Friday 31st January

Today I spent the day working on my branding concepts. By the end of today I really wanted all of my concepts on screen so that on Monday I could just work on fonts and colours which would then enable me to print off my concepts on Tuesday morning and discuss any tweaks with my colleagues before presenting them to the client on Wednesday. 
I am glad that I left the branding yesterday as it meant that I could come in this morning and get straight to work on the project. I find it a lot harder to get motivated when I have no ideas, so knowing exactly what I needed to do when I got in this morning made my day a lot more productive. Originally I was supposed to work on a website banner this morning, but the client decided to keep the same one, so I therefore had all day to spend working on the branding. By mid afternoon I had translated my three concepts from paper to screen. I produced multiple logos for each concept which means that now on Monday I can add different colours and fonts to these, see which work best, and then narrow them down so that I have just one logo design for each concept.
I have now completed my first week on placement and managed to meet all of the deadlines I was set for the week. Although I still have the branding to work on, I am more than confident that this will be finished by Monday. This has made me feel more confident in myself and encouraged me to embrace more work. At the beginning of the week I had a board full of work and deadlines to meet all for this week and, as I explained, I felt very overwhelmed and nervous about this. I wasn't confident that I would be able to get everything done in time. However, now I have got to the end of the week I have realised that I actually got that amount of work completed quite comfortably.
This is a good thing because it has given me a clearer idea of how much I am capable of completing in a week and I can use this as a framework for the future. If I continue to work at this pace then soon I will be able to predict how much time I need to complete projects which will enable my colleagues to determine if I have time to do any more work or if i'm too busy. I feel that this week I haven't worked the most efficiently all week, so I think that I could still complete more in the same space of time if I pushed myself. This is something to work on in future. Despite that I am happy with what I was able to complete this week as I met all of my deadlines at a comfortable place without rushing or putting myself under pressure, while still working on a variety of projects that I can now add to my portfolio. 

Thursday 30th January

Following the meeting and the research I have gathered for my branding project I had to start designing some logo concepts today. I have worked on branding projects with Adam before Christmas, but on these occasions I was expected to produce one or two logo concepts while Adam worked on three or four. However because I am running the project I am expected to come up with three or four, while Adam only needs to work on one. I am excited by the challenge and appreciate being given a project that I can take ownership of, but having to come up with four different concepts is a little overwhelming. I have the technical ability to create logos, but I don’t have the creativity. Having this mind set makes the task even more difficult because I am trying to design with a negative attitude.

I still have another three full days before I need to put forward the concepts to the client, so I have enough time to keep working on this project, which is what I will do. As much as I find it scary I cannot shy away from these situations because I need to learn to be comfortable in them to progress in this profession. As I mentioned before, I am competent with Illustrator and can easily design a logo, it’s the lack of ideas that is setting me back. I have spoken to Adam about this today and he suggested to keep looking at competitors’ logos and finding similarities in them and elements or colours that never appear, to get an idea of what does and doesn’t work in logos for this type of business. He also suggested that I get into a habit of looking on Pinterest and design websites daily and this will help me to naturally build up a bank of inspiration. Hopefully by doing this idea generation will gradually become second nature. If all else fails Julian has already stressed that if I am finding it too much work I must tell them and they are understanding of the fact that I have never worked in industry before. However, this is a last resort and I would really like to prove my capabilities to both Revolution Inc., the client, and myself!
The business is called Sales Force 10 Recruitment, and the client talked a lot about circular shapes and stripes being incorporated into the logo concepts, and they also liked clever logos, such as FedEx, that use negative space. I tried to incorporate stripes, but I think that it would make the business look more like a fashion label, so I stuck with looking at round designs and ways of using negative space. I also came across a recruitment logo that turns the 'R' into a person, which I really liked, so I started sketching out ideas for each of these concepts. By lunchtime I had three rough concepts with a number of sketches for each that I could then start to translate on Illustrator. However, when it got to the afternoon I was struggling to come up with new ideas, and Julian needed a discount card designing by the end of the day so I worked on this after lunch. This didn't take long, and I would have had time to carry on working on the branding, but I felt that I needed more of a break, and if I left the project where it was then I would easily be able to pick it up in the morning and translate my ideas on to screen. In addition, the branding is not due until Wednesday, where I had a mail shot that needed doing for Friday, so I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon finishing this.

Print Quote Mail Shot

As this is a typography based image, I needed to know what it was going to say before I started arranging lettering. I came up with a number of different ways of saying the basic message and eventually came up with "Challenge us! Could we beat your print quote? Call us now to find out!"

After deciding what my message was going to be, I began some really rough sketches showing the sort of layout I could try, where I could use capitals and lowercase, and what illustrations I could include.

While I realise it is good to get drafts of concepts down on paper first, in this case all of the fonts I will be using will be existing digital ones, not hand rendered, and therefore I didn't think it was necessary to spend a lot of time sketching out details pencil versions as it would be much easier to get straight onto Illustrator where I can play around more.

Here are a number of fonts that I downloaded or found already on my computer that I thought would be good to use for this image.

This is my first idea. I really like the idea of using an illustration of a printer, but this concept is far too big for the size that the image needs to be.

This is my second idea. I think in terms of fonts this is more what Adam and I had in mind, but I think that this design is a bit simple and could do with more shapes or illustrations to make it more interesting. (and of course some colour!)

This is my final design. After showing Adam the black and white versions of my initial ideas he pointed out that the fonts I have chosen look like they are from different eras and don't really match. I then started to look at what 50s fonts look like and downloaded a couple in that style and replaced the old western style ones with these ones.

Although the fonts were better we agreed that the wording doesn't sound right and the colours weren't bright enough for the mail shot. I then changed the wording and left a space at the bottom so that I could ask Julian what he would like it to say before adding the text. I looked at 50s posters on Pinterest for colour inspiration and kept coming across a lot of cream, black, burgundy, red and green. I therefore started playing around with these colours and came up with this palette. I left the green out as it didn't go. I was still unsure of the colours but decided to send it to Julian anyway for a second opinion. 

Julian tweaked the text a little, and said that no more description was needed on the actual imagery. However he did ask that I added the logo. After doing this I showed the final product to Adam who suggested a background or gradient to make the writing stand out more so I decided to add a subtle radial gradient so that the middle of the background has a slight glow, making the message stand out even more.

Wednesday 29th January

Today I have come home feeling a little disappointed because I have not completed all of the work that I planned to do. I had hoped to spend the morning completing illustrations for a Revolution Inc. mail shot and then the afternoon gathering research for the branding project I am leading, providing that by then the client had come into the office to pay the deposit for the branding. However, when I arrived in the office this morning, within an hour I had been asked to complete another task that wasn't in my job list. The job was to simply design five tables for a website and would only take me an hour, but I felt under pressure because I had allocated all of my time for the day to the other two tasks on my list.
I managed to complete these relatively quickly and was soon able to work on the mail shot again. However, after lunch, Adam then approached me and asked me he could use my laptop during a meeting in the middle of the afternoon. This was because a client was coming in that we started work for before Christmas and his Facebook page has been set up on my laptop. Of course I had to let Adam use my laptop, but this meant that I also ended up sitting in his meeting which lasted for an hour and a half - another hour and a half that I hadn't incorporated into my timetable. Unfortunately because of these two set backs I was able to create an outline of my illustration for the mail shot, and I was able to gather research for the branding project, but I still didn't complete the amount of work that i had hoped to complete by the end of the day. This will now have an effect on the rest of my week as I need to make up the two and a half hours that I lost today.
I was aware that I would have my own list of jobs, but that also other tasks may be passed on to me in between. However I have not been incorporating that into my day. Most days I will be aware of what work needs doing and I will be able to get on with what I have planned, but I think I need to start leaving some time in my day just in case this happens again. Although I have deadlines that I need to keep, my work load is not so hectic that I don't have time to spare, so from now on I am going to start allocating an hour or two every day of free time that I can use if I get asked to complete another task. If not then I can always use this time to complete my work if I had underestimated how long it would take me, or refine my work if I do get it finished. In addition, I could also spend this time looking for interesting articles that I could post on Revolution Inc.'s twitter as I know Adam likes to post 3 or 4 times a day and he doesn't always have time to find interesting things to post.

Linpex Tables

Here is a website that Revolution Inc. have been working. They have asked me to design some simple tables to show the different features of each type of racking and their ratings between 1 and 5.

Here is an initial table I have put together based on the information I had been given. I was told that the font needs to be Arial 14pt, and the ratings were to be in a bar chart format. I have decided to colour the bars in green as this is used in the logo and it is a positive colour. However, I think the bars look boring as one block colour so I am going to play around with gradients.

I had a play around with gradients to create a 3D bar to make the table look a little more interesting, but decided that in this case it wouldn't look right as the rest of the website has a very simple, flat design. 

This is the final idea that I sent to Julian for proofing.

Julian liked the tables and thought they were fine for the website so I simply repeated the design for the other four types of racking and added a 'low - high' scale so people will understand what the bars mean. I'm not sure that 'low - high' is the best scale to use as i'm not sure it makes much sense to explain how good the features are, but this is what Julian wants and for now I can't think of a better way of describing it.

After saving these in jpeg format I realised that it saved as one image and that it cropped the image right up to the text so I had to copy and paste each one onto an artboard in a separate file, and add a white rectangle in the background to ensure that there will be some whitespace around the edge.

Tuesday 28th January

This morning, as discussed, I met with a new client and ran a meeting in regards to some branding work he would like completing for his new recruitment business. He only started his business two weeks ago and at this stage his priority is a logo and branding and a website. Following this he would like basic print design completing such as business cards and letterheads. During the meeting Julian explained the process of creating a new brand including how long to expect it to take and how much to expect it to cost. He also spoke in more detail about his competitors and target market as he is the director but also looks after the sales side of projects. In terms of the design of the brand it was up to me to ask questions.

I had prepared a list of questions and made sure I had something written down for each one, but I don’t believe I made the client give me enough detail. At the time I didn’t want to push them too much because they seemed to be a little overwhelmed with all of the detail involved in creating a brand. Therefore, when I asked them a question, for example “What is the tone of voice of your business?”, I let them simply answer with “aimed at outgoing sales people” before moving on because they seemed startled by such questions and I sensed that they didn’t really know how to answer it.

At the time I asked them everything and wrote down as much as I could, but when it came to relaying the information back to Adam this afternoon I soon realised that I didn’t get enough detail. Fortunately I got enough information about what styles they like, what existing brands they like and why, and what they think of their competitors branding and reasons, so Adam and I are able to start working on logo concepts. However, Adam did ask me for details such as the type of recruitment they specialise in and the sort of impression they want their brand to give and I couldn’t confidently answer these questions as I didn’t push the client enough for clear cut answers at the time.

In future I must be more outgoing and push for the answers that I need. It would also be good to find alternative ways of teasing information out of clients that may have a more cloudy vision or are more shy and tend to hold back so that I can still gain the information that I need without feeling that I am putting the client under pressure or making them feel uncomfortable.
In the meeting my client talk a lot about their competitors and elements that they would really like to be included in the logo. They discussed having a circular stamp-like design that could stand alone as a logo, and also incorporating stripes, referencing the Paul Smith brand. I therefore spent the rest of the day researching different things from the notes I took and putting together some mood boards of competitors, shapes and colours that they would like to see in their brand so that I was able to show Adam some visuals.

Rev. Inc. York Mail Shot

Brief: To design an image to accompany a story about the new studio opening in York that will appear in the next e-shot.

Adam had already thought about the design and thought it would be good to illustrate a map with York and Sheffield on it, so I began by researching illustrated maps. Not a lot came up on Google images, but I did find this map that I particularly liked. I loved the design of this map, but I think that it is something that was a little complicated for me to attempt, and I had to consider that the image would only appear as a small thumbnail on the mail shot and an image as busy as this one wouldn't be clear. However, I also loved the use of bright colours which was something that I could incorporate into my own design.

Although I needed a simple design that could be seen clearly as a thumbnail, I still liked the idea of a map. I then started thinking about how I could create a really simple map that just showed Sheffield and York and decided to find this route in Google maps and take a screenshot that I could then use in Illustrator to trace over to create my own map.

I only included the necessary roads to create a simple map of the area, meaning that it would still be clearly visible at a small size. I made the route between Sheffield and York bolder to emphasise the fact that Revolution Inc. have studios in these two locations, but then added other main roads and locations so that readers that aren't familiar with the area can visualise where they are situated. I also changed the colours to orange and white as these are the colours that Revolution Inc. York use, and they are also vibrant and engaging and would capture the reader's attention.

I thought that it would be a nice touch to add location pins in Sheffield and York, but then went back to Google maps to see what happened when you actually click on a pin. It brought up a white box which I thought would be good to incorporate to emphasise the new offices in York.

I really liked how this looked with a pin for the current location in Sheffield and an information box for the new additional location in York. However, I think that if you only saw the image, this could potentially look like the offices have moved, rather than the business expanding.

As opposed to removing the information box, I thought that I could make good use of the space in the top left corner of the illustration, and started experimenting with short titles that would better explain the image. I decided to play with the name of Revolution Inc. by suggesting that they are expanding and it will revolutionise design, but simply putting "Revolution is spreading!" didn't seem right.

Monday 27th January

Today was my first day on placement. Due to the fact that I had completed some work for them before Christmas and knew what to expect, I was not nervous about going in this morning. However, as soon as I arrived the atmosphere felt different and it felt a lot more intense than before. I hadn't expected this as before Christmas Revolution Inc. paid me for the work I completed and seemed happy with the way I worked, so I assumed that they would make no changes for my placement. 
On previous occasions I have arrived in work and been told what to work on and allowed to work on it until it was complete no matter how long it took. This morning, however, one of the directors, Julian, and the lead designer, Adam, sat down with me and immediately started talking to me about projects that I will be working on alone that I have to have completed by the end of the week. Initially this scares me a little and i suddenly felt very nervous and not up to the job. Despite this I got to work and soon felt like I had never left.
Although initially I felt overwhelmed, I do understand that I will be working full time during the placement and obviously will be asked to do more, but also the staff want me to feel like part of the company and are therefore giving me my own projects that I can have ownership of, which will in turn teach me vital skills such as time management, project management and multitasking, as well as to gain confidence as a designer.
The staff have provided me with a whiteboard in the office where I can write down my projects and deadlines, but to help me manage my own time I have decided to allocate more specific hours for each task in a calendar to form a timetable that I plan to stick to. This will help me determine how accurate my predictions are for working time. If I am slightly behind then I know I work at a slower pace and can adjust my time accordingly, if severely behind then I know I need to work more efficiently, and if I am on track then I know I can confidently estimate working time for future projects for both staff and clients.

I have been informed today, by Julian, that I will be running a meeting in the morning with a new client regarding branding his business. This made me feel even more nervous that I felt when I first walked in. I have never done anything like this before and felt very unprepared for the situation. Despite this, a part of me is excited for tomorrow. 
I really appreciate that the staff here already have enough confidence in me to allow me take charge of a new project. Having the chance to run and manage this branding will provide me with an exciting project to incorporate into future portfolios, as well as prove to the company that I am capable of such tasks. Hopefully if this project goes ahead and is successful then Revolution Inc. will provide me similar opportunities throughout my placement.
I have never been involved with any kind of business before, but I love the idea of working for myself in the future and therefore am eager to learn the business side of the graphic design industry as well as the design side. Therefore I wanted to be prepared for tomorrow. I initially went online and came up with a compilation of questions from other websites that I could use. After this, I asked Adam if he would mind reading through them and add anything that I have missed that would be valuable to know.

Another project that I worked on today was an mail shot for Revolution Inc. themselves. The purpose of the mail shot is to engage the audience and inform them. There will be three stories, and I have been asked to design imagery for two of them. At first I felt uneasy, but I always feel like this at the beginning of a project when I have no ideas. Fortunately, Adam had already started to think about the imagery and had some potential concepts that he was able to pass on to me to give me a starting point. While I understand that idea generation is an important part of being a designer, I appreciated the prompts in this situation as it meant that I could get straight into designing.
As I mentioned I am aware that idea generation is essential in design and therefore will continue to work on this throughout all of my projects. In future I would like to come up with at least five different concepts for every piece of design I work on, even if they are quick sketches and some are unrealistic outcomes, just to try and enhance my creativeness as I am aware that this is an aspect of design that I currently lack in.

Being More Critical

You need to adopt a questioning approach to what you read and hear about any...issue. First though, think about your own views and reactions to the issue:

• Do you have views on the issue already? What are they?
• Do you know a bit about it? What do you know? And how do you know it?
• How might your views and previous knowledge or experience affect your approach to looking at the evidence on an issue?

Ask strategic questions

• Who
• What
• Where
• When
• Why
• How

For pointers on being critical in assignments, go to page 12 http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/studentservices/documents/oxfordbookesuni-bemorecritical2.pdf

Go to page 15 http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/studentservices/documents/oxfordbookesuni-bemorecritical2.pdf for reflective cycle

Critical Thinking & Reflection

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/studentservices/documents/description-vs-analysis---learnhigher.pdf

Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinking skills 

Identify the line of reasoning in the text – what argument is 
it making? What point of view is it expressing? 

Critically evaluate the line of reasoning 

• Does it contain relevant, contributing and sufficient 
• propositions (reasons)? 
• Does it contain logical progression? 
• Does it contain false premises? 
• Does it contain flawed reasoning? 

Questioning surface appearances and checking for hidden 
assumptions or agendas 

• Is the evidence what it appears to be? 
• Might there be other explanations apart from the obvious 
• one? 
• Has all necessary information been given, or might other details lead to a different conclusion? 
• Are there interested parties who would gain if the 
• conclusions were accepted? 
• Are there hidden assumptions or agendas? 
• Does the evidence come from a reliable, disinterested source? 

The main points which characterise criticism are: 

• agreeing with, or defending a position, or confirming its usefulness through an evaluation of its strengths and weaknesses; 
• conceding that an existing approach or point of view has some merits which can be useful, but that others need to be rejected; 
• focusing on ideas, theories and arguments and not on the author of those arguments, so as to produce careful, considered and justified evaluation; 
• being aware of your own critical stance; identifying your reasons for selecting the work you have criticised and recognising the weaknesses of your critique; 
• selecting elements from existing arguments and reformulating them to form a synthesis: a new point of view on some subject matter; 
• finding fault in an argument by identifying fallacies, inadequacies, lack of evidence or lack of plausibility; 
• identifying errors in a criticism made by another to provide correction and balanced criticism thereby advocating the usefulness of the original work and reasons for rejecting the criticism made of it. 

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/studentservices/documents/criticalthinkingskills.pdf

Critical Thinking

"Critical thinking is a way of deciding whether a claim is true, partially true, or false. Critical thinking is a process that leads to skills that can be learned, mastered and used. Critical thinking is a tool by which one can come about reasoned conclusions based on a reasoned process. This process incorporates passion and creativity, buy guides it with discipline, practicality and common sense."

"The list of core critical thinking skills includes observation, interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation and metacognition. According to Reynolds (2011), an individual or group engaged in strong way of critical thinking gives due consideration to establish. Examples:

• Evidence through observation
• Context skills to isolate the problem from context
• Relevant criteria for making the judgment well
• Applicable methods or techniques for forming the judgment
• Applicable theoretical constructs for understanding the problem and the question at hand

In addition to possessing strong critical-thinking skills, one must be disposed to engage problems and decisions using those skills. Critical thinking employs not only logic but broad intellectual criteria such as clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, significance, and fairness."

"Critical thinking calls for the ability to:

• Recognize problems, to find workable means for meeting those problems
• Understand the importance of prioritization and order of precedence in problem solving
• Gather and marshal pertinent (relevant) information
• Recognize unstated assumptions and values
• Comprehend and use language with accuracy, clarity, and discernment
• Interpret data, to appraise evidence and evaluate arguments
• Recognize the existence (or non-existence) of logical relationships between proporsitions
• Draw warranted conclusions and generalizations
• Put to test the conclusions and generalizations at which one arrives
• Reconstruct one's patterns of beliefs on the basis of wider experience
• Render accurate judgments about specific things and qualities in everyday life."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking