OUGD602 - DBA [uncompleted]

I was unable to complete DBA as we were initially in Hong Kong for the preparation week and then after Hong Kong I was ill and then doing my placement at Pinpoint. Me and Alex briefly discussed the idea behind the project but I took a step back and Alex completed it. He did a really good job with the project but I don't feel I can fully put my name to it.

OUGD602 - Module Evaluation

Looking back at OUGD602 I am quite disappointed with how I approached it, I should have got at this module with a lot more enthusiasm than I actually did. Although this is the case, I did learn quite a bit from PPP and gained some important experience that will help me with my decisions after university regarding my career.

My placement at Pinpoint was not a good choice. I regret not going to a studio more suited to me and my design practice and interests. The work I was doing for Pinpoint was not exactly what I like doing or plan to do in the future, but I was able to do it and wanted to help the team. It was more illustration work than anything, designed to be uploaded to their clients' website blogs. Pinpoint are an 'agency' rather than a studio. I don't think there is an official difference, but Pinpoint were very much business orientated rather than being creative. This is something I will take forward with me in the future when looking for placements and internships as I want to be in a creative environment with other creative people.

One of the highlights of Level 6 for me was my trip to Hong Kong. This trip really made me appreicaiate other cultures and communities and influenced my inspiration and work quite a bit. I was able to do a whole project based around Hong Kong and photography wich I really enjoyed. While I was there we visited Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising and marketing agency that is world renowned for their work over the past 60 years or so.

While we were there we got a tour of the offices and saw the different teams and creatives that make up an agency as a whole. It was interesting to hear about how the different sectors communicate and how they ed up with a finished campaign.

After the tour, John Koay, the Creative Director, gave a presentation talking us through his career and some of the briefs and campaigns he has worked on. This talk was super interesting and honestly really inspiring. At such a young age he had already worked in 3 major advertising agencies across three different countries and became Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather.

I learned a lot from this talk and it really inspired me to want to travel and test different cities before I try and get a permanent job.

OUGD602 - Catalogue Studio

I've been aware of Catalogue's work for a while now but more recently I've really started to like it. I bought a publication a few weeks ago called 'Brick' and really liked the design of it. When looking into what studio designed it it turns out it was Catalogue. I regret not looking into tome sort of placement this year but again, once university is out the way I will be pursuing this.

I feel like a placement at Catalogue would be very helpful for me and my future aspirations in editorial design.

http://www.thisiscatalogue.co.uk/

OUGD602 - Kid. Studio

A studio I rally like the work of is 'Kid.' in Toronto. They are not specifically graphic design but rather just creatives that work with video, photography, branding and web design.

http://kidstudio.co/


I designed some posters as a personal project based on the studio that I was planning on sending with a copy of my portfolio in hopes of a placement or internship. I don't think I will follow this through as I don't think it's the best approach but the posters still came out looking pretty nice.

After university once I have completed my portfolio as best it can be, I will enquire about a placement or internship at Kid.

OUGD602 - Personal Brief | USA Posters

2016 was a big year in American politics and it caused a great divide not only in the country but around the world. Issues stemmed from Donald Trump's win over Hilary Clinton and the policies that he stood for.

I personally I am not a fan of Trump and his views, so wanted to make a set of posters that reflected my thoughts on some of the issues The United States is battling.

Refugee:
This poster is a response to limiting refugees and was designed when Donald Trump refused access to the USA from certain muslim countries. It comments on how little danger refugees pose to their society as there had been a lot of anti-refugee propaganda flying around at the time supporting Trump's decision arguing that terrorists could pose as refugees and cause harm to the nation.

The design behind my poster is quite abstract and conceptual.

- The percentage symbol's (%) two circles represents the the two sides of the story; Americans and refugees. These circles are actually the exact same shade of grey but just appear to be different due to the shades they are on top of. This reflects that everyone in the world is the essentially the same and deserve to be treated like so. The point is that Americans and the rest of the world only seem to be different people due to their background and where they live.

- Type wise I repeated the statement/fact over and over again because I feel it is the most important message of the poster.

Great
This poster focuses on Donald Trump himself and his campaign slogan, 'Making America Great Again'. The poster is meant to convey everybody's lack of surprise when told about another bad Donald Trump decision, using the word 'great' sarcastically.

The poster sarcastically shows the process behind Trump attempting to make America 'great' again and the riots that broke out in protest to Trump. These riots and protests were against Trump and his racist views.

US, A
After the protests started taking place I wanted to design a poster that could also possibly used in these events.

This poster is meant to highlight people's personal views on America and what they stand for.

The type is a mixture of USA and 'Us, a...'. The idea behind it is that people are able to write on these posters reinforcing how America needs to stick together and not let hate cause a divide in the country.

The smaller type reads 'he will not divide us' which isa slogan often chanted at Trump protests. It is laid out to reflect a hanging American flag.

OUGD602 | Competition / Personal Brief - Blank Poster

At the start of the year I knew that I wanted to be more experimental in my design work than I had been in previous years. As a good way to practice this was through the 'Blank Poster' Competition. Each week or so, a new word is chosen at random and contestants are to then design a poster around the word.

Unfortunately after a few weeks I stopped with Blank Poster as I started to work on one of my bigger, more substantial briefs which took up a lot of my time and focus.

Here are a few posters I designed for Blank Poster:





'Go'

'Apple'

'Criticism'

'Match'

'Paradise'

http://blankposter.com/

OUGD602 - Live Brief | 'What Are You Laughing At?' Posters

A group of Creative Advertising students had won an Ad Venture competition brief for the European Womens Lobby. They were to present their campaign to judges and professionals at an edcom event in Lisbon, Portugal.

My task was to design a poster to introduce and advertise their campaign. This poster would be displayed around the venue as well as around the general area of the event.

I had already worked with two of the team members in my Extended Practice module; Zeb and Jasper and it went really well so I was happy to do work for them again.

You can view the project here;
http://d-hart-davies1417-ep.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/What%20Are%20You%20Laughing%20At

OUGD602 - Live Brief | Esty Tomas

One of the briefs I undertook for my Extended Practice module was a logo design for Esty Tomas, an urban photographer based in Liverpool.

This brief came about when Esty asked me if I would be able to design a logo for him which I said yes to, and he sent me over an email with some ideas he liked.

The project can be viewed here:
http://d-hart-davies1417-ep.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Photographer%20Branding

OUGD602 - Studio Visit | Ogilvy & Mather, Hong Kong

During my visit to Hong Kong I got the opportunity to visit Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising and marketing agency that is world renowned for their work over the past 60 years or so.

While we were there we got a tour of the offices and saw the different teams and creatives that make up an agency as a whole. It was interesting to hear about how the different sectors communicate and how they ed up with a finished campaign.

After the tour, John Koay, the Creative Director, gave a presentation talking us through his career and some of the briefs and campaigns he has worked on. This talk was super interesting and honestly really inspiring. At such a young age he had already worked in 3 major advertising agencies across three different countries and became Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather.

He took us through his Behance page where he highlighted certain projects and explained them in more depth along with how the idea came about. It was really interesting to hear the design process of these major campaigns and it taught me a lot about how every single idea needs to be explored, no matter how ridiculous or weak it may seem at first.

Although not graphic design, hearing him talk through his work and ideas really helped me think about improving my own design process. Koay also advised us to try as many different cities and countries as we can before really settling in a job. He couldn't stress enough how much a city influences the work you do, and from personal experience he vouched for this and said his work and creativity greatly improved once he found a city he loved. This is definitely something I feel is important and want to try. I talked about this briefly in my Design Strategy presentation and I working on finding a internship abroad.

This studio visit was really helpful in helping me understand the creative process in major studios and agencies as well as making me think about my design practice and what route is best for me. It was a really inspiring talk and got me excited for my future in the creative industry.

OUGD602 - Placement Report 'Pinpoint'

Starting the week of 13th March, I did a week and a half placement at Pinpoint; a 'web design and digital marketing agency' based in Harrogate, Leeds. I first contacted Pinpoint for my Context of Practice work asking to interview some of their team members. My dissertaion was exploring the the reasonings behind corporate rebranding failures and the role of customer's relationship with the brand. Pinpoint, previously Pinpoint Designs, had recently undergone a rebrand and a slight name change. I wanted to ask the team why they decided a rebrand was needed, how it was executed, as well as the reaction and outcome. I was able to get responses from the Managing Director, the Creative Director and the Head of Digital Strategy. This proved to be very helpful for my work and it definitely allowed me to move forward with that module.

After the dissertation was completed I asked whether they take interns at all as I thought website design could be a good career choice; in the past visiting professionals such as Only have told us that being able to code is not a requirement for web design. Rather than an internship of sorts, they offered me a two week placement. I took this placement hoping I would get good experience and advice regarding my future.

During my time at Pinpoint I didn't meet the team's graphic designer. A last minute situation arose which caused him to work from home from the Isle of Man. I didn't see this as an issue although I would have liked to have talked to him about certain decisions or more information on web design, but I was still looking forward to working with the rest of the team in the office.

The work I was doing for Pinpoint was not exactly what I like doing or plan to do in the future, but I was able to do it and wanted to help the team. It was more illustration work than anything designed to be uploaded to their clients' website blogs. Examples below.

Looking back, I do regret not getting a placement somewhere more suited to my design interests and aspirations, and this is something I plan on amending over the summer once I have submitted all of my work. The work I was doing at Pinpoint was not what I enjoy or wish to persue, I felt like I was doing the work for them just because I know how to work with Photoshop and Illustrator. I wasn't doing much thinking or creative design work.

In the future I definitely want to gain more specific experience that directly supports my own design practice aspirations.

OUGD602 - Presentation | Evaluation

Leading up to this presentation I was very nervous; presenting isn't a strong point of mine at to be honest would rather just completely avoid it. As this obviously wasn't an option, I presented my design strategy as best I could. My plan was to have 10 slides and talk for a minute per slide. When practising I was able to do this pretty well and had enough to talk about to fit the required time. Unfortunately, in the actual presentation, due to my nerves, I forgot a lot of my points and rushed through the presentation. I'm not exactly sure how long it lasted but I would guess around 7 minutes. I am disappointed with how this went and would like to improve my presentation skills, but after 3 years of presenting it has never gotten easier.

My actual presentation slides explained a range of topics about me and my practice. I explained the reasoning behind my visual identity change and how I want to gain experience and work in the editorial design field. In terms of my placement it does not reflect this at all. I do regret not explaining how I recognised this was an issue and how I wish I went else where more suited to my interest.

In my notes and plan, I talked in depth about my placement and what my actual role was supposed to be, versus what I actually ended up doing. When presenting this point I forgot a lot of what I was meant to say and skipped over this slide very quickly, only mentioning how bad it was and not giving any reasons as to why.

In the next slide I tried to explain what I learned from this placement and I was honest in my thoughts. This lead me into talking about my future and what I want to do after university; something that has been difficult for me to decide.

Overall I'm not thrilled with how the presentation went but it could have been worse. In the future I need to remember to look at my notes more when I am presenting for prompts. This will hopefully jog my memory and allow me to make all the points I planned on making.

OUGD602 - Presentation | Script/Notes

OUGD602 - Design Strategy Presentation

OUGD602 - Personal Branding | Behance

I've had a Behance account for about 4 years now. I used it a lot before univeristy because the only graphic design work I ever did was for my own enjoyment and wanted somehere to post it. Over the past couple of years I have neglected it slightly by not posting enough but I left my work up for everyone to still see. Last year I actually got a message off someone who liked my work enough to consider me for a job opening they had.

I did speak on the phone and he said he would get back to me to let me know the verdict on the whole university situation. He never did. 

This is the reason I kept my work up, even if I wasn't always updating it. 

More recently though I have decided to hide my past work as I feel it doesn't really represent me, my work and where I want to go professionally. Over the next few days I will dedicate a day or two to sort out my university work and format it properly to present it on Behance. 

OUGD602 - Photography | Independent Leeds

Independent Leeds got in touch with me to see if I wanted to be involved with their upcoming magazine. They needed some photos taken at, funnily enough, Leeds College of Art; unfortunately I was back home that week as I had planned to get a placement so I couldn't take up the offer - after all that the placement fell through.

About a month later we did meet up and we discussed how I'm finding Leeds as a student, my plans after university, how Leeds is changing and my photography work. Nothing more came of it but I do think it was useful to talk to David and just get an contact who might be able to help later in my career. 

OUGD602 - Photography | Soulection [2]