Popcorn Day 2

Today I jet had to finish off putting the mood boards together. One that was done I then went on to start a new brief. This was to design a 'proposition logo' for right guard. This was to give the client - Mason Williams, an idea of how Popcorn would design for them and what they could do i.e. how they would take the logo and manipulate it to stand out. The client wanted something that mimicked festival logo's and rock band logo's.

For this I had to do a minimal amount of research and then crack on sketching some ideas. 

Here are some examples of the research and some of my initial sketches. 

I learn't a lot about the process of designing through this eg. sketches - how minimal they had to be. Research relevance. Range. This has really helped me with the process of my working method. When speaking to Patt about the sketching technique, he said that the best sketches are the vague sketches because they still leave them open to imagination so by coming back to them you may see something different. This is a really interesting thought. 

Here are the examples of the mood boards that i put together. I was told to overlay the images and cram on the boards as much as possible to as to help when it came to idea generation later. The boards are used for inspiration, so it's important to keep them all as full as possible. 

Popcorn - Day 1

Today.. I arrived at popcorn 45 minutes early.. Slightly misjudged the bus journey from Haringey. 

Firstly I met Ross Gunter who proceeded to show me around the studio. Which was small but open planned. There are only 4 people that work full time at Popcorn, and then they pull in there freelancers.

Patt - Creative Director

Steve - Designer

Ross - Designer

Mateusz - Designer

...

Lola - The in-house dog

After the brief hello's and intro's Ross told me about a brief they wanted me to handle. I was a little daunted but excited. Then I found out it was for the princess of the UAE..

 The brief break down: " Popcorn are tasked with the creation of Brand identity and Website solutions to communicate more efficiently and coherently to their audience" - This is essentially creating a logo design that will cover across the Al Asayl Showjumping federation. This was a really exciting opportunity for me because it was encompassing everything i wanted to do. Quality logo design. I was defiantly nervous but excited!

So for the whole day i spent my time creating and collecting research to create some mood boards for the project. This meant looking for research within a variety of areas that all relate to the UAE, show jumping and websites. 

Ross was really helpful, he showed me that you could use the issue websites, to collect more research relating to show jumping. 

Although it was a bit laborious, i learn't a lot today especially about organisation and the importance of research and mood boards. Im looking forward to the work tomorrow and presenting my ideas and boards. 

Here are some examples of the research I have been doing. It's interesting to

use a similar file organisation as the other companies i have visited. I think that

this type of organisation is good, because when other people access the folder they cane easily read

the processes.

I covered a range of research from:

Showjumping websites

Magazines

Racing

Polo

Showjumping brands

A range of show jumping websites

Emirates

And basically all things, UAE, Showjumping and Quality.

You Work For Them - Vectors and Type store

You work for them

This is possibly one of my favourite websites, it has an unrelenting source of type and vectors, i love it because it has made things accessible to me for the future. For example i know my drawing skills aren't all that so now i have somewhere to turn to when i get stuck. Brilliant!

Typographic Posters

Typographic Posters

Today, i found a really great link to Typographic Posters, i love their work and theres so many things that i can now look and, and feel i can achieve myself. This is defiantly going to be a resource i use in the future.

RR Donnelley - Work with the in-house creative team

After meeting the main office of Donnelley, i then went onto go and meet the in-house creative team. It was made up of 3 people, and i spent my time with the creative director Eleanor Broderick. She is really lovely, she took me through all the aspects of the corporate industry that they are in. They have a lot of jobs coming through because they re now the in-house team so they are taking on a lot of work. It's interesting because they are so organised, the software they use to keep them organised it 'StreamTime' - this enables them to log all the work they are doing, from the project title to all the information that runs along side, so that at any time anyone can access the projects and work on them. This also means that when they finish a project they can then pass on the invoice straight away and all the hours are clocked. 

What i found really interesting they still brainstorm in the same way that we do at college, essentially having crits and then going on with ideas.

I also had the opportunity to sit in a meeting with a client who runs the projects for ASDA, and all their branding. It was really interesting, because i think it has taken away the illusion of the people being really intimidating but they are just normal people. I also managed to work on a small brief for them, they wanted a new mail out to entice their new customers. They wanted something that could stand out and actually interact with, so i put some things together that they actually really liked and they said if they use them in the future they would let me know. 

Eleanor was really supportive of me, and interested in what i was doing and said that in the future i can always contact her for advice and experience.

Visit to RR Donnelley

Today, I visited RR Donnelley. RR Donnelley, is a company based around the globe that specialises in all things corporate. I managed to visit them through the use of my dad's contacts with his business. They are producing the annual reports for my dad's company. I wanted to go along because i wanted to see what corporate design was really like, and how the whole system functions. Throughout the day i managed to sit it on a client meeting, to see how they handled their clients and then i managed to go and meet up with their in-house creative team. RR Donelley outsources a lot of it's design work because mostly they are a typesetting company, focusing more on the information layout as opposed to the look. However, they have created an in-house design team to now take over from the outsourcing.

I met Terry O'shea who is the 'Composition manager - Typesetting' for the London Branch. He was a brilliant guy, who talked me through all their processes and was really helpful and insightful. They focus on doing a lot of bulk printing, and sending things out to a wide variety of countries and all of this has to be 'owed' by Terry. His job is immense. One of the main parts of his job is to sit with the clients and a designer, and go through the production of the work for the client. They then proceed to creating speck pages for the client and then the whole project runs on from there. 

Within the companies across the globe they use a unique set of software that works across the whole network so that at anyone time there is ALWAYS someone working. This means that huge jobs that need to be turned around in 1 night can be handed off to other countries, say in japan, if they need more help. They also break the projects down into specific areas so that different employees can work on different things. There is also a constant flow of communication which makes jobs move faster and ore efficiently. The typesetters within the UK office work on 3 shifts, over a 24 hour period. The shifts are broken down as such: 7am - 3pm, 3pm - 11 pm, 11pm - 7pm.

Learning about the processes within RR Donnelley was fascinating. I never thought about design on such a grand scale, at first it was quite hard to get my head around but after Terry took me through it and actually showed me the work that is done and the areas it's done with i managed to get a grasp. After going to this visit, I'm not sure working on a scale this big is really for me, i found it a littler overwhelming. However the level of control and organisation really helps the projects run smoothly and the work produced is fascinating. I intend to keep in contact with Terry and the design team because their wealth of knowledge and experience is like nothing else. They were such a friendly team, and I can see why people really enjoy working there.