Final Evaluation

My rationale has remained the same throughout this module; I have continued to focus on branding and promotion across print and motion. However, my statement of intent has changed, in particular the briefs I intended to do at the start. I had to drop the Fashion Branding due to the client being slow in getting back to me, which has been an issue across a lot of the live briefs I’ve worked on.

The Yearbook and St Martin’s brief have been the most stressful, which is down to the clients. For example, the St Martins brief was extremely slow due to the client not being able to pick who she wants to work on the branding, resulting in re-pitching several times. Even when she picked Maya and I, we still had to pitch one more time, in the end; we have had to produce some of the other deliverables outside of the FMP due to it holding up our schedule and individual deadlines we had. Thankfully, this did not affect the working relationship between Maya and I. This is a slightly different situation with the Yearbook brief as there were group tensions from the start, but we have ended on a positive note and can look back and learn from errors.

I have learnt a new program this module also, for Brief 04 – E4 and Brief 03 – ITV2, as the kind of visuals I had in my head were not possible to produce in After Effects so I started to learn Cinema 4D end of February, beginning of March. At first, I was wondering if this would mean my ideas would be inhibited slightly due to a lack of knowledge, but it actually set me free. I was able to produce whatever ideas I had written down, and I am really pleased with the colours and quality of the finished pieces. Especially the E4 deliverables, I think the music really refines it and makes it more final than my ITV2 idents where I would have liked to have had a narrator talking over the top, but finding somebody without a strong accent, who would be willing to record audio may be more hassle than its worth.

I am glad I did the E4 and ITV2 brief, as it was a chance for me to do what I wanted to do and enjoy, and it is something I would be proud to have in my portfolio, plus it gives me more content for a showreel. I am equally as glad I did the other briefs as they were a chance to work with clients, one on my own, one with Maya and one with Nick Morgan, Natalie Jackson and Kirsty Hair, so it gave me an all round experience.

As always, I think time management has been a weak point, writing this evaluation now, I can think of many things I should have done, which unfortunately at this time is tough, as I can’t have another go.

Relating to the issue of time is the motion graphics work itself, as much as I have a real passion and spark for creating this kind of work, especially in Cinema 4D where it has that high quality, glossy look, this is disadvantaged by the time taken to render and work with it. For example, to render my Discoball Ident for ITV2 with a duration of 10 seconds, it took 2 hours to render.

In terms of my boards, I am pleased with the way they are, they show what I have done for each brief, and I am actually surprised at how well the motion briefs turned out as the images came straight from Cinema 4D which is RGB, as when I changed them in Photoshop to CMYK, they became murky. An error with the printer and paper stocks has resulted in me having 3 different stocks for my boards.

With respect to my final products, some of my St Martins work was water damaged when I wasn’t in the studio, so reluctantly I have handed some in. This was the same for the Indiependent brief, a few deliverables were ruined but they have been photographed, although they all needed reshooting after advice from the Final Crit.

Without the chances to work on live briefs this module, I don’t feel I would have been ready to work with clients straight after university. The learning experience from these briefs have prepared me in a way I wouldn’t have achieved without the Final Major Project on this course.

Looking back over my work, from the past three years, I am shocked at how my work has developed, and how my pathway within Graphics has changed. I started the course interested in type and layout for campaigns and posters, and now I am more image based interested in motion graphics, for branding and promotion.

My blogging has really let me down this module, there is a lot of development work missing for Briefs 3 and 4, and I am worried this will have a huge effect on my marks.

I feel I have worked to the best of my ability, with the exception of poor time management, and I have learnt a lot about myself personally and professionally. I walked in to the course, naïve and unconfident, and now I feel my confidence has built up and I know what I want to do next. Touch wood, this is a positive end to the year, and the course.

Brief 01 - Final Boards

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Evaluation:

 The Yearbook brief has definitely been the most challenging brief to date. The brief began with myself, Amy Leigh, Natalie Jackson, Nick Morgan and Stephanie Ogelsby. Steph left the group within a few days, but this didn’t make too much difference. Amy and Natalie were the original group members so we were briefed on their concept and we helped to develop the concept further ready for the first pitch to the Fine Art team. It was clear from the beginning they were not happy with this concept – I must admit it was quite sexualised. Looking at the final design, I can see just how far away we were. Amy took on the role as the project leader, which became difficult at times due to not being able to get hold of her, or not turning up sometimes. The next concept was underway, I was never fully behind it, as it seemed too literal, but I grew to like the idea. The group were having problems at this stage, as we had been delegated jobs, which left us doing the harder work while Amy was responsible for the flyer. As I am new to publication design I found it very daunting to all of a sudden be responsible for a quarter of the layouts. We agreed on a grid and begun working to this to come up with layouts, it was tricky as Fine Art were supposed to supply us with statements and images, but were slow in doing so, it became tedious for me to have to mention at every meeting we were still awaiting images. At this time we were still developing the second concept we called the ‘glitch’, it was a glitched students image for the front cover. We were struggling in our weekly meetings as Fine Art didn’t appear to be happy about the ideas we were coming up with which made tensions rise between the groups. Amy left the group and all of a sudden the concept dilemma didn’t matter any more. Down to just four people, we voted we wanted to come up with something new, something that was ours, rather than the idea of one person. We still carried on part of the concept which was the stamp. We had to work quickly as time was ticking. While I was in charge of images I realised over half of the images didn’t match the spec. I did state at the start to send over 300 dpi TIFFs but this was ignored and overruled by my group – which lead to problems with images later on. We finally had a concept that we liked and Fine Art liked and this really uplifted the spirit of the group, and it became more enjoyable. It made Fine Art more cheerier which is always helpful. I definitely learnt to bite my tongue in this brief, we all did. Towards the end Sheila was extremely rude to us, and refused to see us when we desperately needed her to sign the design off to avoid missing our deadline. We are all happy with the publication, although I wish I had a more design role in the end stages, as I was more admin, and sorting out images. I was involved more with the beginning design development, but I guess not everyone can do the design. After Amy left, there wasn’t a real sense of leadership from anyone, Natalie was the main point of contact and organised meetings but she didn’t lead. It was more of an equal effort, which appeared to work for us.

Fine Art: Signed Off

The Fine Art yearbook was signed off today, after an awful afternoon of waiting around for a moody client to then reluctantly sign off the book and part with '...it's on your head if anything goes wrong.' Not a nice way to end our hard work, I am so glad the students are grateful, and even apologised for the aforementioned person's behaviour.

This is the final cover:

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This is the final book:

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This is the final flyer:

Final Mock Up Yearbook

This is the final mock up of the Fine Art Yearbook - the covers have been included at the request of the client. As a group I feel we are much happier with the flow of the book, and I believe Fine Art are much happier too. There are a few technical aspects that need adjusting before this is ready to send to Duffields.

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Fine Art Yearbook Update

After speaking to Mike, it was pointed out all of the images in the InDesign document were RGB. Therefore the images needed to have their colour mode changed to CMYK - originally this was going to be done in pairs but as I have been working in another area of the college, the others managed to do it without me.

The images also needed to be resized in Photoshop as apparently they had been tampered with after I spent the full day resizing images before Easter - this made me annoyed as I spent a long time doing this and explained many times never to scale photos in InDesign. I felt like I had wasted my time, and another problem was caused due to the group not listening.

The images also needed to be changed to TIFFs which in our very first Fine Art meeting I requested TIFFs only, but the group went against me and said JPEGs would be fine, even after explaining why JPEGs are problematic with a project like this I was ignored.

****

The book is nearly ready, the flyers need text which I am sending to Kirsty as she will use the grid from the Yearbook to keep the consistency and colours the same.

The final leaflet design - due to Sheila previously mentioning she liked the yellow pattern:

A final proof read from management has to be done, followed by a final proof read from the Graphic Design and Fine Art Yearbook team - then the sign off.

Agreed Colour Scheme

We are all agreed that this is a more suitable colour scheme for the book - I am also much happier with this. I was disappointed I didn't get a say in the last colour scheme but I realise this is due to me being away on work placement.

Fine Art Layout So Far

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This is the current layout of the Fine Art yearbook - the images need changing to TIF's according to some advice given to Nat and I the other day. We will share the images out between the four of us to save time.

Fine Art Leaflet Ideas

Not my favourite idea, but I just wanted to see how it would work:

Using the front cover imagery to generate ideas for the leaflet, F.A. stated that they wanted the 'stamp' on the front with no copy on, which will appear on the reverse side with a colour selected from the image. As they liked the pink/rouge colour, I will probably go with that one. I did think that each leaflet could have a different part of the stamp on it, which join up all together.

Fine Art Meeting

What was discussed:

- F.A. want to see front cover 14 printed.

Special Projects:

- Take one swirl from front for each page.
- Black and white images with colour tint from front.
- Need consistency - all sepia or all monochrome.
- Monochrome 'our history'.

Front Cover:

- Spine same colour as front.
- Prefer pale cream.
- 2 finals as doubles with correct spine.
- Print 3 covers, red, green and blue.

Inside:

- Like colour sampling.

Rachel Jones - no small image - delete.
Joe Lang - swap round.
 Craig - he will resubmit.
Sam Chtmi - Samantha!
Steven - to email me.
Jeff - new images.
Beth Trainer - check name.
Sheena - whole image
Sam Vince - to send new images.
Karoline - ?
Anna Wills - new image.
Charlotte - new.

Back of front cover - (inside) colour?
Ethos to be emailed.
Jane Riley - Statement amendment

Meet Tuesday PM
- Layouts
- Front Cover

Crit Feedback

Today's crit was with Robyn R, Will Skane, Pav, Josh, Richard and Charlotte. Most of the feedback I received was from Pav and Robyn.

- They advised me, at this point in the game to forget the Fashion Branding brief, it's too late on for a brief with absolutely nothing. My client has missed 2 meetings with me, and not delivered the required work. Major time lost.

- Storyboards and initial ideas for ITV and E4 brief - as it was hard for people with a non motion background to understand.

- Indiependent work - good to have live charity work.

- St Martins - not a lot to say, client driven, well under way.

- Yearbook - same with that.

* Blogs - I didn't receive any blog feedback, as this wasn't the focus of the discussion.

Catch Up with Lorenzo

Summary:

- Work as a team - more unified.
- Cover  for Monday - printed - decide on 16th March.
- Rework Stamp - work through book - on student pages? special projects?
- Take solutions for taking cover and permeating through pages.

New Front Cover Ideas

I do like these ideas, which we sat together and decided on Monday, however, I am not sure F.A. will be so keen on losing the stamp. In terms of legibility this is 100 times better but may be too clean for them...

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Student Layouts

How the other team members layouts look, mine need adding to this for a more rounded idea:

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It's looking good altogether. I just hope F.A. are happy with it!!

Yearbook Layouts

In a follow-up meeting we decided to get rid of the stroke, and change the Name font to OCR to match the M-exhibition page Amy Leigh had designed, which F.A liked. Our main problem is the vast difference between the front cover design and inside layout design.

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I can see the stroke being added back in and the text changing however...

Follow Up Meeting

Following the meeting with Fine Art - we regrouped as a team to discuss what had just happened.
The theme seemed to be mainly annoyance, now F.A want to go back to our original stamp ideas.

- Amy hates layout - delete stroke.
- We all agreed pink wasn't working.
- OCR A Std for front cover
- Contact details in Helvetica Neue Light.

I then sat down with each team member involved with the layout so we could go through each image and check they were the right spec for the book, 23 students either needed to resubmit images or contact details. This was emailed to Rachel part of the F.A team.

Fine Art Meeting

Today, was quite a stressful meeting, it felt like as a team we weren't progressing as F.A. were wanting to go back to the older stamp designs. I did feel some of the cover designs were a bit over the top, and some virtually illegible but no one had seen these before the meeting.

- My first issue raised, as usual is missing students images/contact details. I was assured I would have these by the end of the day.

- Amy's Original Rework (Barbie style) - best so far.

- Text blocked together - no, it's like last years.

- Pattern has no point.

- Brown 'Original' Context image - develop stamp from this.

- Not handwritten font for stamp.

- Marbling effect works.

- Try rectangle ones.

- How will text work on special projects?

- Change 'Name' font.

- Like M exhibition page (white text).

- Provide them with more narrowed down ideas.

- Projects - no glitching of images.

- Where will the page numbers go?

- Full mock up for next time - one PDF.

- Too many front cover designs.

Tutorial Feedback - Lorenzo

Yearbook Layouts

Following the feedback, and new images I have received I have made the appropriate changes to the layouts:

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Fine Art Feedback from Layouts

Fine Art returned the layouts with feedback written on each, the main issue was consistency, particularly with mine, where the text was positioned but this is an easy enough job. *Scan in sheets*

Fine Art Meeting

Today's meeting was a bit of a write-off. Firstly F.A hadn't looked over the layouts together so there was nothing to discuss apart from the front cover but this wasn't ready for today, Sheila expressed her disappointment that there was no front cover or stamp but I assured the person in charge of this would have it ready as soon as possible. F.A will be looking over the layouts today so I anticipate we will have feedback by the end of today, all being well.