OUGD502 - Studio Brief 03 - Life's A Pitch - Presentation & Feedback

The final presentation that was pitched to John, Simon and a group of the class can be seen below. This followed the plan, made in the previous blog post, which allowed us to refer to the bullet points made and ensure that every possible aspect was covered. The initial questions that were answered in the 'Brief & Response' blog post were read over also so that we would remember aspects such as cost, promotion, location and many more.

  

Overall, the presentation went very smoothly. Myself and Harrison took it in turns to speak about the proposal, which was great as we were able to show an even level of interest and determination behind the proposals. Our presentation was well within the time limit, which was great as we were able to take our time and put across each point as clearly as possible. Simon highlighted that it was fantastic that we had identified the fact that our poster project is purely digital at the moment, and that physically expanding it will allow us to develop by reaching a wider audience. This was great to hear as it is the main reason for why we want to make something more of Designbytwo.

Some of the feedback given was also very interesting to hear. John suggested that we could make things other than just posters, such as t-shirts, mugs, drink mats etc. He highlighted that some companies may be interested in buying a wider range of products off us, as a lot of shops stock items and posters with a similar look. This is one possibility that will definitely be considered when considering setting up a stall.

Furthermore, another person in the class suggested that we could consider bringing 3D objects into the exhibition, such as the banana from our banana poster or other objects seen in our posters. This is a great idea to fill a room if we do choose to hire out a space in Leeds. We have been talking about producing stickers in a similar way for a while, therefore, it would be a lot of fun to get in contact with 3D production companies. Financial aspects would have to be considered however.

Overall, we are aiming to complete the 100th poster very soon and then begin to think about these proposals. The online store could be launched first, as we already have interest in people buying prints; however, it is definitely worth considering launching an exhibition at the same time as a site, as both could be used together to reach more people and make Designbytwo more accessible to everyone. Receiving such positive feedback has definitely made me more driven to make this a reality. Once all the Level 05 work is handed in myself and Harrison are definitely going to have a think about how we could achieve both proposals.

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 03 - Life's A Pitch - Presentation Plan & Production

As I have handled all communication with Deuce and people interested in buying prints, Harrison was more comfortable for me to focus on communicating our idea and putting together the presentation plan. For this reason, I was in charge of structuring the presentation, and Harrison was in charge of visually putting it together.

To try and explain our proposal as clearly as possible I separated the presentation into 6 stages. Cue notes were made in bullet points to remind us of what we needed to verbally explain, whilst the text in speech will be placed on the slides for people to read as we go along. The plan made can be read below:

Introductory Page - 'A poster project that allows us to improve our skills and push our creativity in various software'.

• Explain what Designbytwo is, how long we have been doing it for and why we launched it.

Current Designbytwo Situation - 'We have gained quite a few followers on our Instagram account and have been asked about buying prints, from people in different areas of the World. This needs to be addressed and resolved'.

• Explain how we currently distribute our work and why we want to expand on this to reach a wider audience and take the focus away from being just digital.

Online Store Proposal - 'To make the ordering of physical prints more accessible to customers that live in different countries, an online store would make the process clearer and easier. This way, we could bring some of our older posters into the spotlight again, with different section'.

• Talk about the first main proposal and why we want to launch an online store. Considerations such as cost and web design ability will be explained.

Set-up Stall/Exhibition Proposal - 'Our second plan is to set up a small stall or exhibition in Leeds to increase the exposure of our posters and try to make a profit that will allow further projects to be developed and funded'.

• Talk about where we would like to create an exhibition/stall with cost considerations and a rough time-scale.

Stay Local - 'We have gained quite a few followers on our Instagram account and have been asked about buying prints, from people in different areas of the World. This needs to be resolved'.

• Whilst we want to stay local in terms of the exhibition we need to consider followers that aren't from Leeds. Promotion on social media would be key in attracting an audience from various places - not just Leeds followers.

End Page - Gif image of the posters we have created to date.

After presenting these sections to Harrison he visually created a presentation layout that could be used for each page. The introduction page can be seen below. We spent a few nights rehearsing the presentation to ensure that it was within the 10 minute requirement. After we were confident with the content and thought that the presentation was as professional as possible we were ready to go ahead with proposing our idea.

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 03 - Life's A Pitch - Brief & Response

Brief - For this brief, I have been asked to consider the following points:

• What skills and services do you have to offer individually and as a group?
• Who is your target market?
• What form will your showcase take?
• What are your costs, charges and financial considerations?
• How will you structure your collective?
• Who will be responsible for what?
• How will you promote your showcase? To who? Using what media?
• Is it set in a physical location? Then where?
• How will you manage communication through the group?

Response - As a starting point, I wanted to consider who I want to work with the most through Summer and next year. Whilst I have worked with Harrison on quite a few projects this year, I feel that we share very similar interests in terms of our practice style and goals. As we have been running Designbytwo for a few months now and have gained quite a following on Instagram through creating almost 100 posters, we would like to push the project even further to physically make something substantial come from the project. Producing the Deuce report for PPP was one example of how the poster project has had an impact in the real world. Therefore, it'd be great to use the posters in some way to expand our exposure/make a potential profit.

Before approaching the presentation, I chose to answer the questions set. These will help when considering an idea for Designbytwo.

What skills and services do you have to offer individually and as a group?

Personally, my skills lie in editorial design and branding, whereas Harrison is stronger at 3D rendering and illustrations. As a collective, we are very confident at producing posters, publications, 3D work, completing branding jobs and other graphic-design related areas. Whilst we are not so interested in becoming a duo studio, it is a potential possibility that could work. As Designbytwo, we essentially produce regular posters for people to like. We have had quite a bit of interest in terms of people wanting to buy the posters, and have sold a few one-offs before. Therefore, as a collective, we would like to use the posters we have created and physically produce them to sell online, at a pop up store or an exhibition.

Who is your target market?

Other than those that like our Designbytwo Instagram, our potential target market is quite broad. Many people like to have posters in their rooms, therefore the market could essentially be any age range; however, we would like to mainly target young creatives, designers and artists around Leeds.

What form will your showcase take?

An online website would be great, so that anyone can potentially order our prints. A lot of our followers are from various countries outside the UK, therefore it would definitely be worth doing to ensure that all our followers have the opportunity to buy prints. Alongside this, we would like to either exhibit our work at a stall in Leeds or in a public space. This would be to exhibit the posters made this year, increase exposure and sell some prints.

What are your costs, charges and financial considerations?

With the online website, we already own a domain and have hosting. We may have to pay for an eCommerce service; however, we will not need to pay a web designer, as we can make a simple site in Adobe Muse Responsive. As for producing the prints, we would use the printing facilities at Uni, which are fairly cheap to produce in relation to what we would charge to buy prints. If we put on an exhibition we may have to do a fundraiser/invest quite a bit of our own money into getting a lot of prints made. This could be risky if the posters do not sell; however, we would have to ensure that the prints are sold at a reasonable price to shift the posters printed.

How will you structure your collective?

We would both take even roles in the project and contribute equally. As we have been doing the poster projects for months and various other briefs, we have a good understanding of working together.

Who will be responsible for what?

Once again, both take equal roles. As there is only two of us, it is much easier to keep an even workload and ensure we are both doing enough individually.

How will you promote your showcase? To who? Using what media?

1) Instagram - We will put up various Instagram stories and Instagram posts to appeal to the audience we have on the platform.

2) Behance - As Harrison's Behance project of his Designbytwo posters gained a very significant amount of exposure, we will put up a joint project with images of the online store/pop-up store/exhibition and dates (this will be ahead of the launch). My Behance has some exposure too, therefore we will try to pull both our audiences.

3) Leaflets - Once we have a date confirmed for an exhibition/pop-up stall and a live site, we will be able to promote the event in person throughout Leeds, LCA and to various friends through printed leaflets. This will aim to aware people of the project and bring more exposure to the launch.

4) Social Media - Both myself and Harrison use Facebook and Twitter a lot. Animated GIFs and other methods to catch people's attention will be used. As well as this, we will invite everyone we know to a Facebook event for the launch of the set-up-stall/exhibition, and will use online forums such as Reddit, which helped get a large amount of interest in Harrison's Designbytwo Behance project.

Is it set in a physical location? When? Where?

For the set-up store we would like the location to be in Leeds. The print fair next year would be a great opportunity to showcase our posters. Amber works heavily with this, therefore we could see if there is a chance to display our work. Other than this, we could set up a store in Leeds city centre and in LCA. Both would definitely require some financial consideration. As for an exhibition, we could contact various spaces in Leeds, such as Colours May Vary, The Old Red Bus Station, The Art Gallery and many more. We could even ask LCA if we could exhibit in the Uni gallery, as this would save a ton of money. The timing of the exhibition would have to be determined on when spaces are free; however, we would roughly like to do this in 2018 so that we can get everything fully organised, working and promoted as well as possible.

How will you manage communication through the group?

As there are only two of us, and we live together this year and next, we can easily communicate in person and on social media.

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 01 - Live Brief: The Effect

The designbytwo poster project was picked up on by a Leeds University student, who is putting on a play at the Alec Clegg Studio. He got in contact with me through Facebook and attached a small brief with some of our posters as references for the style of outcomes he would like. The initial message can be seen below.

He essentially asked for a blue 3-D brain to be split, or melted, on a black background. As myself and Harrison have been developing our Cinema 4D skills, we initially tried to produce a poster with a 3D brain model. Unfortunately, all the free available models online are not detailed enough and do not render very well. Instead, I went away and tried to consider a concept more than anything.

The main concept that I came up with was to create a multitude of posters, rather than just one. As the play is about a clinical drugs trial for an anti-depressant, it seemed appropriate to include some sort of aspect to do with mental health in the posters. As people with mental health suffer in different ways, I produced a pixelating, fragmenting GIF, that attempts to visually highlight how people's brains can be affected in different ways when having anti-depressants. The initial GIF poster produced can be seen below. The glitches were made by using an online JPEG code alterer.

Daniel and the Director really liked the overall aesthetic and said that it was exactly what they were after. As they can only use GIFs online, they asked to use just one of the fragmented brain posters for the overall identity. The chosen poster can be seen below.

As they were very happy with the branding made so far, I was further asked to produce a set of profile pictures for the cast and team. I was given complete creative freedom, but was asked to visually link them to the brain identity in some way. By taking a similar glitchy GIF approach, I produced a set of animated GIFs that show the two sides of mental illness. The blue overlay and same typography was used to link these sets of GIFs to the poster.

The team loved the GIFs and all used them as their profile pictures. Lydia's post reached over 100 likes, which is great exposure, not only for the play, but for my graphic design work too. I was credited in all descriptions - therefore, if others are interested the design work made they can simply contact me on Facebook.

Whilst this was an unpaid job, it was a great chance to gain some exposure and work on something that will be open to the general public. As the producer got in touch through merely seeing mine and Harrison's Instagram project, it highlights how important social media really is in the design industry, and how clients can come from the work presented online. This project did take quite a lot of time to complete, and was quite difficult to juggle with university work. In the future, I am going to set an hourly fee before accepting a task, as this will make it much clearer to the client about how long the design process takes.

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 01 - Trip To Berlin

The recent trip to Berlin gave me a chance to visit Germany for the first time and experience the culture and city properly. Overall, I personally did not find the city as lively as I thought it would have been. Whilst this may have been because we were only there for a few days I felt as though it was very spread out and open, and much less busy than London, which I do miss. Despite this, the landmarks, local shops, restaurants and bars were great and it was fantastic to experience a different culture for a short amount of time. I don't think that I would want to work out in Berlin, despite the design scene being very interesting; I much prefer Leeds and London as cities.

Two of the main things that inspired me and really benefitted me on the trip were meeting a creative at M&CSaatchi and going to EPS51. Some of the points noted from both visits can be read below.



Myself and Elliott were lucky enough to talk with Tim Alexander - a creative at M&CSaatchi Berlin. Their offices were only a 10 minute walk from the hostel, and we were able to talk with him for a solid hour or so. It was great to have quite a laid back chat about his job, how he managed to get into the industry and more. One question that we asked was how he managed to get an internship after leaving Uni. His response was:

'Do you have LinkedIn? If so a shit load of stalking and trying to connect with creative directors through there, sending over your portfolio and a cover letter.'

I am going to sign up to Linkedin fairly soon as have repeatedly heard from many graphic designers that it is crucial in industry for making, and maintaining, contacts. Tim agreed that this, alongside increasing Behance exposure, will definitely help after graduating.

We also asked about portfolios, and what the best way should be for us to show our work. He responded:

'Be yourself, talk the way you would approach someone in real life within your portfolio such as slang words etc. but keep it concise, no more than about 25 pages within a PDF of work because it can get too much.'

This Summer, I am going to try and put together a portfolio that can be sent out to design studios. I will be able to build on this as I progress in Level 06, and will use the suggestions Tim made.

A few of the other points Tim made were that:

'Good work gets killed all the time'

'As a creative person you can always fix something, you can always improve it, you can make it better, always. But there's such a thing called time and that's a pain in the ass sometimes.'

'How you sell yourself is also really important.'

During the chat I was able to talk with Tim about my CoP practical ideas, and he gave me some pieces of inspiration that I should look at. The meeting was very relaxed and it was really interesting to hear how he had gone from living in the UK to Berlin. Whilst the city was not one of my favourite cities visited so far, I would like to consider possibly working abroad in the future.

Going to EPS51 studio was my favourite part of the trip, purely because their approach to editorial design is fascinating. As I want to pursue editorial design and branding in Level 06, it was really eye-opening to see some physical work of a design studio based outside the UK. What struck me most is the typefaces used in their publications and posters, and how each outcomes uses a different typeface. Ben Wittner and Sascha Thoma, the founders, both made points that, as a designer, you should try to vary your aesthetic from project to project, as using the same visual style can become boring and repetitive. This is one point that has inspired me to start looking into different type foundries, and to find a variety of new typefaces that I could use in future projects. I have been using DIN Pro quite a lot in recent projects, therefore am going to try and venture away from using it too often.



Whilst their work is very heavily typography inspired, EPS51 do a lot of cultural work. Another point that they raised is that, as a designer, it is important to make a decision between taking on jobs for enjoyment or jobs for profit. They said that they much rather take on culturally enjoyable jobs than higher paying jobs that they would not enjoy. In a sense, this shows in the work that they have produced - all the publications and prints made follow a consistent cultural theme that, I think, distinguishes EPS51 from other design studios. Their careful use of different languages in editorial pieces is incredible and is definitely one aspect of design that I have not even considered exploring before. I am definitely going to think about what type of jobs I would like to work on in the future and really need to research further into the opinions of some of the studios I would like to work with.

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 02 - Deuce Studios Report: Complete Digital Publication

As the brief requires, the final report was uploaded to Issuu online. The posterzine, which Harrison made, cannot be seen, as this would be loosely inserted into the publication; however, the entire report with the 500-word report in can be seen below.



Overall, whilst it is still quite early to say, I feel that we have produced a publication that will be liked by Deuce. The style is very much like theirs - clean, modern and fun - therefore they should find it to be fairly interesting. Whilst the brief does not state that we have to physically produce the report, we are going to try and produce a copy to send to Deuce and ask to possibly work for/with them on any live briefs in Summer.