Studio Brief 2: Product, Range and Distribution Studio Session

In order to get us started with our new Studio Brief, we had a studio session that aimed to get us to think of possible avenues we could take with the new brief based on our research. This would be different for all of us as we have all been working on different topics.

We were given a selection of different quick fire tasks where we had to think quickly to be able to respond automatically.

Sheet from Session

Firstly, we had to make a list of words that sum up the subject we have been looking into:

• Conservation
• Morals
• Ethics
• Sustainable
• Attraction
• Animals
• Well-being
• History
• Legacy
• Debate
• Wildlife
• Relationships
• Animal Rights
• Protection
• Care
• Service
• Families
• Donations
• Endangered
• Education
• Charity

We then had to think of what processes we would like to use or things we would like to do / try:

• Improving my Photoshop Photo-manipulating skills
• Crafting skills/ Mock Ups
• Photography Studio- Better at presenting work
• Experiment with stock selection/ recycled stock selection
• Lasercut

What products are you generally interested in making?

• Printed Materials/ Event Materials
• Interactive Design ProposAls
• Lasercut Wooden signage?
• Brand Guidelines for a company/ campaign?
• Object brand rather than traditional branded objects

List things that you do not know about your audience:

• Who they are
• Where do they live?- National/ International/ Local
• What do they do with there spare time?
• Perception of Zoos?
• Do they have any pets?
• Families? Couples? Young children?
• Do they have their own transport? Use public transport?
• Tone of voice?
• How much do they already know about Chester Zoo?
• Would they be interested in helping?

From the lists that we had made, we then needed to select the most important aspects from each list:

• Conservation
• Charity
• Crafting Skills/ Mock Ups
• Event Materials
• Brand Guidelines for a Company/ Campaign 
• Perception of Zoos

Which of the 2 areas specified do you want to focus on?

• Branding and Identity
• Information and Way Finding

Study Task:

From this session, we then had to go away and come up with ideas and concepts for what we could produce for Studio Brief 2. Following this, we then had to write our own brief for this Studio Brief. 

Responsive- Design Process 2: 99 Designs 'The Coffee Crib' Logo

As part of my Responsive Module, I have to take part in Competitions and Live Briefs. I was suggested this website called 99 Designs, a live brief design competition site which has new competition every day.

Live Brief on 99 Designs Website

A brief that I found which I felt would be similar to the style of work I would like to do in the future was a live brief for a healthy cafe called 'The Coffee Crib'. The client wants a logo for the cafe, with the name and a possible image alongside it, using a colour scheme of white, lime green and brown.

Sketches

I started off with doing some rough initial sketches to come up with some quick possible ideas that I would then be able to produce digitally. I preferred the ones which made the text the most prominent feature and I felt that the coffee cup was simple enough to understand.

Cup Illustration

I started off with an illustration of a coffee cup that I wanted to have as an image alongside the name of the cafe. I wanted just a simple image so that the name of the cafe would be the most prominent feature. 

Adding the Cafe Name

I went onto adding the name of the cafe using the font 'Vintage One' which I felt gave the name an authentic feel. The trouble was that I had to check and see if the font was available for use and it wasn't. 

Public Use/ Free Fonts

To make sure that the font is ok for me to use legally, I went onto the website dafont and selected the options of the font being free and in the public domain. This way, I have a font which I am fine to use without breaching any legally. I found a font that I already have called 'Lobster', a script font, so I decided to see if I could incorporate this into my logo.

Testing Lobster Font

I tried the font out as the main font and as the font for the smaller text and I felt that it was most successful for the smaller words. I tried a few fonts for the main word and I felt that a sans serif Gill Sans was very bold and strong.

Adding Colour Scheme

The next thing I had to do was try to incorporate the wanted colour scheme for the client which I felt was going to be quite a difficult job based on the wanted colour scheme. I started off by just filling in some elements of colour and adding to it as I went along. I liked it but felt that the logo needed enclosing off so I added a square to box it in all together. 

No Black Outline

I realised that, due to the fact that I had drawn everything in a black outline, this would not fulfil the needs of the brand as the colour scheme specifically states the 3 colours. I tried using the different colours to see how I could outline the work, thereby making it a full colour image. I tried the image out without the saucer but I feel that it doesn't really suit the rest of the image without it. 

Coloured Cups

As experimentation, I decided to see what the cup would look like if I put it in colour rather than being just white. It was nice in a cream but I felt that this would get away from the colour scheme so I tried it in brown and green. Green is a very unusual colour to use for a cup of coffee but it started to grow on me due to how unusual it was. I felt hat maybe this could be what the company was known for and thus, could be part of the brand if they marketed this within their practise.

Development

I tried to develop the logo further by trying out the white lines or getting rid of the lines altogether. from the steam off the coffee. I tried different type choices as well, flitting form softer sans serifs to a more traditional serif font. I felt that a lighter brown for the type choice was more fitting as well as it softened the overall logo design and went better with the lime green colour scheme. Then I changed the colour lines on the cup to a darker green colour but this made it more difficult to visually see the cup detail itself.   

Experimenting with Typefaces

Again, I kept coming back to the problem that I felt that the main typeface chosen wasn't very suitable and didn't go with the overall design of the logo. I continually kept trying different fonts to see if I could get one to match the overall aesthetic of the logo. In the end, I went back to what I had originally chosen, 'Lobster' but I used it for both the main and smaller words and found that it was the best combination. I changed the placement of the words as well, splitting them up on one side to the other so that they have much more room to play with.

Format of Logo

I made the typeface for the main word smaller so that it doesn't over face the coffee cup itself and condensed the spacing down of the border. Saying that, this made it feel as though it wasn't a logo anymore and more lie a sticker so I decided to change the layout of the logo so that it was more rectangular and spaced out. I made the cup a lot smaller in size as well so that it looks more like a ident than a main image. This automatically gave it the look of a logo rather than just a picture as the cup was too oversized previously. 

Final Design:

A logo design for a cafe which has a lime green, white and brown colour scheme. 

Final Design

I am quite happy with the actual design, despite the fact that it has an awful colour scheme and name yet this is the choice of the client and not my own. I have adhered to the wants of the client, which I felt was, in a way, quite restrictive yet, this gives me the experience of working to someone else's needs and trying to make the best of it I can. If I can get any further into the live brief and past the qualifying rounds then I would perhaps try and improve it whilst working alongside the client.

The Coffee Crib Proposals

To go along with this, I have produced some quick proposals as to how the logo can be used on appropriate collateral, which are business cards and coffee cups. They look very professional and fitting with the white colour going with the overall brand identity.

Design Board for Coffee Crib

I produced a design board showing the logo design I produced alongside some contextual proposals to demonstrate its use.

Submission:

To submit to this, I had to make an account for the website so that I would be able to put my work alongside everyone else's.

Submission

I had to answer a few questions before uploading a screenshot of my image and giving a short description of the logo itself. Then it was put alongside everyone else's submissions so that it will be up for judging in the qualifying rounds.

I am very glad that I took part in this short brief just because this means I have experience of working for a client outside of college on a quick turnaround, similar to a freelance designer. All of my other briefs so far have been competition briefs as I've never done a live brief for a client and this is a simple way of being about to try it out for myself. 

OUGD505 Typography Session 2

For the typography session, we have been encouraged to try and break the rules of type by acting as a research group. We were given little tasks to do  to try and work out how to do things for ourselves.

Kerning:

The first thing we were to look at was Kerning. Kerning is the area between the letters in a word. The rule of Kerning is that you never look to reduce the space but you take the largest white space out of the whole word and make the rest of the letter spacings match up to that.   

Kerning Name

We had to the our name in a sans serif font and make a copy of it underneath. We had to find the largest space in the name and measure it, moving all the other letter spacings to match it. In my name, the spacing between the L and the I is the largest so I had to increase the leading between all the other letterforms. You can see a slight difference in the way that the letterforms relate to each other and sit comfortably, relaxing the way that you would speak it.

Breaking a Sentence:

The next task we were asked to overcome is how would we break up a sentence into two parts correctly. 

Breaking the Sentence

While we were doing this, we were asked to think about how we would read it. By saying it out loud, we can identify where would pause during speech. This way, where you would put the pause when speaking is where you would break the sentence typographically.

Hierarchy:

The next thing we had to determine is how to show hierarchy on a page. We were given the words one, two, three and four and we had to put them in order backwards, with the intention of getting the reader to read the words in the original order.

Attempt at Hierarchy

I attempted to show this by changing the point sizes of the words and changing the weights of the words so that there was more physical emphasis on the starting words to the last word. Placement and page positioning can affect this as well. What was trying to be emphases was that what we look at and what we read are two very different things. 

The next thing we had to do was the same exercise but we were to create a hierarchy using single weights and point sizes. 

Layout Hierarchy

I went onto trying out different layouts, colour schemes and positioning. Another area which can contribute is the amount of white space surrounding a word. The layout of words determine what we see first and what we read first. Our eyes move around but the eye doesn't necessarily read what is expected.

Body Copy:

The final thing we looked at was body copy, where we had to look at readability and legibility of type based on how they are presented.

Making Body Copy Readable

From a large amount of body copy, we had to try and find the next line comfortably but we found that our eyes would jump from line to line not comfortably reading the text. By changing the line spacing and the point size, it helps the readability but the main thing which makes a difference is by putting the text into two columns, which breaks the text up to easily readable chunks.

Different Alignments

We tried putting the large amounts of text into different types of alignment to see how they would affect the readability. Centring and Right Aligning the text made it difficult to read because your eye would continually be trying to find the beginning of the next line as it would never be in the same place. Justifying the text would allow for same line pavement but this does create a larger line spacing between the different words so it can be more broken-up when reading. 

Additional Columns

We then added additional columns to see how this would come across when reading. 2 columns was seen as intelligent writing as it would have the correct number of words (10-12) per line whereas 1 or 4 columns seemed the least intelligent type of writing because they had the maximum and minimum (4-6) words per line which all impact on the readability of text. 

Readable Text

In order to make the text readable and be able to get rid of the large amount of spacing at the bottom, you could make the gutter and margins bigger, adapt the line spacing and change the type size. Changing the type size could be patronising to the reader so you can make the line spacing bigger so it is easier to read. Also, you could indent your information at the beginnings of paragraphs by 3-4 spaces so that there was a clear beginning to the information.