Design Practice III//Brief Submission to YCN.

Officially submitted to the YCN UK Greetings Awards 2012/13, hooray!

Looking forward to submitting to at least one more of the briefs before the March deadline throughout my FMP module.

Design Practice III//YCN Boards Edited For Submission.

Edited submission boards (with the edition of a quick submission page) ready to be sent along and submitted to the YCN UK Greetings brief Student Awards 2012/13.

Generally speaking, I'm pretty pleased with the outcomes and believe they have been well documented, and have been fortunate enough to gain some really positive feedback from friends and my peer group, so fingers crossed for the results from YCN in the New Year!

Design Practice III//Brief Two: UK Greetings / YCN 2013 Submission Boards.

The finalised module submission boards for the UK Greetings / YCN 2013 brief, in which I created my own brand of greetings card and range of gift products to accompany them.

In terms of the scope of my briefs for the module submission, strangely, considering the short time frame and quick development of the brief, this is probably the one I am most proud of, as I took a step out of my comfort zone to work on packaging design (albeit simple packaging) and a really quick turnaround with production values that have impressed others during crits.

Doing a quick competition brief like this one with successful results has definitely given me a confidence boost in regards to what I can achieve, and hope that I can carry this on through to FMP and later on in my personal and professional design practice and career.

Design Practice III//OH PIG.

I spent all of yesterday documenting and taking photographs of my finalised work (images to be blogged asap), but totally forgot to shoot images of my wrapped presents for the UK Greetings/YCN 2013 brief. Whoops. Hopefully YCN/UK Greetings and Assessment tutors will still like what my work and product range has to offer!

Design Practice III//YCN & UK Greetings Print Outcomes.

The finalised results of my YCN/UK Greetings brief, with a product range including x4 designs (in various colours) with greetings cards, envelopes, gift wrap, gift tags and x2 sizes of bags (small and medium).

Considering the (very!) quick turn around of the designs, I'm happy with what I've achieved in a short space of time, and feel that as a product range the designs will look really effective together, and, hopefully, product shots will be achieved over the beginning of next week after being printed and constructed on Monday on a range of specialist papers- particularly looking at achieved a high-end, satin/gloss finish to the designs that would be well suited in a retail environment.

Design Practice III//YCN & UK Greetings Design Developments II.

Happy with a style I've been working towards so far for the UK Greetings/YCN 2013 brief, I started working on more design outcomes, particularly looking at gift bags and wraps to work consistently with the card retail range in a bold and minimal design style that will, hopefully, look really effective when photographed as a group range with a focus on bold colours and typography.

Using existing bags I purchased from Paperchase earlier in the month, I went on to create nets of the gift bags (in a small, square format, and a larger, rectangular bag) to be printed in digital print in my next print slot on Monday.

Over the weekend I'll source and purhcase appropriate satin stock to print, along with tissue paper (for photographic purposes!) and silk/reinforced ribbon to be used as handles for each of the bags.

Really looking forward to seeing the outcomes of the bags, and feel quite positive about my future design developments in regards to my packaging design, which, in the past, has been an infamous nemesis.

Design Practice III//YCN & UK Greetings Design Development.

Moving on from the calligraphic, typographic style (as discussed in a previous design post), I decided to work with vector-based type to compliment the existing 'Write About Love' branding design for the YCN/UK Greetings Brief.

I started experimenting with the type used in the brand logo (Avenir) and exploring weights, particularly Heavy, and was really pleased with the bold, modern and clean aesthetic of the design, which I feel would particularly appeal to my retail audience (18-30 year old women with young families/careers with disposable income).

Looking at developing a range of unique and personalised message (trying to avoid overly-romantic cliches) to work to the range of "all types of love" cards (friendship, marital, parental, etc), deciding on the consistent theme of 'You Are...' as the beginning of the message to make it seem more direct and emotive.

Exploring colours, I took to Adobe Kuler (a fantastic resource for colour matching), looking at themes of love, playfulness and "ice cream" to communicate a sweet, playful and romantic feel to the designs, whilst still looking modern and preferably not too feminine, as I want the range to appeal to a wide range of potential recipients.

Through starting to explore use of colour, layout and content, I've started to develop a range of products which I feel will work strongly together in a bold, simple, yet considered way.

Design Practice III//UK Greetings Initial Ideas Development.

Documentation of my initial ideas development, before settling on my decision to focus on calligraphic/typographic content and themes throughout the product range.
A couple of weeks ago, I started developing a range of minimal illustrations around the theme of love that could be blind embossed, or use one spot colour throughout. Although I have decided not to pursue this theme, the simple hand-rendered type work I was developing gave me inspiration for working towards a more typographic, calligraphic style... more developments to come within the next couple of days, to be posted on my Design Practice blog.

Design Practice III//UK Greetings & YCN Professional Print.

Researching options for professional print outcomes, I've found it increasingly difficult to find square-format cards in the specified 159mm x 159mm I hope to work to (as specified in the UK Greetings/YCN brief) as well as within a reasonable budget for the project/at a very short print run.

The best option sourced, in terms of price and flexibility would be to print 100 cards from Awesome Merchandise (at square format, but not the exact size as specified) with the four different styles, as specified, for a total of £85.00 (£65.00 + 20 for the 4 styles). However, as alluded to earlier, at this point in the student loan year, the budget for printing isn't as flourishing as I would hope it to be, therefore, I will have to rely on digital print or screen printing for my outcomes- not ideal, as I hoped to achieved a really professional, high standard, which realistically I don't think will be the same from Uni, however, I will do my best to ensure I achieve the best results possible for photographing and module/competition brief submission.

Design Practice III//UK Greetings 'Write About Love' Logo Development.

Continuing on from my quick, hand-rendered logo design developments, I went on to create a vector-based design for the UK Greetings/YCN brief, with the proposed title, 'Write About Love'.

After a little experimentation, I found that simplicity was (as often is) the most effective, and using a clean vector based style balanced well with a wide-kern sans serif type (again, like a great deal of my work recently) using Avenir, with the words 'Write' and 'Love' in Heavy, with 'About' in Regular, visually emphasising the subject matter of love/writing, along with the visual aid of the pen nib with the heart-shaped vent.

Also, experimenting with a variety of different colours (as I will with my rendered designs for the card content themselves), I found that a reversed-out white on colour definitely looked the most effective, and really popped against the colour, and being an effective use of the colour's negative space. Taking this into consideration, I may result in white type on the cover of the cards for visual consistency, and, therefore, may result in looking to screen printing to achieve the desired results, which could add a really tactile print finish, or, indeed, look to professional print methods in order to achieve a high-gloss, high-end finish that would be really desriable.

See examples of development and thought process as shown in the Issuu PDFs below.

Design Practice III//UK Greetings & YCN 2013 Proposed Brand Development.

Making a good start in regards to my design development for the brand proposal for the UK Greetings/YCN 2013 brief, in which we have to develop our own signature card brand to fit within the UK Greetings overarching company brand. 

Whilst starting writing down ideas for brand names, I was listening to one of my favourite bands, Belle & Sebastian, when their track with actress, Carey Mulligan, 'Write About Love' started to play, and I felt instantly inspired, with the title fitting in so perfectly with my aspirations to create typographic/calligraphic design cards with sentiments of love in it's many forms (friendship, parent-child, romantic, etc). After generating some simple designs by hand, going along the lines of a pen nib with a heart as the vent hole in the pen nib head, and potentially also having a heart shape above, representing the ink, with a combination of uppercase and script based font as the written type logo, something quite simple and effective that I believe could work well in a range of colours and print finishes (particularly embossing, which is something I would potentially like to explore, time permitting). I will now go on to experiment and start generating vector-based designs in Adobe Illustrator for print.

Design Practice III//Paperchase Gift Wraps.

Last weekend I took a trip to my local Paperchase store, and picked up some essential gift wrap items to help with the technicalities of my YCN/UK Greetings brief, in regards to both assessing the dimensions of both gift wraps and bags, but also being able to get my hands on some of the tubes (yay!) which will be useful when documenting and photographing my work.

This weekend I hope to make a real significant progress with the brief and to be able to print my cards (at very least) in my designated print slot next Monday afternoon, as well as, hopefully, printing a few of my wrap designs, as developed from the typographic/calligraphic greetings cards, to go on to develop the bags later on in the week.

Design Practice III//UK Greetings & YCN Re-Written Brief.

(FINALLY!) My re-written brief for the UK Greetings & YCN 2012/13 brief which I hope to start design developments for within the next couple of days.

Looking specifically at my target market, audience and product outcomes to be produced, expanding the product range to gift wrap and bags, as well as cards, for a significant brief in terms of submission both for the module and for the YCN entry.

Really excited to get started and start developing ideas for a professional-standard printed collateral range.

Design Practice III//UK Greetings & YCN.

ukgreetings.co.uk

Returning to, and going over the UK Greetings brief in finer detail so I can start making design developments as soon as possible, and re-writing the brief to cater for the module as a significant brief, as well as, hopefully, a really impressive design range to document and submit for the YCN 2012/13 brief.

Looking at closer details, and examples of the ranges on the site, I have concluded that my target audience will be focused on women aged 21-30, who are either dating or newly weds, with a range of typographically-driven 'I love you' themed cards for valentines, anniversaries, or just to say, simply, that they love the recipient with chirpy and heartfelt messages in a contemporary style.

The majority of the cards shown on the UK Greetings site are relatively "samey" in regards to the market, but the Collage collection looks very promising as a contemporary and design-lead range, which is something I hope to achieve through a range of printed collateral.

Research and design developments need to get a move on as soon as possible so I can get the brief submitted for both the module and YCN deadline.