For this module, I undertook an industry as well as competition brief and a personal project, alongside an additional brief commissioned by industry. I chose to focus on my area of practice; interactive branding. The aim was to concentrate on user experience within these projects, whilst also wanting to do something different for each one.
My personal brief is related to my dissertation due to having researched extensively on the topic area. It helped me get a clearer understanding of the gender and age ranges most impacted by fairy tales and in what way, therefore providing me with a target market and areas to focus on in this project. My aim in this project was to do something new that has not been done before and knowing it can impact many children. Initially, struggling with this project due to being a beginner to Sketchup, causing the exhibition to take longer than expected. I am happy with the final result especially for the exhibition and feel the concept would work well in a place like a shopping centre and visual attractive for people . Originally I struggled with the design and colours of the interactive slides due to attempting to get the right balance between it being clear and child-friendly, whilst looking professional and well designed. Primarily the plan was to design an example of the hard copy of a personal fairytale, however time restricted me to do this. This could be an idea or a project that can be developed for my major studies.
The industry brief was a collaboration with Damon and Kerri on a new and upcoming festival called “We R Robots.”The communication with the client was important throughout the process to create and obtain a strong brand identity, together with informing us of their needs which included merchandise and advertisements. We were given very little information from the client about their budget, performers or visual outcomes. This meant we had to make a variety of options to give the client choice about which theme and designs they might want to use, whilst making sure our ideas were cost effective. Damon took the lead role creating the identity and logo, Kerri focused on the merchandise and content of the identity, whilst I was the key communicator with the client and concentrated on the snap chat filter, wristbands and helping with the content and ideas of the advertisements. I tried to start to plan and develop the app but it still needs developing further which can be done throughout major studies. I enjoyed this project a lot because of the freedom we had when creating an identity and advertising solution from a blank canvas. Working with Damon and Kerri was great as our communication was strong, as well as developing ideas from each other. Collaborating in this module taught me a lot of transferrable skills that can be used for future projects. The strongest outputs for the projects included advertising ideas, Snapchat filter and the stage designs. The type and the identity still needs a few improvements. Overall, I think the designs need to have better continuity, as there are a couple of themes, which are currently being used. One of our key aims was to keep the design options as open as possible. This we did well as we presented the client with a variety of ideas.
My final project was the RSA competition brief Beyond Boarders. I interviewed 20 random people in order to identify key barriers people are faced with when interacting with different languages, cultures and religions together. The aim was to acknowledge these problems and find a way for people to live together more comfortably or when travelling abroad. These interviews together with other research on campaigns and services also allowed me to find a target audience for my app. This research gave me direction for my app, allowing me to identify key issues and see which ones could be helped. Originally, ambitiously I wanted to have a lot more features in my app including key religion in that area together with their customs and traditions. However, realising I would not have enough time to cover all the features (above), so instead deciding to specialise in just a few features. With the intention to make my app functioning, I learnt to use Invision. However, Invision is not compatible with videos which I used within my app mock-up therefore unable to make it fully functioning. Nevertheless, if deciding to take it onto major studies I can try create a giff example which would be compatible, thus able to make it functioning. This project was the first app I had created, therefore having to start by learning the basic grids and structure, as well as looking at other app designs to help me form my own. Within this app, the most important part of it is the innovative user experience. Due to the originality of the features I wanted the app to visually look quite simple and easy to use as the features are quite high tech. Overall I feel the logo is strong in helping build the brand identity together with giving a direction and consistency towards the app. However, if continuing this project I would experiement more with the colours for the app. This idea is an option for a project that can be developed and expanded for major studies.
Generally, I am pleased with the work produced and think I have given myself a good base for major study. There were parts of the projects such as creating the exhibition for “whats your happy ending? This was brand new to me and I enjoyed this the most. Things like that I would like to explore further while developing on my other strengths combined with the other skills I have learnt through collaborating to produce even better work in major studies.