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Feedback from Tutor

After discussing my new idea with my tutor we established that I need to be careful with what dates I choose and make sue that there are options and things to do on that night and make sure there are places to eat etc. The feedback from my tutor was not to get caught up on the branding just yet but the character idea is good but to be open about different ideas. The deliverables that I have come up with are the website, marvel app to accompany it a print campaign, printed calendar and merchandise. Which all seem to be suitable for the 40 credit module.

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Ideas Reflection

Going in to this brief I had my original idea for Mike the Manc (as seen in blog as idea 1) and then along the way I changed my idea as I started questioning some things with idea 1 such as why would people use the digital platforms it seemed like a very practical idea but there wasn't a fun element to it also there are platforms out there where people will go to find places to go out such as Skiddle which is very popular. I then woke up with an idea that Mike the Manc could work better wight the other brief set by Amaze highlighting calendar occasions because it would have more of a fun aspect to crewe this character and put him in to different occasions as well as still being able to inform students where to go.

After Doing this it made me feel a lot better because I feel like I have an idea that is now a complete package and I am able to apply it to different mediums such as web, print and also able to make an advertising campaign from it. The only thing is I am now a bit worried that I will not be able to find research such as competitors etc because there is not anything like that for students in Manchester. But I have been able to find individual occasions to reference.

I think that changing my idea has been good because it means I will be able to have an engaging finished product. But on the other hand changing my idea so code to my pitch may limit the amount of research I am able to do, as I have to pitch my idea in a week. But I do feel more confident talking about this project and the feedback from discussing this with my peers seems positive.

My action plan moving forward with this is to gather as much research as I can and give a short mock presentation tomorrow to my peers to gain feedback and see what sort of questions are raised on the topic to prepare me for my marked pitch.

#projectpitch reflectivepractice

Idea 2. - Mike the Manc - Target Market

Like Idea 1 Mike the Manc will be aimed towards students at university. But Idea 1 was mainly aiming at first year students where as this idea can reach more than just first year students as it will be highlighting calendar occasions such as Valentines for example. A day where many students will be looking for places to eat drink or party. As this will only be aimed at Manchester Students I can say that my target market will be Male & Female students living and studying in Manchester. As I will be covering places to eat drink and party they will all be over 18 as they are university students and will have disposable income. They like to eat out and will go to clubs. Some promotional offers may include alcohol so the majority will drink alcohol although others may not.

The target audience for this market is fairly wide as students at university have many different interests but I think that for calendar occasions I will be able to link it to that day so for example for thanksgiving I would be recommending american style bars and restaurants to eat as it links with the theme.

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Special Occasion Calendar Dates

http://www.clareflorist.co.uk/special_dates.asp

Holiday dates on the calendar according to clareflorist.

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Idea 2 - Mike the Manc (calendar dates)

This idea is based on the Amaze brief for the selected seasons this idea has stemmed from my other original idea but I feel that this will answer the brief better and also fits in with this category. For this brief I still want to aim it at students. For each calendar occasion it will show places where you can go for that occasion. It will be split in to three sections which will include places to eat, drink and party for students. I think this will fill a gap in the market as there isn’t anything that shows these things for students for big occasions

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Mike the Manc brainstorm

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Mike The Manc - Tone of voice

I feel that for the branding of Mike the Manc as it is going to be aimed at university students it needs to be humorous bright and fun. It also needs to be simple to use and easy to navigate. From looking a few competitors I feel that Skiddle has the most user friendly navigation and is very bright with the yellow and black colour scheme.

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Mike The Manc - Target Market

Who? The target market for Mike the Manc would mainly be student freshers living in/moving to Manchester aged between 18-25 although this may vary as they may not all be freshers that use the website. But I would target this highly at freshers as they would be the people that would use it the most.

Why? I think that freshers at Manchester Met, University of Manchester and Salford University would be the target market for this because a lot of freshers move from other cities to study and don't know the area. But with all the hype built around student nights and all of the promotion that goes in to all of them freshers only know where to go from seeing a flyer but Mike The Manc will be a website where they can see photographs, hear music and even watch promo videos of club nights before going and doing a lot of searching on Facebook and other social media sites to find information. Mike the Manc will also give a platform for students to find out where they can play sports, join student friendly gyms, good places to eat and various other activities.

How? This will benefit student s because it will save them money going to places they don't enjoy or that don't have student deals etc. For example you may go to a club night not knowing much about it and hate the music or you might go bowling and that venue don't have student discount or you may miss happy hour at your local bar. With Mike the Manc I intend to make it Manchester's student guide to going out, whether it be for some food or a big night.

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Mike The Manc - Competition

From looking in to a few places online to see if anyone else is doing what I want to do there are a few places for me to look at such as Skiddle, Nitehive, Design My Night and Student Beans just from my first look. All of these apart from Student Beans focus on nightlife in Manchester allowing you to buy tickets for various places. Where as Student beans covers deals and student discount places. Student Beans is not Manchester only based it covers all across the UK but from looking in to this it shows that there is a market for what I want to do. Nitehive only have a Facebook page and mainly post articles about whats on in Manchester (club night wise). From looking at all of these I would say Design my night would be my biggest competitor because on their website it has a section for students and shows who they think the top 5 student nights are and what students clubs/bars there are. It also offers a section where you can design what night you want by using their online menu. I think this is a good option because it gives you a good range of places to go and a wide variety of occasions you may want to go for an evening drink.

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Idea 1 - Mike The Manc

Mike the Manc is an idea I have had based on the Amaze brief local love. In this I want to create a digital platform that gives students in and coming to Manchester a place where they can search for club nights, Djs, Places to eat, watch sports and activities such as bowling, going to the gym etc. This idea stemmed from personal experience of moving to Manchester and not knowing anywhere to go and wasting time and money going to places I haven't enjoyed. This idea will fit in great with the Amaze brief because everything I will include on my digital platforms will all be Manchester based and the website will bring an array of local Manchester places in one space. The name Mike The Manc came from wanting to connect to Manchester and the students living there I felt rather than calling it something like let me know manchester (one of my other options) that creating a persona would have more impact as the idea has come from a personal experience it would be better to try and reflect that it is from a personal experience.

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Evaluating Presentation

In today's session our tutor showed us his old BA end of year show pitch. We looked at 3 areas: Weakness', strengths and What do I get from it and then we marked it.

Weakness • Video at beginning makes you not know what the presentation is but then lets you know it is for a end of year show at the end. • Left the presentation with an idea of what was going on but not a clear understanding of the deliverables • No evidence of other project ideas or research

Strengths • Presentation was engaging • Good use of multimedia • No errors on slides • Bullet points kept short • A lot of time and effort put in to creating this presentation • Very emmotive

What do I get from it? • Can see a new way for presenting • Using videos to communicate a message • How to add suspense to your presentation

We marked this in the 70-79 • Because it was original • A lot of time + Effort went in to it • Uses multimedia which is an extra self developed skill

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Reflection on Research & Writing Case Stdies

At first I was researching my essay question in general and finidng lots of unuseful research and a lot of the stuff I was looking in to wasnt specific enough to build a case study. I then decided to write out a list of case studies that I wanted to build up resarch and answer my essay. In doing this I have been able to try to research specifics such as the advantages of using Digital Textile printing and be more specific in researching designers. This has madd my research a lot more structred and organised as I can now do research based on a case study and then complete a case study and move on. This is helping me to build up my research folder too.

Difficulty in researching

When researching my inital dissertation question ‘Why are high end designers choosing digital textile prinitng over screen prinitng’ the ammount of benifical research to support either side of the topic was minimal and I found it very difficult to gather research. All of the research I could find was based on the process or history of screen prinitng and digital textile printing. There was also no interviews or documents that backed up any high end designers talking about this topic.

When not being able to find any of this information it was getting fustrating because it is something that I really want to look into and will help me in future projects, working with print design. I continued to look into the topic to try and find any information that would be useful for me and found some but I thought that the subject area didnt have enough acessable information for me to write an essay on it without doing a lot of primary research and speaking to high end designers directly.

The good part about finding this out early is that I now have time to reevaluate my question and create a question that is more relastic to research and write an essay based on my findings.

After discussing the problem I was having with my tutor we was able to disect the main focual point I wanted to research in this essay and create a question that is more realistc to be able to research. The question we came up with is ‘How is digital printing benifical to the fashion industry, what are it’s key usability features and how does it compare to traditional techniques’. I feel more comfortable in researching and answering this question from the research I have already been doing.

My action plans to move forward with this is to gather the research I have and see how I can use it in this new question and then start researching again then develop that research into case studies.

New Supreme Jacket. Uses an all over print possibly using a Digital textile process due to the size and durability that the jacket will be but could also have been done by screen printing as its only one colour.

Writing my Statement of Intent

For my dissertation I was asked to create a question to explore and write an essay on based on a subject area of interest to me. I knew from working on previous projects that my interests lie heavily in surface pattern for fashion. I knew this would be a good topic to go into as it would be engaging to me as well as learning a lot about that area. After a lot of thinking and changing my mind I decided my question would be 'Why are high end fashion designer choosing Digital Textile Printing over Screen Printing'.

Before I got to this conclusion I had been thinking of other ideas such as, does digital textile printing only benefit high end brands?, Is digital textile print saving fashion? And finally just a general topic of screen printing vs digital textile printing. The last one formed the basis of my final question. Whilst I was thinking about these titles I was also thinking about how I could answer them are they just a simple yes because of this reason and how I can prove what I find out through my visual submission. Another thought I had whilst thinking of how to approach this brief is will my visual submission be realistic as working with fashion prints can be extremely expensive.

I would say that the good parts about writing my statement of intent is I now have a clear guide of what I want to do and have points to work on straight away. I also think another good point is that I have found an interest question to me which will keep me engaged and that I feel comfortable talking and writing about. I would say the only bad point is how long it took me to come to find my question as it was frustrating at first because I kept thinking of questions that were too broad or that I couldn't talk about because I didn't have enough initial knowledge in that area.

To conclude on the statement of intent I wrote I feel that to improve on it instead of mentioning I was going to create a Gantt chart I could of made one and attached it too it and also instead of just naming books I could have used correct Harvard Referencing and had a bibliography to go with it. If I was to approach this again I would have improved on those things to make my statement of intent a lot better.

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