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. 

Postage & Drink Responsibility

I have volunteered to be part of the postage, invites and drinks.  My job is to design the show invitations with Chloe and to be in charge of postage.  I have also volunteered to be in charge of drinks along with drinks.

I have come up with some branding for the invites that i have sketched out and I will post them soon. We have decided that we should send actual physical invitations instead of E-mails because we felt that people within the design industry would be more likely to attend.  We felt this because an E-mail could get over looked or maybe ignored.  An invitation actually coming through your own door would be looked at.  We are planning to send E-mails however just at a later date to remind people when our show is.  This would include dates, times etc as the invites would too.

For postage I have been doing some research for prices and for how many we need:

These are the prices for letters at different weights and sizes.

For drinks, me and Jake have been trying to sort out a sponsor for our show to get alcoholic drinks cheaper.  We are thinking of getting beer/ale and/or wine.

Job Titles

We have all been given job titles for what we will cover over the course of this project.  It has become apparent there is a lot of work to be done here so we as a group, decided to dedicate everyone different jobs.

Here is our jobs preparation:

Above here is the board of aspects we needed to cover and who is labelled to that particular job.  We have Prep: everyone is involved in this.  Social Media, updating social media sites to promote our show.  Invite list: Invitations for the show.  Drinks: Drinks for the show.  Venue: hanging up work and taking stuff down is everyones job.  

Above here is a timeline of where we would like to be every week.  We thought it would be a good idea to produce this because we want to keep on track of deadlines and things to be accomplished.  Some of these consist of name of our show, poster design, branding, invitation design and postage etc.

The Brief:  End of Year Graduation Show

Our next brief has come and it is our end of year show.  This means presenting our work in Brighton to family, friends and the public.  Its a chance for people that work with design to see us and what we do.  We all have to agree with a name for the show and a branding poster to promote it.  We will each design and produce self business cards to promote ourselves for the show and for the future.

What we will have to submit:

Group Branding for the Show
Two images and two .mov movie files for the show-reel and inclusion for the Show
Online portfolio
Up to date CV
Business cards or some evidence of self promoting
Blogging work

Pitch

I pitched to Diana & Val via E-mail and sent them my video files with some information on my ideas and how I got to them.

This is in response to Diana asking for the music alongside my idents.  I thought this was a bit strange as I never received a final music piece as she had others to attend to when I asked.

I pitched to both Val & Diana my workings and ideas to wait for feedback with some of my own recommendations for my work.

Communication

These are my E-mails I have been sending to Val & Diana.  I thought I would list them all together then list underneath what the mail was about.

Above here is my E mail from Val after I showed her my idents.  She asked me to change the art style of the Brighton Landmarks which I played around with.  Overall she liked the theme a lot.

This is Diana who was in charge of the music.  She liked the graphics a lot.

This is the E-mail I sent to Val & Diana I explained my uni deadlines and sent her my idents.

I asked Diana about a particular theme.  I asked her about the music.  She sent us an 'unfinished' peice of music in which by the weekend we would have the final product.  We never received any so I had to use what i had got given.

Above in reply to Diana about my feedback.

Above is Val suggesting the seagull theme for the idents for Latest TV.

Above is Diana explaining she would of sent me a finished piece of music, but she didn't.

Above here is me explaining that I would like a .png or PDF file of the Channel 8 logo and the Latest TV logo.  I received the style guide for Latest TV logo which explained measurements, size and colours.

Above is me asking about specific themes.

Above is Diana asking to see my ident clips with the music clip she sent me.

ident 3

This is my 3rd and final ident.  This one is more LatestTV orientated or more of an obvious choice than the previous.  This has the Channel 8 logo fade in to the centre of the screen.  The red part of the 8 appears first, followed by the rest of the channel 8 logo.  

Sky gradient.

In this frame you can see the clouds coming into the screen on either sides.  The red part of the logo also fades in.

The rest of the Channel 8 logo appears in the centre of the screen.  I feel this screenshot looks clean and crisp and matches my others in a series of footage.

Everything present on screen begins to fade out.

The LatestTV logo then appears and fills the screen.  This is what happens in every ident, all kept below 10 seconds and as short as possible.

idents 2

In this ident I wanted to be more creative.  I wanted to do something that was really expected.  Something original and unique.  The plan for this one was to have bubbles being blown up into the air, then the seagull comes and swoops down and pops one of the bubbles.  The bubble then reveals the LatestTV logo.  The logo falls to the bottom and then again like my first idea, takes to the full screen.  At first the ident may not be immediately obvious that it's branded towards Latest TV.  However I feel this is a unique idea.  I will send these to Val. 

Opening frame, bubbles flow upwards in the sky with passing clouds used in my first ident.

The seagull swoops down from the left in flight, popping one of the bubbles that reveals the logo.  I have added a splat/pop animation to make this more obvious to people that have never seen this before.

The seagull pops the bubble then flys off to the right out of view.  Again, the LatestTV logo appears taking over the screen with the white background.

idents 1

I have been working on my first ident and these are some screenshots from it.  I have been keeping within the 1-10 second time ratio.  Before I started designing I wanted to keep them fairly short as I believe this will be more effective.  In this ident, I have worked on my vectors from the Brighton landmarks in my previous posts.

In the above image shot I have the opening frame.  Brighton landmarks are down the bottom of the screen acting like a boarder or half banner.  I think this really works as It looks like all the landmarks have come together and they all fit.  I have included the Channel 8 logo in the centre.  This is the focal point of the ident.  Focusing purely on the brand & channel.  

I have the seagull flying in from the left.  I tried  making it white as seagulls are but like I said in my previous post, It kind of got lost in the background.  Something new I did add were the clouds, moving left to right.  This is something I did not have in but added in at last.  I made them in Illustrator and reduced the opacity to make them more life like.  I added them because just the gradient background seemed to static.  The bird flys in..

The seagull then lands on the Channel 8 logo.  The screen's transparency fades out..

Lastest TV logo is revelled.  All of this animates in around 8 seconds.  My next step is to E-mail Val the graphics and see what she wants changing. 

Brighton Landmarks Further Research

Brighton Pier.  Defiantly going to be a big part of labelling my idents a part of Brighton.

Ferris wheel.  Not the biggest part of Brighton however it is recognised along the seafront.

Will use this as part of my idents.

Part of Brighton Pavilion.

The old Pier.  Slightly unsure weather I should use this old pier as it doesn't resemble Brighton as a positive aspect. - Something to think about. 

Windmill.

Pavilion.

Ferris wheel, day time.

Clock tower.