OUGD503 - Collaborative - YCN MSC Submission Boards

Overall I'm really pleased with the outcome of our collaborative group. I found it quite beneficial working with other courses just to see their design processes and how they work in general. It also meant making contacts for the future if I need an illustrator or an animator I will have people who I know I can trust. Also I think it helped that at the start of the project we all set each other roles to do within the animation and design campaign, and the time plan that the animators created was a huge help in knowing when our roles had to be done by. 

I feel that as an individual I did quite well within the group as often in meetings I would sort of take control a bit to sort out what we were doing. Also I feel that I did a lot of things for the animation as the environments were a large part of it as well as producing some design work for it afterwards as well. I got everything done by the allotted time deadlines and we managed to submit as soon as the animation was finished because of this. 

OUGD503 - D&AD Submission - WWF Membership as Community

I think that this brief has taught me a lot in terms of doing competitions as well as developing my own skills. I tried lots of new techniques like paper cutting which I've never really attempted before and found out that I really like doing it. Also I've never really come up with much conceptually before so I feel more confident in portraying a concept and following through with it in the designs. But I feel that the most important thing that I have learned during this brief is how to write about my work confidently for submission. This is a skill that will come in handy especially next year and when I am creating my portfolio. 

I am really pleased with the visual outcomes too. Like I mentioned before, paper cutting was something that I hadn't really attempted before and I found that I have a knack for it. So this is something that I would like to carry over to other briefs. If I had more time I would have definitely tried to create a stop motion advertisements for the ecosystem clubs. Although I feel my concept is strong so it is pretty self explanatory. 

My time management in this brief has been alright but could have been better. I did spend longer than I probably needed to on this brief, a lot of the time was spent adjusting and re adjusting the presentation boards for submission however I feel that this worked out for the better. 

OUGD503 - Collaborative Practice - Supporting Design Campaign

I had quite a few creative ideas for how to advertise MSC fish, most of them involved pull off recipes. My first idea was to have big fish installations in relevant areas such as markets and supermarkets where each scale on the fish was a recipe. However I thought that this might not be that viable because it would require a large space for it to be placed which some shops might lack. So my second idea was to have 'fish' hanging off a string over the fish counter so you could "catch" a recipe by pulling a fish off the rope.

A made a little mock up using some of the fish that the illustrator, Tom, had drawn for the animation. I showed this to the rest of the group and they really liked the idea. They also suggested that if I had time to create a series of posters that show different scenarios that we couldn't fit into the 30 second animation. I decided I would try this if I had time to spare but this was the more creative "out of the box" idea for a supporting campaign so I continued to develop it further.

With the help of my peers I narrowed my designs down to three fish that are most popular among the 18-25 target market which are: Tuna, salmon and cod. So I started to develop the designs for these. Using the fish that had already been drawn I chose ones that were similar to the look of the fish and colour coded them with appropriate colours. 

When I showed these designs to my peers they said that they were a tad on the plain side. I do agree with this as because they are now static rather than moving they could have a bit more detail to make them feel more alive. 

So using various artistic effect brushes in illustrator to create scales and a bit more detail. I think that this works really well as it makes them look more 3D as well. So I decided to look for some recipes to put onto the back of the fish. 

Initially I found it really difficult to fit the recipes onto the strange shape of the fish, I tried using an oval shape to fit the text into but it just didn't work. So I resorted to using columns. The only down side about this is that there isn't really enough room for any illustrations or photographs of the food they are cooking. Hopefully 18-25 year olds will have a good imagination! 

This was the final product. I thought that they looked really effective all hung up on the string and it would definitely tempt me to grab one. If I had more time with this I would have mocked up the fish properly within the context of a fish shop but due to the deadline nearing I will have to leave it with these photos.

I also managed to mock up a poster idea, I tried replicating the tongue in cheek aspects of the animation with a quirky looking speech bubble. I only managed to create the one scenario of some divers tucking in a fish in a "bed". Again if I had more time I would have done a couple more designs but I did manage to mock it up in context which I feel makes the design look a lot better. 

OUGD503 - Responsive - Final Crit

For the final critique I showed my final presentation boards for the WWF D&AD brief as I wanted to have them checked before submission. I couldn't really show much of my collaborative as we had already decided on all the environments that I had done and the animators are in the process of animating it all so there wasn't anything to show really. 

So I asked some questions about the WWF boards and these were the responses:

Is the concept clear enough, if not why?
- Absolutely! Great way for members to engage and collaborate with other members. Effect and more engaging for new members to go along for talks and meetings
- I think the concept works really well as its a good way to make the community grow.
- Yes, great way to bring the members together and take action
- Very clear concept that achieves the aims of the brief
- Yes its a great way to bring in new members together.
- The concept is clear and definitely helps in igniting an active conservation community.

Do you feel like the design material is relevant to the concept/brief, why?
- Posters are Super. Nice as collectables for members
- Yes all the materials works really well especially the posters look really engaging. The design works well and gives the feel of a WWF material.
- Yes, nice use of the colour green & good that materials make use of recycled materials - completely relevant!
- Very relevant, bright blues and greens which relate to nature
- Love the use of colour in the posters, really eye catching and exciting. Posters work really well.
- They help to put the power into the member's hand which will make them more a part of it rather than just donating money.
- Yeah definitely, covered so many areas + gives a really thorough explanation.

Are there any quick changes that could be made to make the presentation clearer?
-Nope
- No I think it all looks good
- No it's straightforward as it is
- No
- No the presentation works really well and it is straightforward
- The presentation is very clear + has communicated the idea well.
- Nope really clear, goes through everything very methodically

From this feedback I feel a lot more confident about my submission. I think people have cleared it up for me and there are no real massive changes to make before I submit to D&AD.