Heaven - Presentation

Heaven is a competition brief run by Iggesund, a swedish paper company. The competition is to create an innovative piece of packaging for a personal care or skin care range. 

I have created My Heaven. 

My Heaven is a small business based in Devon owned by Veronica Heaven. The range includes three different scents of body scrub, Jasmine & Sandalwood, Coconut & Mango, and Bergamot & Vetiver. Each product is lovingly made and packaged in Veronica’s kitchen overlooking the rolling hills of Dartmoor.

Making products in her kitchen is Veronica’s own slice of heaven. She has always dreamt of owning a kitchen as beautiful as this, and to run her own business from it has made it even more special. The packaging for the three products reflects this; each box is made to look like one of the many different patterned titles in Veronica’s kitchen. With calming colours and touches of gold foiling this brand has a luxury feel.

Each body scrub comes with a small wooden spoon to allow the consumer to scoop the product out of the tub. This is also there to represent the utensils that Veronica uses in her kitchen to produce the products.

My Heaven would be sold on it’s own online store where customer could order directly from Veronica. My Heaven would also have counters within high end department stores where there would be the opportunity to have mini spa treatments. The branding would be extended over the towels, counter and accessories.

I created the tiles for the boxes by hand carving lino and printing the different patterns using ink. I then enhanced the prints in Photoshop and changed the colours to neutral, calming tones. I have added small touches such as a halo on one box and a cloud on the other to subtly represent Heaven. The boxes would ideal be manufactured in Incada 350mg with the seals and labels on the tub in Incada 200mg. The idea of the boxes is that when placed on a shelf or point of sale they would look like a wall of tiles. This, and the gold foiled logo, would draw attention to the products. The main display would be the boxes on top of their matching tiles on gold stands. 

Visual Connections - Final Crit

This was the idea I come to the final crit with, I still wasn't happy with how it looked but I thought the idea might be in there.

• Bricks out of scale - not needed
• Too many spirals on notepad and no other side to them 
• Fixture could be more ornate? 
• Could include other language such as a red margin line or a pen or pencil in the spirals
• Could have a second poster as a stand to carry theme through 
• Hand drawn text is need for title

So I went away and changed things so it then looked like this: 

This still doesn't have the wow factor even though I like the idea. I decided to leave this project for the time being and come back to it when I had my next holiday from uni. 

* UPDATE* 

Mid Unit Review

In my mid unit review Helen looked through my back up work and said I had a stronger idea in there. So I went back and tried to combine a pencil top with a pint. I had previously tried to create a drawing where the two combined but it didn't work very well and was hard to distinguish what it was meant to be. 

I moved away from the illustrated style and choose to photograph the two. This is the final poster I came up with. I am still not happy with the image quality but I think the idea is a lot stronger and shines through more. 

Visual Connections - Intermediate Crit

In my first crit for this project I was told to stop being so neat with my work. I need to do more sketches and layout designs. I need to go away and look at illustrative techniques and styles to help me with my final poster.

I was also told to look at existing graphic posters from places such as D&AD and design books.

The idea is key, not how busy the poster looks, I need to remember this.

Event Magazine - Final Crit

The final crit for the event magazine was a little rushed as it one week before hand in. Rob liked my booklet, he checked through for orphans and widows and said he liked the exaggerated size. 

I perfect bound this book which made it a bit stiff as the paper was thick and it didn't really have enough pages. It was a good opportunity to learn how perfect bonding is done and I would do it again but on a different paper stock. 

Event Magazine - Intermediate Crit

To my first crit I took a booklet that had two books in it. From the front it was about the empire state building. Then if you turned the book around the flipped it over it was about book about the statue of liberty.

The idea was a little hard to understand. I was given the advice of changing it before I got too far in. They liked the idea of having the magazine in the same proportions as on of the grand building and told me to exaggerate it further.

Info Graphics - Final Crit

This is my final infographic. I managed to make it on After Effects after watching a lot of online tutorials and playing around with different features.

The only changes I was given in my final crit was to make all the international place names the same as some where cities and some countries. They are now all countries as this gives more proportion to the map.

Info Graphics - Intermediate Crit

I haven't been to the two intermediate crits because of a couple of different reasons.
On Monday I sat down and spoke with a tutor to have a little crit on my own to gain some feedback. This helped me to solve some problems with the layout of my information and the design of my piece.

My info graphic is about where people lived before coming to nua in norwich. I started by creating a map on google with all of the places that people said they lived in my survey. I then started to make this into a poster but it is difficult because I have people outside of England too. The map got too big and Rob suggested to make it out of scale to get all the info in.

I have also been thinking about creating a moving piece by using After Effects. I have never used it before so I am going to try and teach myself the programme over the weekend and give it a go.

Reflective Journal Crit

After having a week to work on my reflective journal I felt like I needed some more advice on the layout and binding. I want my book to be sewn together or even perfect bound if possible. This lead me to be a little confused about how to set my document up and I have always just stapled my booklets together. I now realise I need facing pages so I can visualise the spreads. 

I have also decided that I want a number of the pages to be full photographs. This will help to break up the written work and give my work more space of the page. 

It was suggested to make a plan of how much space I want to give each to each section within the booklet. This might make it easier to see what the final product would look like and how each page would flow to the next one. 

All in all a good crit with some good advice! Lots of work to be done!! 

I Wish I Had - Final Crit

This is the final outcome that I created, it is very simple but clearly states the message. 

I played on the fact that I keep accidentally deleting different versions on my uni work. This is such a silly mistake that can waste time that I don't have. I simply took a printscreen of my desktop and changed the text to read 'I wish I had stopped deleting my work'. 

As this is such a simple outcome that I what to create a second piece. It is an idea I came up with when doing mind maps for this project about not getting up on time. It would be a short film with lots of quirky shots and repeated scenes. I will update you on how I get on!  

UPDATE! 

Heres the short film! 

Advertising - Final Crit

On are final crit we had totally rethought our idea.

The only changes we were give is to remove the bottom line of the background to make the logo and slogans clearer, and then for this to be updated on all posters. To change the conversations on the blue poster so it flowed better. And to have it so the conversation runs down the tube escalator, as this is a clever advertising trick.

This was my favorite project of the year. Me and my two friends worked well as a team and I think the outcome is really clear and effective.

Advertising - Intermediate Crit

At the crit we talked about how to photo did not represent the idea.

We are trying to promote family meals and having conversations around the dinner table and yet there is no one at our table. We were told to go back and rethink our idea before rushing to create an outcome.

This is the image we had so far.

Packaging - Final Crit

Again with this project I found it hard to start something a week before Christmas. A lot of students had already gone home and from the wednesday onwards I was off university ill.

By the time we came back after Christmas I felt recharged and ready to go. I worked hard to develop my project and went to the final crit with a nearly finished idea. Unfortunately, I had misunderstood the brief. I thought it was just as easy to fulfill the brief by repackaging an existing product as it was to create something completely new.

I thought I was being different by reworking the labels of a washing up liquid bottle. My idea was to show how boring washing up really was. I made a label with photos of miserable looking adults and children on it this different sayings on them. I thought my idea was okay until I went to the crit. My tutor pointed out that it didn't work. Because the brief was to create packaging and not labels, to make washing up liquid boring it would have to be a boring bottle with no label, a standard lid and no branding. This idea totally doesn't work but my tutor understood the concept I was aiming for.

The next brief is being given out Monday and is to be done in groups. I don't want to pull my group back or end up missing out by trying to finish this at the same time. I am going to leave it until the 2 weeks after the Advertising project where we do have a directed study project but there is a lot more free time. 

My new idea comes from something I found in the last project. There is an origami box that has no opening. So there is no flap or anything to get in. I was going to make these in different sizes and put different items in them so when you shake the boxes you are curious as to what is inside. Curiosity being the emotion I am choosing. In my crit, when talking to other people, the tutor mentioned making the packaging realistic, so it could be used in really life. If this is something that we need to do I would design the packaging so the boxes are different children's toys that you would maybe pick out of a £1 bin in a toy shop or even while doing your food shop. 

I really need to speak to another tutor before I start making anything again to run it past them. 

Visual Identity - Final Crit

I found it really hard to get back into the swing of working after hand in. I think this was because we started BA1b 3 weeks before Christmas. Everyone was well into christmas and it was hard to get going for those 3 weeks.

I missed the intermediate crit on the first week of this project and attended the final crit with a stationary set that is so far away from being finished!

I think I am going to leave this project for now as we have another brief Monday to start. I am currently working on the Origami society and have an envelop made, but I need to change the design slightly for it to work better. I have thought about using screen printing to add depth to the pattern or foiling to make it stand out more.

This is what I have so far:

Type and Image Booklet - Final Crit

My final crit on my booklet was an interesting one!
I had made all my prototypes and had decided on what my final booklet would look like. I didn't have my crit until the afternoon so I had all morning to go into the print room and put together the final copy.
Well, I printed out the booklet and the cover, foiled the cover and started cutting it all out with a scalpel when I realised The booklet had been printing out the wrong size! I must have ticked scale to fit and it was about and inch too big all the way around!
I went to the crit with my prototype and the miss sized booklet.

I was told everything looked good and Emma liked the paper stock I had chosen.
I was given the advice to shorten the title to make it pop more.

Overall I was very happy with my feedback. It just proves that you should always go to a crit even if your work is in a mess!

Type and Image Booklet - Intermediate Crit

The Intermediate Crit for the yarmouth booklet wasn't the most successful ever. I'm a little behind in this project and didn't have a booklet to show. 

We were supposed to come with the first draft of our booklet but all I had was a couple of edited photos. I had been between two ideas but I've picked one now and I just need to get on with it. 

My idea is to make a parody of the old fashioned booklets for times where going to the sea side was an amazing day out. I'm editing my photos to look old and then putting text saying how yarmouth is holding on to the past and needs to move on. 

Gill suggested making it the size of a postcard as everyone used to send postcards from the seaside. I will have to play around with size.

We have our final crit for this project next friday which will hopefully be more successful. 

Individual Tutorial

Yesterday I had my first individual tutorial of this unit. The idea of it was to check everything was going the right way for hand in on the 13th of November.

Everyone was running really far behind but after waiting an hour I finally spoke to Emma who I knew for my Year 0 last year. She went through all my work and portfolio giving my advice for hand in and how to present my work.

All my feedback was very positive and it felt better being on top of all my work for once (Apart from contextual studies but that doesn't count).

I has been nice last week not to be given another project straight away again. It has meant I was able to catch up and finally get my typographic booklet printed.

One more project to go before hand in!!!

Typographic Collection - Final Crit

Umm... Again there wasn't one...
Instead we had another 'presentation of outcomes' hour where we all put out our work on the table and walk around looking at everything.
This time I actually did go and it did help even though I was still really stuck. I basically had nothing to show apart from the tasks. 

The morning of the last day of this project I spoke to one of the tutors for some help and advice. At the time I was working on an idea of recreating decorative A's I had found on pinterest. I realised while talking to this tutor that this didn't really follow the brief as I had not collected the letters as such, but was just remaking them. 
She said in one way or another that I was trying to make it too complicated and that I could find letters anywhere. She said to walk around uni and take a photo of anything that looked like a letter A. She also showed me different types of booklets as most people were doing an A5 booklet. I was never going to use a standard paper size but I did get the idea of not having a booklet at all. I ended up using an A3 sheet of paper and folding it down to look like it was a book. 
I did one side photos of A's around the university grounds and the other side letter A's from around my house. This really made me look at all the small things. I ended up collecting a lot of images and having the choice to select the few I wanted. 

Overall I am very happy with this project even if it did take some time to do. 

This was how I started that day, with the decorative letter A's

I then went and took a lot of photos around uni and later at home.

And this is what I ended up with, very happy with the end result! 

Typographic Collection - Intermediate Crit

Ummm, there wasn't an inter crit for this project, instead we had a 'presentation of outcomes' hour where we all put out our work on the table and walk around looking at everything. 

I didn't go to this because I was feeling behind and a bit stuck so didn't want to display my work. Looking back I should have gone to look at everyone else's and get some inspiration. This is something I do a lot. Instead of asking for help I just hope no one will notice until i'm back on my feet. Probably not the best idea... 

I can tell you that at this point I had only completely finished one of the three tasks from this week. And I had gone through about three different ideas for the main project, none of which went anywhere. 

On this blog it looks like I'm always up to date but I'll tell you a little secret, you can change the date the posts get published! Oh well, I did pull myself out of it which you will see if you carry on reading up. 

One Word Poster - Final Crit

This is the final poster that I presented in the crit. I got to this composition after trying out lots of different option with the word zone. I tried putting the black and yellow tape into the 'O' in my first draft (Linked here) but it just didn't say zone enough. 

I then tried positioning the work in different places and different angles but it was still too plain. I spoke to a tutor who said to take the idea of the black and yellow tape and to experiment with that further. This is when I started to put the whole word onto the tape. 

I ended up with lines of the tape on the page which looked good on the computer but once printed out and cropped it look far too static. One tutor described it as having a police officer with severe OCD putting the tape up! 

I rearranged the tape to create the finished piece. I was a little worries about the amount of white space on the poster but after speaking to people and getting used to the design I now like it. I think sometimes less is more. 

I printed the poster A3 for the crit on a natural satin paper. For the hand in it will be printed A2 on Kodak satin paper using the large format printer. 

Overall I am very happy with my first project for year 1. It was a lot harder than it looked but I am happy with the overall result. 

One Word Poster - Intermediate Crit

On Friday I had my first crit. It was in very large groups of about 35 people were we all go to look at everyone's work and here feedback for everything. I presented two ideas and now have a week to make changes and print to A2.

• Change it to portrait with the 'E' at the bottom
• They liked the font and colour
• It's too complicated with the word zone over and over again
• Could be changed to having police tape or something 
• Nice composition 

• They liked the concept
• It shouldn't be black, should be a soft pastel colour so it looks like 'fabric conditioner' 
• Nice composition 

I would like to try making the 'ZONE' poster out of cut card as well as digital. I think this is my strongest design but I'm not going to give up on the 'Soft' poster. I did prefer the second poster until I printed it out. It just looks so much nicer on screen, all the colours are completely blended. It could've just been the printer I used but this put me off the design.