Good Creative Feedback

As a change to the usual projects we get at uni, we have been tasked by an actual design company to design a logo and packaging for a children's natural soft drink, Kate's Fruit Potions. The company that has provided us with this task is Good Creative. Due to the Director (Keith Forbes) of the company being ill, he was unavailable to assign us the brief in person, so it was up to Phil and Gordon to do their best to inform us on what was required.

We were to produce our research and work in the form of advanced mood-boards to show Keith Forbes on Tuesday 8th February and explain where we wanted to take our designs in further development. I have to say that the Friday before this was slightly unfair as our class were all getting moaned a good talking too about not having completed such boards yet. The bizarre thing about this though was that no one had told us to produce any boards for this date as people were still working on initial ideas to produce for the meeting. And will say that a lot of people were getting stressed out due to this situation and I know it put my confidence in the project down a bit.

So over the weekend everyone did their boards and on the Tuesday we all spoke to Keith and his associate about our ideas. I actually enjoyed talking to them, even though they said my idea was good, they said that it didn't go with what they expected of the product, but did this in a way that didn't put me down or make me doubt my abilities in my work. It was also here that they said I should continue with one of my original ideas, which they thought was more natural and fun, a design I was told to avoid by my tutors, but one I would of preferred to do. So now I am currently working on the logo design I originally intended to do. This does resemble a logo design I did in college, by this I mean that it is making an image out of cool, funky type from the 1960's. I wanted to do this design as I enjoy doing stuff like this, and believe it is playground cool for boys and girls to drink.

I am looking forward to showing Keith my final design and took what feedback he gave me and applied it to my design.

Our Posters

Just our posters for design studies.

Planet Earth, Calm Down

Seriously, the world needs to just take a chill pill, there is just so much going on just now. Australia has been hit with floods of a biblical proportion, and is now being hit with its most powerful cyclone ever, that's just unlucky, and I really do feel for all the people who have been effected by this. America is also being hit with the extreme weather, with layers upon layers of snow stretching for thousands and thousands of miles. Egypt is not facial any severe weather conditions but protest have been taking place now for over a week, the people demanding that the president step down immediately, I was watching the news on Friday, and the reporter had said that the Egyptian presidential office had said despite the protest the President still had a 90% popularity vote of the people. Where the hell did they get those figures from, even the reporter couldn't help but laugh and state just how corrupt the government must be. Even in our very own Great Britain, where students are at their own protests over tuition fees.

This is all just overwhelming, over recent years weather is getting worse, I just remembered about the floods Brazil had recently. It is all just non stop, we just can't all seem to catch a break from it all, who knows what will happen next and when will it happen? Will things get any worse and how could it affect us in the long-run? Could 2012 really be happening? will just have to wait and see.

Boardwalk Empire Completes Me

For the past few weeks I have noticed advertising on T.V and billboards for the new digital channel Sky Atlantic. This channel shows all the biggest shows coming out of America at the moment. The channel opened it's launch with the premier of the hit T.V series Boardwalk Empire starring Steve Buscemi, and was rather excited about seeing this as I have heard all the hype about it in magazines and T.V reviews.

The plot of the show follows that of a notorious gangster Nucky Thompson, also the treasurer of Atlantic City, and how he manipulates and does business with people. I don't know what it is about gangster films and shows, but as a guy I can only say I love them, there is something that is just suave and sophisticated about the. Need I remind anyone of The Godfather films and Goodfellas? I do not know a single person who doesn't like these films. Can you think of anyone?

Anyway, after watching the pilot episode I have to say it is one of the best things on television I have seen in a while, I was already hooked after the first episode. The story-line and acting were fantastic, and what made matters better was that the godfather of gangster films, Martin Scorsese, directs and produces this. This is a very stylish set piece set in 1920's Prohibition. The clothes, sets and music all add to the atmosphere of the time.

I wouldn't say this is a program for only guys,but think women would enjoy it too. My mum liked this, though did complain about the swearing as well as a few of the scenes in the show, but I think that's just a mum thing, they all do it.

Last night I watched the second episode, and can't wait to see the rest. This is a series I can tell I am going to really enjoy. I am also looking forward to seeing the show Mad Men, as I have heard pretty good things about this too.

Assignment 2a Semester 2

To continue on with our team project we were to meet up and discuss post consumerism, all doing research and bringing what we had to the table, what we produced is a mind map that we will put into the form of a poster, the poster will be added to the blog pretty soon.

Assignment 1.2 Semester 2

The second part of this was to guess the scores of all the members in our groups then discuss them with each other, finding out if we were right or not. For the majority of us, we all in general made the right guesses and there were some that we found quite surprising.

There were points after we revealed our own results that we would say that we thought you would have been more of this than that, everyone had an area where we discussed this. There were even points during the discussion where we would say of how surprised we were of our own results, thinking before we took the questionnaire that we would be more this than that and that we would disagree with them. In the end we all agree with the results of our learning skills.

The dominant areas in our group are in the Activist and Reflector modes and that most of us had low for Theorist. We found out that some of us had similar results, and I would agree as during past meetings we have all spoken about our views and ideas, and all understand each other's as we all pretty much have the same ones.

Even though we are all quite practical people, being at an art college, we have all been very surprised just how low we all were in the Pragmatist mode and talked about how we can improve upon this. We all need to be aware on the areas we are most weakest in and need to work together to do so, we need to think, take time, and apply this mode of learning and thinking for our future assignments.

Assignment 1.1 Semester 1

To begin this new semester at university, we have been assigned to take part in a questionnaire that would determine where our better learning skills lay. There are four modes learning skills on the test, Activist, Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist. These are the results I produced:

Activist: Strong

Reflector: Strong

Theorist: Low

Pragmatist: Very Low

When analyzing these results with the information provided I agree with the results of my learning styles. I feel that I learn best under all of the listed categories. With being involved in new experiences I always find them a bit daunting a first but once I get into them I find I learn a great deal from them and improve my understanding with each new experience. When working within a team, I feel that I can both listen to other team member’s opinions as well as express my own. I tend to dislike being thrown into the deep end but this is where I tend to work at my best as I just work endlessly until I get the job done.

I find it quite difficult to learn much when I am reading or writing, I have always found it difficult to concentrate if I am reading anything outside of fiction, I don’t know what it is but I struggle to understand or gain anything from reading and analyzing books and articles, I have to have someone there to help explain things to me.

For my results in the Reflector area I agree with the fact that I will observe other people’s view before expressing my own, this is because it helps me understand my own opinion and further improve upon it. When working on a project or an idea I collect as much research as I can to help with my final outcome, this is because I feel that I must research as much I can to understand what I am doing and to come up with the best outcome I can come up with.

The skills that I find weaker are my leadership skills and this is because I find it difficult to instruct others to do something, the responsibility of leading people makes me nervous.

With the other two areas that are my weakest are the Theorist and Pragmatist. For working on this team project I will try to take on board and pick up on some of the skills that other members may be stronger at so that I can work better within the team and as an individual.