Parish Rebrand Brief Crit

We were to have a Crit for the Extended Practice module to show what we had produced so far and to get feedback on what we had done.

For the Crit, I had made some design boards for the Parish Rebrand Brief to show what I had made in preparation for the crit as well as some small mock ups of the editorial aspects of the brief, ie. the Menu and Brand Guidelines, which will allow for the people in my Crit to be able to physically go through my layouts and proof read them/engage in physically writing on them if need be. 

Design Boards and Mock Ups for Crit

For the crits themselves, we have been split up into groups. I have been put in the Blue group. Within the Group, we had to decide how we wanted to conduct the crit so that it would be the most beneficial to us so we decided to split the group into 2 halves so that the groups would be smaller but would be more intense.

For the crit, I showed the design boards that I had made and discussed my brief so far. The feedback I got however, wasn't great.

Crit Feedback

One of the pieces of feedback I got was that I needed to change the typeface that I had used for the logo as it was too clean and sophisticated. It needed to be grittier and grungy, however, this would go against the needs of my brief as it needs to have some type of sophistication as that is the point of the brief. The same was said about my illustrations, however, I had others say to keep them in because they liked them due to the clarity of the imagery.

An interesting piece of feedback I got was the suggestion of achieving this 'grungier' look by adding a texture or producing a pattern for the brand identity so that it creates a detail to the identity. I quite liked this idea as this would add to the brand identity that I had produced whilst adding to it, perhaps even having a dispersing pattern.  It was suggested that I could create more of a detail by having a banner on the logo design.

In regards to the skewer flags, they liked that idea and suggested maybe having just a hand as a skewer which reflects the logo design. Also, for a double page spread of design work within the menu  to break up the information for a bit of personality, however, the group did like my menu layout and commented on how much work I had managed to get done.

Preferred Colour Scheme from Feedback

Lastly, the group commented on my colour scheme as they agreed that they liked my reasoning and choice of colour yet they thought that it would look better if the colour scheme was changed up by having less off-white. I showed them some of the designs that I had played around with colour and they prefered the black background, white logo variant saying that it instantly added to the desired aesthetic. 

I think the crit could have gone better and I will take on board some of the comments, in particular the comments about the banner and the patterned background and see about applying it to my work. 

PPP3: Studio Brief 1- Design Strategy Presentation

We have been asked to produce a 10 minute presentation for the start of the year, which builds on from the presentation we gave at the end of 2nd year.

We had been given key aspects in which we should discuss:

• A statement about you as a designer
• The studio briefs we are proposing
• The direction for COP 3

I had trouble producing a layout for the format of my presentation, however, I realised that it would be a good idea to use the brand identity that I have just produced for myself so that I could use it in a professional context.

I decided to use only text within my presentation because I didn't see how I could illustrate the points I was intending to make. I kept it very simple with only the most important information on the slides. This was mainly for me to use the slides as prompts so that I had no choice but to face the audience and talk to them rather than using the presentation as a crutch.

The statement about myself as a designer is what I used for the CV that I was making for within my self branding yet I managed to condense it down to the most specific elements.

Practice Notes for Presentation

In order to illustrate the points that needed to be made and so I could practice the timing of my presentation, I made some notes that I could work with.

After doing the presentation, I felt that the presentation went well. I was given some feedback on my presentation. I mentioned that I wasn't sure of one of my briefs because of the timing, however, it was suggested that I should do it anyway. Also, John mentioned that there is a lot of brand agencies that specialise in being specifically designing for 'the ultimate shopper experience' so I feel that this would be a good avenue to go down.