Professional Practice

Reflections on Professional Practice

During my FdA course, I spent 5 weeks on placement. 4 weeks at Bruce Dunlop Associates London office, and 1 week at their Sydney office. I learned a lot, and did some interesting bits of work, but didn’t come out of that experience with any portfolio-worthy projects. This year, I decided that it would be a good idea to do more localised live briefs instead.

Oxfam.
This was a ‘live’ brief, set during my miserable 9-week stint at the University of Chester.

NB – this brief was the only one I had all your which did not reach a satisfactory conclusion, and did not yield a piece of work I could use in my portfolio. I fully expected to omit this from this my assessment, however I decided to include it because I learnt a lot, and have much to reflect on.

To explain the brief further, this was set as a compulsory brief by the University of Chester, where I initially began my BA year (I came from an FdA, straight onto year 3 BA). Around 90 students, the entire 2nd and 3rd year were to work on this ‘live’ brief. This brief was:

Previous Oxfam messages have “blended into the wallpaper”. Oxfam see the need for eye catching and symbolic messages but know they require a fresh eye. Oxfam are keen to attract a younger audience and would like to move away from the traditional imagery used when advertising this type of charity.

1. Oxfam are inviting you to design a series of posters, minimum of three, to advertise their need for donations of:
Books [fiction and non-fiction]
Music [CDs, tapes, DVDs, videos, records, etc.]
Clothing [vintage and high street]

2. Oxfam also require at least one poster, or this could also be a series, to recruit volunteers with a passion for:
Books
Music
Clothing
Computers

It is therefore required that you produce at least five individual design ideas for each poster category leading to hand rendered finished designs for both of the categories.

Along with the above you are required to submit a research file showing evidence of your exploration of Oxfam along with the visual inspiration for your design ideas.

Design work may be hand rendered; computer-generated mock-ups are not necessary as this is a first pitch situation to your design colleagues before finalizing design decisions.

Initially these posters will be placed in the Liverpool branch of Oxfam, however if successful there is the possibility they will be used nationally therefore any copy you produce for the poster should not include local information. The dimensions for the posters could be anything up to A0.

You must present the above work during the first seminar session of the Professional Practice module. Final designs will then be produced and printed ready for a formal exhibition in a public space, to take place during the second week of the semester.

This appears to be a good brief, and is, but in practice we did not deal with the client, but with a lecturer, Alan Summers, who ‘controlled the work’. Once we had been through this whole process for several weeks, they were then all the work was submitted to the Oxfam shop in Liverpool, who chose one to use. There was no direct client contact. I realise that this might happen in industry, especially if working for larger organisations or advertising agencies, but it was still a bit problematic and a confusing way to begin the academic year.

Despite this problem, I feel I did gain a lot from this module. I had been studying branding a lot, and applied that knowledge here. I did a lot of research on the new Oxfam branding, and made comparisons to previous campaigns, and other nonprofits organisations. I used many of the same research processes in my Neg 1 module (Fostering Service). I found the course in Chester too stifling, lacking any spirit, very soulless! Alan, the course ‘boss’ has some benefits: he is a stickler for research, research methods, and dry hard facts. Unfortunately everything else was negative; the inventive, playful aspect of design was disregarded there. I believe this coloured my work there, and steered my design. I almost felt like an operator, doing what I was told to do!


The Research Process
I did a huge amount of research, reading Wally Olins' “On Brand” twice, and the Loins’ “The Brand Handbook”. I also researched non-profit organisations and spoke to some friends I know, some of which work in local government (nonprofits) causes, and an in-house designer who worked at Christian charity. This helped me to get a better feel for non-profit organisations. (Please see workbook).

I also decided to work within the new brand guidelines for Oxfam, which was based around colour and often, type only design. I thought that a lot of work should go into the copywriting, and spent a lot of time on this. In hindsight, I should have worked on the copywriting and visual development at the same time. I feel I learned an important lesson here!
Visual Development
I looked at a lot of graphic illustration, and did a lot of research into Pictograms, synecdoche, symbols, semiotics and a bit of psychology. I did want to get the idea that Oxfam didn’t just sell and want junk, but actually dealt with a lot of ‘vintage’ clothing, and good old films and music. Unfortunately the design process was heavily monitored, and the idea was reduced to very simple forms from this stage. The symbols were to be matched to the slogans, but they did not end up being integrated properly. The ideas looked ok, but just didn’t work that well.

Production:
The campaign was required to be a series of 4 posters, and the designs were simplified, tested, and many colours were tried. With this level of simplicity, I thought that the colour palette would need to work well. I think I achieved this on some of the ideas, especially ‘Share Wear’ (green and yellow, taken from scan of my T Short) and ‘Second Life’ (black, pink and orange). This has made me realise the importance of colour theory, and made me want to build up my own swatch sets during ‘down-time’. The posters were completed, and look ok, but ultimately the whole thing did not work out. (N.B- I knew at this stage that I needed to leave the University of Chester ASAP and go back to NWSAD. I did, and have been the biggest fan of NWSAD ever since!)


Reworking.
I had intended to rework this project once I came back to NWSAD, but wanted to concentrate on other work for while, as my self-confidence/esteem was very low at this point. I got quite stressed, and became unwell with depression/anxiety. It was horrible at the time, but this dark period made me revaluate my life, I sought counselling and returned to NWSAD with a new outlook. I try to be philosophical, and believe every cloud has a silver lining. I utilised this new attitude, began mixing with the other students more, working in teams. The rest of my work was a lot better because I started enjoying it.

Summary
I might rework this project, but on evaluation, this was an important project, because it made me approach all my other projects differently. I am glad I made these mistakes, as the overall benefits were positive.



Paolo Mojo – ‘Smokestack’

A second piece of professional practice I undertook this year was a design, branding and promotional campaign for an independent UK record label, Curfew Records. They had signed a record by Paolo Mojo, and already established artist and DJ. Part of the deal with the signing was that Curfew Records would promote the release well.

Curfew handles their own PR, but needed the tools or the ‘PR kit’ to spread the promotional material on the web. The brief required graphics in various formats (square composition for iTunes, a rectangle banner for many other online music stores). I used to run a record label, and was a full-time recording artist and record producer prior to commencing University. I was also a DJ for 20 years, and only retired in October 2008. I know this market very well, and have done graphics for this use many times before.

Visual Development
The companies’ label manager, Rob supplied a logotype we could use, and a photo, which they had sourced. Both were taken into account, and this basic idea was used as a starting point. I did however remake the logotype, changing it from a lifeless Arial to a more interesting Swiss type (this is Helvetica with more x height). The image they sent was a burning chimney, or ‘smoke stack’. It wasn’t particularly well shot; it really just looked like they had Google-image searched for a smoke stack. Their image was orange and black, and they logotype was black and red. It just didn’t hold together.

In addition to this, the label Owner, Matt Thomas also wanted to keep all his designs related to his label within their new brand colours (Black, yellow and white). He runs his own MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/kinguniqueuk
Matt, who has a sideline in amateur web design, has a bit of a knack for creating strikingly ugly design! He is however good at creating an identity that is different from his peers and sticking to it, and it works on that level. Matt asked me to keep within the brand colours, so I took everything into account when creating the design. (See workbook)

Once the design was created and approved, I showed the graphic to a fellow student who is also practising motion graphics, Daryl Higgins. Daryl wanted to know if he could have the parts to create an animation. I quite liked this idea, but suggested we collaborate, and deliver a web-based video promo. I asked the label, who were only too happy to get more for free, and we set about our collaboration.

I spent time on work experience in London last year, and saw how several designer/animators can simultaneously work on a project. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to try this. It was a bit odd at first, as we have different ways of working, and did not initially know each other well. I think I helped Daryl by showing him how I would plan a project, and the planning and storyboarding. He helped me by showing me a lot of technical bits I hadn’t yet approached, and he had a more ‘freestyle’ approach to the program After Effects. The collaborative process was hugely enjoyable, and is something I would very much like to continue with. It helped boost my confidence, and we completed the job to the satisfaction of the label and ourselves.

Summary
I am very happy with this, and would do it again this way. I have ‘over-thought’ and over planned my previous motion graphics projects from year 2. This collaboration was more fun, and very liberating.


Self-branding, portfolio and web site
The final professional practice work I undertook was branding myself. All students have to make a portfolio, but my work is primarily video based. This works best when viewed in real-time.

I spent a lot of time thinking of a concept, a symbol that I could use, and decided to use a light bulb (suggesting ideas). This wasn’t heavily worked out on paper, but I had been considering the branding for months. The design was actually completed in a day, and works well. I think I had done all the work subconsciously in advance!

I have a visual style, a colour palette (a simple Black and White, with optional yellow), typography (Trade Gothic Bold, upper case, tracked widely for display, and used in sentence case for copy). I have applied this branding to my site at http://kupon.co.uk/ and will apply the same branding to my PDF portfolio and print portfolio. I have made various previous attempts at creating my own logo too, and discovered that they looked good in isolation, but didn’t work on my site. They looked over-bearing on my web site. I feel that in this case I got it right because I had previously got it wrong many times!

Negotiated 2 - Prudential (D&AD)

D&AD – Prudential

At the art school, we had several group brainstorm sessions, which were a brilliant way to spark ideas. They also meant they everyone felt a little like they owned the idea. I think we had a great mixture of people, and credit has to go to Tim Harris for initial brainstorming. Tim would suggest great images, and get everyone involved.

One of these was the prudential brief. I had spent the bulk of my time working on the Sunday Times brief, but D&AD extended the deadlines on several briefs. This meant a group of us, Sam Burgon, Joss Gleave and myself could have a go creating a piece from scratch in around 72 hours.

Sam had an existing idea about a guy ‘being a dog’, and burying a bone in the garden, whilst Joss and I had an idea based around a guy eating a meal and putting his favourite bits to the side of the plate until later. Both ideas had potential, and we set about developing the script and storyboards. Joss and I liked both ideas, but Sam felt very strongly that we go with the Dog idea. This was all on the 1st day.

The development process had similarities with the Sunday Times thing, except this was based entirely on live action. We also had to develop everything extremely quickly; this meant planning, taking reference shots and shooting on the second day. We brought in 2nd year Film student Alison Mclean to help us shoot the piece, and Alison really helped, making the shoot work as well as possible. The location wasn’t ideal, but we didn’t have time to perfect it, and had to use somewhere where we could dig up the garden.

I then had to import all the footage, put it all together and edit it (I had very little experience using Final Cut pro until this brief, but picked it up very quickly here). The brief was completed on the 4th day, and delivered on time.

Summary
If I were to do this again, and had more time, we would plan a better location and cast better actors. The idea was meant to be absurd, and I think we did achieve that, but it would work better in a better surrounding. Despite that, as an idea, or a pitch, I think it is good. I am happy to get any opportunity to work on storyboards and shot-flow, and really enjoy editing. The whole area fascinates me, the production process, the planning (I think storyboarding is film-directing on paper), film-language and the rhythm of the edit.

Negotiated 2 - Sunday Times (YCN)

The Sunday Times – Style Magazine.

This brief was made in collaboration with Jocelyn Gleave.

The Research Process
The earliest part of the research process for this brief was undertaken by Joss, who began the brief whilst I was working on my Neg 1 module. She had looked at the demographic, and got a rough idea to use a birds-eye view of a desk, and did a motion test of the letters changing pattern with swatches taken from the style magazine itself. There was however so much more to do, and the project needed to be developed out, a narrative written, more ideas.

It was necessary to find out what could and couldn’t be done, and we got the idea first, and looked for ways to do it later. Of all the briefs I did this year, this one required the most technical skills. The mixing of media and techniques was worked to look easy, but the processes involved meant learning a lot of new things, and using utilizing previously learned skills at a much higher level. This included storyboarding, film-language, show-flow, planning, set-design, stop-motion animation, live action, after effects post-production and editing.


Visual Development
Joss and I developed the idea over 4 weeks prior to the shoot. Joss handled more things like set-design, and I thought about the logistics, storyboard, and the shoot. Storyboards were drawn, redrawn, scripts, set design pieces, motion tests, photography, logistics (please refer to workbook). Despite being a lot of work, it was the most enjoyable time I had ever had as a student ever. I think if I were to do it again, I’d have done much of this part the same, but maybe really worked on the set-design on a more anally-retentive level. I think at this stage, detail is everything!

Shooting:
We planned as much as possible prior to the shoot, and tested all the technical trickery we were going to do in advance of the live-action shoot. Simon Hall helped us quite a bit, showing us the techniques needed to do what we planned. There were many production decisions that needed to be done in advance, all new things to me. We had to get the camera directly over the set, to gain a birds-eye view.

When the time came to do the shoot, we got some help from Stewart to shoot, and it went quite well, however we made an error by leaving something on the desk on the set, which wasn’t supposed to appear until later in the shoot. This was later addressed in post-production. The shoot also happened very quickly. We planned for weeks, and shot in about 30 minutes, with no real chance to re-shoot anything. Most of the shots were ok, but some were out of focus. This was partly due to limited resources; it was all shot in the art-school with a DV camera, a step-latter and a tripod. The camera was balanced over the set, and held still. It wasn’t possible to use manual focus, as the camera was out of reach, tied to a long pole. This, combined with a limited time to shoot meant we had to use what we had and make the best of it.

Post-production:
Post-production for this brief involved a huge amount of work. We had tested many of the stop-motion pieces in advance, but needed to shoot the proper versions of these after to line up with the live-action shots. We also reviewed all the footage, and realised we would need to change a few shots, replacing the blurry footage with new shots, replacing some of the live action shots with more stop-motion.

I had to learn a lot of new techniques to fix all the mistakes, a kind of crash-course in visual effects (rather than motion-graphics), and we pieced the film together. It transpired that some of the shots we remade were wrong too. The camera wasn’t always set right (we hadn’t set the white balance, leaving this stuff to Simon Hall. We were a little naïve, and didn’t know how to do this!) – plus we didn’t get the focus right (again, using the autofocus). I would definitely not make this mistake again!

We were able to use all the shots, and pieced the whole film together with some music, for which I gained clearance permission. We got everything done and handed the brief on time. There were things I’d have done differently next time, but I only discovered what they might be through this process. The piece wasn’t perfect, and we would have liked to tie up a loose ends of we had more time.

Reworking.
In the final weeks of the BA course we made some time to address the niggly things about this project. I handled all these, as I did all the After Effects and compositing parts. We replaced the backgrounds to the face on shots of the radio and the wall in the room behind our star Catriona.

I was also unhappy with the end shots, the ident. The idea was good, but I had to cut corners to get it completed in time for the competition deadline. We reworked this part, Joss reshooting her stop-motion parts with a blank piece of paper, and I spent a few days learning techniques to animate the Sunday Times masthead. This new ending and the other revisions fixed almost every problem we had. There were still a couple of shots where the white balance wasn’t ideal, and were slightly blurry, but they do the job. Obviously we would try to avoid this in future.

Summary
This project was a joy to work on, and my personal highlight of the last 3 years. I would love to continue to work with Joss, as she has a lot of energy and positivity. I am very keen to develop this style further, and would like to do so on an MA if possible.

Negotiated 1 - The Fostering Service

Wrexham Fostering Service (a department of Wrexham County Borough Council).

This brief was began life prior to beginning the final year at University, and was worked on from late August 2008 though to May 2009.

The Research Process
This brief was approached like a re-brand. The clients, the Fostering Service are very passionate about their jobs, and had always historically devised their own promotional work. I have family contacts that work there, and they initially asked for a design for a billboard site in Wrexham. I said I was keen to look at this, and set about initial research.

I had spent a lot of time throughout the summer reading Wally Olins’ books on branding (On Brand and The Brand Handbook) and decided that this area ought to be researched in depth. I started desk research, and once appointed a point of contact, began having regular meetings at their offices.

Around half my workbook is about research. The very brief summary of this found that:

• The Council run (public sector) Fostering Service has ‘competition’ from the private sector
• The Local Authority is legally responsible for the basic welfare of ALL 0-16 year olds, whether in local authority or private care, or with their natural parents or guardians.
• The Council’s Fostering service didn’t have any fixed identity or a fixed name.
• People in the area did not know the difference between them and the higher profile corporate competition (i.e. Fostering Solutions)
• All communications are required to be bilingual, which usually makes typographic communications overly wordy and cluttered.
• All previous communications and advertising examples were collected.
• Research from fostering services all over the UK and worldwide was collected to look at the general feel.
• Other visual research was collected, and a new direction was sought, for a fresh approach.
• I looked at the Council’s brand handbook, and discovered that it was allowable to move away from they chosen colours and type choices for any department that competes with the private sector, so found out what could and could not be done visually.
• I also found out they really needed to differentiate themselves from the corporate fostering agencies, as their competition raises the council's budget for fostering by up £5m per annum. They needed to get more foster parents working with them directly.

At this stage I decided to go with a pictorial symbol, which could communicate the essence of the Fostering Service. I brought in and briefed illustrator Alex Willmore, and we collaborated on the visual approach from this point.

I had many further meetings with the Fostering Service to find out as much about them, what they do, what differentiates them from the private sector agencies, and to find out what makes them unique. The unique point was that they do not do what they do for profit, and the employees could earn a lot more money working for the corporate sector. They care passionately about what they do, and felt strongly that the private sector competition exploited vulnerable children and young people for profit.


Visual Development
Having worked out what they were about, I discussed the ideas with the Fostering service. This involved being very straight with them, whilst remaining sympathetic to their needs. I told them I thought they were most likely too close to know how other people saw them, and told them that the general public often know nothing that goes on within the council’s buildings.

Having decided to use minimal quantities of type, and base the communication on bright colours and a pictorial symbol to represent the essence of the Fostering service, many approaches were tried. I felt strongly that they needed to use an abstract image or Anthropomorphism, so they anyone of any gender or race could imagine themselves as that character. I had written down many ideas that suggest protection, such as ‘take a child under your wing’, and Alex tried a mis-match of different animals. We also tried some more obvious approaches, which we could then eliminate. I also tried looking at a lot of reductive pictogram type symbols (anything with eyes and a smile looks human).

Symbols:
Various symbolic images were now tried, e.g. an umbrella, Birds (take a child under your wing), Penguins (who protect each others eggs to help the colony survive), big hands, Kangaroos (with a pouch), Characters based around Jigsaws (with mis-matched colours). Many of these symbols might have worked, but many were just too twee and cute. We needed something bold, but a bit more universal, and started developing the umbrella idea. I spent a lot of time developing out a pictogram with a parent, 2 kids under an umbrella sheltering from rain, whilst Alex Wilmore drew an illustration based around the same theme. We presented the ideas to the council, and they were happy with the concept, and thought it worked best as an illustration.

Further development:
From here, I worked on typographical styles, and integrated the pictogram umbrella into a logotype. What followed were many attempts at settling on a colour palette and layout (see workbook). Our characters were at this point abstract, neutral-gender people based on a thumb. The council liked these, and had approved it, and 2 versions were presented with the colour palette, one with the characters shown in a full-body ‘long shot’ and one where they were shown in close-up. The council were very happy for 2 days, before they came back with a problem. It was felt that the characters looked like Muslims, and fostering is anathema to their religious belief system. This could cause a lot of problems, especially as social workers are often vilified in the media.

Once the idea was in place, Alex redrew the characters as real human beings, but still mixed the skin tones and hair colours to suggest a happy mix of people. We now finally had the elements and approval to proceed (after much ‘can you make the phone number bigger type stuff).

I took the development of the job from this stage, and I requested a full body line drawing of the characters and set about delivering the work. The original plan was to submit a Billboard and A2 and an A4 poster design. The Council had been fairly difficult to deal with, and didn’t really know what they wanted. This is why I had to do so much research, as they didn’t suggest anything that was of any use. They also didn’t really know too much about the production process, as most of the formats were then handled by external media buyers and print companies.

I spent a few weeks trying to second-guess them and emailing and calling them, before suggesting they pass on the external partners contact details. These were the repro graphics department at the council (surly and unhelpful), and the media buyer, Hugh at Walker Media (efficient and very helpful).

Reflections on production.

Hugh Walker was very good, supplied me all the tech specs for the planned jobs, plus many other formats, which hadn’t been agreed. The billboard design was already done, but needed to be make to scale, which was 20% of full size with bleed. Hugh had become my point of contact, and became the guy who briefed me on formats. I had never worked on large-scale outdoor prints before, but the principles are the same.

I worked a lot with Dave Kelly, and produced all the artwork in the hub at the art school. Many of the bitmap parts were replaced with vectors for better reproduction, but the line drawing and some of the colours on the characters were kept as bit-map for the look and feel. I discovered that there was no real mystery to the print process on a technical level, but everything did need to be tested, printed, tweaked and reprinted. I found that by printing the big work small, it was good to balance the compositions, and then looked right at full size.

It was a fairly long winded process, as Hugh kept asking for more formats, such as super-rears (bus rears), Vinyl Banners, a leaflet front page, and every time a new format was done, I reworked the layout to fit the format, and to give the idea a slightly different angle, avoiding too much repetition. For the posters, I decided to devise a way to include a bit of type, as I thought they might request that sort of thing in the near future. I picked some other devices, and complementary colours that would fit, which could further be associated with the brand.

The production all happened fairly quickly; there is a national fostering fortnight, which began on the 11th May. All the formats were delivered with time for production, and the billboards and bus rears went live around the start of fostering fortnight. The artwork, which went through Walker Media, all looked good, and went up exactly as planned, un-doctored. There were always compromises throughout the design process, make the logo bigger, make the phone bigger (make everything bigger) and I obliged them, and they were happy.
The council’s own repro-graphics team handled the posters, and unfortunately they changed it a bit, altering the Council’s logo to the chosen pantone. This was a little annoying, as my design had been already been approved and cleared!

Summary
This project taught me many things. The research, professional practice and print-production elements amounted to a lot of work, and this project gave me the confidence to undertake other projects of a similar nature. I think public sector or ‘worthy-cause’ work is always going to be available, and whilst it isn’t glamorous, it can reach a large audience, and is available outside of London and other major cities.

If I was going to do things differently in future, I would maybe try and work out exactly who I need to speak to earlier on in the process about each role (e.g. media buyers etc), and I would also be a bit more wary of the in-house repro- graphics people (or get to know them and gain their trust!). I think we got the idea right in the end, but it took a lot of trial and error to get there. It would be good to be able to get there quicker in future.

The only other thing which I found frustrating, is the way the fostering service handle the identity. I realise it theirs, and I can't control everything, but a there are a few examples of how they fail to make the most of the new branding. They used our new design for the front cover of their leaflet, but kept their old campaign stuff (different, ugly colours and type) inside. They also still use a collection of various old campaign ideas at their promotional events, many of which even us a different name for the service. This does not really help clarify the difference between the Fostering service and the private sector, it just confuses people.

I could not control every aspect as a student, but I think a campaign like this would work much better in future if the brand identity could be better managed and adhered to. I think the media buyers were good to work with in the production stages, and all the formats they handled looked as intended.