OUGD 503 End of Module Evaluation

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

This module has brought with it a lot of new opportunity to try new things and work in different ways, it has fully introduced me to the world of design competitions and improved my collaborative skills. I think that is is my collaborative skills that I have applied and improved the most, dividing work, offering and taking feedback and reviewing and organising  the project together helped me and Sam to produce a cohesive and effective body of work.
Another skill that has been invaluable throughout this module has been physical testing of products which allowed me to develop them until they were as good as possible before settling on a final design.


2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

Throughout this module I have focussed on producing a wider range for briefs and experimenting with what products would be relevant to various projects rather than just designing for the standard products. Mind mapping and deciding what will add to a project has affected the path that project will take and how the final outcome will look.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

My design boards and layout skills have improved a lot throughout this project, I will continue to develop these skills to create professional and polished boards for future projects. I enjoyed creating unique deliverables for the Forestry Commission brief such as bacon packaging, car air fresheners and coasters, this is something that I will strive to develop upon in further projects to create unique and memorable work that stands out from the standard deliverables such as posters/ leaflets etc.



4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?

As I have said in previous evaluations I still think that the photography and presentation of final products could be improved, although I have gone to more effort this time photographing products in a relevant way and taking time to sort out lighting I think that I could push this further in the future to create photographs that really sell the work.



5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

I will put more time and art direction into the context, theme and staging of final product photography which will give me much more professional, engaging and effective photographs that showcase my work in a positive light.
I will put more time into researching the audience that I am designing for as this will inform my design decisions and will also strengthen the rationale of all choices that I make.
Something that I haven't fully explored yet is testing different stock for final products, I would like to get hold of a selection of various stocks that I would be able to use for printing and other processes, this will give me much higher quality and considered work rather than just making do with the first stock I can get/ what is cheapest.
I want to spend longer at the start of projects really developing the concept that will run throughout the project, honing it down to a concise sentence will allow me to keep focus through the project and refer back to it to make sure that what I am designing is relevant to the initial statement.
Finally, I want to focus on briefs (when possible) that suit my strengths, light hearted and interactive briefs that have room for a personal tone of voice and humour are what I think I am best at and this is something that I would like to develop and get better at. This will allow me to have a broader body of work of which I can show to illustrate how I differ from other designers.

6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance					x
Punctuality					x
Motivation					x
Commitment					x
Quantity of work produced				x
Quality of work produced				x
Contribution to the group				x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

Design Boards for All Briefs

An interactive version of this document can be found on the disc included in the submission folder

OUGD 503- Responsive report

Open publication - Free publishing

Individual Contribution 5x Design Boards

Finished Products and Extended Submission

These are a few pictures taken from our photo shoot of all our final products:

This is the complete range of physical products

This is the interior of each box with embossed base and leaflet:

In addition to the physical submissions we are proposing how the range could be extended and promoted, I mocked up a potential web element and Sam mocked up how the range will be promoted through magazine adverts and public advertising.

I used the existing Lartisan Parfumeur website to mock up the concept

The idea is that the user can pick a colour they like and then a scent will be matched to that colour to best suit that customer, this allows users to feel more part of the overall experience and the fragrances will feel more personal to them:

This is the summary that we submitted to explain our project:

Open publication - Free publishing

Extended Vovomo range

Vovomo is a company that specialise in designing and engineering cases for smart phones.

I designed their identity, web presence and staff uniform that has a bit more of a personal touch than the average obligatory clothing.

I extended this project from a Design crowd brief to give it more weight, the products that make up the range are:

Letterhead, receipt, business card, lanyard, employee t-shirts and web banners/ adverts.

Using Bevel/Emboss effects on Photoshop I have mocked up the logo to show how it would look if imprinted on an actual case

I managed to make use of Sam Hoh's smashed iPhone to show the advantages of using a high quality protective case

The logo is used to construct the shape and imagery of the business card which is kept simple and strong.

These are the t-shirts that will be worn by the employees working in store they are designed to be un-daunting but strong so that staff appear approachable but also knowledgable, using brief and too the point sentences gives the impression they know what they're on about.

This is the Facebook page where Vovomo can post updates and offers to extend their customer reach and target specific markets.

If I were to extend this brief further this would change to a custom website and shop.

YCN Forestry Comssion - Presentation

This is my submitted PDF for the Forestry Commission competition:

Colour Matching & Crafting

Here are the finished leaflets that go in the boxes:

The leaflet gives information on how to use the product a brief description of what the perfume represents and health and safety warnings. This information is translated into 5 other languages to that are the most common in places where L'Artisan Parfumeur sell perfume

We had some trouble with colour syncing. I printed the stickers (Small yellow rectangle) in Digital Print and the leaflet is printed from a laser jet and you can see that the colours are quite drastically different

It was most apparent on the yellow. I tried to remedy this as best I could by changing the colour on the document to compensate for the printer, this worked relatively well and was an improvement on the original difference but still not spot on. If we were to carry this design proposal through to industry we would specify Pantone codes so that all the colours were clear and consistent.

We also had a lot of trouble with the blue, these 3 shades are from 3 different printers all using exactly the same file. We are going to leave this slight difference for now and photoshop our images if the difference in tone is obvious and distracting

We finished constructing our nets today, we used a strong laminated stock that is very similar to the packaging that is used for most medical products, it was very easy to score and fold and produced a strong and structurally sound package.

Final Products: Crafting

In our second attempt at embossing we achieved much better results. By dampening the paper and rolling out the excess the embossing plate was much more effective.

We embossed white card which will be used for the support structure within the box

We also embossed black card which will be used for bottle labels:

I was in charge of crafting the bottle support, which I have developed to consist of two parts (after vacuum forming was unsuccessful) a case and a support.

This is the simple net for the case with just 4 tabs that need to be glued down.

This is the assembled 'case' with logo emboss

We require 4 cases to fit the 4 scents that we are designing for, I have made more than enough so we can pick and choose the most successful for photographing

The second component to the internal support is the insert that holds the bottle.

This was the result of the initial net that I thought would work well- after testing with printer paper.
After trying this with white card it is obvious that it didn't work as well as I'd hoped

I decided to simplify the net and cut a circle that the bottle would fit into rather than two half circles (as pictured above)

Cutting the circle away in segments helped to achieve a much more accurate circle

This was much more successful and produced a very neat and solid structure

When we have attached the label and assembled the boxes I think that this support structure will photograph really well

This gives an idea of what the finished products will look like:

Net Editting

The net that we were basing our packaging on had quite a rectangular base when we needed it to be square. Using illustrator I changed all the sides so that they were 5.7cm wide

We also decided on removing the viewing window as it was quite gimmick-ey and not medical.

We printed and assembled the net to see if it would work before we dove into printing on high quality stock

The net was successful even though it was  a little flimsy in places, a thicker stock would fix this

The flap opens up like a door and reveals the perfume sat in it's embossed base with the accompanying leaflet tucked behind it.

After making the alterations to the net the base fits perfectly at the bottom of the package

Laser Cut take 2 & 3 + Emboss take 1

To emboss the base and bottle label I laser cut more logos out and glued them onto card to emboss the base

This was the first result that we were happy with, this was made by not using any padding and applying a lot of pressure

Aligning the logo to the right place is the biggest problem because you can hardly see where you are placing the stamp

After applying too much pressure our logo got squashed down a bit, we applied some water and padding so that the pressure would be spread evenly and the paper would take the emboss easier.

This worked well but was a bit too deep and also damaged the paper too much

After damaging the first mould quite a lot we laser cut more letters to use for the final products on Monday 11th. We will emboss each 4 of the bases and 4 labels for the bottles