to stay in touch and keep E-mailing him some new recent things that I get up to and create.

This is the kind of company that in reality I would like to work for. It seems fast paced, a challenge and a good small group of people that work well together. Their work is flawless and to work as a collaboration can only be a good thing as they learn different things from each other all the time.

Hesign

Whilst on my travels in Berlin I went to an agency called hesign run by Jianping He (on the left). He has two agencies of the same name one based in Berlin and the other in Shanghai.

He was a lovely man who has a very witty nature about him. He always sees his problems as being funny and he will make his creation out of it.

I don't have the pictures to hand but he showed us a presentation that he had made using his own photographs which nobody has a copy of to explain some of his ideas. One example would be that he said a client rang him up and asked him to create a publication and after designing it he realised he didn't have enough paper so he made the book but using around the size of an A5 piece of paper and half this size constantly throughout the book, so the end result of the book looked as though it was a wedge of paper almost like a 3-D isosceles triangle. It looked fantastic, very unique. Also he explained that he was supposed to be putting on an exhibition in Shanghai to show the public his publications that he had made, his contact that was putting the event together rang him a day later and told him there wasn't 50 people turning up there was 5000! So again he realised that he didn't have enough books and he didn't want lots of people touching his work so he took his books down the road and had them put in what looked like a transparent pillow so people were unable to touch them. They were all then set out in a contemporary room spaced apart on long white tables. In my opinion this looked fantastic.

Here is one of his books that he created in 2006 which has been a massive hit to many graphic designers.

Overall he seemed pretty impressed with our portfolios and said that if we were ever in Berlin again then to pop back and E-mail him some of our ideas sometimes. He also had a guy from Scotland that was a interim for him which has opened my eyes a bit to perhaps gaining experience in another country which is what I plan to do with my future anyway. So I would definitely class this as one of my top portfolio visits as perhaps making a bit of a contact

123buero

Whilst in Berlin a select few of us that was interested in typography and had examples of good editorials and typography in our portfolios were chosen to visit a small graphic agency called 123buero. The main man was called Timo.

My first impression was that I could not believe how much space they had in a room where they work. It consisted of 2 chairs, 2 Macs and a huge shelf of design books. Here is an image below:

Timo was very nice and completely honest and critical about our portfolios. He firstly made us some ginger tea which seems to be quite popular in Berlin and we after we had all settled in a little we started going through our portfolios. He told us straight away if he didn't quite understand why something irrelevant was put in our work and he gave good constructive criticism about how we could make our portfolios better. He said that with mine I should have more scamps and the thought processes behind the final idea as he said it would be easier for a employer to understand your way of thinking. I found this very useful and have since

changed it and added more recent thought processed work.

He then started telling us about his company and what he had been up to recently. He also showed us his portfolio which obviously consisted of mostly typography and he showed us his high quality print outs that he had made in to books. One piece of work that I was very impressed with was A.D.Deertz which they are currently working on the future positioning and rebranding of the fashion label ADD, which will be redefined toA.D.Deertz with the collection of Fall/ Winter 2009/2010 and will be shift from a unisex concept to an all menswear line. He had directed the photography too.

Here is an image of one of the catalogues below:

Timo and his colleagues have also created a few of their own typefaces using Fontlab which he showed us the basic of how to use it which was very interesting. A couple of fonts to look out for when they are ready to be downloaded are: Maison and Naiv.

I overall really enjoyed this visit as it gave me an insight to how a small company works hard and is now getting big clients. He said it's always important to be able to get on with and work with somebody that is on your wave length so that there is no conflict and this gets the cogs of the company turning.