Saturday 5 March 2011

Design Is About Doing - Thumbnails

Before I started anything, I spent a good hour searching and reading through various websites and things I have, taking notes from them with the key pieces of advise they offered in order to be a successful designer. I wrote them all down because this was easier to do so the sources I have from these are here - link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5, link 6, link 7, link 8, link 9 and link 10.


Once I had enough I read back through them and noted down the main sort of categories I got from each I have. These were:


From this list then, I wrote down the advise for each header. I kept in mind the sort of things that were said when I was reading through the advice, and wrote out short paragraphs for each. Whilst writing them I got in the frame of mind of the sort of person who wouldn't really care about what they were doing or how, and generally think that they are the most amazing designer already in their life. I tried to keep a laid back feel to the copy, and almost humorous to make the audience laugh and maybe think 'yeah I know a guy like that...'. It is all done light hearted without trying to offend anyone with it.



Here are these typed up, and edited slightly to make them read better.

Feedback – why bother listening to any feedback you get from clients? After all they are the ones paying you to do the designs so what do they really know about anything. They should stick to their jobs and let you stick to yours.

Communication – keeping contact with a client through a brief can be such a drag so just don’t bother, you know what you’re doing anyway, so what’s the point in all those occasional awkward chats – you don’t need to listen to what they have to say anyway.

Practice – You already know you capabilities and limits with your design skills so don’t bother wasting time practicing them because you couldn’t possibly get any better than you already are at them right?

Don’t Adapt – Why should you have to adapt to what the client wants from you – they should be the ones that have to adapt to what you can give them. You know your own skills so just stick to them.

Design Process – It takes way too much effort to go through each step of the design process for every brief you do so just don’t bother. Skip straight ahead to the final outcome and whing the rest, the client will never know.

Time Management – Don’t bother wasting your time and effort planning out your days, just do what ever you can be bothered to do when you can actually be bothered to do it. The client will just have to wait if you don’t get things finished in time.

Creativity – You don’t need to bother with the whole trying to be as creative as you can routine because you know what you already do is awesome and the client is obviously going to love you for it.

Don’t Network – You don’t need to mingling with all those other budding designers out there on networking sites, you’re way too good for that.  You don’t need to showcase your work to any of them because you already know how to be seen on your own, and will clearly have a better chance at succeeding this way.

Portfolio – those spare prints you’ve accumulated in your bottom draw over time from previous briefs will do if there ever comes a time you actually need your portfolio. They might have got a little creased but that doesn’t matter. You are too good to bother paying out a small fortune to get things printed on decent stock and what not, and a website would just be too much maintenance.

Have a social life – after all, being a designer at the end of the day is just a job. So make sure you spend plenty of time down at the pub with your mates, or relaxing watching TV on an evening. Nothing helps more than completely forgetting everything you have been working on over the last few days.


Before starting with the full layout of poster ideas, I sketched out really quickly different ways that I could possibly have the body copy of it laid out.


I then digitised the experiments.




I will keep these in mind once I produce the final poster.

I figured seen as I already have the majority of the posters on screen, I will experiment more with the layout and header and what not on screen rather than drawing them. I think this will save me time as well with me changing my idea and leaving myself half a day to get things done. 

Here is the thumbnails/development of the main poster. I have decided that I will have a main poster with all of the advice on it, and then create smaller ones with like one piece on each. 



 

When I got to the point before the last 3 thumbnails. I took a breather from what I was doing because I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere so I went away for like an hour and came back and looked over all of the thumbnails so far and there were 2 layouts I particularly liked, and went on to develop them into one, which is what the last 3 thumbnails is doing. Once I did this it felt more completed than what it was doing so I decided this would be the final design and layout for this particular poster.

So because my plan is to do the over all poster, and then do the 3 required to actually answer the brief consisting of just one piece of advise I moved on to producing these. I basically took the same design elements and what not and put them onto a smaller landscape poster. Once I was happy with the final layout of this, I basically did one for all 10 pieces of advise in the same layout to keep them all visually consistent.




As time is running out and what not, I am happy with the stage that I have managed to achieve even after changing my whole idea so late in the week, but there is just a little something that makes me feel there is something ever so slight that is missing. But for now I am happy, and all ready for the crit to head what sort of feedback I receive for it.

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