Nicole Jennings Project Management Journal.

Media Studies and Entertainment Technology student at UOP. A journal for Creative Industries and Project Management.

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Final Evaluation.

Creative Industries Project Management Evaluation

‘The Little Biscuit Tin’

Project description

Sharron Jennings is someone who has always been a passionate baker, cake decorator and general creative person. She has always spoken about her desire to start up her own business in something based around baking, but has struggled to get anything started. After meeting with my client, she explained that she wanted to start off a business initially selling a variety of biscuits. My client possessed the skills to create the products; however it was clear that her multimedia experience would prevent her from showcasing and advertising her business effectively. This made my client easy to work with as she was extremely happy to receive professional input and advice. Together we scoped the project and these were the agreed artefacts to be produced;

1.       A logo, designed by client and adapted by designer

2.      A website with personal domain name

3.      A Facebook page

4.      Business cards and stickers

5.      An email account

At a later date it was also decided that I would create an Instagram account for my client.

Explain and justify the rationale for the work

The logo is the first section of this project that I wanted to tackle. My client provided me with a design idea, and my initial thoughts of it were that it was far too complex and busy. I did some research on other companies; The Biscuiteers and The Biscuit Box, to back up my point to my client, and we met again and came up with some new ideas. The final design is one that I suggested; it took part of my client’s original design but just cleaned it up and made it simpler. The font for this came from DaFont and it is one my client selected herself, due to the roundness of the letters and the highlights making it look tin-like, which linked to the name of the business.

Colour schemes were next to be selected. My client and I had already confirmed that the two main colours would be dark brown and an off-white colour, the third we debated over two shades of blue/turquoise and two shades of pink. In the end we decided to go with the pale pink as we felt a bright pink with a dark brown would be too intense. With the colour scheme selected I could go ahead with creating the rest of the content and colouring of the logo.

The website was to be eye-catching and easy to navigate. I chose the template site Wix to do this on and my client selected the ‘City Baker’ template for me to work on. The reason for this being was that she liked the wood background, and felt that it would complement the colour scheme selected. The structure and layout of the website was finalised by the research I had done on The Biscuiteers. Most the decisions made regarding layout were my own decisions, but when it came to the layout of the font, I referred to my research and found that smaller font, in columns and left aligned, looked the most professional. Also I found that keeping pages appearing in a grid formation were far more complimentary to the eye. The font used on the main text sections was different to the logo. A simpler font ‘Helvetica’ was used to make reading easier for future clients. The galleries were kept simple, just an image, with a short description, without prices on each section. My client sells personalised biscuits, so the cost all depends on what an individual client requires.

The same font, ‘Helvetica’ was used on the business cards. The layout was kept simple, and my client requested an image of her products on one side of the card. We went for a pale pink background to maintain continuity through all areas, and my client decided on rounded corners as she felt they would be less likely to be damaged and become tacky in client’s wallets etc.

The photography for this project was initially planned to be all done by myself with my Canon eos 700d, however circumstances meant that my client had to take most the photography and consequently the quality became extremely varied.

Group organisation and participation

My project ran between just my client and myself. Originally I had considered collaborating with someone advanced in coding as I was going to make the website with Dreamweaver however I decided I wanted to be completely in control of the project to fully display my project management skills, as a result I decided to use Wix instead.

My client was easy to work with and easy to get hold of either through email or phone calls, although preferred phone calls. This made decision making easier because I planned to keep in constant communication with my client in order to keep them as involved as possible. It meant I could keep my client up to date with my progress within the project and inform her of any changes I had made. For example, I decided to make an Instagram account, as another social networking platform to display her products.

Merits and problems of the final artefact

The logo is something that I am very proud of. My first attempt did not work as well as planned as I tried to trace my scanned sketch on Adobe Illustrator and it looked messy because each side was not even. However once I made the decision to only draw half and to copy, paste and reflect it (on the gingerbread man) the outcome was far more successful. The colours used were really effective and maintained consistency with the other created items.

I also felt the website met all requirements from my client and functions smoothly. The layout and photography used were changed around a fair bit until I felt satisfied, however I feel the standard of the photography does let it down slightly.

The business cards, coming from Moo had a very professional finish. Again the layout, with the text being too close and quality of the photograph used lets it down slightly.

The biggest problem I had was with the photography. With my client being unprepared to start her business as planned, and due to the distance between her and I, it meant she had to take the role of photographer. This meant that the quality of the photographs was not up to the standard required, however, due to my client’s personal reasons, I did not feel it fit to criticise her or pressure her into creating more products for me to come and do a big photoshoot. I did my best with what I had, using Adobe Photoshop to edit the images. At this stage I went back to my risk assessment and looked at the actions implemented, it reminded me that I already had a signed contract set out so did not have to worry, and that I should re-do my Gantt chart to ensure continued efficient time management.

What are the possible future developments?

Due to my client not being prepared for the end of the project, we have discussed the idea of her starting off smaller, without the website and online resources. So after this project I plan to take the resources offline and support my client through her intentions to start off solely with things like farmers markets etc. I have also informed my client that when she is ready I will be more than willing to take on the role on managing her online resources again and re-shooting her products in a professional set-up to ensure consistency and professionalism.

Evaluation of artefact

I found that all the software I used worked effectively and my time working with them ran smoothly. Wix was such a simple piece of software to use and had endless tutorials available. All other software that I used was familiar to me, and anything I did struggle with I turned to the tutorials for these or sought advice from tutors.

What would I do differently if I had more time?

If I had more time I would have ideally dedicated a lot more time researching into other similar companies in order to get a better grasp on aesthetics across a wider range of sources. Also I would have liked to master the art of photographing food to a higher standard.

I would have preferably planned more trips to visit my client in order to take the photoshoots myself as this would have saved me editing time, and given my overall finished artefacts a better aesthetic.

I also would have preferably got my client to sample their business in some way so that I could have added customer review comments on the website to encourage new customers.

To conclude

This project has been a real eye opener to working professionally with a client to contracts and planned time scales. It has been enjoyable to gain the experience in time management and overcoming certain problems faced along the way. The skills I have gained along the way will only benefit me in the future.

The opportunity to use new software or just expand my knowledge on ones that I already am familiar with was really fulfilling and I hope to continue to expand my familiarisation with these.

I plan to continue working with my client as I feel optimistic about her project and would be proud to be the person to aid her success and support her along the way regarding all advertising and online resources.

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Gantt Chart Update

The development section of this project took a lot longer than had planned, so I re-did my Gantt chart to show the differences in time scale and to make sure that I would still have sufficient time to complete all the other sections of this project. 

One reason things took a lot longer than expected was that I struggled to export the logo, which meant I left it for a while just saved as an ai. file while continuing with other elements.

Another reason is that the photography was difficult to get hold of, as my client decided she was not ready for the business she was not in a place to make endless sample products for me to take photographs of and as I did not want to stress her out I suggested that the best way forward would be for her to take the photos as and when she felt like baking, within reason, and that at a later date  (post-project) I would happily offer my services to her to professionally shoot her products with my Canon eos 700d. My client was happy with this suggestion, although for me it meant it took me longer to receive the material to use on the online platforms, it also meant that the quality of the images was not as I would have ideally liked but due to circumstances I think we did the best we could. This consequently had a knock on effect to me completing the online artefacts as I could not complete all the content to fit the original Gantt chart.

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Learning the Software.

I used the tutorials available on the Adobe Illustrator website to refresh my memory on creating a logo on the programme. I found the videos very easy to use because they were split up into sections so I could take my time going through each video and looking back at my Illustrator window I had open to remind myself where all the tools were etc.

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Gantt Chart

This is a photograph of my Gantt chart that has been planned to end at the very beginning of February to allow time for testing and amendments. 

I created it on Project Libre which is a software package that you download onto your laptop and it allows you to make the Gantt charts. The software is fairly simple to use, however I found that you have to be really careful and observant as you go through inputting each bit of information because sometimes the dates had a tendency to get messed up and it was just a case of deleting that specific section by highlighting it and pressing delete and then re-writing the section again. 

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Project Proposal 

After finding my client and getting in contact with them, this is the form that was constructed to clearly state her initial aims and ideas.

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Sign off Sheet

Signed and dated by my client and myself.

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Is the project up to the client’s standards

I phoned my client to inform them that I had completed all artefacts listed at the beginning and now with all the changes having been made. I asked my client to have a look through everything that had been created and let me know how they felt about everything and how the project has gone. This is the email I received back an hour or so after the call. 

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Checking the assumptions made at the start are still the same

This is a copy of the client contract that was made at the beginning of this project.

I went through it with my client while I was on the phone to her. I ran through the contract again with her and we agreed that everything had been met and that there were just a few changes that wanted to be made that are in the next section.

All items listed on the contract were completed with all listed sections included, the only addition made was an Instagram account, and this was agreed between my client and I through a phone call as we felt it is a good, popular platform and will therefore be an effective place to advertise products from. Also I advised my client that their website will look more professional with more than just a Facebook page being accessible through the social bar, my client agreed that this would be a good idea.

The time scale changed quite dramatically, although from the second level questionnaire you can see that my client was happy to wait however long, as long as the final results were up to our agreed standard.

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Business Cards and Stickers 

Here are the delivered versions of both sides of the business card and the stickers. My client and I are very happy with the quality and designs. On reflection however, if I were to re-do them for my client in the future I would probably scrap the photograph of the biscuits and spread the text out more to make it appear cleaner and more professional.

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Testing

These are screen grabs of me testing whether the ‘Order Online’ section works. The test proved successful in that the message sent, informed the test customer that the message has been sent and that the message was received to the correct email address. 

The other testing that I have done has involved me asking other people to go on to my clients website from different laptops while I was with them and go through all the pages and let me know if anything was wrong. All these people got back to me saying they could find no faults in the website and that the overall website was effective and easy to navigate. 

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Once I had edited all the images and re-sized them all the best I could, I had to remove the galleries and rearrange them all. The screen grabs on the left are the before versions and the ones on the right are the after versions. They still are not of perfect quality but I have done the best with the material I had to work with and my client is satisfied with my progress. 

Once I had done this I had to go back to the  Facebook page and Instagram and remove and re-upload all the photographs. I left the layout and structure on both of those platforms exactly the same as previously. 

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Website Improvements Cont.

Another thing that was pointed out to me was that the colours on the images used on the website were making the products look unappealing. To correct this I was advised to use Adobe Photoshop to change the levels in order make the white look white and hopefully this would adjust all the colours in the image to be correct. This did work on some of the images however others it didn't work so well. I did my best to do what I could however due to it not being me personally taking most of the photographs due to distance between me and my client, I could not properly monitor the set up for all the images. However as my client is unprepared for the business to start yet, I have advised her that I will re-shoot all the images professionally when she is ready and she is happy with this and satisfied that I have made a good display of her work at the moment in time. 

Another thing that was pointed out about the galleries on the website was the fact that all the images in the gallery came up as different sizes. I am aware that they will all be slightly different because they have all had to be cropped to different sizes, however I have done the best I can to set them to the same size and resolution, but there is still some difference. 

In the future I would plan to set up a shoot for the biscuits with a fixed tripod and camera setting. Food is difficult to photograph professionally without experience, I would of ideally done a lot more research in to this to have a better grasp on how to take the most successful shots of my clients products. 

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Website Improvements 

After speaking to my client and tutors at university I was critiqued on the way I had laid out my text on the website. I went and looked at one of the websites that I used as research initially and noticed that the text on this website and others is never centralised, but aligned to the left and is in columns generally, like shown in the first screen grab on this post which comes from The Biscuiteers’s about page.  

I decided to trust this website layout because it looks extremely professional and successful, and split my text up and made it into two columns. I also made the text a smaller font size because it looks more professional like this. I made similar changes like this too the ‘Galleries’, ‘Tradition Biscuits’ and ‘Iced Biscuits’ pages. Some were harder than others because there was not a lot of text, for example with the ‘Galleries’ page I decided to move the text over to one side, making it left aligned and smaller font size like with the earlier changes, but added in another image on the right hand side. I feel that the final versions are a lot better and a lot more professionally acceptable.

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Creating the Business Cards

These screen grabs show the business card at an unfinished stage, I took these screen grabs so that I could ask my client whether they wanted rounded or squared edges on the card, we decided on rounded. 

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Updated Budget Sheet

Here is an updated version of the budget sheet. Costs went up from the original estimate, however everything was agreed with my client before proceeding with any payments and I have been reimbursed for all costs made like originally planned.

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Communication with Client

Here are screen grabs to show the communication with my client throughout the project, a lot of the communication was done over phone calls and through face to face meetings. 

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Overcoming an Issue.

After a phone call with my client she has told me that due to personal reasons she has decided that she is no longer ready to begin her business for when this project is planned to end. She has however told me that she is willing for me to continue with the project, however this fact explains why the images I have for the website etc. are limited and not of the best quality because she is very stressed out at the moment. I will continue with the project and make it as professional as possible and leave it in a place so that it will still be usable when she is ready.