OUGD603: End of Module Evaluation

This Module has been great for me and my practice. I have been able to produce a fari bit of real work for clients.

My first Live brief was 'Cien' gin branding, created for the restaurant and bar I work at. I dont usually count work I do for friends or collegues as actual work, but my design is constantly being used by the restaurant and displayed on social media. This brief has also lead to some future work with the brand manager of Portobello Road Gin. He came in to the restaurant and saw my design and left his bussiness card behind for me. This is a great opportunity as alchohol branding is where my interests lie and I have found it to be a hard area of the industry to get into.

My time management has improved alongisde my organisation skills. This is due to the amount of group briefs I have done this year. Working on Creative Networks, we have had regular deadlines which we have to meet. Our success with the DBA Hyperloop brief was due to our incredible organization. We had a neatly organised shared google drive which each person would date if changed. This is good practice for working in a studio as it is important to keep files organised and labelled correctly. We also were able to organise ourselves in respect of workload. Each person would be given a task to be completed for our next group meeting.

This brings me onto teamwork and collaboration. I have collaborated alot this year, especially with Joe Auckland. This is due to us realising that we wok well together as we are both well organised and are able to bounce ideas off of each other well. Although we have diferent styles of working and diferent aesthetics, we are able to discuss our ideas well until we come to an agreed upon design decision.

I found that I mainly worked digitally this year. This may be subconciously due to the fact that I had many issues last year with printing and selecting apropriate stock. Working digitally I have been able to learn a completely new technique and programme; After Effects. I have wanted to learn it since first year and was hoping we would get a session to learn it. I decided that I would learn it myself as it is usually the best way to learn. I have used it for Hyperloop, Cookbook, Telegraph and Flag brief as well as some paid work for FDB Design Ltd. I really enjoy using after effects, and love seeing my work in motion. I now believe it is one of best skills to show possible employers.

I am happy with the broad range of work I have produced, and despite not knowing exactly what I hope to do in the future, I think this module has helped me narrow down my general idea of what I want to do and what sort of work I want to produce.

Monday, 23 May 2016 by Ashley Woodrow-smith
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Studio Brief 11: Flags: Book and expansion

Here is the final outcome for the flag brief. I set myself the task to try to teach others how to design an effective flag. My initial plans were to make some simple jigsaw pieces which can be used by others to create simple, bold flag designs. I have decided to leave this for the end of year show, and simply design a booklet in the dimensions of my previously redesigned flags using them as visual teaching tools alongside some new information I have written backed up with information from my research 'Good flag, bad flag'. The design and layout have been kept simple to keep in tone with the minimal flags, and be easily used by all target audiences.
I also plan to expand this project further into a motion video for the ned of year show. I feel that this would also act as a great teaching tool, showing how flags can be made up from a few simple shapes and colours.


Saturday, 21 May 2016 by Ashley Woodrow-smith
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Studio Brief 11: Shapes and Colours: MDF Block Experimentation and Video

I began experimenting with how this brief could be expanded upon for the end of year show. I wanted to have an interactive piece that can teach people how to design an effective flag. I looked at how I could either create jigsaw pieces or stackable pieces of flag pieces for guests to use and re-arrange.


The first are jigsaw pieces, these would be much harder to standardise and there would be hundreds more pieces than I am prepared to make . It would also be messy.
The second type would stack. This would minimise the amount of pieces and have a 3 dimensional aspect to it. The only issue with this is that some may not rest well and fall apart. This can be minimised by only have 2 layers.

Ive also looked into how motion graphics could be used to show people how most flags can be made up from a few simple shapes. This will link with the jigsaw pieces so that viewers can make their own.

Friday, 20 May 2016 by Ashley Woodrow-smith
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Studio Brief 3: Telegraph video

Here is our final design in motion for the D&AD Telegraph. I was able to use my skills in after effects to give life to the design and better explain how the website would work.

by Ashley Woodrow-smith
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Studio Brief 1: Creative Networks 4: Event Night

The event night was great. We met Jonathan, and he appreciated the work we had done and was interested in the typeface.
The beermats were a hit. We barely managed to keep any as people wanted to keep hold of them. It was a conversation starter for many guests.
We decorated the event night with the promotional posters, swell as black table clothes that fit the colour scheme of the night, removing all orange chairs so that there were only black and white ones.




After some thought, we were able to select appropriate headlines to display our typeface. Using quotation marks we were able to show that these are quotes and not the beliefs of the Uni


by Ashley Woodrow-smith
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Studio Brief 1: Creative Networks 5: Will Alsop: Developmet

After establishing the 3 shapes we would experiment with we began experimenting with what we could do with them
My own experimentation was to recreate Wills buildings as posters:
As well as this we produced a series of small flyers to act as guerrilla advertisement, scattered around uni in interesting places.
This was later expanded to create extremely large shapes which acted as posters.

Here are the 3 variations of posters influenced by Wills buildings, using multiple layers to create windows. The 3 dimensional aspect aims to interest the audience more than a normal poster.







by Ashley Woodrow-smith
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Studio Brief 1: Creative Networks 5: Will Alsop Brief, Research, Idea Generation

The Brief

Create a series of posters to promote the Will Alsop Creative Networks event. Due to the time of year of the event, it will be harder to convince students to due this. Consider some alternative ways to catch the eye of students.


Outcomes

-3 poster Designs

-Additional Collateral

-Vinyl

Research


We started our research by looking at some of Wills work, especially his architecture. Our previous event posters that incorporated a 3 dimensional aspect were more effective. We instantly agreed it would be a great idea to somehow do this with one of his buildings.
We were inspired by his use of colour, but we were most interested by the weird shapes used in his building designs. A lot of the windows were odd shapes.
These type of windows could be implemented into a poster in some way.

We decided on 3 shapes which could be used across our campaign to reflect Wills us of windows and will see what we can do with them


by Ashley Woodrow-smith
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