Print and Web: Crit Feedback_

Again i am showing how i am not jumping straight into the design process, I want to create a logo design that is in my opinion effective rather than something that just simply looks good, I have again whittled my colour schemes down again so that i can receive more feedback on this, as this will be a huge part in making my logo effective.

Visual research this basically just looking at a few competitors of my for this brief, As i have looked into creating an on demand channel but i aim to make this innovative in introducing a system to make the whole process much more user friendly. As this to be honest is the only down fall to some of the competitors is how easy the web site is to use.

In terms of where my design will appear in context this board shows what would be produced and where it would appear.

Design Boards:

Crit Feedback:

Strengths_ 

Lots of research, understanding your concept very well,. 

The idea on making an on demand website, very ambitious ideas

Specific audience is very focused 

Innovative Range of products.

Visual research is strong and looked into competitors

Clearly considered colour scheme - Choose which is most appropriate

Age range is appropriate for tv.

Visual Research is great maybe look at a wider range.

Areas for Improvement_

Produce some branding designs 

begin working with visual ideas.

Generate a name in order to move forward with the design 

Considerations_ Design Boards need to use a greater point size 

Make sure that the designs are consistant across all medias

5 problems that need solving:

_ What programmes are going to be shown on the channel ---- Film and Drama

_ Make the design communicate to my audience using a strong and effective brand identity 

_ Make the brand stand out amongst the crowd make it not only noticeable but also memorable

_ The channel has no identity 

5 ways your audience would come into contact with your work:

_ Digital   

_ Web design - on demand channel 

_ Print based and web based advertisment

5 things i still dont know about my content:

_ What programmes will still be shown -------- Film, Series, Documentarys_ Where and When the advertisements will be shown ------ From watershed onwards -- Weekdays during the day not 2 - 4  

_ What the people want from a channel --------- Students, Working Professionals, Retired adults 

_ What is the most effective and cost effective way of promoting the channel --------- Tv advertisement and web advertisement  

_ What the audience are interested in (in general) ------- Action Thriller, Romance, Fantasy Adventure, Comedy, Drama

Crit Feedback:

Main point that was taken from the brief:

_ Be specific about the genres that are played on the channel

Areas of improvement  

_ Must look at further research on channel topics, what they are visually and how does this translate on the channel to the brand  identity

_ Further research into the genre of programmes that will be shown on your channel

_ The brief is very broad for the time scale we are working too, making it international what programmes?

_ Channel x is proposing to show, ECT could be more specific or specialist to make this more manageable.

Presentation Boards: 

ISTD: Re Writen Brief and Design direction Boards.

5 problems that need solving:

_ What programmes are going to be shown on the channel 

_ Make the design communicate to my audience using a strong and effective brand identity

_ Make the brand stand out amongst the crowd make it not only noticeable but also memorable

_ The channel has no identity 

5 ways your audience would come into contact with your work:

_ Prit based advertisements  

_ Web design - on demand channel 

_ tv advertisements

5 things i still dont know about my content:

_ What programmes will still be shown

_ Where and When the advertisements will be shown 

_ What the people want from a channel 

_ What is the most effective and cost effective way of promoting the channel 

_ What the audience are interested in (in general)

Crit Feedback:

Main point that was taken from the brief:

_ Be specific about the genres that are played on the channel

Good: 

analysis of competitors this helps to recognise what your audience is like think about strengths and weaknesses. 

_Specifics have been given this helps define outcomes will be focused and appropriate:

_Humour will attract the audience well, ambitious ideas for products, but is appropriate for time scale

_ Good initial research on competitors, Specific audience and good knowledge of them Great proposed ideas

_ Good use of visual research, clear direction, Experimentation with ideas, looked at previous entrants to brief to get an idea of other designers approaches 

_ Research is in depth and relevant to subject, Experimental ideas could work well especially as the brief wants to stand out and be different

_ "Change the name sounds like a  porn channel"  are they all abit similar for a reason could begin so different backfire? 

Areas of improvement  

_ Must look at further research on channel topics, what they are visually and how does this translate on the channel to the brand  identity

_ Further research into the genre of programmes that will be shown on your channel

_ The brief is very broad for the time scale we are working too, making it international what programmes?

_ Channel x is proposing to show, ECT could be more specific or specialist to make this more manageable.

Presentation Boards: 

Re Written brief

Competitors and Existing examples

Last years entrants 

Colour schemes 

I have re written the brief this is in turn allowing me to push on with areas of practice that i feel will be beneficial for my, for example i have really decided to focus on the logo design and will then be moving onto the branding of the company both are key areas that i plan on moving onto as i progress in my career as a designer.  

I thought it would be very beneficial to me to look at existing tv brands it was clear to me initially what i saw as effective branding and what i felt wasn't, For example film for is effective in that the use of the colour red reflects the curtains of a cinema giving the viewer the feeling of the cinema at home. Dave for example is extremely effective in that it directly targets the audience. My favourite of the lot really has to me more 4s branding, This is my main inspiration due to the fact it target as a wide target audience as mine will do, and in my opinion this is down to the colours used a range of youthful colours mixed in with natural colours. This means that man nor woman is singled out it is for a wide audience and the programmes shown are reflected through the branding of the channel.

As i have decided not to rush straight into the design process i felt it would be more effective for me to look at the colours i would use first i looked at a range of colours initially to present to the group and i was hoping to get closer to a selection after the crit the group helped me decide on a few colour swatches to experiment with. All of the colours selected where what i saw to be relevant to a wide age range and also relevant to both sexes.  

And the final sheet is basically looking at past entrants looking at what had already been created, I decided that i would take a completely different approach to this and hopefully create something that is not only innovative but also highly effective. 

The Brief: Channel X 

"We are an international Tv brand. We love our Drama, reality tv,  soaps. We commission gutsy programmes and blend cool drama with our own lifestyles. We segue effortlessly from escapist to gritty to humanitarian, to sensational."

"The picture is fantastic, what is missing is the frame. We need and identity that stands out amongst the avalanche of brands, movies, adverts, sponsors and TV shows that are all screaming for attention."

"We need to build a bold brand, to forge emotional connections with our audiences_ to be open and compelling. rooted in truth and effect we want to be memorable. be a challenger and express a clear point of view. We need o be more than expected_ not just another channel"

Background:

Look into existing branding - 

Look into existing work that has been created for competitors 

Look at what already exists 

Look into what interests the target audience

What medias will be most effective for delivery 

Times for advertisement

Target audience:

Our audience

_Love being entertained

_ Are not affluent but have sophisticated spending and tastes 

_ Are articulate but not necessarily university educated

_ Are between 16_45 

_ With a slight male bias

_ Including young parents

Tone of voice: 

I intend on making the campaign have a humours feel, however the tone could be varied for different programmes that are shown on the channel.

The tone of voice will depend entirely on the ad, i must create a range that appeals to the whole range of ages within my audience:

Deliverables: 

Develop a brand identity, aesthetic and creative direction of the channel 

Create a company name

Logo design that represents the channel, it can be live action, animation based and it needs to have a bold strong attitude. that feels alive. this must be branded across all print and web based products. 

Mandatory Requirements:

Whether you take an animation, live action or print based approach, you must develop and produce a set of design guidelines for use of the identity/logo.

Development: ISTD workshop:

Selected Brief: Channel X
We started off the workshop by highlighting 5 problems that I need to solve:

_The visuals are fantastic, however they are missing a brand/Identity that holds it all together.
_ What is meant by the word Mojo?
_ The brand needs to stand out amongst the range of brands that surround this Channel
_  I must make sure that the design connects emotionally with the audience:
_" We need to be more than Expected" - Must be innovative ( not the normality)

5 reasons why i want to solve them:

_ The brief allows me to be innovative with experimental logo design
_ Allows me to develop my problem solving skills, especially making the brand communicate emotionally with the audience
_The brief allows me to experiment with branding even further as this is one of my chosen areas of interest this is a great opportunity for me to develop my skills.

5 facts about the subject and content:

_ The channel plays, Series, Film, Documentarys, These are what the target audience are most into. 
_ The company blends cool drama with our own lifestyles
_ international Tv brand
_ The brand is too passive and needs to stand out amongst the crowd

5 things i need to know about the brief:

_ What the brief means by MOJO
_ Look at competitors Branding
_ Look at what appeals to the audience
_ Define what the brief is actually asking for_ A face to the channel an Identity amongst other channels.

5 ideas that need to be communicated in this brief:

_ a strong bold attitude
_ alive however still focusing on type as well as image
_

5 End products:

_Website
_Channel name
_ Print based documents
_ Advertisements
_ Billboards

5 points of distribution:

_ In the city/Motorways billboard designs
_ World wide web
_ Online channel (4od)
_ tv advertisements
_ Web adverts



Inspiration
Proposal

Selection of ISTD Briefs:

I have selected 3 briefs from the ISTD brief list, I have selected briefs that i feel give me  the chance to experiment with my personal practice and look into areas that i want to develop. 

I felt The Channel x Brief suited my design direction the most so i plan to move on with this brief. The brief was to create a face for the tv channel and identity that stands out amongst the rest, I felt up to the creative challenge and cannot wait to push this further.


  

Print Production: Progress Crit:

This was the final crit on this project and the feedback that has been given has pointed me to what alterations must be made, once these alteration are made i feel that the content of my editorial is complete and i can now explore new printing methods and  print techniques that i would be applying to my design if i was actually getting my design printed. 

We laid our work out on the table and paired off into pairs we then went about analysing our peers work and in turn recieving critical feedback on our own work, during this crit we did not specify specific questions that we wanted the answer too this allowed the feed back we received to be a basic over view of the full book, not specific areas.

Feedback:

Strengths:
Nice mix of images and diagrams, not too heavy - balance between type and image clean layout effective to read and follow, embossed cover will work really well, use the black one more readable? 
Great experimentation with embossing print techniques into practice nice and easy format easy to hold overall great job.
Typeface is appropriate

Areas for improvement
Annotated throughout
No contents page, and page numbers
Just watch image quality, especially when printing 
On finishes change the 'Definition' spelling.

Considerations to think about:
Remove all the full stops on the headings - not needed. 
White Front cover looks better than the black, embossing idea is good 
Good use of Lorem Ipsum:

Key points raised in the crit as a group: Good:

Good research
Contents page
Page numbers
Basic type skills
Proofreading
Line spacing

Action Plan:

Make sure i proof read the whole of my design making highlights
-
From here then apply the changes in InDesign 
- 
Proof read again - Peer this time another pair of eyes
- 
Preparation for print
- 
One last proof read
-
Finalisation
- 
Send to printer

Lifes a pitch: logo design and brand identity and Online Presence:

As you can see we experimented on a pulp like paper that would be similar to the substrate that would be used for our envelope design and other parts of our brand identity products. We also plan to print our logo onto the cover of each of our moleskines, we experimented with this and we where overwhelmed with the quality of the print when high pressure was applied the border will not appear on our final prints as the plate will be to the scale of our largest print. 

Today was all about experimenting with print, as we had already completed our e flyer it was a great opportunity for us to push on with our Brand identity project, we decided to experiment with creating new print plates instead of using the wood as a group we have commonly used individually, as we are going to be using this plate a fair amount of times, we felt as a group perspecs would be the best choice as it is much cheaper than a copper plate, however we decided to test the plate material by printing on some of the stocks to see how the materials would react and how effective the print finish was. The outcomes are displayed above.

    

E flyer

The general idea around our e-flyer is to ensure that it targets our specific target audience which is mainly businesses, ASSSK is a branding and communications agency. As a group we didn't want to go down the 100% corporate business route either, we want the branding and products we produce to reflect us all being new graduates generating fresh innovative ideas. This must at the same time not to experimental as it must still appeal to our audience. We produced a range of ideas as a group and decided that a design that displays our modern innovative ideas on design but keeping the design simplistic and minimal would be highly effective. Abbas went away and produced an E flyer that we where happy with after a few alterations. ASSSK E - flyer is shown below  

"The idea behind asssk is we make everyone who comes to us look good throughout a variety of media, big company or small company, jussst asssk."

Sams Layout mock ups:

We sat down as a group and generated a few ideas for our E - Flyer. We decided that a minimalist layout would work well as we had decided to incorporate an animated aspect into the design. The simplistic layout in combination would ensure the design is not overpowering. Sam went away and produced the layouts below that we where very happy with as a group. His designs also displayed a colour scheme that as group we feel are highly effective in displaying how our business is modern but also contemporary. 

Online Presence:

As a group we decided it would be highly beneficial for us to create and online presence, we decided to create a behnace account to display our work and we can all become co owners of this and can link to our own individual portfolios. this also allows people to contact us. as well as creating a twitter email and purchasing an online domain name. 

Our online domain is http://www.asssk.us and out email address is info@asssk.us

This then allows us to add work to the behnace and twitter pages as we go, we are aiming to treat this as a great opportunity to brand ourself as one of our first projects and post this to behnace when the designs are completed and even in progress, this will help us get our names out there and hopefully allow people to see the the foundations of an exiting studion that people and businesses will be interested with working with.  

These are just some ideas i have produced for our brand and identity project as a group, we all gave each other tasks to work with over the weekend i have decided to produce envelopes for our brand, we have decided to use two styles of envelopes. a catalogue envelope that will be used for important business notifications such as bills and formal documents, and DL envelopes for aesthetic presentation for less formal documentation such as invites ect.

I have decided to put together a pattern design that will be used for the inside of the envelopes and could possibly be used for other aspects of our products in our brand identity project. The outside of the envelope is to be embossed or de bossed this is somthing i will bring up with the group on monday. 

The logo design was and idea that was generated as a group i then took away the ideas that the group had put in and produced this design drawing. The group where happy with the design and we discussed the design bringing up the areas that needed tweaking. from this point it was time for me to digitalise the logo this is the first logo i have created and i feel this was a great opportunity for me to step up to the challenge. I am happy with what i produced and what was produced by the group. this allowed me to use design drawings that would create a clean finish. I still feel the logo design could be touched up further but this is something i can do over time.