#bdw19

[eimearcooney]

Belfast Design Week

Tuesday - 5th November 

The Future of Design with Design Council

In the butcher building Sian and Cat for the Design Council talked to us about what the design council is, the history of the design council and the double diamond process.

There was a range of different designers at the talk from photography, textiles to ux design. Mixing and mingling with these people really gave my an insight to their design perspectives while also seening that there are some things we do the same when it comes to designing. 

I was talking to Maire-Therese from Fathom and Damian Cranney from Big Motive about design processes and learnt how people in the design service industry do their process. In groups we where all able to talk about our own experiences and backgrounds.

I really enjoyed today, Sian talked about how the Design Council to their process and Cat talked about the Future. I would like to thank Cat and Sian for their amazing and informative talks and I will be sure to use the material I learnt into my projects.

This is quick ideas our group had of what we do when designing.

Learning what and how others do the process was very rich information I feel. I learnt what blueprinting was and how ‘going for a walk’ was someones design process as I way for thinking and clearing their head.

[eimearcooney]

Belfast Design Week

Monday - 4th November

Animation Workshop

Being a designer I wanted to take a step out of my bubble and see how animators design. In this workshop in Ulster University we where shown how to use a software called Kirta and then told to create something around the word ‘Power’ as power is the main word for design week. Given 3 hours to design and draw up something that we though was power there was a range of different designs and amazing drawing. 

This workshop showed me how to use a graphics tablet and how frames work. I really enjoyed it but going to stick with my interaction design as i’m not a animator :D 

Going to event during #BDW19 is something I would recommend everyone to do no matter what your design background is. It is a great way to meet and mingle with people that are seniors, juniors, students and recruiters. 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1191427769151959047

This is the designs in one that was created by all the people that went to the workshop.

[saoirseann]

The Importance of Brand with Kaizen

As part of the Belfast Design Week, I attended a lunchtime talk on the Importance of Branding with Kaizen Brand Evolution.

I attempted to do some rough sketch notes of the talk using Procreate on my iPad and my apple pencil. To sum up the talk I learnt the importance of branding in the design process from Ryan Stanfield who has worked at Kaizen for over 10 years & is apart of the ISTD - Institute Designers Ireland.

He began the talk by asking:

What is a brand?

A brand is a gut feeling about an organisation and it ISN'T just a logo. A brand represents a product well and you know what you can expect from seeing the symbol and instantly recognisable.

The importance of Brand Identity has 3 different steps:

1) INVESTIGATE

It’s important to start by investigating your business initially along with investigating your competitors. The main responses of this investigate stage include:

“by having lots of ideas”

“by having lots of influences”

2) DESIGN

Showed some main examples of companies Kaizen have worked with - Punchestown and the 4 target audiences they had to identify. For instance, they are modern and elegant in how they designed their brand.

3) EVOLVE

You need to always ensure it works, for instance through Signage, menus and the small details

Toalsbet & leanbean are two examples of companies Kaizen worked with to create their branding. They created a set of brand guidelines for lean bean to follow, these guidelines were fresh and very sophisticated in style. Whereas, Toalsbet created a Toal language with a range of colloquialisms and carefully crafted strap-lines from the name and they ensured the graphics they created for the brand were bright, colourful and young and humorous for their targeted market.

Another one of their customers included Tribal Burger. For this brand, they wanted to create an identity that was hip and new and a next level of “cool” in order to compete against their main competitor, Boojum. Their logo for Tribal Burger is simplistic, cool and demonstrates truth as it’s kept very minimal and straight to the point.