AG / Major Study

Learning Outcomes

Research and Audience: https://themajorstudy.tumblr.com/tagged/research-and-audience/chrono

Creative Thinking and Communication: https://themajorstudy.tumblr.com/tagged/creative-thinking-and-communication/chrono

Technical Skills and Production: https://themajorstudy.tumblr.com/tagged/technical-skills-and-production/chrono

You can find the final outcomes, tagged, here:

Project Links

Range Rover AR Brief: https://themajorstudy.tumblr.com/tagged/range-rover-brief/chrono

Amazon Freshipe Brief: https://themajorstudy.tumblr.com/tagged/amazon-brief/chrono

maison & maison Brand: https://themajorstudy.tumblr.com/tagged/Luxury-Brand-Brief/chrono

Adobe Brief: https://themajorstudy.tumblr.com/tagged/adobe-brief/chrono

ISTD BEO London Brief: https://themajorstudy.tumblr.com/tagged/istd-brief/chrono

TfL Underground Project: https://themajorstudy.tumblr.com/tagged/tfl-project/chrono

Lombard Risk Digital Signage Brief: https://themajorstudy.tumblr.com/tagged/lombard-risk-brief/chrono

Galliford Try Interview Project: https://themajorstudy.tumblr.com/tagged/galliford-try-project/chrono

Major Study Evaluation

 Roughly four years ago I began my journey into world of graphic design, coming from a corporate/educational background. Working at Oldbury Academy for my working career has taught me so many important lessons such as business acumen, being professional, working as part of a team and how to deal with extremely tight deadlines. What my time at Oldbury Academy didn’t teach me was how to channel my creativity and get the best from it. I knew I had a reached a glass ceiling and wasn’t being challenged anymore and had to do something that would challenge me and help me grow into the person I wanted to become. I decided to apply for the Graphic Communication Bachelor of Arts degree at Birmingham City University and reduce my working week to two days per week. At 26 years old this was probably one of the hardest decisions I’d had to make about my career. The driving force for wanting to go to university was to understand the theory behind design; why has the designer put that there on the page and why has he chosen that colour for the logo. I wanted to train my mind to think like a designer and I knew the only way I would be able to achieve that would be to surround myself with creatives.

 During my first year at BCU, I found it really difficult and considered on many occasions dropping out. I’m so glad I didn’t. I learnt a lot during the first year; mainly transitioning into a learning environment and being receptive to everything everybody said. I learnt the basic skills of graphic design and how to work as part of a team. The first project I worked on was the Introduction to Visual Communication module as part of a team of 6/7 people from different disciplines. I felt so out of my depth, having to work with complete strangers on what seemed like a mammoth project. It was throughout the first year I learnt to dissect the brief and understand how to respond efficiently.

 Throughout my second year I started to develop an understanding for theoretical design and the links between formative research and creating successful final outcomes. The second year helped me develop more confidence for myself as a designer; I had a stronger belief in myself compared to the first year. I feel this was because I was learning to experiment and push my own boundaries in terms of my design work. I arranged a placement at PCL Digital based in Ladywood. PCL Digital are a digital printer who I have used for print work before. I wanted to increase my knowledge about the print process and how to get files ready for print without errors so spent a few months working there as a Graphic Designer on my days off work creating print ready design work. It was in my second year I started to realise where I saw my area of practice; luxury branding.

 I really began to form an in-depth understanding of conducting informed primary and secondary research. I spent most of the first two months of the Major Study module conducting in-depth research and understanding the main projects I was working on. One of the projects I began work on was an augmented reality environment for the ordering process of a new car at Land Rover. It would allow the customer to see, in real-time, customisations to the vehicle they are interested in buying, things like colour, wheels, engine, price, etc. I did quite a lot of in-depth research for this project by interviewing a customer of Land Rover who had bought a new vehicle and the Head of Business. I arranged with Land Rover to have a loan vehicle for the weekend to study the cars information systems, the design of the system and how it worked as solution to interacting with the car from a customer’s perspective. During the development of this project I managed to create a sample video, demonstrating the kind of augmented reality a user would experience when using the AR ordering system for Land Rover. I created this using Adobe After Effects and Adobe Illustrator, using 3D motion tracking to allow me to get the visual elements I had created using Adobe Illustrator to ‘move’ in relation to the video footage and create a sense of augmented reality as the user walks around the vehicle using the headset.

 During the Major Study module I began applying for jobs as a Graphic Designer at various companies; I got offered an interview with Birmingham City Football Club but was unsuccessful in being offered another. I was also offered an interview at Galliford Try, based in Solihull. The interview process went on for around four weeks and required me to work on 3 different example projects which I have submitted with this module. The first project was for Transport of London to help alleviate some of the negativity associated with traveling on the underground. The campaign I created was called “we want to show you how much we love you this Valentine’s” and was aimed at commuters of all sorts using the tube on Valentine’s Day. On Valentine’s Day commuters would be able to travel in pairs, for the price of one person. Beginning the project, I researched the brand guidelines and identity documents for the London Underground and started developing some ideas. The research I had done surrounding previous campaigns by TFL all had elements of logo ‘play’; the underground logo had been manipulated to look like something else e.g. a birthday cake. I wanted to take this project in the same sort of direction so began thinking about how I could manipulate the underground logo. I designed a love heart shaped logo that would later be used in all the campaign collateral. I received some great feedback for this project and was offered a second interview with Galliford Try. The second interview involved a further two projects where I was expected to create a visually appealing bid document/infographic, pulling out key information to questions in response to a bid for construction work. I was challenged by this as I had never worked on anything like this before so I had to research bid design and read some interesting articles about information design on TDL-Creatives website.

Hatts Health // Business Card

maison & maison Website Design

I wanted to create a website that was less like a traditional estate agents and more like a bespoke, premium service offered to clients. I wanted to move away from the typical information overload on sites like Right Move and focus more on creating something of beautiful simplicity while adhering to the branding.

The website was designed based upon a 12 column grid system and split into equal dimensions. The website would have elements enticing the viewer to scroll further down the page while viewing each section, such as “begin your search here”, “featured properties”.

maison & maison Stationery Mock

Hatts Health Website // First Weeks Sales

In the first week of the site being launched, Hatts Health has made £238.75 in downloaded product sales. This has outdone the usual weekly target of £100 per week set by Chris Hatton. This is an amazing turn around in sales and the A/B testing has indicated which of the sites served is more successful. The A site is receiving more sales than the B site and this would indicate that the layout and colour scheme on the A site is more appealing to customers, leading to them buying more. 

Part of the design process for Hatts Health site was to consider familiar elements and how they could be applied to the design of the site. 

Familiar elements make the site more recognisable and intuitive, like when we use an app that has a timeline - we intuitively understand by looking at a timeline-like set of key points they are in some form of chronological order. 

As part of the development process for Hatts Health website, I have enabled A/B testing to test the success of two designs for the site in terms of sales metrics. 

Hatts Health // Website Mock Up

Visit the live website here:

Lombard Risk / Digital Signage Design

Here are the final designs for the Lombard Risk digital signage for the Birmingham Office. I worked with a java developer to create a bespoke signage solution that could be easily integrated with the employees day to day activities. 

The digital signage platform created a link between a shared Google Calendar to populate the events page.

The design of the signage was important, to continue to reflect the company brand while also creating a new feeling for the new Birmingham based offices.

Adobe Brief / My Interpretation 

Here is my video response to the D&AD Adobe Brief. The brief wanted the designer to use imagery to portray the messages you would like to pass on to younger people, about to follow in your footsteps. 

Throughout my journey at university I have learnt that it’s important to be fearless and try new things, do what you want and forget what people think. It’s your life and you have to do what makes you happy. Take risks and don’t be scared of being wrong. 

I was initially struggling to come up for a concept for the D&AD Adobe Brief but then I had an idea. 

Someone that lives near me is always out and about illegally riding his mini-moto. I’ve spoken to him a few times about it and he truly has no fear of being caught by the police, or how other people will feel. Agree with this mentality or not, I thought it would be a great interpretation of the Adobe Brief if I made a short moving image film of him riding his mini-moto. 

I wanted to create something in black and white to give a deeper sense of connection to the message. The short text flashes have elements of colour and help focus the viewer on the message, rather than what’s going on in the video. 

BEO London // Studio Photography 

After doing some screen printing in the print room, I decided to photograph the outcomes in the studio.