Nescafe Azera // Evaluation

I enjoyed working with Sam Hoh again for this brief, and I thought that we worked really well together for this project. Taking on the Nescafe YCN Brief, we and to overcome the challenge of producing a ‘product innovation’ for the instant coffee brand. We bounced ideas well and used the design sprint method to understand the needs and expectation of coffee drinkers in the UK, settling on an alteration to packaging that allowed consumers to dispense an exact shot of coffee by twisting the carton. This met the aims of the brief by providing a solution that is novel, more convenient and more precise than other delivery methods. 

As part of this brief, and due to limitations in design style to Nescafe guidelines, we were both interested in using the copy to sell the product and push the brief. I really tried to focus on creating a distinct tone of voice for the product e.g. ‘instant coffee with a twist’ and felt that this made a huge difference to our delivery and presentation. Sam is very knowledgeable about advertising, and this was useful for me as we were able to consider techniques such as ambient advertising and organic social involvement that made our submission much deeper. While it was tempting to mock-up the packaging digitally, I was pleased that we decided to craft it ourselves, ordering recycled poster tubes to imitate our format and using paint and stickers to create a convincing mock-up of the packaging. This photographed really well and helped to demonstrate the viability of our idea a lot more than we we would have been able to without this. As this is the last year we can enter, I wanted to make sure that we had a strong entry for YCN and feel that for this submission we have done our best to hit every point of the brief and more. 

Hungry Sandwich Club // Evaluation

We were advised to write one brief that could run for the length of the year and could be revisited as skills and direction changed throughout the year. This long and thin brief for me was the self-branding and promotion of a collaborative studio practice with Andy Foster. This has been an important brief, allowing each of us to contribute individual strengths and skills to develop an overarching and revised body of work that is focused on public presentation, audience and tone of voice in relation the the current Graphic Design Industry and represents an attempt to define my place within it. Last year, I found it extremely difficult to brand myself and create a website that I was happy with as a representation of the kind of work I was producing. This year, as my practice has become more defined in digital delivery, I have found this brief a useful outlet for exercising skills such as design strategy, web design, animation, typography and copywriting to create outcomes that speak to my strengths as a designer. Andy has complimentary skills such as concept development, image-making, physical production and finishing which have enhanced the outcomes of the brief and led to a stronger combined presentation of the brand on and offline.  

Foodpreneurs // Evaluation

This brief came as an unexpected opportunity at the end of the year as me and Andy were asked to design some live event branding for Food& and Northern StrEats. I enjoyed this creative challenge, and found it to be a great brief as it had a really specific audience and context that we could use as a basis for our design, but was open enough that we were able to challenge ourself to do something new. Iconography is something I wish I had done more of this year as it has become an essential skill in the modern graphic designer’s toolbox and demonstrating it in a portfolio can be a big boost. I was really pleased with the full icon set we were able to produce as part of this project and found the use of the icon grid to be a really interesting and advanced way of working that produced great results.

I enjoyed the challenge of trying to select appropriate typography for the brand. The brief required type that struck a balance between minimalism and character, using typography to communicate the street food industry’s traits of professionalism and friendliness. I felt that I worked well with Andy on this project, as we were able to separate roles well to work more efficiently, working with the same objective and combining our separate elements to create the full brand. 

We produced a pitch of the brand for the client received positive feedback on the design. I look forward to continuing with this project after the course and applying the brand format to future events. 

Newspaper // Submission Boards

Jaypee // Submission Boards

This was a live brief set by former BAGD student Jonny Packham to redecorate studio 3 collaboratively with Jaypee, Andy, Tanni, Hannah, David and Natalie. We all had to pitch an idea for a section of the space. Keen to add more vinyl work to our portfolios, I wanted to collaborate with Andy again in pitching for the window space. Andy has strong image-making skills and was able to establish a graphic format that we could both work to to create the set of characters based on the tools of designers. I enjoyed helping the others to paint the studio as this took me away from my usual studio practice and I was impressed at how the combined digital illustrations could be applied as a mural through projection, sketches and painting. This was not a process i was familiar with and it was interesting to be a part of. Through applying the vinyl, I learnt the importance of using application tape to make sure the vinyl was applied evenly, as this is something that we did not do in our Colours May Vary brief. I think that the lessons I learnt in that brief really improved the quality of design and application of this one. It was really gratifying to see the end result of everyone’s approaches to the brief combined in one space. 

Waterstones // Submission Boards

Pledge Music // Pitch Site and analysis

In order to send over our work on the Pledge site to the company themselves, we took our initial pitch boards and created a website that would display the features in a simpler format:

We started with a really direct and straightforward introduction building on language used by the company now and highlighting the core strength of what a reimagined PledgeMusic could be. 

Next we introduce the new format for displaying projects that we call the Pledge Card. It was important to introduce this concept early on as variations of it run through the whole of the new site and it forms the backbone of the redesign, giving a uniform look for the display of information across the site which did not exist before and introducing a much needed call-to-arms 'pledge' button that users can recognise throughout, reducing the number of clicks to create a conversion from a user. 

Here we demonstrate the variable home page formats, something which we felt was desperately needed to feature particularly high-profile artists which are not celebrated in any way by the current format. The video box is particularly important to our project as it allows the artist's journey to become the focus of the site and not the rewards, something which our design sprint revealed to be one of the strongest differentiators between pledge and its competitors. By putting the actual video with the artist telling their story on the homepage instead of just the photograph, the first interaction that a user has with the Pledge project can be more personal, direct and more likely to convert. 

One of the biggest issues that we identified with the project page was a complicated video box. Considering how vital it is to every project we needed to make 4 element really immediate: The number of pledgers, how long the project has left, it's progress towards target and finally the pledge action button. By removing the clutter, icons and giving space for the video to breathe on the page were able to simplify the project page and once again let the artist speak for themselves. 

One of the most important changes we made to the original site was by removing the kickstarter-style sidebar and using an expandable card format which flip left and right to reveal multiple content (images, text, video) in a much simpler way. Another important change was to highlight by colour which rewards were exclusive to pledge, something which creates excitement around the service itself and encourages more artists to create exclusive content for their campaigns, something that is mutually beneficial to artists, pledge and fans. 

Finally, we save one of our strongest features until the end of the presentation. The biggest new feature that we developed in the design sprint was in response to the separation of separate posts by the artist during the campaign. This blog format didn't celebrate the artists progression and journey as a whole, instead focussing on individual updates. We wanted to move all of these updates and milestones into one section which would allow users to scrub through everything that has been posted from the very start of the project to the present, with key points indicated by a marker along the timeline. We felt that this would be best a good way to end the pitch as it ties the journey theme of our redesign with the general UI designs and leaves a strong impression of the core values of the design. 

After the pitch, we included the interactive prototype we had create using the Marvel service, which ties together prototype images with transitions to give a better approximation of what the final experience will be like.