The final project I needed to complete at the University of Salford was the Negotiated Major Project (NMP). For this project, I was tasked with creating my own brief and tackling it with as much energy and design ability that I could muster. After much deliberation and thought, I decided that I would create, brand and advertise my own American football team. This brief posed a series of challenges as I had to generate the entity from nothing, rather than just altering or re-imagining a design that previously existed.
To set about this brief, I did copious amounts of research into how popular sports teams branded and presented themselves. This research meant that I could observe the best brands and set myself a target to achieve in terms of quality. The first obstacle I came across when tackling this brief was the name and location of the team. It took me longer than it should have done to decided on the name London Valkyries, which made me feel under more pressure as I then had to play catch-up to get back on track with more important and substantial parts of the brief. However, this was not the most stressful situation I was placed under at this stage of the project. After selecting the name Valkyries, I began to generate logo ideas and experiment with early designs regarding this name, however, it was brought to my attention that Valkyries were in fact female-only guides in Norse mythology and could not be male. This feminine twist meant that it threw off a lot of my plans and logo designs and so I was faced with an ultimatum, I had to change all my designs, or change my name. After much deliberation, I decided that it would be more efficient if I was to just change the name of the team. This name change lead me to research more into Norse mythology, and I soon found that male warriors were called Berserkers, and so I decided to use the London Berserkers as the name instead.
This name change proved to be very costly in terms of time for my NMP, however, I learned a lot about correctly researching before making vital decisions. I learned a lot from this early experience and I feel that although it cost me a grave amount of time, it also gave me a lot of experimentation and development as I could see my designs progress and evolve through the name alteration. After the decision was made regarding the name change, the project opened out and I felt much more comfortable generating designs and outcomes. It did not take me long to get into a good rhythm and find a regular schedule to keep to. From this point, I felt that the project went very smoothly and my continuous research and development meant that my designs evolved into something that I was extremely happy with, both in terms of quality and relevance.
I did experience some heightened stress when coming to the climax of the project, but this was due to the fact that I was keen to ensure all my work was in order and ready to hand in. Overall, I felt I learned a lot throughout this project, most noticeably time management and organisation. I believe that I have adapted my abilities to work at a faster pace, whilst still maintaining the quality necessary to produce a high standard of work. As well as time management, I also learned a lot in terms of the importance of research, as I was constantly looking out for new influences and inspirations to help my designs progress. I spent a lot of time on the online portfolio website, Behance, and I made sure that I maintained a high level of activity to constantly gain new ideas and concepts. This online activity gave me alot of impetus to push my designs further and generate outcomes that I personally felt did my ability as a graphic designer justice.
