D&AD Design Workshop

Myself, James and Mike attended the design workshop which was hosted by a lady from The Chase. There was a group from the MA Advertising course in Leeds and also a tutor from Preston.

We all sat down and introduced ourselves and said a little about what we are doing at the moment within our courses. We then went through a few ideas that I had come up with the night before. I was the only one who had brought ideas along with James because we hadn't had the brief long. It was difficult as we didn't have a product to go off.

We all then discussed the pros and cons of the product in a lot further detail to try and get down to what exactly we wanted to communicate. There were a few good ideas about 'sexing' the product up by likening it to underwear and getting down and dirty on the floor. Price, effectiveness and economy were high on the agenda and we talked about the shift in throwaway culture to people keeping their things. To come up with ideas for the brand we spoke about what coulours and typefaces meant to people and we even named a typeface and colour that would best show ourselves.

We had the idea of colour coding to show the different grades of underlay.

Funnily enough The Chase had come up with something similar which was a nice fresh design but I feel it could have been pushed even further and become more interactive with the consumer.

DBA Education Seminar Speaker: Ian Thompson

Ian Thompson, founder of Thompson Brand Partners gave a lecture about design branding and business. He started freelancing in 1984 but decided to start up a business in the 1990's as he found people who weren't as good as him were becoming more successful.

He is now Head of the DBA - Design Business Association. DBA attempts to tell companies how important design is to them.

Ian spoke about the importance of brand guidelines which need to be worked to show criteria, personality and branding. The objective is to make the client interested. He showed examples of how design can drive sales which included the recent Durex re-design which increased sales 10% in it's first year. This is huge for a company that is already the market leader. Their sub-brand Durex Play became a £40 million brand in 2 years and there was a 290% sales increase it it's second year which is phenomenal by anyones standards.

He then went onto speak about what employers are looking for. This included a desire to learn, freshness, skills, what you can bring to them, willingness to work and to do the boring stuff.

Also to be able to talk about other things in the world outside of design. He sees Wally Olins as a forerunner in branding and feels that a creative project will get peoples attention. He thinks people should ask questions aswell as delivering good work work which gets results. With this you will win. He finally said Quality is the best business plan.

D&AD Student Award's Talk

To start with Fergal gave an introduction into what the D&AD Student Awards are all about. Unfortunately as we struggled to find the venue we only caught the end of this and then he introduced Andy from an agency called 'Work Club' which have a number of high profile clients including Alfa Romeo. They do illustration, game design, TV Branding, web design and advertising. The people who gained 2nd place for their HP video entry are currently on a placement there.

Andy spoke about originality and appropriateness being key to creativity and proceeded to engage the audience within an activity where we had to say, left to right, the colours of words which were different colours to what the word described. This got everyones attention and it was funny which I feel is great for an interesting lecture. He spoke about making people care about a product whether it is washing powder or something better.

To do this he spoke about hiring people who can do your job better than you and getting out of the way. I appreciated this as a recent lecturer in our college spoke about not liking to see someone that is better than him which is totally wrong in my opinion. This led onto the idea of insights and truths. I hate the word insight as I hear it too often and find it contrived but he used this in triangles to make things work. This triangle involved Business Objective - Brand - Consumer. He proved that this worked by showing us a Mellow Birds campaign that they did which was fantastic and very effective. This allowed to touch social media and get people talking.

This talk followed onto the role of technology in design and the way tweets made Foursquare communicate with the public. Everything you see now is already 10 years old. Things are being developed right now that I won't see until my thirties. I find this amazing although from experience knowing about aircraft engineering through my cousin I realise that everything is years and years behind that type of technology.

Sometime the solution is not always advertising. As was the case with a campaign by Burger King. This involved the King being spotted by paparazzi. It was clever and a whole new way of getting attention. People are even buying branding things to wear for their online icons. I find that unbelievable but some people are obviously sad enough to do it.

The talk by Andy was very inspiring and he spoke a lot of sense aswell as gaining the respect of the audience. I look forward to having a look at their work soon.

Liverpool Design Symposium 2009

Yesterday I attended the Liverpool Design Symposium. We left at 8-30 from Stockport to get there in good time to find the place. By around 10, when the talks started, we were right near where we needed to be but still couldn't find it. Then we saw a sign which was about a5 size telling us directions around a lot of construction work which took around ten minutes to walk around itself. We got in late along with quite a few others but soon settled into the D&AD Student Award's Talk. There was then a short interval to allow for setup of the Educational Seminar by Ian Thompson. Me, Mike and James from my course then went straight into the D&AD design workshop which was hosted by Fergal of D&AD and a representative of The Chase where we worked together to create ideas to advertise 'underlay'.

Following this were the D&AD Portfolio Surgeries where I was lucky enough to see two established people from the design and advertising industry and got some great advice on my work. There were two more talks after this but I unfortunately could not attend as I needed a break to get some food. There are no breaks between activities which means things have to be missed whether you want to or not. I then returned to attend the D&AD President's Lecture by Micheal Wolff which was more of an interview.

Overall I gained a lot from the day as a whole and it was definitely worthwhile attending. Getting this contact with industry is invaluable and I try to grab every opportunity to do things like this.

New York Video

Today we had a talk about New York prior to our trip there on Sunday. This went over any rules and regulations we had to keep to. As part of this we were asked, as a group, to come up with a small presentation of what New York means to us. Other groups managed to do this such as illustration and surface design but most of our group couldn't be arsed. So I took it upon myself to just do it. The result ended up being a short video of a few different aspects of New York.

Thanks to Lauren, Sarah, James, Mike, Kat, Bob and Carrie for making the effort to provide image/footage to be put into the video.

Artboard Limits

When doing my last design I realised that often a lot of your design work gets cut off the edge of the page when it is saved or printed. This is due to the artboard restricting your space. Sometimes the design looks better when view outside the artboard as I have shown above. I thought this looked better and I am sure I can use this to some good effect in future projects.

New York - Men on Girder

We have been recently asked to come up with images and design a page to put into a small presentation. These had to be of things that interest or inspire us about New York. Something that I thought of straight away is the famous image of workers on a girder against the backdrop of New York City. I have seen numerous imitations of the image and it is one of the most popular posters you can buy. The image is inspirational as it shows the workers taking their break without a care in the world and not worrying about their safety. It is humourous and shows character against the contrasting industrial robot like background.

I combined this with the yellow of New York taxis and the stripes represent the busyness and sharp angles that make up the New York landscape. I have typed over the word 'New' of New York with the word 'Old' as this image represents the history of New York and it shows its age.