OUGD603- Evaluation

Looking back on the module and the work that I have produced I have created a lot more work than I expected, I managed my time through each brief giving myself time scales for things to be completed by. I am happy with the outcomes the briefs. The briefs that I initially planned to do changed over time due to realising as much as I would have loved to do have done them there just wasn't enough hours in the day. 

I have collaborated with a lot of creatives on other courses' during this module, this has been incredibly useful seeing how other people work and how we can work to each others benefit. I have released the importance of collaboration and not with just people that do graphic design. Collaborating with photographers showing them grids and layout design and fashion students the importance of branding and consistency, they have also taught me a lot about editing photos. I decided to collaborate with the people as they proposed interesting projects that we could bounce ideas off each other. 

I would love to have had more time on certain briefs but it came to a point where I had to call it a day and move on, there is never enough time within designing I have learnt that through placement and extended practice. 

I wanted to use extended practice to get briefs together that I would like in my portfolio to take into the real world. I wanted to create work I actually liked so I chose briefs of interest. My main interests are branding and publication design for print so there was a lot of print design created. If I had more time on briefs such as Bootees and Breathe I would of liked to have created a web mock up, this could be something I develop after uni for my portfolio. I really would love to have learnt the basics of web design as I think this would be something I would enjoy however there just wasn't enough time to teach myself, this again will be something I would like to develop after college. 

In the future I would like to make my designs more conceptual as sometimes I think I make things just because it looks nice. I have really developed my love of print in this module and have realised that I only want to design for print to get a physical copy of the design. 

I have developed new skills on the Adobe suite this year just from spending so long on them and wanting to find out how to design in different ways using Youtube to guide me. 

I am excited for the end of year show, to develop something for a exhibition environment on a large scale for many other people to see. I am happy with the way my portfolio and website are developing these are both things I will always revise in the future. My confidence within my work and my ability to talk about my work has grown which will be useful for future interviews. This module has been great being in charge of my own briefs, managing my time and creating design I like, entering competitions and collaborating. 

Looking back this has been my favourite module throughout my time at Leeds College of Art, it has been a lot of stressful hard work however looking back at the work I have produced I have created a lot more than I ever expected. I am ready to leave college now happy with my portfolio to hopefully get myself into the design industry. 

Cheese Society- Evaluation

Being the vice president and the graphic designer of the cheese society this year has been a great pleasure and we will be leaving the cheese society behind and two first year illustration students shall be taking it over.

As it it is the final year of myself and the president Hollie Webb running the Cheese Society we wanted to make it a good one. We planned, organised and ran five cheese society events this year as well as the fresher’s fair. Organising the events always takes longer than expected, making and creating posters and flyers, contacting bars around Leeds and actually getting the cheese and holding the events.

Our first event of the year was held at Friends of Ham a very appropriate place as it is a cheese and meat specialist restaurant. The promotion for the event included a poster design, a Facebook event and over 100 emails sent out to people who signed up to join the Cheese Society at the Fresher’s Fair. The poster consisted of a collage of cheese clouds, a cow and a mouse, something light hearted to catch the students eye.

Once the promotion had gone up for the first event we realised that people had to pay memberships again and this year we wanted to give something back to the members something they can keep and advertise the Cheese Society to others. We decided to screen-print tote-bags to give out with a membership. The membership has gone up from £2 last year to £5 this year, this is purely so we can buy more cheese for the events.

The Eat and Greet went really well, people came with their own cheese which started converstation and we also provided cheese. It was a great night with a great turn out, we sold seven tote bags which made up for the cost of the cheese.

The second event was the Christmas event held at Homage to Fromage in Leeds a pop up Cheese restaurant. Everyone was asked to come in their best Christmas jumpers to come drink and eat cheese with us a great way to start the festive period. Promotion for this event again was in the form of a collaged poster of Jesus with Cheese and wine along with a Facebook event to invite people.

The Ot-Brie run was the third event of the year, the event is an Otley Run which is a famous pub crawl of Leeds. As it was a pub crawl we had to fill in various health and safety forms. I struggled with the design for this poster for a while and came up with various ideas before creating the mouse coming out of its hole. To keep every poster consistent I kept the logo to the top left and information in Edmondsans at the top of each poster. The event was promoted arouind uni and Facebook to remind students and members of the next event. The event went really well, it was a fancy dress event, people came dressed as various cheeses which was amusing.

The Dairy Disco was the fourth event of the year, by this point we wanted the new presidents of the Cheese Society to get more involved and experience how to contact bars and promote the events. I asked if they wanted to have some design input within the poster and they really liked the idea. We had a cheese meeting and I asked them as a joke to draw a DJing cow, I really didn’t expect the results to be so good. They send It over to me and I added the logo and type. I was really happy with the results from the collaboration. The illustration students booked a bar in Leeds for the event Bilbao Bar in Granary Wahalf, myself and Hollie were happy they managed to book somewhere however weren’t too happy with the location. However, the night went as planned and the first years got a lot of their friends to come who will be the new members of the Cheese Society next year.

The final ever event that myself and Hollie will plan for the Cheese Society is the Cheese Ball. We both wanted this to be a big celebration of the year and a goodbye to the LCA Cheese Soceity and all the fun we have had creating the events. I wanted a lot of people to come to the event so I made many leaflets to put around college and posters to promote the event. I designed the leaflets as giant cheese balls and cut them into a circle shape and put them where people swipe in and out of uni to catch students eye, pick one up on the way out and for it to be a conversation starter. The event was held a Belgrave the biggest place we have ever had a cheese event. The Cheese Ball was great, a great celebration of cheese and the Belgrave was a great choice of venue for the send off. 

Designing for the cheese society has been great this year, third year has been a busy year so sometimes the events didn't get as promoted as much as we could of due to lack of time. I am sad to leave the Cheese Society as Vice President and graphic designer, its been an interesting two years running it, however I am really happy to hand over the cheese responsibilities to two passionate cheese illustration students and I wish them all the best in their cheese related adventures. 

Breathe- Final Publication

Here is the final Breathe publication back from the printers, it is printed on a 130 gsm cyclustec recycled paper and the cover on a 200gsm for added thickness. Me and Lyida are really happy with the printed outcome of the publication, the printers were fast to deliver 100 copies ready for sale. The first place Lydia is going to sell these is at the Art Market at the End of Year show, her Uncle also knows someone in a New York bookshop that may be interested in having some to sell in his shop. A copy will be sent to every farmer featured within the issue. The next issue is undecided yet however Lydia is traveling to Australia in the New Year and hopes to find a new outdoor topic for Breathe for the second issue. In the future we hope to have Breathe have competitions and for people to enter their own work to be published within the magazine. An Instagram for the magazine has just started generating an audience for the publication. 

Cheese Society- Final Cheese Branding

I wanted to do something more for the last cheese society event so I created some cheese branding with stickers. The branding works with the cheese society as it uses the same colours and type used throughout this years cheese societies posters. I designed this as I want the cheese society in my portfolio and I am interested in food branding and thought how much I would love to brand cheese. 

Cheese Society- The Cheese Ball Event

The Cheese Ball has been the best event all year, it was held at the Belgrave which was a great venue, plenty of people came familiar faces and new first years. People boogied and ate cheese. This event was a great last event myself and Hollie will ever hold for the Cheese Society, it has been a fantastic two years having fun designing, organising and putting on cheese events all over Leeds. 

Bootees- Evaluation

Developing and branding Bootees has been a thoroughly enjoyable brief and I am really happy with the outcome, however there has been many problems along the way with screen printing and getting everything together, the little things such as sewing the labels in actually too a lot longer than expected.

While screen printing a previous brief with Hollie I realised how easy it would be to screen print t-shirts and begin a clothing brand of some sort, myself and Hollie are both into the same clothing brands so it made sense to work together as we would have a similar vision for the brand. We both love colour and knew we wanted it to be as bold as possible. We had no brand name or designs when we first started this brief and we have finished it with six screen printable t-shirt designs and an Instagram with over 900 followers.

Our ideas developed quite rapidly, we knew we wanted bold pattern and fun design but just wasn’t sure what of, our initial ideas was to put puns onto t-shirts but then we had to question who would wear them. We started to experiment with brush strokes and screen printing them with a gradient pattern but neither of us was happy with the outcome, so we developed ideas further on paper scanning them in mocking them up on a t-shirt to see what would look best. We also researched into brands that we liked and looked at them for inspiration, their fashion styling, logos and the overall brand and what made them stand out.

We experimented with paper screen printing some designs to see how that would work, this did not go to plan, after a lot of frustration we decided to expose screens to repeat the designs easily and quickly. We experimented with the paper screen printing as this brand is something we both want to carry on a peruse after uni and as we wont have access to an exposure unit after uni we thought to use paper would be a good idea. The process was too long and we both began to get frustrated.  

I digitally developed all of the t-shirt designs, I designed all of them but ‘Harry’ the face design with the glasses. We decided to go for primary colours and pink and screen print onto white t-shirts after much debate whether to get coloured t-shirts. The screen printing was a long process as we were using 4 colours on each t-shirt and we needed to get the t-shirts ready as fast as possible so they can be used within fashion shoots. There were a few problems when screen printing as the t-shirts are white if anything gets on them they look grubby so keeping them clean through the screen-print process was difficult. I have never screen-printed more than two colours on a design before, this was a new experience and a skill I have definitely developed through this brief.

We both have a love for vintage items and after researching and visiting vintage shops together we thought the best direction to push the brand was with colourful shapes, so we did and added extra face designs for fun.

We had to photograph the t-shirts for the product shots a couple of times to get it right. Hollie was in charge of getting the photo-shoots organised and this casued a lot of stress. We had a lot bigger plans for the photo-shoots initially and were planning on doing the shoots on location in an ice-cream van and at a bowling alley, however so many models let us down last minute after a lot of planning. This was disappointing and we were pushed for time to get the shoots done. 

While the shoots were taking place it was my responsibility to sort the branding for Bootees. The logo was something that I really struggled designing as there was so many possibility’s with it, I mocked up loads of designs and it took a while for something to click, we eventually went back to the very first typeface I suggested. There was a lot of printed material to be designed for the branding, I tried to imagine what the brand would need when sending the t-shirts to a customer. I designed a variety of things, swing tags, returns forms, business cards, postcards, wrapping paper and thank-you cards all in the same typefaces and colours we chose to keep the brand uniformed.

We created online presents to push the brand into the real world and sell some t-shirts. The t-shirts proved popular on the Instagram, we also wanted to show the screen printing process on the Instagram so we took photos of that too. We set up a Depop which will only display the t-shirts for sale.

Overall I have enjoyed creating Bootees and it is a brand that we are looking to develop after uni as we both have a love for bold clothes. I wish we started this brief earlier in the year so the photo-shoots could be more organized and less last minute, also I would of liked more time screen printing, it is a long process, something I have got faster at but we both wanted to be incredibly careful when printing. Hopefully Bootees will still continue after university, I wont have an exposure unit after uni however I am looking to develop the paper screen printing technique that we experimented with at the start of Bootees. Working with Hollie has been a pleasure, the work load was spread evenly, Hollie focusing on the fashion shoots and me on the branding and designs for Bootees.

Bootees- Website

Research 

In the future I would like to set up a Bootees website to begin selling the t-shirts I have began to look at websites of brands that we looked at the start when designing Bootees t-shirts. The websites are quite simple, large images, links at the top and the logo. 

Development

I have gone for a similar format when designing the website for Bootees, the front homepage is showing the spring summer collection 2016 and arrows to the side to view the collection. 

Final Website

Here is the final homepage for Bootees, links to accessories, stationary and the tee's as Bootees expands so will the website.