Typography project

The three main elements of our typography project were for it to be 3D have train tickets and photography incorporated, Amy and I had the word 'Get' twice, in order to created our display boards  we used a disposable camera and travelled around Bath to create images with the context of our college and its surroundings. We also had a collection of train tickets provided to us which really helped with the 3D aspect of our project, to incorporate the commute most of us do every day into college. I believe this was also a was a strength of our project as it allowed the display board to really stand out from the others but also is easy to understand what we are trying to communicate without think too hard about it, as for weaknesses however, i fell like overall all the display boards had so many ideas added to it that there was not lot of flow to the whole quote, this was unfortunate. Another weakness of the project was that the fonts used were entirely the same, this was another let down to me as i feel like the display boards could have looked a lot better and more professional if it with the fonts used differently to adding to the idea that these were individual tasks. My opportunities during this project were really strong, we were lucky enough to have help from Nick (our project's supervisor) but also all of the tools and resources that we needed to give the project a good try such as the donation of cardboard but also Nick's feedback really helped to our ideas and how we could push ourselves to look individual. Finally the threats to our project were little to none accept one day  of illness which really held back our project from sticking to a time schedule, we just worked as hard as possible and managed to get the project done in time. Another threat was the overall neatness of our work as the cardboard was difficult to cut out and made the project like amateur to what its worth could have been, i believe that others had this struggle too though so I am glad to know we weren't the only ones.

Overall, I really enjoyed the project and the creative freedom that was given to us. I would like to do a project similar if the opportunity was given to me as it can really help to build up my portfolio. Here is our final outcome;
I really liked the collage effect that we have created, it gives it the rustic feel with a scrap book edge we were looking for, both Amy and I contributed and created the boards together and equally.

Evaluation of Portfolio and Presentation

Through the duration of Jo's brief we were set two particular tasks which really allowed the class to hit the ground running in terms of how we ended things with our FMP's last term, the brief also allowed us to be treated like practising media professionals ourselves by creating a working online portfolio and having to do a presentation on where we see ourselves in the future, what we are doing currently and how this will help us in for what lies ahead. The task we did first was to create a twelve month professional development action plan to present to the class, I found myself to have last minute jitters before heading up to present, however I find this when speaking in public everytime therefore I was not too concerned.  Once up there I found my rhythm and really started to personalise what I was saying adding humor and light hearted jokes into the mix, like I do with speaking with most people. I tend to find that this style of personalisation really relaxes me as when I know that the jokes are flowing and everyone understands me if a form of subconscious acceptance and encourages me further, generally, I find myself enjoy the thought of working in a high pressured environment where work must be down soon and time is quickly running well, I keep my calm and tend to find that once the work is done, the reward is even more, well...rewarding! I am not one to be unprepared however, I may work best under pressure but I ensure to be through in my work to make sure that I do not shoot myself in the foot when standing up to speak, this attitude was very much applied when doing our personal development presentations as I found myself wanting to add more onto the slides just to ensure I didn't end up making any mistakes, luckily I didnt. My relaxed 'take things as they come' attitude may seem as a really strong skill to have, as it means that when i am working in a high pressured working environment I will strive for great things, yet I would really like to have more discipline with myself, working to a set time table even on days off to give myself some breathing time before having to present or even hand in work. If I was to present again, I feel like I would use less information on my slides and really just speak from what I am thinking, only using prompts to go on. However I had difficulty with this task anyway due to the fact that I feel like if I attempt to follow life by some sort of plan, then I will fail myself if that doesnt happen and trigger a lowering in my self esteem.

The next major project we had to do for Jo was create an online portfolio to send to potential employers, I made the conscious effort to use a website portfolio as I thought this would be the most sleek way. Squarespace, the website creating site I chose to use enables me to have a creative space where I can store all of my best work and also give me the freedom of a creative outlet to show employers what i can really do, I didnt want to section off any different pages within my website, yet just allow my work to be a variety merged in together, with captions for context underneath but also write, maybe about why i chose to take this image or why i decided to edit this piece of work. Creating my logo was another large section of this work and the one I created I absolutely love, since changing my name to Lola May I have received compliments on what a statement name it is, therefore I wanted to embrace and own it as part of my identity today and incorporate it into my own personal logo, I have written a separate blog post you can check out however in brief summary I created wild flowers in the 'L' of Lola as I have a large tattoo which can be seen often and it represents me really well. Overall, I am really enjoying adding to my portfolio, I am proud of how shes coming along because OH MY GOD SQUARESPACE YOU ARE THE MOST OVER COMPLICATED WEBSITE, but the sweat, tears and one mental breakdown were worth it. I am proud and will continue to work on her.

Primary and Secondary Research

In order to collect primary research I decided to collect information by doing a survey on as many people as possible in the target audience for my project, for this this age range was anyone below 30 and above 16 as they are the main age range of festival goers', to do this I created a google survey and shared it out through my facebook friends (asking my mum and grandma to skip this one out) and allow for results to trickle in, I ensured to ask questions like 'Are you employed?' and 'Are you familiar with these celebrities?' To ensure that I was creating something my audience would want and also if they had the money to purchase the garment on offer, Overall, I feel like my survey was really successful thanks to the amount of feedback I received, on reflection I could have gone into the city and handed out a questionnaire or asked people if I could ask them questions, however I didnt really feel like harassing people in the street nor wasting either of our time with them being too young or too old or being interested in what I had to say. Once collecting my results, the statistics were overwhelming for me to look at therefore I created an infographic;  As you can see the results are really interesting, with  facts like 70% of those who answered my survey, were familiar with Town & Country, which I was not at the start of this task! Turning my results into an infographic really helped me to comprehend what I was going to do next in terms of the design and marketing process. Unfortunately, not much secondary research was done after this point, accept when it came to individual celebrity style moodboards, which can be found here.

Promotional Research on Target

Before creating any mock ups of potential designs to fit my re brand, i wanted to do some audience research on what they wanted, how much they were willing to spend and if they knew of the British Influencers I was going to use as part of my collaborative re brand. To do this i created a survey through google surveys, asking questions on top those previously planned things like if they were employed, to ensure i had all of the information necessary to allow my re branding to reach my target audience. I shared my survey through my 'friends' on facebook and got a fairly good response, I shared the post with nobody over the age of 30 to know my survey was reaching my target audience, this was fairly easy to do, i just ensured that my mum or grandma answered the questionnaire. My marketing strategy involves three main ideas, created around the five main p's of marketing;

• Product
• Price
• Promotion 
• Place 
• People  

For me, using this strategy fell into place quite easily.  My product is five sets of 'revamped' Town & Country wellington boots which will be individually designed for a British influencer, after everyone had answered my survey and most were employed and willing to pay £20-30 for wellingtons, I will market my wellies at £25 per pair, my promotion will be done through snapchat geofilters at main festivals such as Glastonbury to promote through word-of-mouth, another way I will promote my wellies is through pop up shops during the main festivals to really push the exclusivity I am aiming for, as this and buying online will be the only way to buy the wellies. Another way I will promote these wellies is through billboard and social media work with the five influencers together in one space, I also feel this will be effective as it is scene alot with other influencer X brand collaborations. As said previously, my product will mainly be sold during the festival season as this is when wellington boot sales really rise in the UK, with my collaborators Harry Styles, Jordan Bunker, Rita Ora, Cara Delevingne and Alexa Chung wearing them at the selected festivals to promote, allowing paparazzi to shoot them wearing the wellingtons and also using the promotional Snap filter together.    

Visuals to communicate concept

To visually showcase the products I have created for my brand I have created mockups of what each wellington boot could look like. I wanted each design to be slightly different from the other in order to give myself the variation that the public could potentially want, therefore I created visual mood boards to under which aspect i was going to incorporate for each celebrity and how each design would differentiate from one another, as you can see from the mood boards I selected an individual stylistic piece and put focus on it and similar aspects they have worn. Once designing mood boards to have a solid understanding of how I would design and differentiate between each style of wellington boot, I went about creating mock designs of the shoes.

After having mock ups of designs down, I created potential marketing mock ups of how I would like my product to me sold. This included a logo, a billboard mock up and a n Snapchat GeoFilter. 

 

 Lastly, I created an infographic to visually represent my survey findings for my presentation. To do this I created a Prezi presentation account and used a mixture of graphics and visual representatives to show my findings.

Logo

For this assessment in the brief, I wanted to create a logo which was simplistic and monochrome yet still image based, As i have a large flower piece tattooed on my shoulder that distinguishes me I wanted to incorporate some of this into my logo design, as i believe this accurately represents me. To do this, I began researching into small flower wild flower designs to maybe put under my logo as an inlining or something, however I stumbled upon a twisted wild flower image that really stood out to me as an 'L' shape therefore I exported the image into photoshop and traced around it. After finishing the 'L' to incorporate the image based idea I wanted from my tattoo, I found a font i really liked and exported it into Photoshop also. Ensuring that the font fitted with my wild flower 'L', i was happy with my overall design and thought it expressed myself in a minimalistic and effective way to add into any portfolio work or online websites.

Interviewing a media industry professional; Anthem Publishing

Overall, my experience with visiting Anthem Publishing was a really positive one. The women who gave up their time to educate and inform us seemed to want to encourage our knowledge not only their company but the publishing industry itself, it was really refreshing to have a warm welcome as students intruding on their workday, no question was too big but they also wanted to ensure we had all the information needed to carry out our write-ups. Three of the most important things I learnt whilst speaking to the digital edition and marketing assistant were probably not about the industry itself, but how to get into their position. One of the main points was that a portfolio or work experience was very necessary in order to get onto the job ladder, two examples they offered to us were that blogging allowed the digital editor to gain her position as the company through being able to prove her tech-savvy skills, another example offered was the marketing assistants work experience through the company during the summer which then allowed her to gain entry into a full-time position for the job she is in now through the same company, which was the best outcome for her. Another interesting piece of information I learned was that although a university degree isn't demanded, it is really helpful in order to climb the job market at a faster pace, they also told us that if any of wanted to work overseas in the US for example; then it would be expected of us to have a degree therefore in order to not limit myself I must pursue a degree. Finally, the last thing I found interesting from our interview was that their sales of print magazines are doing better than ever, which really surprised me as there is such an emphasis on print 'dying' but that Anthem publishing are constantly evolving their online presence when it comes to digital magazines, personally i would like digital magazines to becomes more interactive with the readers such as through video content and hyperlinks to other sections of the magazine, etc.

Finally

PT 1

PT 2