I have contacted my dad who is the Commercial Lines Director at Covéa Insurance and explained what we were doing. He has told me to create a very clear email on what we are wanting to do and send it to him who will then send it on to the marketing team within the business. I am currently trying to make the email and am struggling to sound professional enough. It is a fantastic opportunity and I am excited about it!
From my other blog called 'interviews with designers and illustrators' you can see what happened between now and when I wrote the above two blog entries. I am now doing a live brief on designing everything (bottle shape, name, logo, etc) for a beer brewery in Bolivia (South America). We have been given this brief from Pat from Design Activity to practise a live brief and present our findings to him in a professional form. He has given us a timetable of when he wants everything doing by and it is an intense schedule.
Here is the brief he has given us:
These are some of the photo's I took yesterday of us all working in the studio and of us discussing ideas with Pat and what he's wants us to achieve. They are also photos of us working on the brief and and sharing our ideas and thoughts.
 |
| The man in the right is Pat. And the window is boarded up in the background because there is scaffolding up and I was told by the other designers who work there (whilst making a cup of tea) that the last time they had scaffolding up, they were broken in to six times in the space of five weeks. So they now have to be extra careful. However this made the room extremely hot and stuffy which made it hard to work in. |
Pat has asked us to spend a lot of time at the studio over the Easter break so we can work on the brief in a professional environment. He was extremely busy this time we were there and said that next time we go there will be much more room downstairs for us to work which will be a much better experience because we will be working amongst other professional designers.
This is the email we all received off of him describing the timetable and what we should have done for the following time we met:
I have just got back from my second meeting with Pat. This time was much more exciting and productive. This was because we were in an official conference room and we had to present our work to him and another Graphic Design Director called Mark. It was intimidating but great practise! I did most of the work he had asked apart from the style board which I am working on now. He gave me a lot of criticism on the work I had done, especially the designs because I hadn't done very much variety and had got stuck on just the one idea which wasn't actually very strong. This was very productive criticism however because I learnt so much about how they present there work and how much is actually expected off you.
Because I hadn't done as much on the Brand Marque as they had hoped, they asked me to email them with my ideas before our next visit. I did so and had this as a reply:
I did as they had asked in the email and was determined to get better feedback for my work this time.
I did pages upon pages of research on Bolivia and the mining there and also other beers that come from Bolivia such as Paceña before I began my mood boards and style board. This is the best mood board I made and the style board I presented:
I worked so hard on coming up with a brand marque I was happy with. The following images are of me working on them in my refill pad. This is something Pat told us they work in because the paper in them are almost like tracing paper but more not so flimsy. This way you can sketch out lots of rough ideas and when you have a good one you can trace over it again and again so you can replicate your ideas in different ways. They are also loads cheaper than sketchpads making you more likely to unload all your ideas, good and bad, enabling you to come up with the best of your ability.
We had our second official meeting at 3.00pm on Thursday 1st May. For the first hour of us being there, Pat and Mark gave us lots of advice on how to approach our current Uni projects we are working on and also how to write our dissertation. Then it was our turn to present what we had been working on. Out of the four of us girls, I had to go first. I usually really struggle to talk about my work in public but I managed to talk confidently about what I had done without shaking too much. Pat and Mark really liked the ideas I had come up with and the amount of work I had put it. They also gave me some great pointers as to where I could potentially take the idea next and advice on what to leave out to prevent it from being too much.
Although they liked the work I had come up with, they said it was clear I was more of an Illustrator than a Packaging Designer. I already knew this and was happy that they had recognised it. I took this opportunity to ask about how Illustrators work and whether they have Agency's such as theirs. They told me that it was much more common for Illustrators to work Freelance but also work with an Agency that will have their work in a book. 'Contact Creative' is an example of an Agency that works in this way. They gave me a fantastic book by Contact Creative that they get sent which is full of contemporary Illustrators from all over the world. I was told I need to have a unique style and I would do well. They informed me of the importance of having my own website and of websites such iStock. This is where businesses will buy an image for a piece of design and pay a small amount for it. I could be earning money through this now and it something I am going to start doing over the summer. This is the book they gave me:
This book is fantastic inspiration for me and is great for research into contemporary Illustrators and particular styles that I like.
For the next part of the brief is putting it all together on the computer professionally. Here comes the really exciting part! Pat has said that for five days we will each be put with one of his Designers who will spend the week teaching us how to use the programs and put all our ideas into them, such as making the bottle shape we designed and our design on it. We originally planned for the week of the 12th May to do this. However this is an extremely important week with Uni and clashes with our presentation. The week after also wasn't possible. So annoyingly we will be doing this the week after we hand in all of our work, so the week of the 26th May. This means I won't be able to write about it as part of my Professional Context. But it does mean I can purely focus on getting my work done and then focus all my attention to this and really get the most from the experience rather than add to the stress of what we already have going on.
So far this has been such an exciting and eye opening experience and I have learnt so much about how the industry works. I have also got some fantastic contacts now for future work experience opportunities. I am considering potentially doing another brief over the summer break. For originally Pat said to come to him whenever we want some more briefs, to help build up our portfolio.
