REFLECTION
We handed our style guide over today. Went briefly over our presentation, making sure everything was right and where it was supposed to be. All thatâs left now is the budget, and after that preparing to do the presentation first day back next semester.
Cassieâs Reflection:
I thoroughly enjoyed this first half of the semester, working in a pair with Maria. I felt we worked really well with each other. We had a nice balance of similarities and differences, enough so that it wasnât just a process of âthat looks niceâ (but then getting no critique), but more of a âthat works, but what if we tried this? Oh yea. That works better.â or âNah, letâs just stick with the originalâ. This kind of team work is something I really value in our partnership â us being able to fluidly critique and comment on the work weâve produced, bounce ideas off each other, and keep the other motivated and on track.Â
Iâve havenât always favoured working in groups or small teams, just because I find it doesnât always work as well. There would always be someone who didnât pull their weight, or get their tasks done, and I would always be the one trying to make up for that. Sometimes, no one really took the initiative to get the conversation going about what we needed to do. But with Maria, I felt we worked at a good pace, most importantly, we worked at a pace well together, and thatâs something I find quite rare. It helped we both seem to have similar patterns in our design process â getting things done early and being motivated for the most part of the design process. We each pulled our own weight, and was on task with our own responsibilities. We were able to converse fluidly; no awkward silence in between or times where we didnât have much to say. There was a good balance between work and simply discussing the project, and at times unrelated things.Â
I donât think I would have managed to get through all that work on my own, certainly not in the short time we managed to do it in (under two weeks for the good majority of the collateral and style guide!). It really does help to work as a team, and is certainly a good skill to have when going into the workforce. If you can work well both in a team and independently, youâre sure to do well in any situation. Overall, it was an absolute pleasure to work with Maria. I certainly look forward to working with her for the rest of the semester.
The overall project of re-designing our NGOâs visual brand identity, was in itself another rewarding part of this semester. I had a lot of fun and certainly learn a lot about the process and design behind a logo polish, creating a typeface and making it into a font, creating the style guide, whipping up a presentation, forming and adhering to a visual system, expanding my knowledge on infographics, getting work printed to the correct colour and most importantly the joys of working in a good team.Â
The logo re-polish, which I took up after we both initially started on it, certainly felt like a long process of trying, testing, exploring, getting feedback and repeating until it reached a stage where it was good enough. Not perfect, but good enough. Having done a few logos now, at uni and for other things, I realise that the process will vary a lot between projects. For one project, the final chosen design could be a really straightforward thing, while for another project, it can take ages to get the right one. But I think in both cases, there is a certain process of generating multiple ideas, that needs to be done before the good ones appear/can be chosen as âa good logoâ. If that makes any sense whatsoever. All in all, there is much more to the logo process than what many people believe. At the end of the day a logo looks like a perfect articulated representation of the brand, however there is a lot of work behind the scenes that goes into the creation and design of a really good logo â one that is concise yet simple and recognisable.Â
The typeface was another fun extension of the brand. I certainly enjoyed doing that. My very first typeface. Itâs certainly nowhere near perfect or as refined as a proper typeface, but it does its job in our visual system, so thatâs good enough for me (for now).Â
The style guide presented another opportunity for us to test our skills in publication design. I really do like making publications. Not so much of the content in them (thankfully Maria took the lead on that), but making a book come to life, build and increase page by page. The finished product always feels good, and thereâs nothing better than holding a physical hard copy in your hands. Print will always fascinate me. Digital is something great, but a well designed printed book always feels a bit more cooler. To me anyway.
Another go at creating a presentation was in store this half semester. Presentations are tricky. Itâs always hard to get a good balance of visual and text. Certainly, I think with the kind of presentation we had to prepare this half semester, one that we could use to present the project, but also so it made sense on its own (without explanation from one of us) made the task a bit trickier. Infographics and visual slides always look the best. It takes a good eye and a bit of practice to create good presentations. But when you can do it, you have under your belt the ability to create (and hopefully deliver) an amazing presentation to wow your audience (hopefully).Â
Printing. Iâve already reflected on printing. It certainly was a big pain at times. But we got there in the end. And the final product looks amazing. So it was all worth it. Having learnt our lesson from previous projects, Maria and I aimed to, and met our self-assigned deadline to get the books off to the printers the Friday before. I think having done so alleviated some of the stress that comes with printing the day before hand in. Itâs certainly something I want to continue doing in future projects to come.
All in all. I think this half semester was one of the best projects yet. A little stressful yes (due to all the other projects going on), but I really enjoyed sharing the burden of a project with someone else, working as a team, and getting to know the basic ins and outs of what goes into a style guide.Â
Mariaâs Reflection:
When we were first given this task of re-desigining an NGOâs visual identity, it was daunting to say the least. The nerves of picking out someones name from a box to be your partner, and then the sigh of relief when you realise youâre partnered up with Cassie, who's already a design buddy.  And then the nerves again at the realisation that thereâs all this work to do, and only two of you  to complete it in a grand total of 8 weeks. Brilliant! Couldnât wait to start! And weâve done it!  What can I say, this assessment was quite challenging, and is our first look at the real world; potentially meeting with a client, and accomplishing an identity re-design. Itâs sounds very serious and very real. Even as junior designers in the industry I canât imagine being given such a job. I hadnât a clue where we were going to start, how long different tasks were going to take, if we were doing it right, let alone how to try and write a formal email to actually make contact with this organisation!
Working with Cassie on this project has been brilliant, we get along and work together really well. I personally feel like Iâve learnt a lot from working with Cassie, Iâve been pushed to try and keep up with her on the project as sheâs so driven and so organised! Iâll get home and Cassieâs already got a list of what we need to do for tomorrow. I feel weâve been a great mix, both of us having slightly different strengths over this project. It was great to be able to bounce ideas of each other, and having someone who will give you good critique and help you when you get stuck. This sort of team relationship is what has led us to completing this project. Being able to completely trust one another, to put the time in and get the work done working side by side the whole way. During this project Iâve enjoyed the focus on trying to deeply understand this new NGO, to see how they work, and try and express their identity through the new design. With each logo concept and development we learnt more about the organisations identity, the difference between slightly curved corners vs angular, straight lines vs imperfect. Each small aspect of a design holds so much meaning behind it, so when you do a logo, an element of the collateral, or a written sentence for the style guide it has to be perfect. Itâs amazing how smaller detail can suddenly change so much about the way the organisation is portrayed. Even though when I was writing the book for Red Cross last semester I struggled and found it really hard, this time round tackling the writing for the style guide strangely enough I think I may have enjoyed it. Just a little. The writing was covered in three nights, not two weeks. I had a white board covered with notes for a sentence and paper brainstorms for different points of the identity that I was trying to write. After the catastrophe of the emails to the first given NGO, Iâd already learnt that in formal writing each sentence you write can have an underlying meaning. You can write one thing, but it can be read in a completely different way, itâs like mind games! I tend to write as I would talk to someone, but its easy to forget that the written word is without the same expression and doesnât carry the same emotion therefore meaning can sometimes be misinterpreted. So when I was writing the style guide I was just constantly questioning myself, so having Cassie there to proofread and double check everything was really good! When you get that string of sentences which sing âI am Auckland City Missionâ, thatâs when you can relax. The presentation was another big hurdle for me. I found trying to simplify the slides from what I thought was already a simplified style guide, was a bit of a mission.Trying to keep in mind the purpose of the presentation and keep things simple and clear. Iâm so thankful that Cassie does infographics as her minor and produced the infographics for the presentation! I wouldnât have known where're to start if I was to try doing one.
Printing. This was such fun... Thank goodness for the decision to go to Penrose to get the style guide printed, we got the quality we wanted and the quality this style guide deserved. The final style guide both looks and feels professional and Iâm so proud of what Cassie and I have achieved. I look forward to working with Cassie on more projects in the future.Â
What we learnt:
⢠All the information and detail you have to include into a style guide
⢠Printing quality is vital
⢠Simplicity is a powerful presentation
⢠Visuals are so important, and carry such powerful meaning
⢠Teamwork is built on trust, honesty, dedication, and good communication
⢠Formal writing has hidden meanings
⢠Small design aspects, have a great meaning
⢠Budgeting is scary, but necessary
⢠Uniformity of design style across media for a brand
⢠An idea of marketing strategy and how the organisation communicates to the target market groups ⢠It is important to do your research. Get to know the ins and outs of what youâre trying to do. Learn from good examples.
⢠It helps to make a project schedule and try stick to it as best you can. Get organised!
â˘Â In designing for real world situations, you have to be realistic about who youâre designing for, how it functions, and its overall purpose. Â












