Screen based communication (2)- new unit

Had the first flash session with Leigh on Friday. He gave us some great advice on creating our websites, and that it wasn’t necessary to use Dreamweaver and HTML. Leigh also explained that it wasn’t necessary to use web safe colours as 95% of computer monitors can now show the entire colour palette; this is massive advantage as the colours I wanted to use were not web safe.

We were advised by Leigh to create our website in Photoshop or Illustrator and then import each page and all its separate layers into Flash Catalyst (a new piece of software which will be in CS5; can be downloaded for free on the adobe website). Flash Catalyst can be used to create our entire website. Leigh explained how we would also be able to use any typeface within our website as Adobe have sold the rights/software to search engines like Google and Yahoo which can read text on any website, even if its in Flash; we don’t need Meta tags!

People asked if this was cheating or going the wrong way about creating our websites; Leigh explained that in industry a designer does not create an entire website by there self. There are web designers who create the layout and make the site aesthetically pleasing; then there are the coders, who create all the code for the website and actually make it work. I know for a fact that I would never want to become a coder.

By Thursday we have to have put together a working site map, showing forwards and backwards steps and our initial design for our entire website, that includes home page, contact page, about page etc.

I feel as though a massive weight has been taken off my shoulders after Leigh’s Flash session. The Dreamweaver sessions we have been having with Neil are good and I’ve understood them, but for the work and effort you put in the results aren’t anywhere near that of Flash catalyst. I don’t want to spend days trying understand and learn Dreamweaver and code to a high standard, when I could be using that time to improve the appearance of my overall website.

Great websites:

lynda.com

960.gs

noupe.com

Brand Identity Complete

Overall, I felt this section of the unit was the trickiest. In a way I felt a pulled the short straw with George Eliot, the information and history on her was quite limited, and that of which I did manage to find was of some age. I tried reading her novels to get a feel for her personality, but I struggled with this as I'm not the strongest of reader and her writing is pretty intense.

Saying this I have finally managed to create a business identity for George Eliot and have had to deal with it. I don't personally feel branding is one of my strengths and haven't particularly enjoyed this part of the unit.

Here are my final designs portraying what I feel suits Mary Anne Evans' (George Eliot) style if she were to have her own business identity in the present day:

Letter Head

Business Card

Communicating Ideas Complete

Finished my communicating ideas brief on Jeff Hawkins today, create a newspaper spread. I originally found choosing a video from TED.com quite difficult as they were in-depth videos with some references I didn't understand, such as scientific meanings etc.

I did eventually decide to go with Jeff Hawkins, who created and found Palm Computing and eventually went on to study neuroscience full time. The video on TED.com talks about how brain science will one day change computing. My brief was to create a means of advertisement for TED.com through this video in an original way.

I began my research looking into puzzles and crossword books. Hawkins talks a lot about how how the brain breaks things down into puzzles and if somethings not right it automatically tries to correct it. I eventually came up with the idea of having a puzzle type advertisement in the gaming/puzzle section of a newspaper. By placing the ad here I would target the correct demograph; people who enjoy puzzles and mind games.

Flickr link to my final piece - Final spread

To start with I wanted this piece of design to be challenging to the reader. "How much can you predict?" is asking the reader can they do the dot to dot and rearrange the brain and football? Thats the simple bit; the reader then reads "intelligence and perdciontn are gained through mmorey". This sentence is deliberately spelt wrong, it gets across Hawkins' message that the brain is continuously deciphering puzzles, even it is a simple spelling mistake (deliberate mistake). My aim was to gain the readers interest, thus linking to the video and further TED.com.

New From Old Complete!

Finished my final paper marquette today. I had it printed on the professional Epson printer at Uni, it's well worth paying the price for high quality. The finish was really nice, especially on the quality card I used.

I created a fully working template in illustrator for the difficult shaped tin (I had previously tested the template with cheap paper before hand, to make sure the marquette would work correctly).

Actually making the marquette was very fiddly and initially I put on the wrong way using double-sided sticky tape! I thought I had completely ruined it, until I was told I could undo it with patients! I ended up breathing on the tape as to warm up the glue; bit weird but it worked in the end! I then triple checked I was fitting the side to the base correctly!

I am really pleased with the final outcome of my rebrand, even though I have changed the design four times! It was worth it in the end though, I'm really pleased with the result!

Template

Final pie

D&AD competition choice

Got together with Oli yesterday to discuss which D&AD brief we were going to choose. We narrowed down three final choices:

• The Body Shop- Create an unconventional brand campaign for the body shop to reinstate its position as the original pioneer of ethical beauty.
• Metro Live- Create a transport advertising poster campaign and strapline that cuts through the visual noise of the everyday commute to promote metro newspapers.
• Quaker Oats Live - Create packaging for Quaker's new "Chilled Creamy Oats" product for young women looking for a truly delicious healthy snack.

We initially both wanted to go for the Metro brief; but after breaking the tasks down and getting an understanding for the brief we crossed it off the list. We didn't want to just dive straight into a brief without any consideration. We both agreed that the Metro live wouldn't have suited our style and that we wanted something slightly more interesting.

Quaker Oats, was a bit more interesting, plus we both had the added bonus of just finishing creating packaging design rebrands for our New From Old Unit.

But after breaking each of the three projects down, we finally went for The Body shop. We were drawn straight into this project after just 5 minutes of research. There is a great deal of history behind the body shop and the brief definitely suited both our styles!

The Body shop has been involved in a lot of charitable campaigns in the past such as sex trafficking, violence in the home and HIV and AIDS. They have very strong opinions on such situations, and have had ever since the opening in the 70's.

From my initial research into past brand campaigns at the body shop, I haven't found anything of great interest and I wasn't impressed. A perfect example of this is the obese type barbie doll on a lounge chair! Really not a fan at all. It's as if the body shop are trying to be someone they aren't (Amnesty?!).

A odd fact about the body shop is that they don't advertise on a large scale; in fact very small actually, only in the shop windows, their goods lorries and plastic bags. I'm yet to find out why this is!??