Reflective Practice

Reflective Practice

The aim of studio brief 04 is to produce a design that communicates the advice I would give to level 4 students enrolling on the course next year.

Immediately, I began to come up with different bits of advice I could give...

- places to go out in the evenings e.g. restaurants, clubs, bars and pubs

- day activities for the weekends e.g. trampoline world

- Things to do with the course itself e.g. blogging, print room slots, inductions

Writing my own brief

We then had to write our own brief to inform our design decisions. 

Studio Brief

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Speaking From Experience

Undertake research into key information & past experiences that you think would be beneficial to anyone enrolling on the course next year.

Produce a graphic response that offers advice to first years.

Work with any appropriate media & format to ensure the advice you give is easy to understand and useful to the reader/viewer 

Produce a design that will be noticed and not ignored, Allow for the design to be mass produced easily and applied in noticeable spaces.

Background / Considerations

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Aim to explore a range of different aspects about the course and life in Leeds in general.

Think back to the time when you were starting out on the course, and think of the info and advice you would most like to receive. 

Mandatory Requirements

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Use the blank brief to define aims and intensions 

Take advantage of the processes and facilities available to me

Content should be appropriate to a level 4 student 

Cheap and efficient reproduction

Deliverables

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Design Boards

Resolved design solution

Rationale and evaluation

Blog posts

Blogging

I have decided to pursue the idea of blogging. 

Blogging is one aspect of the course that I have battled with throughout the year. My relationship with it started very badly as I did not see the point and thought of it as a really bad way of documenting my progress. In the past, I have kept sketch books which I was much more comfortable with using, and I hadn't used blogging before. My frustration grew as I saw blogging as just extra work I had to get out the way in order to enjoy any work I was interested in.

This is why I have decided to try and prevent this from happening to next years 4th years. 

My Aim

To create a fun and engaging character using the blogger logo. The character will be a clear representation of blogging and will be light hearted. This will hopefully change the 4th years opinion on blogging and make them stress less.

Idea

The Blog Monster

The blog monster is a fun character that will feature along side sayings such as 'feed me blogs' and 'don't leave me hungry!'

[image of drawings]

Feedback

I left a few sketches out in the studio along with my brief in order to get some feedback from my peers.

'I think it's slightly childish and needs more consideration of the target audience'

'the monster aspect is quite negative, maybe make him/her more friendly'

From the constructive criticisms, I gathered that my message needed to be more positive as well as take more consideration as to who the intended audience is.

I made some more sketches and produced a more friendly character with more sympathetic messages.  

My New Aim

My aim is to create a friendly and positive relationship between student and blogger from the get go. This would have been greatly useful to me at the beginning of the year. I now hate blogging slightly less but still am not a fan, however I feel that my experience with it could have been a better one from the beginning if I had had a good relationship with it.

I will be creating a character out of the blogger logo and combining it with positive, witty text.

As for format, I intend to create stickers. These will be handed out in the welcome packs and can be stuck anywhere from laptops to notebooks and even in their rooms.

Production

I've taken the existing blogger logo and combined it with classic cartoon character features. I have aimed to make it as friendly and approachable as I can whilst also adding elements that consider the age of target audience. One way I did this was to give the character a pair of trainers, typical of the audience and well recognised.

I then thought up a couple of humorous slogans to go with the character and on the sticker. Both were then applied to a circle shape to form the sticker design.

I stuck with the original colour orange from the blogger logo as a) it would be easily recognisable and b) its very vibrant and will be noticeable on a number of surfaces.

Stickers

I decided to produce stickers as part of my response in consideration of my target audience. The recipients of these will be freshers starting the course next year. They are popular amongst said age bracket and will therefore appeal to them and be noticed more than just text or imagery. The stickers can be applied in a number of places such as desks, laptops and notepads.

The idea behind the sticker is that it will be situated in places where it can motivate students to get blogging and get it done so that they don't fall behind.

Feedback

The general feedback of my stickers was that they were not age appropriate.More consideration into the target audience is needed as at the moment, they are a bit childish and would be suitable for a younger audience.

One comment mentions:

"Less child cartoon. consider not having a personified blog character? Just nicely designed blog stickers? more subtle maybe"

This feedback gave me the idea to scrap the character and design a new sticker that my target audience would be happy to stick on their laptops and desks.

I've taken the existing blogger logo and manipulated it to make it more interesting. I've kept the original orange colour and added some background shading.

I have prepared the stickers on an A3 sheet for printing this afternoon.