Contribution - Postage

I had all the figures and amount of stamps we needed for the amount of invitations we were gonna send out.  We were inviting 50 design agencies because we felt it would be great to hear from them and get them to see our work.  It will be an experience to get our showcased work judged by real life designers.

We axed the idea of using stamps as Andrew wanted to hand post them to save money.

Copyright

Copyright is protection against something given a form.  This could be anything such as design work, music, poster, film almost anything.  The copyright holder on someone's work is usually the creator themselves unless they are employed by anyone then that person is the holder.  Copyright protects one's work and this could be breached if someone uses it in a particular way although there are ways round it.  If someone is breaching copyright there are serious consequences and it is not a subject to get overlooked.  Most of copyright's 'rules' only apply to something if It's being used to make money. Or if someone has stolen you're particular work.
If someone wants to use someone else's work they can obtain clearance from which an agreement is made with the producer of a piece of work and this has to be agreed on different level.  Copyright does not need to be applied for paid for because It is the law.  As soon as you produce something weather that be a piece of music or a website even, copyright protects you.  Also your work does not need to be published to be protected.

Portfolio Website

I have chosen to design and produce my portfolio website on Tumblr.  I am not familiar with Tumblr in anyway at all.  I had a previous account with Tumblr but I never pursued it making it social.  The reasons why I chose Tumblr and not something else is because I wanted to be assisted when making my website and not just building it from scratch.  There are reasons for this.  I am not the greatest at all with web code and doing this by myself with the CSS & HTML I don't know what could of happened.  I also chose Tumblr because I felt I could have a crack at looking at the code within the Tumblr settings where you can actually write your own code.  

When I first started designing my website I was just playing around with different layouts, themes colours to get to grips with how Tumblr works.  

Although its part of the criteria to submit a portfolio online I feel its really important I did this anyway.  I am approaching the end of the second year and I would of liked to produce something promoting myself as well as the business cards I've designed.  I will continue to update my portfolio website as I create new designs/ complete new projects.  These could be assignment briefs or just personal projects of my own.

Below here are some screenshots of my website;

Above here is a small preview of my website on Tumblr.

Here isa the top of my web page.  The header image is a blown up version of one of my personal projects of a strawberry.  It adds colour to my page instead of a block colour or gradient.  

What I knew I wanted before I started designing this was a continuous scrolling page.  Reasons for this is because of the successes of my website I created last year for one of my projects.  I had a continuous scroll until there was no information left.  I feel this is one of the best ways to browse information.

Next page down.

Next page down.

Below here is how my website looks on a smartphone.  It is fully responsive and works pretty well.  From looking at this image there is a lot of colour within my page and I believe this is eye catching and exciting.  I chose green as the background colour purely because It matches red and blue.  They are also primary colours.  I changed my avatar shape to a square and added a photo of myself.  I am very pleased with the appearance of my page and I feel my business card and website complement each other.

Business Card Update

My business cards came the other day.   I ordered 250 with 'premium glossy' finish.  I am extremely happy with how they have turned out.  Despite costing around £30, Vista print were the cheapest I and anyone could find on the internet.  I paid an extra £13 to get them delivered in time as well which is pretty expensive.  They are durable and long lasting due to the type of finish on them.  They are suitable for wallets and purses as they are not that easily bent compared to some others.  They could never get torn.  They have a shiny effect.  I wanted this because I thought it would make them look more pristine & professional.  Below here are some photos of my business card;

Super glossy finish.

The only point I could say that could be better is my half border is too close to the edge of the card.  On the preview on Vista Print it wasn't exactly like this.  Every time it went to preview I kept going back into Illustrator and playing around with the border making them further apart or closer together then re-saving my document and uploading again on the website to see the preview.  Overall I am very happy with them and they have come out pretty much exactly how I expected.

Business Cards

For my Business card I already knew what kind of theme I wanted.  I wanted simple, easy to read text standing off a dark background.  I knew I wanted white text.  i feel this gives an expect of cleanliness and pureness.  It looks professional and you can't go wrong with it.


Below is my final Business card.  I didn't take any screenshots throughout as I thought this wasn't necessary;

Texture:  I added a texture from the appearance panel called 'sand'.  Sand is a wavy like texture with small dotted lines.  I decreased the opacity to 35% to bring the text off the page.  This covers the whole business card.

Border:  I have created a half border using a 3pt stroke in white.  This complements my name and my areas of work.

Colours:  Simply, black & white.

Fonts:  I have used 2 different fonts.  A script font for my name and a simple, light weighted font for everything else.  

Title:  For my name I have duplicated it and added a shadow effect behind to make it stand out of card.  For course name and location i have triple spaced the type manually.  I feel this adds professionalism and gives the place a sense of credibility.

Social:  I decided not to have a reverse side for my business cards.  I wanted all information in one place.  

Contribution - Drinks

For the contricution of our end of year show I have re-searched what type of drinks we should have for the show.  I asked around the class and spoke to tutors as to what would be suitable and what they have used in the past.  Out of our budget, I found out that we have a £50 budget for drinks.

I thought it would be a good idea to have a variety of drinks as everyone likes different things.  Alcoholic and non-alcoholic.

Here is some re-search I made:

I found that Tesco Direct seemed to be a cheap, reliable source of drinks.  They had a variety of wines on offer which seemed cheap for the type of wine.  Above here we have Merlot.

£23.94 for a case of 6 bottles which turns out at £3.99 per bottle.

An even cheaper option was these white wines above here.  At £15 - £20 per case of 6 I thought we should do this straight away as it's cheap and reliable.  

In the end I decided to go down to Lidl next to the college to buy our drinks there.  It was easier and actually a lot cheaper.  As you can see from the photo I took, we bought 12 bottles of wine 6 red, 6 white along with soft drinks such as water, orange and lemonade.  This all came to around £45 I believe.  I thought it would be better to have more drinks just in case we do run out then it looks a little embarrassing.

Poster Branding

For the poster branding I have come up with something.  I did some research on Digital Media in general and on pixels as I thought a pixel theme would suit the show brand and everyone could relate to it.  However I came up with something else:

I wanted to create something that would make the show name stand out.  I created the type with yellow, blue, green and red dots.  Some layered on top of others.  In the background I have a slight gradient to enhance the text and bring it to life.  For the poster title and the lowered text, I just added a querky white text.  I don't want to settle on this text, I have this in as a stand-in font as my main focus was on the middle text.  I wanted to make the dotted text stand out whilst have a certain element of class about it.  

We have all created different posters for our show and we will analyse each one and decide on a favourite as a group.