Script:
Sunday, 31 March 2019
Wednesday, 27 March 2019
Creative Portfolio (Studio Brief 2)
Targeting ad agencies and creative internships at ad agencies.. (ignore pdf colours)
Why have I done it like this?
- I have put my most striking, clear, concept driven images at the beginning and end so that they are instantly drawn in and leave with something they will remember. In the middle there is a bit more storytelling and insight into how I think with the animation stills (which hopefully they will have more time to look at now I have their attention). I've also demonstrated my branding skills and ability to contextualize my work in the middle.
- I have included a few pieces from each project to show I am adaptable (subject matter, message, aesthetic) but capable of creating a cohesive aesthetic/ set of rules for each project (important for ad campaigns)
- I took out my work lino print work because it didn't match the aesthetic. This is more the direction my work is headed - slick, digital, bright, bold (I still have them on my website because I love them, should I take them down?)
- I've only included work with a strong and clear concept - visual communication is the key
- I've included images of my work on tshirts/ the Dyes and Demons logo - to show I can create work for a branding context
- I've included animation stills to document my storytelling skills/ thought process and technical skills.
Future thought?
- At the moment my portfolio is very image focused and I think it needs to document my beginning to end thought process and ability to contextualize my work. (I am going to put some shoot pictures in with the t-shirts when I get them)
- Advertising agencies want to know how I think/ come up with concepts so I need to include sketches
- I also need to provide some more context of where my work is appearing - a proper mockup of my splash page, screenshots of my instagram campeign??
- From what I have read this is what they want to see but from what I have heard a portfolio is all about the image itself so I need to get some advice on this..
- I want the 24 pages filled by the time I leave uni !!
Monday, 25 March 2019
Hanbury
Hanbury was a really fun experience and it was great to hear from some professionals !!
Some things that were hot topics to consider when applying for jobs:
- People tended to prefer PDF portfolio, not posted things - if things are posted to make sure they are all one document so they aren't separated
- A big talking point was social media following and Illustrators having big followings being a big bonus - this is something I want to work on
- It is clear that the people in advertising found their staff through a mix of being found and finding. In order to increase my chances - I need to send off my portfolio as much as possible/ increase my social media presence as much as possible
- Those in advertising spoke about how they receive too much work that has no concept behind it - I need to make conceptual thinking at the center of my portfolio - sketches, visual metaphors, interesting campaigns and branding !!
Making the showreel:
- Doing this was actually really fun - I enjoyed enjoyed trying to coordinate everything, get everyones work and contact people on the course I hadn't spoken to before ! It was a fun little collaborative project.
- However, the slides never worked fully. This was really frustrating because we had put a lot of time into formatting the presentation and getting two pieces of work off 49 people! However, on reflection this was out of our control and there was nothing that we could have done to get around it. In the end, the presentation sort of worked but none of the animations did. I am glad that it ended up being my slide that suffered the most as I was the one that requested that people send moving images. This was because I put my plastic gun moving image up but because it didn't work it was just a random display of pieces of plastic (totally concept-less). Reflecting on this, the likelihood of something going wrong and the animations not working was quite high so I should have made the first frame the finished image. This is definitely something I will do in the future.
Some things that were hot topics to consider when applying for jobs:
- People tended to prefer PDF portfolio, not posted things - if things are posted to make sure they are all one document so they aren't separated
- A big talking point was social media following and Illustrators having big followings being a big bonus - this is something I want to work on
- It is clear that the people in advertising found their staff through a mix of being found and finding. In order to increase my chances - I need to send off my portfolio as much as possible/ increase my social media presence as much as possible
- Those in advertising spoke about how they receive too much work that has no concept behind it - I need to make conceptual thinking at the center of my portfolio - sketches, visual metaphors, interesting campaigns and branding !!
Making the showreel:
- Doing this was actually really fun - I enjoyed enjoyed trying to coordinate everything, get everyones work and contact people on the course I hadn't spoken to before ! It was a fun little collaborative project.
- However, the slides never worked fully. This was really frustrating because we had put a lot of time into formatting the presentation and getting two pieces of work off 49 people! However, on reflection this was out of our control and there was nothing that we could have done to get around it. In the end, the presentation sort of worked but none of the animations did. I am glad that it ended up being my slide that suffered the most as I was the one that requested that people send moving images. This was because I put my plastic gun moving image up but because it didn't work it was just a random display of pieces of plastic (totally concept-less). Reflecting on this, the likelihood of something going wrong and the animations not working was quite high so I should have made the first frame the finished image. This is definitely something I will do in the future.
Monday, 18 March 2019
Printed Creative Promotion (Studio Brief 2)
My promotional pack is targets advertising agencies and creative internships.
Business Cards:
Aims:
- For text and image to be incorporated into one another - So it becomes a designed object (not your average business card which has text on one side/ image on the other)
- Bright and bold to catch peoples attention amongst other cards
- To document my layout/ design/ illustration skills
- To documents the social political context that runs through my work (this is about fast fashion)
- For it to be layered - it is aesthetic but theres more to it if you look - I want them to know I'm an ideas person
- I want to engage the viewer for as long as possible - to make them more likely to look up my website
Concerns:
- I'm not sure if the social political context is too specific for my personal branding? Will people think all my work is about fast fashion? Or is it clear that this is just a demonstration of the sort of work I make - Need to ask people!
- The shape and difficult bleed makes this card way too expensive to print professionally !! But I love it so I am going to try printing it cheaply as a rectangle and cutting the top myself..
Thoughts for future:
- I found some cheep business cards made of recycled cotton tshirts - could work well with fast fashion content. I think it is important that the production of a piece of art matches the values it exhibits.
- I keep coming back to look at this CV from the presentation.. The way they have used type, layout and separated it with colour is really impressive.
*Now that I have printed it the pink and yellow isn't working at all - it needs to match the pink and green of the book cover - this will work better with type too!
Why I've designed it like this:
- I wanted it to be 1 document so that the parts aren't separated (this is why I have incorporated my business card on the cover/ my CV folds out at the back)
- I have put everything in order of how much I want them to see it - details, work, CV
- 2 A4 pages, 1 A3 = cheap/ light to post
- slick, clear, concept driven, narrative, software skill set, exploratory, adaptable, coherent, opinionated
Business Cards:
- For text and image to be incorporated into one another - So it becomes a designed object (not your average business card which has text on one side/ image on the other)
- Bright and bold to catch peoples attention amongst other cards
- To document my layout/ design/ illustration skills
- To documents the social political context that runs through my work (this is about fast fashion)
- For it to be layered - it is aesthetic but theres more to it if you look - I want them to know I'm an ideas person
- I want to engage the viewer for as long as possible - to make them more likely to look up my website
Concerns:
- I'm not sure if the social political context is too specific for my personal branding? Will people think all my work is about fast fashion? Or is it clear that this is just a demonstration of the sort of work I make - Need to ask people!
- The shape and difficult bleed makes this card way too expensive to print professionally !! But I love it so I am going to try printing it cheaply as a rectangle and cutting the top myself..
Thoughts for future:
- I found some cheep business cards made of recycled cotton tshirts - could work well with fast fashion content. I think it is important that the production of a piece of art matches the values it exhibits.
Creative CV:
(see CV content on advertising agencies post)
Why have I designed it like this:
- I wanted it to match the branding of my business card/ promo pack.
- In this case I have erased the social context to keep it simple - there is already so much info on a CV it would have been distracting.
- I have visually put the focus on my details/ personal statement (by putting them on the dark pink areas) - these are the parts I want them to read the most.
Concerns:
- I am not totally sure what I am going to do with the education section - I would like to do something interesting with typography - maybe incorporate it into a game?? - Need to keep it simple!!
- I need to be more succinct in skills/ put the key points in my statement - so they get what the need to know from a skim read - also works with layout.
Future Thoughts:
- The way I use layout and typography is going to be key to the visual success of this CV. These are skills I really need to work on as type becomes increasingly a part of my work as it moves into more of a design context. Valuable when hunting for agency work/ internships.
- I keep coming back to look at this CV from the presentation.. The way they have used type, layout and separated it with colour is really impressive.*Now that I have printed it the pink and yellow isn't working at all - it needs to match the pink and green of the book cover - this will work better with type too!
Creative pack:
Why I've designed it like this:
- I wanted it to be 1 document so that the parts aren't separated (this is why I have incorporated my business card on the cover/ my CV folds out at the back)
- I have put everything in order of how much I want them to see it - details, work, CV
- 2 A4 pages, 1 A3 = cheap/ light to post
- slick, clear, concept driven, narrative, software skill set, exploratory, adaptable, coherent, opinionated
Professional Contacts - Brand (Studio Brief 2)
Brand:
Since starting our brand Instagram, we have been in contact with lots of slow fashion/ mental health awareness accounts with big followings. Our intention was to both forge some social media connections and ask for tips on how their accounts blew up. Everyone has said it was by collaboration and influencer promotion.
Since, we have been in contact with a few small charity events and eco Instagram accounts (all very willing to help us out). We have arranged to co-sponsor Jail Break events. They have 5 influencer participating in their May event, all with over 100k followers so this should gain us some attention!
We have also decided to focus our brand around creative people because we know that mental health is important topic within this industry. We have been trying to get the attention of musicians. This has been fun but a massive challenge !!
We have tried everything.. We managed to get Zak Abel's phone number and arranged to meet him after the show. However, he didn't put us on the guest list so we had to sneak backstage when the venue tried to chuck us out. We spoke to him for 15 minutes and give him a t-shirt. He said he'd post wearing the tshirt and tag us but he hasn't done it !!! We just posted a little reminder on instagram.. We should have been much more persistent when we met him and got the photo then and there, rather than relying on him to take it. Next time we meet someone we also need to give a more rehearsed to the point explanation of our ethos. He seemed confused by the unnecessary details.
We also messaged all of the band members of the Internet (an R&B Group) separately over Instagram.. but none replied. So when we were at the show we wrote a note and chucked the t-shirt on stage. However, they all looked at it like it was a smelly t-shirt an audience member had taken off and thrown. If we were to do this again we would wrap it in tissue paper and attach a hand written note.
Conclusion: It is clear that other charities and eco-living/ mental health pages are much more willing to give us their time. We are going to keep messaging these pages on Instagram and getting them to share our content/ sharing theirs. However, young creatives are our definite target audience so we are going to keep persisting with contacting musicians (it's also really fun). We are also going to get up and coming creatives to model our clothes, who we are going to write profiles on. This both adds depth to our shoots and it is clear co-promotion is the best way to get shared.
We have also decided to focus our brand around creative people because we know that mental health is important topic within this industry. We have been trying to get the attention of musicians. This has been fun but a massive challenge !!
We also messaged all of the band members of the Internet (an R&B Group) separately over Instagram.. but none replied. So when we were at the show we wrote a note and chucked the t-shirt on stage. However, they all looked at it like it was a smelly t-shirt an audience member had taken off and thrown. If we were to do this again we would wrap it in tissue paper and attach a hand written note.
Conclusion: It is clear that other charities and eco-living/ mental health pages are much more willing to give us their time. We are going to keep messaging these pages on Instagram and getting them to share our content/ sharing theirs. However, young creatives are our definite target audience so we are going to keep persisting with contacting musicians (it's also really fun). We are also going to get up and coming creatives to model our clothes, who we are going to write profiles on. This both adds depth to our shoots and it is clear co-promotion is the best way to get shared.
Friday, 15 March 2019
Brand Online Presence (Studio Brief 2)
App:
What?
I have been working on an Augmented Reality app in unity for my t-shirt brand, Dyes and Demons. It is a really simple app with our branding, which goes through a Unity splash page then all that is inside is an AR camera. If you hold it up to any of our tshirts the design will be animated through the camera (the mental health concept is more clear in the animated design, a light access point for conversation). Initially, we were going to do this through a white collar app but it was to expensive so I made us one.
Pros:
- Really enjoyed making this app and I found that I had a serious drive to do it. It was the fact that that no one thought I could do it and the intrigue into what my work could be by learning a new technology that drove me to do it. I definitely really want to keep using Unity!!
- My desire to try out new technology and contexts for my work is becoming an increasingly big part of my practice and something I want to reflect to ad agencies as much as possible. A willingness and ability to use new software and expand imagery past printed media is something a lot of agencies talk about.
Struggles:
- I've had an absolute nightmare trying to run my app on a android/ iphone - it was all I could think about and focus on for about 4 days until I eventually gave it a break. However, I have been getting increasingly worried that little projects like this are taking their toll on my uni work so I've given them a break until after hand in.
The future:
- The only thing that I am unsure about is weather people will actually download an app to see their tshirt move. However, if they are it will be a really good USP for our brand. However, it has opened lots of doors for us and we have thought of a really unique new use for augmented reality through it. We looked at patenting it so that we can pursue it in the future but it was too expensive so we are thinking about taking it to a company who already have the software to do it.
Instagram/ statistics campaign:
We have spent almost two months posting on our brand Instagram before our launch next week to try to build some anticipation, a following and to describe our mission as much as possible before we do. We don' t want to be mistaken for a brand that just prints cool artwork on tshirts, our ethics and mission come first so we wanted to posted this first. We spent month posting a daily statistic - alternating between fast fashion (dyes) and mental health (demons) across the rows.
Successes:
- When we've met anyone whose interested in our brand we've referred them to our instagram and this works really well because they are constantly updated on what we are doing. It is really great for staying in contact.
- It has also been really great for networking as everyone who has collaborated with us has posted about it and tagged us (photo from our last shoot).
- We have also met so many like minded people through it, who have been really interesting to talk to about our mission and hear from.
- Creating the statistic posts - laying out the type and illustrating them was also really enjoyable - it was fun trying to make statistics visually engaging to a scroller, while thinking about the whole feed aesthetic. Working with type and image is something I'm getting better at. I've also learnt so much about social media marketing - hashtags, posting times etc. which will be really useful when I have more time to put into my own account. - It is also perfect marketing and campaign experience for my CV - its the first campaign I've designed that I've actually put into action.
Struggles:
- Gaining a following is difficult and far too time consuming!! I feel like we are constantly making content and writing captions but every time we miss a day of posting we loose at least 10 followers - its a nightmare. Instagram feels like such a game of following and unfollowing and half of the positive comments we receive aren't genuine or are trying to sell us a turtle bracelet ! It can be really demotivating sometimes but we need to just keep working at it.
For the future:
- we need to make sure we post every day, as well as at least one story. I think that gaining a following will become much easier when we start to post pictures of people wearing the clothes. People love pictures of people - art is really hard to market. We posted one picture of us and it had triple the interactions of our other posts.
Website:
We have bene building a website on adobe portfolio because it is free but we can't work out how to have a cargo collective shop through this so we may have to resort to squarespace.. Building a website has been a bit tricky so far because we are still waiting on the shoot pictures (most of the content) but here is a splash page I've been working on..
What?
I have been working on an Augmented Reality app in unity for my t-shirt brand, Dyes and Demons. It is a really simple app with our branding, which goes through a Unity splash page then all that is inside is an AR camera. If you hold it up to any of our tshirts the design will be animated through the camera (the mental health concept is more clear in the animated design, a light access point for conversation). Initially, we were going to do this through a white collar app but it was to expensive so I made us one.
Pros:
- Really enjoyed making this app and I found that I had a serious drive to do it. It was the fact that that no one thought I could do it and the intrigue into what my work could be by learning a new technology that drove me to do it. I definitely really want to keep using Unity!!
- My desire to try out new technology and contexts for my work is becoming an increasingly big part of my practice and something I want to reflect to ad agencies as much as possible. A willingness and ability to use new software and expand imagery past printed media is something a lot of agencies talk about.
Struggles:
- I've had an absolute nightmare trying to run my app on a android/ iphone - it was all I could think about and focus on for about 4 days until I eventually gave it a break. However, I have been getting increasingly worried that little projects like this are taking their toll on my uni work so I've given them a break until after hand in.
The future:
- The only thing that I am unsure about is weather people will actually download an app to see their tshirt move. However, if they are it will be a really good USP for our brand. However, it has opened lots of doors for us and we have thought of a really unique new use for augmented reality through it. We looked at patenting it so that we can pursue it in the future but it was too expensive so we are thinking about taking it to a company who already have the software to do it.
Instagram/ statistics campaign:
We have spent almost two months posting on our brand Instagram before our launch next week to try to build some anticipation, a following and to describe our mission as much as possible before we do. We don' t want to be mistaken for a brand that just prints cool artwork on tshirts, our ethics and mission come first so we wanted to posted this first. We spent month posting a daily statistic - alternating between fast fashion (dyes) and mental health (demons) across the rows.
Successes:
- When we've met anyone whose interested in our brand we've referred them to our instagram and this works really well because they are constantly updated on what we are doing. It is really great for staying in contact.- It has also been really great for networking as everyone who has collaborated with us has posted about it and tagged us (photo from our last shoot).
- We have also met so many like minded people through it, who have been really interesting to talk to about our mission and hear from.
- Creating the statistic posts - laying out the type and illustrating them was also really enjoyable - it was fun trying to make statistics visually engaging to a scroller, while thinking about the whole feed aesthetic. Working with type and image is something I'm getting better at. I've also learnt so much about social media marketing - hashtags, posting times etc. which will be really useful when I have more time to put into my own account. - It is also perfect marketing and campaign experience for my CV - its the first campaign I've designed that I've actually put into action.
Struggles:
- Gaining a following is difficult and far too time consuming!! I feel like we are constantly making content and writing captions but every time we miss a day of posting we loose at least 10 followers - its a nightmare. Instagram feels like such a game of following and unfollowing and half of the positive comments we receive aren't genuine or are trying to sell us a turtle bracelet ! It can be really demotivating sometimes but we need to just keep working at it.
For the future:
- we need to make sure we post every day, as well as at least one story. I think that gaining a following will become much easier when we start to post pictures of people wearing the clothes. People love pictures of people - art is really hard to market. We posted one picture of us and it had triple the interactions of our other posts.
Website:
We have bene building a website on adobe portfolio because it is free but we can't work out how to have a cargo collective shop through this so we may have to resort to squarespace.. Building a website has been a bit tricky so far because we are still waiting on the shoot pictures (most of the content) but here is a splash page I've been working on..
Aims:
- A splash page made of three videos - together form one image. Each arcade game (video) will play when you click its play button (a custom type button) or you can enter the website by pressing 'enter site' instead.
- We've read a lot about interactive experiences trending moment so I thought it would be a really good way to draw people into the website.
- Everyone we have spoken to says they would be much more likely to buy a tshirt if it was on an interactive/ well designed website.
- It supports our mission by introducing young people into the world of slow fashion in a young and attractive way. Not your classic eco campaign - we are trying to make our content visually appeal to them as much as possible. (not to heavy, but making a clever/ charged comment)
- We are trying to make our message as clear and visual as possible, from the moment someone clicks on our site.
Struggles:
- Everything is taking SO long !! I always forget how long it takes to get an image ready for animation, particularly with 'junk slot' because the screen needs to spin. Its made me question how important the pages interactivity is but I've decided to keep going with it. Based on our research I think it will increase the chances of young people engaging with the content and reading the text massively.
- I'm also quite concerned about about getting the three videos to line up on squarespace and for the custom play buttons to work. From what I've read it is possible so I'm excited for the challenge.
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