Eat Sleep Design

Conclusion

Overall I have really enjoyed working on this project. It’s had it’s ups and downs but we pulled through in the end and overcome those problems. I enjoyed making all elements for this project, which included the leaflet, business cards and the website. I was never that fond on branding and I think at the end of this project that remains the same. I’ve helped with designing the logo but couldn’t quite design the perfect logo for the company. Other elements of the brand identity I have found easier, which includes fonts, colours and shapes. I came up with having circle images across all elements so we designed a logo to fit around that. Our final logo design was designed with Winsomes work in mind. She works with patterns, mosaics, fabric, felt etc so we designed a logo based on these to resemble her work. Our previous logos didn’t do this. We have re-designed the logo 4 times but it’s been worth doing to give us more options and produce the best one. Kay designed the best logos for the project and was really good at branding the company too. In this project I have got more involved in the brand identity side of things to help me get stronger at this area. I feel more confident now and will experiment more with branding for future projects. 

Leaflet designs started a bit slow as we had some problems throughout the project but we got through it and I had to step forward to start moving things along swiftly and put things back on track with our schedule. Being the team leader helped me to manage my team to stay on track on motivate and help them along the way. I found it difficult with one member to motivate him and get him to contribute in team meetings. After having problems with getting leaflet designs from a team member, I had to take over and start the designs myself to progress things forward. I designed the leaflets with the help of Kay who designed the front cover of the leaflet design as I was having trouble with the design. Kay took a bigger role in the leaflet designs at the earliest stages when we had our old logo with the jigsaw piece designs. This was the first time designing a leaflet but with the help of my love for layouts and being a perfectionist, I managed to produce a professional leaflet design that follows our house style.

The business card designs were the easiest to design as we had already sorted out the house style and designed the leaflet. We used a circle image and cropped it on the business card and placed the stacked logo alongside it with a grey background to match the leaflet. The back of the card had the contact information on with the horizontal logo. We created two different versions of the logo, horizontal and stacked. Each one would be used depending on the document, for example the stacked version on the leaflet and the horizontal version on the website. I designed the new business cards whereas Kay had a bigger role at the start with her puzzle designs before we changed them for our new designs.

I designed and created the website in WordPress and Kay designed the patterns and graphics for it. I added a watermark to all the images and saved them all for web. This was the first time using WordPress. It took a while to get used to the tools and find things but it got better with time. With WordPress and research, I have learnt that designers find one or two templates and learn all the coding so they can take it apart and design what they want. This obviously takes a long time to find a suitable theme with lots of flexibility and learn all the code. I wasn’t a fan of using WordPress as you didn’t have much flexibility over the design but I managed to get around that and work my designs around the template.

Final Client Meeting 

We showed Winsome the new logo designs and the print-outs of the leaflet and business cards. She was really happy with the final designs. Our next job was to get the files print ready for Winsome to take away. It was quite an awkward goodbye as I had something else to say to Winsome but didn’t want to talk about it infront of everyone. I ran after Winsome after the meeting to catch her in the hallway to discuss the possibility of carrying on with the project after our deadline. She was more than happy for us continue with it. Winsome mentioned in our meeting today that she would like some document templates designed for her letters and emails so this would be the perfect time to do that. I wanted the work to be completely finished and happy with it so Winsome would be too. I would like to put all of our work on my portfolio too. We agreed to meet next Thursday.

Today me and Kay met to have a look at the new logo designs. I was very happy with the new design as it was more colourful, which the original was lacking. The new logo represents patterns, mosaics, and flowers, which all resembles WB Arts work. I think this logo is far superior and the best one to date. The logo is constructed of circles of different colour to make one main circle. The previous two black circle logos were too harsh. We haven’t told Winsome that we’ve redesigned the logo again as we wanted to surprice her with a new one and we thought it was the best path to take in the project. By only having a week left, we wanted to take the project further before our final meeting on Thursday so we have a set of work we are happy with. I placed the logo on the leaflet, business card and website. It suited our house style and fitted in well. We decided to make two versions of the logo, one with the text horizontal and the other stacked. This was because the stacked version worked best on the business card and the leaflet and the horizontal version worked best on the website.

Today I spent the day finishing off my online portfolio ready for publishing. I downloaded a lot of mockups for my work to put on my website as I think it compliments them. This took some time to find the right files for my work, longer than I originally planned. I didn’t manage to sketch any designs out for the new logo but luckily I gave Kay the job to design a new logo so she was working on it ready for our next meeting tomorrow. I wanted Kay to design the new logo because after seeing her individual work for this module, I thought that her designs were really clever and colourful and nothing I would ever have thought of. Being the team leader I knew that it was the right job for Kay and I knew she wouldn’t let me down.

Online Portfolio Link:

Portfolio

Today I started my online portfolio. I began browsing and researching different websites that I could use for my work. I came across a few sites such as format and found that they would be suitable as they look proffesional. Only thing that was putting me off was monthly subscription. I don’t have the money to pay for something like that at the moment. I carried on browsing for some free sites but there wasn’t that many out there. I gave Wordpress a try but I couldn’t find a suitable theme for my work. It didn’t have the flexibility I wanted. I find it more of a blogging website.

So I then looked up Wix as I’ve heard people talking about it recently but never knew too much about it. I carried out some research on it and signed up to it. I found a suitable design portfolio theme and began playing around with it. I found it very easy to use and learn. The website came together very quickly. It felt nice to start seeing all my work together so I can show people what I’ve been doing at uni. Once all the content was in I started downloading mockups for some of my work to make them stand out more and look more professional. My book design worked the best on the mockup as it completely transformed my work and put it into context.

Mock Presentation

Before our group meeting today we got yet another message from Jordan saying he couldn’t make it in today as he was ill. Me and Kay met a few hours before our client meeting to discuss ideas we had for the new leaflet and business card designs. In today’s meeting with Winsome we had a practice run through of our presentations so far. I went first and it went fine. I was a little worried before hand as to how it was going to go as I always get nervous. I talked about my journey through the project from start to finish. I got positive feedback from Winsome, which I was surprised with as I’m rubbish at presenting and talking about my work. With Jordan not turning up to meetings and contributing to the project, it is allowing me to develop skills in project management by moving the project forward with just the two of us and getting on with it so it doesn’t effect the time schedule. Clients don’t want to here us complaining about someone not helping as they just want the work done and it’s embarrassing for us.  

Today I started getting together all my old and new designs for my presentation with Winsome tomorrow. It took a while to find all the files again and remember what I had produced. I still haven’t found a way to keep my files in order so I can easily fine them at a later date. I tried InDesign and PowerPoint for my presentation but I was having difficulty transferring my files over so I choice to Illustrator as the majority of my files were ai. Constructing the presentation took a long time so I’m glad Winsome is giving us the chance to have a practice run-through so it gives us a head start. 

Briefing

We had a briefing today in the lecture theatre along with first years. The agenda for today’s talk was about trips for next year. We have the chance to go to China next year after this year was cancelled due to lack of people going and Amsterdam. China doesn’t really interest me at the moment so I probably won’t be going with the uni. Probably sometime in the future. I prefer to see places on my own terms and not be restricted.

Client Meeting

Today we had a meeting with our client. I was currently in Cheltenham at home for the week so I was making the journey back to Coventry this morning. On the way to the station I got a message for Jordan saying he couldn’t make the meeting because he was in Worcester. I was annoyed because he hadn’t even tried to bring his laptop with him and send the work to us before the meeting. Why was it ok for him to skip the meeting because he was away when me and Kay were making the effort to do the work and turn up to the meeting no matter where we were. He didn’t even make any effort to let Winsome know he couldn’t make it today or upload his work beforehand. This just shows he hasn’t done any work but he has let himself down this time rather than the group.

In the meeting we showed Winsome our development work for the first lot of work we produced for her and our new designs. Before that we had a talk about Jordan and how we have found working together in a group. We discussed that me and Kay were doing all of the work while Jordan was sitting back. He just agreed with designs and never contributed towards any designs. Winsome agreed with us and said that she could see it from day one. This was a relief knowing that see could see it too.

I showed my designs to Winsome first. I found it difficult talking about my work and always have done. Trying to justify why I did so and so was difficult. Something I need to get used too especially for the presentation coming up in about two weeks. I was seeing Kay’s work for the first time today too. It was good to go away and produce some designs of our own as we can take it down our own route. Comparing both of our designs today proved that this was true as our designs were on complete other ends of the scale to one another. This was a good chance to see what others are thinking and how they develop their designs. Kay’s designs were really colourful and how they were constructed was very clever. It was good to see how someone’s head works differently to yours.

Business Card Design

Leaflet Design

New Beginning

Start Again!

Meeting with client