PPP End of Module Evaluation

My Approach

Compared to last year, I’ve made more of an effort with PPP this year and I think this has really paid of in terms of how I understand where I’m at as a designer. I’ve made more of an effort to incorporate content from my other modules into PPP on my blog, and being constantly aware of being on the watch for things to post to my PPP blog has made me more aware of even the little steps forward I’ve made this year. Because of this PPP has been more at the forefront of my mind than last year, which has resulted in a much stronger blog, reflecting how much more I’ve gained from the module this year than last year as a person and as a designer. I feel much more comfortable on the course because of this.

Strengths

That I decided that I didn’t need a website has emphasised to me the importance of developing a portfolio next year, as I don’t currently have much work that I’d be happy to show at an interview. This element of PPP has been particularly useful to me as I now know that I need to spend more time working on a variety of coherent outcomes to each brief.

My work still isn’t focussed enough for me to decide where I want to be in and what I want to do, but the process of having to think about it currently to create personal branding and a web presence is valuable experience for when I need to do it conclusively, which will hopefully be at some point next year.

Weaknesses

Despite the reasonable amount of research I’ve done into different design studios, my interaction with the majority of them has been, limited only to a very brief e-mail conversation and a 10 minute phone call. Having said that, even this is a step forward from last year. I believe this to be a confidence issue more than anything else, which is something that is slowly improving.

Unfortunately I’ve not managed to narrow down the field of my work to a specific area to develop a speciality that I either excel in or particularly enjoy. That said, I’m enjoying the course in general more this year, which can only be good.

Conversation With Jonathan Phillips of Square One Design

I visited Square One design for a week a couple of years ago. I'd managed to keep hold of the business card given to me by Jonathan, the family friend who works there.

By ringing the phone number that was direct on the business card I avoided any confusion that my have arisen by ringing the studio direct, as I knew I'd be able to get straight through to Jonathan, at the same time I knew I wouldn't have to run the risk of getting lost in his e-mail box. I waited specifically until about quarter to five in the afternoon to ring, as I knew he'd be coming to the end of the work day so probably wouldn't be as busy as at any other time during the day.

Whilst we didn't agree specific dates today, he said that I'd be able to do come in towards the end of August, which is perfect because it'll be fresh in my mind by the time I return to uni next year. I've given him the dates when I'm unavailable the summer and he's going to get back to me at some point this week.

Based on what dates we agree I will try and get in contact with Vivid design and see if they'd be willing to allow me to come in for a week or two as well.

End of Year Presentation

Below is my presentation for Brief 3 as well as some commentary with an idea of what I hope to say to accompany each slide when it comes to delivering it.



Slide 1: To hold the place while I compose myself and let any noise quiet down.

Slide 2: Talking about how my strengths and weaknesses now are still the same as they were when I started the course, but I can now consider logic to to be a weakness in some situations and a lack of diversity to be a strength in some situations.

Slide 3: Images I put on my first post in PPP last year of design that interested me then that doesn't particularly interest me now as the top one is more advertising/photography and the bottom one is is hand-rendered type, which I see no appeal in doing whatsoever.

Slide 4: My personal branding reflects my approach to design in that I don't take it too seriously in how I approach it, and try to keep it simple.

Slide 5: I looked at a few studios that I think have similar approaches to design as I do and found Bleed and N&S as my favourite two, although they had the drawbacks of being located in Norway and Finland.

Slide 6: Around the time I was looking at Bleed and N&S I was contacted by Ochre Media through my blog. They were impressed with my blogging and asked me if I'd like to write a post on their blog in order to help my exposure. I didn't feel I was in a knowledgable enough position to contribute, and I thought starting out my networking with a company based in India wasn't the best way for me to start out.

Slide 7: Square One is a design agency in Sheffield that a family friend works for, they tend to do work for local organisations and companies. I've organised to go in and do a work placement with them for a couple a weeks late this summer.

Slide 8: Vivid design is another Sheffield-based agency. They primarily work on web-based projects and marketing campaigns. If I managed to organise some work with them, I feel like this would be a complementary work placement to Square One because of the variety of work that the companies do between them.

Slides 9 & 10: The projects I've enjoyed working on most this year have been ones where I've either been working with other people. This has surprised me because I don't normally enjoy group projects because of the compromise that it involves. This is a sign of me becoming more open-minded as a person, which is important as I've always been quite a stubborn person.

Slide 11: Over summer I'll be doing a work placement with Square One and hopefully with Vivid. I'm also going to try and do a lot of first-hand research for my dissertation, as I've really enjoyed working on my essay this year and want this positive attitude to carry through naturally to my dissertation. I've started reading the Antichrist by Nietzsche for a brief in OUGD505 and find his thoughts really interesting, so I want to read some of his books over Summer to get a more thorough knowledge of his thoughts. Next year I primarily want to continue enjoying the course whilst being more ambitious in my projects and develop a portfolio.

Slide 12: Slide to be shown after I'm finished if anyone has any questions.

Operation Black Vote - Saatchi & Saatchi

Whilst looking through some recent posts on Creative Reviews blog page I found this post about an advertising campaign trying to encourage black an ethnic minority people to vote in the upcoming general election.

 

 

This campaign initially grabbed my attention because Sol Campbell (top left) is involved in it. The ex-Arsenal and Tottenham footballer played 73 times for England, and in March 2014 he claimed he would've been the England captain for more than 10 years if he was white, see this article by The Independent.

Clearly Campbell is using his position as a (somewhat) well-known public figure to try and raise awareness of and tackle racism, which is good and necessary, especially seeing some of the comments on The Independent's article.

Saatchi & Saatchi did the above campaign for Operation Black Vote, which is an organisation that aims to get black and ethnic minority people to vote in the general election. A campaign about this topic needed to be careful because of social sensitivities about race, and I really feel this campaign failed to be this.

Some of the comments in the Creative Review article suggest that this was campaign was intended to be controversial and "edgy" to get public attention, which I can only assume is the case, and because of this I feel that what the campaign was saying is completely overlooked. Using the term "coloured" is now politically incorrect (as explained by the BBC here), so I find it particularly strange how the world "colour" is used, and it is an indication of how little attention and care Saatchi & Saatchi paid to the campaign.

I also find the inconsistencies in the imagery odd. The photo of Sol Campbell is by far the most striking of the four, but the one of Tinie Tempah is so completely different, if you took it out of the context of the campaign, you wouldn't necessarily know that the image was produced for a campaign about race.

One commenter said this; 

'Can you imagine if white people blacked up with the same text, ie, taking the white out of Britain, they would be branded racist. Hypocritical advertising campaign that just encourages a colour divide. An us and them campaign, how divisive. Everyone with the right to vote should do so if they wish, people of all colours and genders have fought for rights/votes on behalf of us all, so those who don't vote should always be encouraged, but not in this way. Shameful and racist.'

I completely agree with them. 

I think if large professional advertising companies are producing adverts as ill-thought through as this, then there's plenty of room in the design industry for me somewhere.

Web Presence (Blog, Behance, and Website Proposal)

After Danny was talking to us about looking at peoples Behance projects as a guide to how we could be putting together our design boards and what should be put on them.

At the moment I don't think I have enough work that I would consider worthy of being put in a portfolio on the merits of the final outcome alone to merit having a website of my own, and having a Behance page seems like a good way for me to display my work as it will also display the merits of my thought process. My Behance page can be found here.

Given that I was contacted a while back through my blog, I deemed it necessary to personalise it slightly so it says a bit more about me. The fish at the top of the blog have been there for a while, but I changed the colours so they matched the colour scheme for the rest of the blog, which just shows an extra bit of thought. 

A portfolio website of my own would have to be simple and easy to navigate, as well as having a clear way of displaying my process. Reducing the site to 4 pages that all link to each other keeps the site simple, and having each page fit the screen size, navigation is simple as scrolling isn't needed. The 4 pages would be:

• Home (Displaying my work)
• About Me
• Blog (Displaying selected posts from my uni blogs)
• Contact Me

Development of Website Proposal

I tried using a golden ratio grid like in my personal branding, but found that this wasn't a very practical approach to take for developing a website grid that has some flexibility. As a second choice I decided to use a modular grid based around a 12x12 central area for content, which I decided on because of how it's easily divisible into 2, 3, 4, and 6 columns and rows, which allows for a lot of flexibility. After allowing for a border and menu bar at the top, the full grid will be 14x15.

The colours of the border are taken from the vector of the fish used in my printed personal branding, although I decided to use Helvetica rather than Gotham because I don't like how Gotham looks at small sizes on screen.

Home

Examples of my work fit within the 12x12 grid, with gaps appearing where the photo's don't fit. Each of the projects has a name and the reason for its creation, overlaid onto it along with my logo as a brief explanation of the project as well as being a deterrent from it being used without permission. Clicking on any of the images would bring it up larger in a pop-out. The circles at the bottom of the page show what section of work is currently being viewed, when my portfolio increases to the point where I'd need/want more than one page, it would automatically scroll through the work, with the highlighted circle changing accordingly. The page is called 'Home' rather than 'Work' because it helps SEO.

My Blog

A live version of my design practice blog will be embedded into the website for easy access to see what I've been doing recently. This allows for the user to see the development process and research I undertake. A link for the full blog is in bold in the text.

About Me

A brief explanation of my interests outside of graphic design as well as my route into it. A more suitable photo would be used if I had one, this one would be more temporary, but it does reflect the relaxed nature of my attitude towards design, reflected in the description.

Contact Me

A photo of my business card immediately suggests I'm available to do payed work, but a short sentence of writing suggests that's not the be-all and end-all of why I would want to be contacted, and comes across a bit friendlier than just leaving an e-mail address.

Production of Personal Branding

Over the past few weeks I've been ignoring PPP because of the Responsive deadline and working on my COP essay, so I thought the best way to get back into PPP was to produce my personal branding.

I bought some acetate to print the fish onto. Whilst there were no issues with it going through the printer or anything like that, I found that the colour printed translucent onto the acetate, which somewhat compromises the effect I wanted. If I'd been more forward thinking with this and known this would happen in advance, I could've altered the vectors and screen printed them onto the acetate to get a better result. Another problem I had with the printing was that the lighter text didn't come out very well, which isn't an issue I've ever had before.

I also found that the business cards were flimsier than I wanted them to be, although retrospectively this was inevitable because of how thin the border around the acetate is.

When I was doing the printing I didn't have access to an A2 printer, which meant that I had to assemble the folder part by part. I do quite like the hand-made feel this gives it, as it goes with the theme of not being too serious and a bit fun.

Despite these issues, my branding definitely represents me well through it's lack of seriousness and hand-made imperfections. 

My Thoughts on the First Things First Manifesto

When I wrote about Square One design the other day I mentioned that they'd done lots of work that is encouraged by the First Things First Manifesto but that I wasn't particularly bothered about that. I think this because I think the First Things First Manifesto is far too idealistic and no longer relevant.

Towards the beginning of the year in COP we had a studio task to write a piece of triangulated writing about the First Things Manifesto with reference to an example of Graphic Design as an exercise to help our academic writing.

I personally feel that it's far too idealistic to say that you shouldn't do work for certain types of companies or organisations, as many people, and not just designers, aren't in a position where they can be turning down work, purely for financial reasons.

Given the established nature of the some of the signatories of the 2000 manifesto such as Erik Spiekermann, Lucienne Roberts, Ellen Lupton, Rick Poynor, and of course Ken Garland himself, make it so idealistic in my eyes. I wonder how many of the signatories would want to sign it had they just finished a degree and been looking for work.

With this said, the last manifesto was published in 2000, a time which I can barely remember. Given the financial difficulties that western economies have gone through in years since then, reading and understanding the manifesto now must be taken with a pinch of salt because of the social change that's occurred since then.

In summary, at this moment in time I feel like I have no obligation or even duty to pay any attention to the manifesto because feeling like I have a moral existence within my professional line of work is useless if it results in their being no professional line of work. In 10-15 years time if I've established myself in a career, then that is when the First Things First Manifesto becomes important to me.