Wednesday, 30 March 2011

The Partners

I stumbled across this agency by accident while hunting for my ten briefs over the Summer.

' The Partners is Marketing Magazine’s Branding Agency of the Year and no 1 in Design Week’s Creative League Table.
Our unique understanding of creativity as a driver of business success is fast being recognized as the most dynamic and effective approach in the industry – a point that many of our clients will happily endorse. '


They have studios in London and New York and have a variety of clients from some of the world's biggest brands e.g. and some much smaller brands. The company has been winning awards for their work since 1990, here is an example of their work.




'The first outcome of that institution-wide work was the development of a coherent brand look that fully integrated the existing logo and color into a new and clean design framework. We realigned every aspect of the brand from logo development to print collateral to creating a contemporary new home on the web.'
 







Website guidelines by The Partners NY - I tried to create a similar guideline book last year when branding my music channel.

This is the response I got when I emailed them about a placement:

Tuesday, 29 March 2011

Task Four... Who else is out there? How good are they?

Edge Interactive:

Stengths
- Cover a wide range of services.
- High quality, yet cost-effective.
- Recently extended team, more expertise and knowledge.

Weaknesses
- Produce a lot of printed material.
- Work not widely recognised.

Opportunities
- Expansion more into the 'digital age' - more interactive solutions.
- Ever increasing usage of internet - more people wanting websites.

Threats
- With the recession hitting the Scunthorpe area very hard, it could affect future business.
- A lot of people learning to make their own websites - less business.

FND Collective:

Strengths
- Merge a variety of disciplines - greater expertise.
- Resolutions are in the public eye: music videos, commercials etc.

Weaknesses
-

Opportunities
- New technologies emerging, will be more expansion points for the company.

Threats
- General competition - as the digital design industry opens up further with new technology.

MPC

Strengths
- Leads the world in post production and visual effects for film and advertising.
- Diverse creative portfolio- appealing for potential clients.
- No printed media as such so company is resourceful.

Weaknesses
-

Opportunities
- Expansion in technology e.g. Super HD.
- Increase in popularity in 3D films.

Threats
- Competition

Mainly, from the above analyses the external weaknesses are competition. For the smaller company, e.g. Edge, the internal weaknesses is the economy. However, for the larger companies like MPC and FND Collective, I found it hard to think of any weaknesses, as they are big companies, especially MPC, who can't really afford to have weaknesses.

Monday, 28 March 2011

Enterprise Brief... Company Name

Today we met in the canteen to discuss what our company would be about, and come up with a name. It was a slow start, but in the end we decided to be a company specialising in editorial design, creating our own magazine too as a type of promotion and a way of building a status. We wanted a name short and snappy, my first idea was Grid, followed by Margin, slightly dull really, but it starts the name firing process! Many names were thrown about before eventually I said Quarter, before quickly moving on to think about another name, and the group liked it. I wasn't keen, it was just a word I said, but thinking about it, it was logical. There are 4 of us for one company, meaning we were each a quarter of the company, the magazine would be distributed 4 times a year. It made sense. The word brings about many different visual ideas, and a really interesting logo could be created.

Amy and Emma had written a list of what we needed for the presentation, and delegated to each of us:
- Amy: Company information, Magazine, Clients
- Liz: Legal information (trademarks etc.), Insurance + banking
- Emma: Premises, PR, Launch Party, Logo
- Me: Anything else financial.

Friday, 25 March 2011

YCN... Evaluation

At the start of the module I was extremely nervous about this brief; I think the word ‘competition’ unsettled me. The fact that this was a collaboration made the brief seem less daunting as I do like working in a partnership from time to time as it normally forces you to work outside the comfort zone.

My collaborative partners were Naomi and Ellie, I had not seen a lot of Ellie’s work beforehand so I had no idea how she worked. Naomi on the other hand, is interested in type and layout and always gets good grades. Her typographic interests are the opposite of my image making background, but this could complement very well. Ellie too is interested in image making.

Picking the brief was incredibly straight forward, it was a brief we all had in common, and were quite excited about, I knew we would work well from this initial chat. Delegating jobs again was quite simple, I like doing primary research and Ellie and Naomi prefer secondary research.

It took a while for our visuals to match each other, as at first Ellie’s was completely different, and after it became clear from the crit the ideas were not working as a range, the designs were changed. Another crit saw Naomi’s having something different to Ellie’s and my designs. In the end our visuals were consistent across our ideas.

I really enjoyed working with Naomi and Ellie, they were easy to voice opinions to, we weren’t afraid to say something wasn’t working, but were always there to award praise for good ideas. Our different interests and complementary skillsets made our team the perfect collaboration. We produced work that we were proud to show off and happily sent it to YCN.

In terms of practical skills, I didn’t learn anything new, but I didn’t feel it was the time to learn new tricks in software. However, I did do vector illustrations, something I always promise myself I will practice but never do due to lack of confidence, but working in a team I didn’t want to let them down so I tried, and succeeded, even though the ideas weren’t used.

I am really pleased with the final motion graphic I produced, it had a great flow to it which is the kind of feel I wanted. However, I do wish I had included music, I think it would have really refined it, but it was taking far too long to select music so this can be added after. It does show how it would work on the LCD London Underground digital panels.

Through our strong work, I feel we successfully answered the brief, the design was contemporary, which is more likely to attract the younger, more affluent audience Glayva are striving to attract.

Sunday, 20 March 2011

Enterprise with Jane...

Today we had a session with Jane to clarify what needed to be done for Enterprise. I felt better knowing we had a better sense of direction after the meeting yesterday, although we did still seem to be like lost sheep.

Notes from the session:
- 3rd May - Present to Jane/Bridget.
- After Easter break - 3 days to catch up: collate information, work out presentation and run through!
- Re-read brief!
- Think: proposal... Business plans from banks. Take regular questions, make own plan.
- What is content? 8 minutes.
- All visuals? Key lines of copy?
- Reflect on PEST? SWOT?
- Storyboard presentation - by end of week.
- Not necessarily .ppt - 1. Who we are? 2. What we do? 3. Competitors. 4. How to get name out there?
- Pricing - negotiation.
- Costings: security, insurance...
- Business centre? With receptionists.
- Where to meet clients: cafes? hotels? business centre?
- Look where competitors are - outskirts of Leeds?
- Costs: commercial software
- Banks: business funding/ overdraft: where is money coming from? where is it going?
- Factory 4
- Printing - where? 10% handling fee? who does large runs? cheap runs?
- Networking events (Arts mix) - business cards, website, mail out.

Monday, 14 March 2011

Company: FND Collective

Another digital collective who have created some amazing pieces!

"Established in 2007, our goal is to find projects that allow us to explore the artistic and commercial opportunities that come from collaboration between film makers, animators, musicians, illustrators and interactive developers.

We recognize that the future is in a merger of these disciplines and we see that our specialist skills, when put in one place, can lead to exciting and innovative outcome."

Showing the making of Pendulum 'Watercolour':

PENDULUM: 'WATERCOLOUR' BEHIND THE SCENES from the found collective on Vimeo.



Showing the finished cut:

PENDULUM: 'WATERCOLOUR' from the found collective on Vimeo.



This video is really exciting, and the way it is filmed and the effects complement the energy in the song. The silhouette of the crowd jumping up and down brings a familiar feeling of adrenaline from being in a similar situation watching The Prodigy live, which gives a personal touch to the viewing of this film.

innocence wedges magnets from the found collective on Vimeo.



The brief for this was to re-design the Innocent smoothie characters into a three dimensional format, while still retaining the cartoon style.

SONY IFA from the found collective on Vimeo.



I absolutely love this, this was created for the Sony IFA 2009:

'FND worked with DFuse and Paul Mumford to create 3D elements for this installation for Sony. After being involved with DFuse for the 2008 IFA event in Berlin we were invited back to create an installation for the 2009 event with Labmeta and DFuse co-directing the video content'

I would love to be in an environment like this as my job! I can really see how exciting the outcomes are from their portfolio of work.

Company: The Light Surgeons

A collective of seriously cool people, based in East London.

Looking through their work, I came across by accident, I thought wow these guys do some cool stuff. Then I noticed they have done a lot of motion graphics for one of my favourite bands, Chase and Status! Winner.
However, they aren't just about motion graphics, in the collective they cover, illustration, type design, photography, screen prints, installation and live performance! Everything that interests me...

One of the tour visuals for Chase and Status:


I would love to be a part of something like this, their work is really exciting and contemporary, and involves lights, which strangely is something that interests me! I like lighting but never thought of combining it with graphics until my digital module previously.

Enterprise Brief...

The group I will be in for the Enterprise brief consists of:

In our meeting we discussed the kind of areas of Graphic Design we wanted to cover, this included a range of ideas from illustration to motion to editorial. Nothing was agreed at this point, but gave us a target point for our next meeting. A common interest among us was design for the music industry, this is something to think about.

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

Company: Attik

'We don't just create advertisements, design and interactive experiences. We get the world talking, staring, blogging, and most importantly remembering our client's brands.'

This is such a cool collective of people, the work they have created is recognisable straight away, meaning the end of the first quote is correct, a lot of the work I saw and thought, "Oh yeah, I've seen that, how cool!"





This was an advert for the new Scion, a strong message was needed to promote the product so Attik, designed a campaign called 'Take on the Machine' in the style of a new Blockbuster campaign. With a short but intense teaser creating intrigue, and a range of printed media to accompany, directed the audience to a microsite built to look like a new movie website.

This company is very concept driven, and their work is incredibly clever and innovative, and shows a lot of collaborative work, to target all demographics of their audience.