OUGD502 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | CREATING THE REPORT

I had some trouble with deciding on what to produce for the report. I thought about a poster series, booklet or interactive leaflet.

Considering all of these, a booklet/zine would probably be the best way to display the interview as the answers I received were quite lengthy and in depth.

I started by creating the front cover, which I wanted to be eye catching and a well rounded representation of my style.

The outlined text was originally meant to be a drop shadow under the filled text, but I think this way is a lot more interesting. It falls under the umbrella of contemporary design which I am particularly interested in, and outlined text/borders are very "on trend" at the moment. 

Inside I went for a double page for each question and added 2 more spreads, introducing Matt and then discussing what I have gained from the interview. I also included some more of Matts work that I felt was appropriate to his particular style. The overall aesthetic of the booklet is quite minimal, so the work gets centre stage on the page. 

I wanted to make the booklet feel more like a short magazine, to give it a sense of luxury and as though its a "one-off" exclusive interview, so the magazine will be printed on a4 glossy stock. 

OUGD502 | STUDIO BREIF 1 | YCN REFLECTION

After completing my YCN brief Feel Good Drinks, I feel as though branding and identity has become one of my favourite areas of design. I don't know whether its because I've created something I'm happy with, as I haven't done much branding before, or whether its my actual preferred area of design.

It was a huge project for me, I created a new identity, packaging, print campaign, app and website. I tried to keep it extremely consistent throughout, with bright colours and engaging text. I initially had some ideas when I first started the brief, but wasn't really sure how to approach them. I started off with hand rendered text (but I'm not particularly good at that). After that, I took a more digital approach which I am more comfortable with. I do like to take risks with my work but I always seem to end back up on Illustrator.

My work seems to be the strongest as brightly coloured vectors. I've noticed this throughout a few of my projects now, and although it isn't the style I like the best, its the style I can create the best. I've often worried about not having a distinct "style", but this might be it!

OUGD502 | STUDIO BRIEF 1 | SIGHH

Since July 2015 I have been working with fellow student Polly Vadasz at Sighh Designs. My role as a co-designer for these few months have helped me develop as a designer outside of university. I have helped on various new designs, and expanded my techniques using more traditional approaches to create patterns.

My first project with Sighh at the beginning of 2015, where I helped produce the Lil' Cacti case. I was approached by Polly on Instagram before we even met at uni, and was asked to collaborate with her!

From there I went on with helping out with new designs, processing orders and dealing with customer emails. My most successful project so far would be the revision planner. I helped out with the layout and structure of the revision planner, and it has proved extremely popular with students!

As Polly is more advanced at hand rendered type than I am, I've taken more to designing patterns. Recently, the Dottie phone case was released which I designed. It's a basic black and white pattern, which is very popular with customers as it doesn't clash with outfits and looks great in selfies (these are all new considerations I've had to get used to).

Having our own studio space to create and work in really helps too. Working for Sighh while at university has given me an idea of what real industry work feels like. We have our own desks with lovely furniture and plants - a space of our own. In the past few months I felt like I've really developed with considering what the client/demographic really want, and this further helps me as a designer. Putting the client needs before your own preferred style is something I need to get used to, and Sighh is helping me achieve that. 

OUGD502 | STUDY TASK 1 | COMPANY RE-THINK

Over the Christmas period, progress with the business slowed down. After we met and focussed on our idea, we decided to change the name and approach we were taking. The business that we will be running is a quarterly magazine that highlights student work.

We decided on the name of the magazine to be called Bodies. This name puts everyone in the magazine on a level playing field, making the students and professionals featured feel equal.

We made a list of considerations and decided to research about two sections each:

Skills and Services: 

Bodies is a quarterly magazine run by 4 creatives that showcases work from students (with professional work included to entice buyers).

We each carry a wide range of skills, as we all come from different design backgrounds. Jack is the confident with UX and web design as it is a particular field of interest to him. Lo's biggest skill is editorial design, and will be taking charge of the majority of the editing and layout. Rhys' skill set is very varied and will be assisting with the curation of the publication, and talking to potential clients. He is very confident and will be able to talk to people with ease. My skills involve being extremely competent with social media and talking to people online, so I will be taking charge of our online presence over instagram, facebook and twitter.

Target audience: 

Our demographic is mainly young creatives, but we would also want industry professionals to be interested in the magazine to give them some scope on who's graduating soon and becoming available for industry.

OUGD502 | STUDIO BREIF 1 | REPLY

After the Christmas break, Matt managed to take time out of his schedule and reply to my questions. His answers are very in depth and it's clear he's put a lot of time and effort into this. 

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? 

The most important first stage is establishing a commercial relationship. By which I mean agreeing a project fee and a scope of work. This usually takes place before any brief is written, but it's the most important first step. To embark on any project without an agreed budget, timeframe, expectations and scope would be bonkers. 

We usually break our projects down into four distinct stages: discover, define, design and deliver. Discover is the first step: information gathering. This could include receiving a client brief, and would also include a meeting with the client, some desk research and fact finding, perhaps a site visit or field trip if that's relevant to the brief (i.e. if you were designing an exhibition, you'd want to make sure that you'd actually been to the space in which the exhibition is to be held). We'd be seeking to arm ourselves with as much information about the client and their project as we possibly could. 

Then the Define stage is to take this information and to distil it into a creative brief. This will usually contain elements of the client brief, but may also challenge that brief if, through the Discover stage, we've identified something which allows us to think differently about the brief. Crucially, the output of this stage is a final creative brief that everyone can agree on: it will inspire the designers to do great work and will form a reference point to which we and the client refer back to throughout the project. Often, design can be very subjective ("I don't like it"). With a good creative brief, we and the client have something non-subjective to refer back to: we can ask ourselves "does it answer the brief?". 

NB: a good creative brief includes a number of important sections: 

Purpose: Why are we doing this?

People: Who is involved?

Standards: What do we need to be aware of?

Results: What will be delivered?

In our Define stage, we'd want to ensure that our brief contains information to cover all of these sections.

Then the creative fun can begin: initial concept development. Thinking, sketching, talking, planning. Crucially, much of the initial creative stage takes place way from the computer. We're interested in ideas above style. Good thinking comes before good Mac skills and styling.

What made you want to become a designer? Was it an ambition from a young age?

I went to the University of Northumbria thinking that I wanted to be an illustrator, over and above a designer. I was always good at drawing, loved comics and illustration and I did Art at A-level. But skipped the post-A-level foundation year as I was too impatient to get to Uni! This worked out well in the end (I got a first class Graphic Design BA as well as a D&AD Student Gold), but it did mean that lots of people on the course knew a lot more about design than I did! In retrospect, I did have an awareness of design before going to Uni. For example, through an interest in music, I knew that my favourite record covers were designed by Peter Saville and Vaughn Oliver. But because design didn't feature in my A-level (it wasn't offered back then), I still saw illustration as my main area. The Uni course very quickly changed my mind and I grew to love design almost straight away. That said, I do still dabble in illustration: I write and draw comic strips for the weekly kids' comic The Phoenix in my spare time. 

Looking on your website, the Sabre identity you produced really caught my eye. What was your inspiration behind it? 

Interesting that Sabre caught your eye. It's one of my least favourite jobs on the site (though there's nothing on there than I'm not proud of to some degree). Sabre was a good challenge in that it was a new tech start-up: a group of three young entrepreneurs had an app that they'd developed and a little bit of budget for us to help them come up with a name and a visual identity. The name took a long time to develop – naming is always difficult in my experience – but the visual identity was relatively smooth. As the primary function of the brand was as an app to be used on phones, we wanted to design something that worked at small sizes, felt simple and easy to understand. The very stylised 'S' shape symbol was derived from the imaginary 'swoosh' of a sabre through the air. Picture Zorro and you'll get the idea. We also came up with the streamline 'One step ahead', which articulated their offer really well.

Do you think having a distinguishable style, or being a flexible designer has the advantage?

People generally say that our work is simple, clear and effective. So you could say that there's an element of a consistent style or approach there. However, we try to approach every project on its own terms and create work that's right for that client and theiraudience. Some design businesses have a very deliberately identifiable style and clients go to them to 'buy' that style: those design business tend to be more aesthetically/stylistically driven. We tend to be more conceptually driven – we're an ideas business first and foremost – so the idea drives the aesthetic. Which means that the output can be very varied in the way it looks. I think it's better to be flexible, ultimately: as a designer, part of your job is to solve your clients design problem. If you have a very fixed style, you're using a limited palette to solve that problem. It's worth noting that in other areas of the creative industry, it is beneficial to have a distinguishable style: illustrators and photographers, for example, survive on having a style that people recognise and want to use.

What advice would you give your younger self as you were starting out in industry? 

Work for a wide variety of employers: from small, boutique studios doing small, well-crafted design jobs right through to big branding studios working on large corporate projects. It's important to see how places of different sizes work. I only ever really worked for the former type of design business which meant that when I was a partner at a company called 300million and we had a team of 25 people, it was the biggest design business I'd ever been part of! I also saw people setting up their own studios at quite an early stage: I'd always say that you should hold on, work for a variety of people, learn from colleagues (and clients) and make mistakes on a salary, rather than within your own business. Then take all of that knowledge and experience and set up on your own. Oh, and maybe travel and work in design overseas for a spell. It's good experience if you can do it.

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? 

Hmmm. That's your challenge! Maybe start with that creative brief (see above). It's worth thinking about the final deliverable in as broad a way as possible. It could be a beautiful piece of print. But it could be a short animation. Or a box of dos/don'ts cards. Good luck!