OUGD502 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | BAXTER AND BAILEY

After looking at a few different studios, I found Baxter and Bailey.

http://www.baxterandbailey.co.uk/

Their work really stood out to me, and represented a similar visual style to my own. Their design resolutions seem to be based around concept. Two projects that they worked on particularly caught my eye, the Sabre identity and the Little Green Pig identity.

The Little Green Pig is a space for young writers, and I really liked how they used the quotation marks to look like a pigs nose. 

The Sabre identity is particularly similar to the style I like to work in, colourful and vector.

I decided to contact Matt Baxter, who is the Creative Director at Baxter and Bailey. Matt has written for Design Week and The Drum and has judged design awards for D&AD and Design Week. With an interest in design education, he’s given talks at LCC, the University of Northumbria and Middlesex University and run portfolio surgeries for D&AD Newblood.

I emailed him these questions: 

• Our first project of the year was to create a leaflet explaining -the- design process, and it became apparent that everyone has their own unique process. Where do you start when receiving a new brief? What do you feel is the most important stage? 
• What made you want to become a designer? Was it an ambition from a young age?
• Looking on your website, the Sabre identity you produced really caught my eye. What was your inspiration behind it? 
• Do you think having a distinguishable style, or being a flexible designer has the advantage?
• What advice would you give your younger self as you were starting out in industry? 
• At the end of this interview, I must produce a creative report based on your answers (which could be done in any way I want). How would you go about this? 

OUGD502 | STUDY TASK 1 | BUSINESS TYPES

Moving forward with our business, we must first decide what type of business we're going to be. There are 4 main types of business that we think would be suitable for us, which are:

- Limited Company
- Limited Liability Company
- Ordinary Business Partnership
- Unincorporated Association

As we're working on this as a team, I will be looking into an Unincorporated Association business, and seeing if this will fit our ideas.

Unincorporated Association

The definition of an Unincorporated Association from http://www.netlawman.co.uk/ia/unincorporated-associations is:

"An unincorporated association is an organisation that arises when two or more people come together for a particular purpose but decide not to use a formal structure like a company."

Pros:

• Can be set up quickly and cheaply (no setting up fees unless you involve a solicitor) 
• Cheap and relatively easy to run - no need to notify changes in office bearers to any public register 
• Offers a democratic structure with reasonably flexible procedures 
• If your group’s aims and purposes are considered ‘charitable’ (as defined by law) you can apply to the Charity Commission to be registered as a charity

Cons: 

• The group cannot hold property or enter into contracts in its own name 
• Members may be held personally liable for the organisations debts

This structure is ideal for small groups with a membership, short-term goals, low incomes, and which do not intend to employ staff or acquire property. Unincorporated organisations can take different forms such as Charitable Trusts, Friendly societies, registered charities, which are not registered as companies, and unregistered voluntary and community.

OUGD502 | STUDY TASK 1 | PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT

We must all sign a partnership agreement to ensure we take equal responsibility for the project. We will all own 25% of the company, which was a suitable amount if we're all doing the same amount of work. 

I feel this is a suitable way to ensure everyone does their fair share of work, and it makes the process seem much more realistic. 

OUGD502 | STUDY TASK 1 | COVET

Taking Care of Business is a large study task of the PPP 2 module. My group consists of 4 well rounded designers who all enjoy similar fields of graphic design. Me, Lo, Jack and Rhys are all good friends outside of university, so we thought we could work together on a project well.

For this task, we need to construct a business plan or proposal for a creative design studio and present our ideas to the rest of the group. We must consider what skills we have to offer, our general interests as a group, our target market, our competition, costs, structure of the studio, who is responsible for what and how we will promote our services.

Deliverables:

- 10 minute presentation
- Appropriate visual material to support the presentation
- Evidence of research and development of your presentation and visual material should be posted to the PPP blog.

To succeed in this brief, we all need to ensure we work effectively together and make sure everyone is happy with the decision making process. We need to split the work fairly and ensure we all stick to a schedule we're all happy with. I feel that this project is very useful and not many other people have a chance at coming up with a creative business proposal. Although I've never had this opportunity before, I think it will be a great way to learn about how a creative business is structured and how to work together with a team effectively.

Once we were given the brief and settled into our group, it was time to begin thinking of a name and a business idea. We found it difficult at the start, but through the power of random word generators and song names, we settled on the name Covet.

covet verb

yearn to possess (something, especially something belonging to another).

We thought this word was fitting to a design company, as clients may see work we've created and want some for themselves. 

OUGD502 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | DREAM LIST

My dreams for the future are:

- To be financially stable and have a nice house

- To have my own studio space

- To have a personal chef that will bring me tomato and mascarpone pasta at any time

- To visit every continent

- To own a Shiba Inu

OUGD502 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | RESEARCH

To begin my project, I need to research into some designers that really appeal to me and have a similar style to what I want to progress onto.

Tyler Spangler:

http://tylerspangler.com/
Tyler Spangler is a Californian artist that creates various posters and iconic imagery. His work is extremely eye catching and has its own signature style.

His work is very colourful and resembles a postmodern aesthetic. He seems to use a lot of vector artwork which is similar to my own style. It would be interesting to interview him, but as I want to send something hand made, it would be expensive and time consuming to contact someone in America. 

Kate Moross: 

http://www.katemoross.com/

Kate Moross is a UK based designer. Her work is well known within the industry and she has a varied portfolio. Again, she looks to use a lot of vector artwork which is something I am confident in. 

Her work is something I'd admired for quite a few years, so I think sending her something would be worth it, because you never know if they'll reply or not! She focuses heavily on typography and bright, bold colours, and this is something I'd like to enhance within my own practice.

Spin Studio

http://spin.co.uk/work/all-work
Spin studio is a studio that I've only heard about recently, as they featured in the Computer Arts top 30 UK design studios, though looking through their online portfolio I recognise a lot of their work. They have a very sleek style, but are also quite experimental and like to push boundaries.

Duo

http://designedbyduo.co.uk/projects/
Duo are a Leeds based design company that specialise in branding. There's only two members of the company, so they are quite small scale. Branding isn't something I've done a lot of, and I'd like to possibly look into more. It would be a good opportunity for me to contact Duo, as I  can possibly meet them face-to-face as they are extremely local.

Glorious Creative

http://www.gloriouscreative.co.uk/work/

Glorious Creative are a design studio based in Manchester. They create a lot of brand identities and focus a lot on re-brands. Looking at their portfolio, they undertake large projects with lots of various collateral. They recently collaborated with The Tate to create the signage and information for the exhibition. I like this studio as they're very professional and create sleek looking work for big clients, and I'd be interested in talking to them and finding out about their design process.

OUGD502 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | INTRODUCTION

This brief is quite exciting, as it entails contact with real working professionals. We should approach designers and ask them for an interview, and create a report based off what they have said. The report can be produced in whatever way we like - which gives us a lot of freedom to experiment!

I'd like to research into some small studios, but also try my luck with some bigger designers. I'd like to send them something hand made and more unique to give myself a presence, rather than just sending them an email that they may not read. 

I'm looking forward to starting this project and seeing what the end result is!

OUGD502 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | BRING ME THE HORIZON

Over the summer, many people including myself spotted this poster around cities and densely populated areas:

Not many people knew what it was for, and it got people talking. Eventually it was revealed to be the album artwork for the new Bring Me The Horizon album. The symbol they used is so iconic, and very different to their other album artwork:

I think this way of promoting something is quite risky, but this worked very well. The whole campaign was very cryptic and got people talking about what it could be about. Overall I think this campaign was a success, and I really like their new approach!

OUGD502 | STUDY TASK 1

The summer period was quite relaxing for me. I spent a lot of time with my friends and enhancing my Wii U skills. One of the biggest changes to my life this summer was that I now have a job! I work for Polly Vadasz in first year graphic design, who owns an online shop. We collaborated earlier in the year on a cactus phone case, and when we found out she was coming to LCA, we decided to team up permanently.

Since Polly lives in Surrey and I live in Lancashire, I worked remotely for a few months on some new designs and processing orders from the shop. We are now currently working on re-launching the shop, as it's been closed since the start of September to prepare us both for moving back to Leeds. We have our own studio located in Leeds, and are in the process of getting everything ready for when we open.

A more relaxing part of my summer was spending 4 days in Amesterdam with my boyfriend. Experiencing a new city and country is always exciting, and consciously looking for examples of type for my summer project was a really cool way of immersing myself in the graphic culture.

I also teamed up with Lo from this course and we are in the process of creating the third issue of our zine. We've tried to create a more professional aesthetic and approach to it this time, and we're hoping to get it stocked in Village Bookshop.

Overall this summer has been very relaxing and relatively stress-free. Although everything I've wrote here has examples of design, I've tried to take a break from it to get me ready for level 5.

OUGD402 - Studio Brief 2 Printed Business Cards

Today I printed my business cards. I wish I had the time to print them professionally but unfortunately I had to print and cut them out myself. I think they've turned out well as I usually am quite clumsy and things don't turn out the same size, but these are fine! They're slightly smaller than a normal business card but I like them. The colours have come out slightly different on screen but I doubt that can be avoided. I think the text size on the back is a bit small but other than that I'm happy with them. 

OUGD402 - Studio Brief 1 Age UK

Age UK have released a new ad campaign focusing on social media, to engage more young people. I think this ad is successful because it does make you feel guilty. You often forget yourself when you're on facebook or twitter. Everyone feels better when they get 50 likes on a picture they posted, or have gained some new followers, but this campaign makes you think about the people that social media has left behind:

OUGD402 - Studio Brief 2 Self Branding Final Outcome

For my final outcome I used my developed design. I have used my final logo and some vector patterns.

My grid is based around my logo, the columns can be used as double the width of my logo or the same width. This grid is quite versatile and will be appropriate for presentations as the columns will allow me to bullet point and then leave me more room to organise images. 

OUGD402 - Studio Brief 1 Coca-cola 100th anniversary

To honor coca-cola's 100th anniversary, designers from around the world have re-designed its packaging and created some great pieces of design:





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http://www.creativebloq.com/branding/designers-reinvent-coca-colas-iconic-packaging-41514687