OUGD503 // Hellfire // Inspiration

For the bottle design of the beer, i am either going to go with the idea of printing onto a label which will be two separate labels, one for the front and back, or to print direct onto the bottle. 

Both these design ideas will have the same aesthetic look and feel for the bottle, but the approach will be slightly different for each idea.

I have looked into bottle label designs, looking at both label designs and printing directly onto the bottle. I have seen that the majority of the designs are based around using a label instead of printing direct to the bottle, this is because it wil be more cost efficient to use labels with such a mass production needed. 

With the style of the labels i prefer the ones which have a more illustrated design to them, these look more eye catching and i think if it was on a shelf in a store or supermarket, someone would be more inclined to see that sort of design over another.  

Looking at these designs has given me some ideas for the design of my own label, and the way in which the label should be designed in the first place. With the visual aids from the concept idea, ic an now start to work on the label.

OUGD503 // Hellfire // Concept Research

The natives honor eagles for their opportunistic ways. They depicted this as work smarter not harder, this as a message and symbol would fit in well for a creative network, targeting young creatives.
An eagle also represents masculinary, dominance, power and ruler which all have a relevance to the beer itself - its a masculine beer as it is as bitter, dominance shows through in the strength of the beer and power and ruler are reperented by it being the best on the market.

The eagle also stands for opportunity, freedom, community, skill, inspiration, determination and vision.

These are some simple illustrations of a double headed eagle, which i can use as a visual aid in order to illustrate my own logo for the hellfire beer label.

OUGD503 // Secret 7" // Research

For my secret 7" design, i want to focus on using image and the artwork up by using layers of images, textures and colours to create the final design. 

I have looked at various designs that have this sort of style, either using image or colour as the main focus within the design. 

I want the sleeve to have a older style look and feel to it - 'vintage' if you like. Basically to have a distressed look. 

Looking at these designs have given me some ideas on the style to the design that i want to create, i have also looked at some designers which work inspires me for this sort of design, using the two research approaches i will be able to create the design.

OUGD503 // Threadless // Research

For the design of the t-shirt i am going to do, i want it to be based around illustration and be a full bleed image within the t-shirt itself. I want the artwork to take up most of the space within the t-shirt and be very prominent on the design. 

I have looked at some designs to get some ideas on the style of design to do for the t-shirt and the placement and proportion of the design within the t-shirt. 

Even though i have only looked at a limited amount of designs, i feel that this has informed me on the sort of design that i should do for the t-shirt. I still want a strong illustration, but seeing these designs have shown me what proportions and placement it should be within the shirt.

OUGD503 // UK Greetings // Stationery Range

In order to expand the range of products to make this brief into more of a project, i have thought of the idea of using the illustrations and patterns and applying them to stationery. Stationery seems a logical range to use as this is very similar to greeting cards and you would often see them together. 

To get a better idea of what stationery i could apply the illustrations to, i have had a look online at some stationery ranges:

For the stationery that i will design, i will mock them and create a simple illustration to represent what the item would be. This will work inline with the illustration style of the product and also be easier way than having to print the actual products out. 

OUGD503 // UK Greeting // Looking at the competition

I have looked at other greeting cards brands to see what there card designs are like, focussing on the blank cards as this is what i am producing.
Looking into the other brands has given me ideas of what are already out there.

PaperChase

Clinton Cards

Looking at the two brands i can see a distinctive difference between the two brands. With paperchase there is illustrative style with the cards but these are very different across all the cards and they dont have any sort of pack or collection of cards that are similar or work as a range. 

With the clinton cards there cards aren't illustrative at all, all the blank cards use photographs are humorous cards. This again shows a gap in the market in which i can work my cards into. 

With both of the brands there are very limited blank cards, which works in advantage for me, like i said before neither of them offer a pack of cards or have any cards which are within a range. This makes my cards different from the competition. The Paperchase cards are the closest in style to the ones that i will be designing, but they still are only illustrations and dont use any sort of patterns which i will be doing within my cards. 

OUGD503 // UK Greetings // Inspiration

after deciding that i was going to take an illustrative route for the greetings cards, i have looked into some greeting card designs. These have the style to which i want to design my own cards. They also have a hand made / screenprinted look to them. 

OUGD503 // Wedding Invitations // Research and presentation

I was given from my sister (client) a presentation of research that she had done herself, this consisted of wedding invites which she had looked at and liked. 

This was a great opportunity for me, as it gave me a starting point of the sort of designs she liked and the style she was wanting, it also gave me ideas of what to do and how to get the ball rolling on this project. 

Combined with my own research in the previous post, i have a good amount of visual research to get some ideas flowing and start to design the invites.

OUGD503 // Wedding Invitations // Inspiration

I have started to look at different formats and ways that i can work with this wedding invitation idea. I am totally free with the design of the invitation, so its quite hard to think of something right from the offset.
Here i have looked through alot of different designs in order to try and give me some ideas for what i can do. 

I have seen that all the designa are different, theres not really a set style or anything because wedding invitations are personal to the couple and they normally match in with the style of the wedding.

I have seen that alot of the designs especially traditional designs use serif typefaces and other have a letterpress style to them. I would love to use letterpress within the design, but with the timescale and because i have never done it before i think that is too ambitious. But i will be able to serif fonts and work with the traditional style, maybe try and put a modern twist on it and see how that goes.

This visual research has defiantly helped me think of somewhere to start with this.  

OUGD503 // Its Nice That // Website and content for app

The app in which i am going to create is basically going to be a mimic of the website, except it will be designed within an app for the iphone and be much more user friendly. The experience of using the app will be better than the website and hopefully the audience want to use it more.

Looking at the website has given me an insight to the important features of it and what the user may want to use the most within the app. The main focus of the app is to get the student audience to use the website in order to find new inspiration - inspiring todays youth.
From looking through the website and seeing the different sections of this, i have identified the main areas in which i want to include within the app.

Homepage

From the homepage, you get the first glimpse of the website and what it will be like, this also reveals all the links at the top and everything that the user first see's. This isnt nessecarily going to be included in the app design - its just interesting to see the first impression of the website. 

Website Archive and links

At the bottom of the homepage there is the website site map and all links to every section of the website  - this was great for me as i could see all the different areas in which i could create the categories for the app. I had decided on doing 6 categories / sections to the app, so i needed to find the most important 6 sections and the ones i thought would be the best within the app. 

About

About and contact details are always necessary when you are creating an app for a company which allows contact and people to submit to them, its how alot of the content is on the website. Having a small section about Its Nice That and how to submit your own work and work with the company is a good idea - this also works into the creative community by submitting your own work and getting seen as a designer.  

Categories

Categories for me is always going to be the most important, whenever i use this website i always use the categories at the bottom - it takes you to the specific area you want and only shows you content relavant to that category. I think this is a must for the app and would be great for searching for specific inspiration in a given area.

Regular Features

Regular features are done by the contributors of the website - the people that run the company, these features are quite different to just displaying designers work - but it interacts with the designers more and is a section in which works with designers and get there ideas and opinons on things. As this is done by the contributors i think its a must to include, it also gives an insight into designers mind / lifes which would be great to read as a designer. 

Monthly Archive

Monthly Archive is another way in which you can search the website, in this case it brings everything that is relevant to that specific month - it will be work and posts from all categories. This would be good if you were looking in general or looking for some general creative blogs to read. I think this should be included. 

Podcast

As the website offers you to listen to podcasts of the contributors and this is done by downloading through iTunes - it makes sense to integrate this into the iphone app and cut out any of the downloading. This would let you stream the podcast direct from the app, so the user can listen to the creative knowledge where ever and doing whatever. Listening for on the go. 

Events

Its Nice That are involved in many events across the country, this section would display that and inform about the event itself, its always good if you are a creative to visit and take part in events, you are getting to meet new designers and gain contacts but also be kept in the social circle of designers and up to date with the work thats going on. Its always good to know if there is a design event near you. 

From looking at the website and identifying these areas as the most important areas and the ones i think would work the best within the app, i can now go away and start to design the app. 

OUGD503 // Its Nice That // Inspiration

As i am designing an app for the relaunch of Its Nice That, i started off by looking at some app which i liked the design off. I had an idea in my head of how i wanted to it to look and the style of it, but i also wanted to look at some other designs to see if i could get any any new ideas or develop the ones i had.

I like this gridded system and structure to the app interface it gives a formal style to the app and make its easy to use. The buttons are also big, which makes it easy to use on the touch screen. 

Again the gridded system to the display works well and makes the visibility and readability of the app easy.

With this design i like how the different sized shapes and icons have been used within the interface. This breaks up the screen and makes it easy to identify different object and uses that the app has.

The icons work really well here, with the titles below them it makes sure the communication of each category has been put across, but the bold and simple icons makes it easy to understand anyway. 

From a distance the icons are strong and bold, with them being in white against the vibrant blue background it makes them stand out. I can still see what they are representing from this distance. 

Again i really like the icons used on this app. The structure to the app makes the aesthetics of this really strong, having the icons makes it easy to see each category and more appealing to look at. On the top image i like how the four main categories have been split using the lines. 

Working on the idea of different shapes and sizes placed together in proportion within the screen space. This is like the one before and breaks down the screen. I think this would be effective with images, having a wall of images at different sizes, that all fit together within the screen would work well and look good. A creativity wall!

I like the buttons being designed within the circles with the simple illustrations again. they are split down in squares and are all proportional to each other. Im not too sure is the having all the buttons in the circles works well together on the screen. 

This menu is great. Splitting the screen down into equal squares and having one as each button, works a dream - the buttons are big enough to use on the touch screen and the illustrations can also be bigger within the square. The black and white work well together to make it really clear and stand out, so the legibility is strong. 

Again with this app i like the structure an grid to the menu page, along with the clear icons, it makes this app look really modern and clean. 

On this app i like the colour identity for each of the categories down the left hand side. This makes it easier to identify the different categories, but also add some colour to the app, which all work well against the black background. 

The vibrant orange background stand out well on this app, working against the colour of the iphone it makes the app really eye catching and striking. I think the use of colour for the app is important, you need something that will attract attention to it but also work throughout the app for all the different sections. Again simple icons have been used - I have seen this in all app, the main buttons have been really simple but bold icons, this makes it clear and easy to identify the categories.

The different opacities work well on this app, even though it is all in greyscale, the variation in the opacities add some sort of distinction between all the buttons making it easy to identify each one. The typeface used in this app is really nice, being a bold and condensed font. The icons again are simple and bold being in white they stand out again the gradient background. If i was designing this i would have added one colour in the background, to take it away from being greyscale, this would have added some colour to the app, but still had the same effect on the buttons. 

Looking back on the apps which had different sized shapes and images within them, i looked at more of these based around images. here you can see the full background it made up of images all of different shapes, but they all link together and fit within the screen proportions. I think for the blog posts and searching out new inspiration this would work really effectively on my app and give the maximum usage of the iphone. 

Thinking about this same idea more, i have looked at pinterest, because this uses that same format, which i think could be interesting to use within the app and within the iphone contraints.