Finished Project

Today we presented our work to the class and got warm feedback for the concept, there were a few things that needed changing such as adding logos and more details to the posters and video, but these were welcome changes that could be easily done.
Looking back over this short project I have realised that working in a group is both exciting and challenging as at times it was tricky to find a time we were all available to skype, but the project over all was well separated giving each person a fair say and role toward the final products.
I ended up really enjoying this brief and am very pleased with the work my class mates did and the final outcomes we all achieved.

Check Up!

Ash and I send over the assets to Thomas who was in charge of creating the video, to make sure that everything went smoothly we skyped him that evening to see a rough cut version of the video and to discuss any changed that needed to be made to the assets.

Once we were happy with the look of the video we sent it over to Rob then got him to join the conversation and discussed with him what text would be appropriate. At this point I also showed the group the posters I had printed out and sent them a photo of the final product. Everyone seemed pleased with how they had turned out and I feel printing them was a good idea as it really brought them to life.

Poster Assets

Ash and I have been working hard to create all the assets we need to send over to Thomas, we have had some challenges with the shape and size of the top halves. As you can see below for the poster shape some of the tops were too small to fill the space, however we believe that these will be perfect for the video. Here are some of the examples of tops and bottoms we have added followed by the colour choices for the three posters.

Idea Generation on Skype

Today everyone was tasked with trying to think of something interesting and new for the theme of the show to bring forward in our Skype meeting. The previous idea that we had all been thinking about was "Wireframe" for this we planned to use wires to create frames, but most of the group was not sold on this idea especially as the plan went on and I collected some old wires from broken toys. 

Ash had come up with an army based idea and drew us a funny sketch to try and help us visualise what he had in mind, although his idea did sound interesting and fun to make, with the limitations on time we didn't feel we would have time to make it look professional and finished.  

While I was brainstorming in the day I tried to focus on words that I felt represented the course such as digital, inspiration, combination, creation and so on. While looking at all of these words and more, I came across the word "Commix", this is simply a rare word for mix. What I really liked about this was that I felt it represented the mixture of the two classes and the combination of different skills coming together for the end of year show. I then started to look up art work that was liked to the theme mixture and came up with some interesting results. 

When I saw these images I wanted to create something that was quite eye catching but had the same combination of pictures that didnt quite belong together. After some playing in Photoshop I ended up with this image, the font I decided to pick was "Tall films" and I picked to have the images in black and white to make them stand out more against the colourful background, and therefore having the text in grey to match.

In our Skype meeting I produced this poster to the group and explained what Commix meant and why I thought it was relevant. After some discussion and decisions about how this could relate to a video, the team decided to pick this idea and then we started to set job roles to make sure the work would be done in time.

Ash and I picked to be on assets and poster creation, selecting images for the tops and bottoms, cutting them and sizing them in individual layers to send over for the video. We also allocated ourselves the task of picking the colour schemes for each poster and deciding which tops and bottoms best suit for the posters.

Thomas and Rob were then put on the making of the video, Thomas was tasked with creating the video from all the assets that Ash and I sent over and animating it to look good, then sending it to Rob who was in charge of sound and text with the power to do any last touch ups to the final product.

Change of Plan

After deciding on an idea last week, we showed our main tutor the work we had created and described what we had planned for this idea, unfortunately she did not feel the idea worked at all. We had based the theme around the group of 4 we were working in and as we found out this may potentially be used for the show, that wouldn't be appropriate. Sue also suggested that we try to move away from computer based themes as they are a little obvious. Because of these reasons we have started to rebrainstorm our ideas to come up with something more abstract and interesting.

During the lesson we spend ages trying to come up with some new ideas, there were a few that we ended up with which are:

• Space bar 
• Blank Canvas
• Wireframe
• Digital warriors

But none of these ideas are jumping out at us so we have decided to schedule a skype meeting for the four of us to continue with idea generation.

Press Start

Having picked the idea of Press Start we have all started looking at other pixelated designs and characters and have also created some of our own.
Ash and I picked a font which you can see below, we felt that this font gave the right retro game feel without being hard to read.

Here are some of the images that I found for characters that gave me inspiration in creating my own pixel character.

After seeing these I decided to drawn up my own character based around myself for the project

End of year Project

For this project we have been put in groups of four, the team I have picked consists of me, Thomas, Ash and Rob. In this project we need to come up with branding for the end of year show next month. By the end of this short two week project we will need to have created a concept, an A4 and A3 poster design and a short promotion video.

Today we say down and started to brainstorm ideas that we could carry forward for the show branding, the ideas we came up with were.

Tron- This first idea was based around the film Tron Legacy, for this idea we planned to create posters and a video with bright light beams and a strong black with neon colour scheme.

Graffiti- For this theme we would be using stencil art in the banksy style to create affective artwork

Pixel- We then decided that we could create a pixel theme show, for this we would use 8 and 16bit characters and base it around a retro video/arcade game, we came up with a name for the show called "press start" symbolising our start in the industry. This is the theme that we thought was the strongest so we have decided to work more on this.

Finished Website

The website is now completed and has a stable amount of products, this store will continue to grow as I add more and more designs to it. Here are screenshots from my finished site in desktop, ipad and phone sizes. If you want to visit it yourself its up and live at www.pixelpatterns.co.uk

To go with the websites header I have also created a business card, the idea behind this is that when the customer types in the URL from the business card, they will see the link between the styles and branding and know instantly that they are in the right place. Here is the business card design that I have drawn up.

Vouchers

I have decided to add a voucher than I can then use as a promotion for the new site, this voucher is for a free download of the Autumn tree pattern that was shown in the last post. To make a voucher I used the "Coupon" section of my dashboard in Wordpress.

The settings for a coupon let you decide how much discount you want to give, in this case I am putting in the full price for the tree print which is £2.99, you can then make changes such as the date it expires, which products are and aren't accepted and if there is any minimum charge. With these setting I have created a voucher code for a free tree design, along side this I created a flyer that could be sent via email to all the members of the shop. I have created the flyer in the theme of the tree pattern and have only needed to use a small amount of branding as the emails that are sent out have headers already. Here is the poster that I have made to accompany this discount voucher.

I did also try to get a flyer that has the same branding as the website, however I felt that this didn't work at all so will not being using it from now on. This is what the other design looked like.

Adding products

Adding products with WooCommerce is simple, but there are a few things that need to be done each time, the first thing when adding a product is to name it and give it a description, after this you then have this box

In this section you can add the price of the item and then you have the option to add a sale price which I have done to most of my featured items. The boxes ticked at the top let the server know that the idem is a download after purchase and this is where you can add the actual product link rather than the thumbnail. You then have the options to limit your download per purchase, this is something that has come in very handy as I only want one download per purchase on my site, this means that if the customer tries to download it again, they get an error message saying they have exceeded their limit on that purchase.

When uploading my products I came across an issue that took me a while to get around, there is no way of stopping the customers taking the image you have uploaded to the shop gallery and printing them off without paying, for this reason I was worried that people would come to the shop and steal the products, I tried to add watermarks to the work but unless I covered part of the work, making it look bad in the store, there was no way a water mark could stop someone cross stitching that pattern. 

The only solution I could think of was to take away the grid in the thumbnails, then upload the fully finished and labeled piece so they can only access it when they have paid.

Here is an example of what my thumbnails look like in comparison to the actual pattern print.

Changes and customisations

After adding the plug ins I originally planned on getting such as WooCommerce, I also found that when you add products you can add tags, these are great ways of people being able to locate your patterns if they are looking for a particular thing such as a dog. However, the search bar that came with myplug ins did not search via tag, this meant that a lot of my products would be missed when a customer uses it. To sort this problem I found a secondary plug in that could be used in conjunction to the search bar I already had, this extra plug in was created by a guy called Matthew Lawson and he has simply named it, Search By Product tag. This extra plug in has really opened up my shop to its maximum ability of search, this way I can tag products with a range of things that I think customers may search, the beauty of these tags is that you can have as many as you like and can edit them whenever suits you, without effecting the rest of the site or products.
I wanted to make the theme my own but found that the feature image was too big and took up too much valuable space, so I decided to edit the code in the head of the document, at first I changed the size of the feature image to a max-height of 300px, but even this did not look right, so I changed the header to have a background of my own image which I uploaded into the theme folder on my server.

Using this code I managed to get my header to appear like this, which I feel is much more interesting but also hopefully different to all the other people using this theme. I also changed the theme to be boxed, giving me space to have a small border where I can see the background that I have made look like cross stitch material. I am hoping that this along with some other changes will make the theme seem like my own and will not look too similar to other shops using it. 

Mystile

Once the decision was made to use and modify a pre-made theme, I looked through the internet to find a good low cost one that I felt could be changed into what I wanted. I ended up back in WooThemes like most of the tutorials I watched had and the theme I picked was called "Mystile", this theme is very plain and simple, its clean and easy to use and the main thing that I wanted was for it to be responsive and I have tested this theme to check that it is.
The reason I chose such a plain theme is that I want to make it my own, so getting as close to a blank canvas as possible but avoiding having to try and code the PHP, this theme seemed like the best option. WooCommerce is the addition to this theme to make it a shop which is exactly what I needed.
Here you can see what the theme looked like as a demo, but when you get this site it is completely blank for you to customise yourself.

The only downside to this theme is that because it was free you are not allowed to take off their branding on the bottom. However for all the plus sides this theme has come with, I can live with their watermark. 

Joomla VS Wordpress

While at the start of this project I had decided to use Joomla, I had not looked at the differences between it and Wordpress. It wasnt until my tutor suggested that Wordpress could do everything I needed it to that I started to look into it.
The first thing I did was go on Wordpress.com, not realising that it was different to .org, seeing the prices I was sure that I had gone wrong somewhere, this is where the book by Chris O'Connor "Wordpress For All : How To Create A Website For Business Or Personal Use, Quickly & Easily - Whatever Your Skill Level" came into its own, this book clearly established the difference and the pros and cons to either, his book was very pro .org which luckily was what I wanted to use. After working about that I would use Wordpress without taking a loan out! I started to watch tutorials of both Wordpress and Joomla to see which I thought would be most suitable, but I found that I struggled to find a good clear video for Joomla, while there were hundreds for Wordpress. This to me was the first sign that I may have jumped to the wrong choice.
I had another flick though the book by Chris O'Connor "Wordpress For All : How To Create A Website For Business Or Personal Use, Quickly & Easily - Whatever Your Skill Level" which was very useful and almost instantly sealed the deal. Before I made my choice I also had a look at some of the information in "Wordpress for dummies" which despite the name, was also very useful in giving me a head start with tips and tricks of the software.
To make certain I had made the right choice I also looked though "The Official Joomla! Book" by Jennifer Marriott, this book was useful and interesting but by this point, I had already made my mind up on Wordpress.
So I paid for hosting and started to set up the Database and upload the files, with the help of some good walk though videos to make sure I got it right.
Once Wordpress was up and running on my website I started to look at more videos to give me a place to start. The thing I noticed with all of the videos was they they all used themes, and 90% of them used themes from WooThemes, I looked into what it would take to create my own theme and teamed that with the comparison of how much you can modify from a preset theme. My decision was made on the basis that you can modify almost all of the templates you can download, but they come with the bonus that all plug ins and widgets that you could think of will definitely be compatible and above all else the check out and cart ability would not have glitches forcing customers away.

New Logo

Since changing the name of my business to Pixel Patterns, I have been working away on a new logo.
I started drawing designs on note paper as you can see below

After multiple different ideas that were wiped off, this one stuck and started to take place the more I drew it. Here are the white board scribbles of its first appearance

Starting as a simple swooping P, I found myself adding extra details such as the X instead of the dot on the I and pixels at the bottom of the P. The more I drew this piece the more that came up, the final drawing before moving to the computer was to have the first P as a needle and tread swooping round and looping through the eye and the second P to have pixels dropping off the bottom of the stalk. 

From this I headed straight to the computer and started to recreate this logo. Picking a font to go with the large swooping P's was tricky and I wanted it to look somewhat similar to what I had drawn in the sense that the letters are tall, reasonably thin and well spaced. After a while of searching I found a font called Tall Films, using the fine version of this font I feel that I managed to keep all of the aspects I wanted from my whiteboard drawings. 

Here is the final logo and its smaller icon version which I will use as a favicon and possibly much more.

To make sure that I dont run into the same predictable issue, I have used the needle on pixel and the pixels on pattern, this not only keeps away from them being too predictable, but also represents how I am bringing the two together to combine them in my work.

Logo and Name troubles

I wasn't 100% sold on the last designs I mocked up for this project as I felt they were lacking in something, after showing my tutor the designs she agreed. While I couldn't put my finger on it, she suggested that the problem may be that it is too predictable. Pixel fonts on the word pixel has been used a thousand times before so we just expect to see it now. She suggested I try to come away from taking it so literally and think about the imagery past just fonts.

While I was considering new logo designs, I decided to buy the URL for Pixel Stitch, so that I could start setting up my hosting and website. However when I came to buy www.pixelstitch.co.uk, I found that it had already been taken and so had .com

The company that had taken the name, to my surprise were nothing to do with sewing! They are in fact a software company in Australia.

As much of a shame it was to lose the name to another company, it did give me the opportunity to revisit my brainstorm and see if I could add anything to spark my interest. After a few days of pondering a new name and flicking though what other people were using online as inspiration, I found that the names I liked the most were ones with double letters such as sew sweet and cottontail crafts. So I decided that I would stick with pixel and see what words that began with P could work. After a few such as pixel pig and pixel pie which were sweet but didnt really make sense, I thought of the most obvious of all, Pixel Patterns. I quickly checked online to see if the URL and name was taken and to my surprise it wasnt. This is the perfect name for my shop, it says exactly what it does but also have a nice ring to it with the use of two p's. Now I just need to design a new logo and start building the shop.

Cross Stitch Patterns

Since I will need to fill she shop up with my own patters, I have been drawing some designs that have started to cover all bases of big, small, hard, easy and so on.
Before I started this however, I was looking through books at other designs that have been done before, how they are laid out and what information is normally given with them.

In the book "Mini Cross Stitch" by Michael Powell, I found some very good information on what sort of stitch notes are normally written, all of his pieces have a stitch count, letting the customer know what size material they need to start on, along side this he always has a colour key, while patterns can be stitched from simply looking at the colours on the grid, this does not suit everyone and sometimes colours are very similar, because of this most cross stitch designers code each colour pixel and then add a chart at the bottom of the design, here is one of the charts out of Michael's book against the designs coded symbols.

Ed Hardy's book Love Kills Slowly Cross Stitch, also showed me a very similar style of charting colours, however this book did not show the colours and the code together as we can see above on the dairy. Instead this book shows you the finished article and the colour code then sets you off with a black and white image. 

Although this is a perfectly reasonably way to lay out your designs, I feel that looking at the two books I prefer the style of coloured images shown in Powell's. For this reason when I code my designs, I will leave the colour showing through.

Here are some of the designs that I have drawn up so far.

Some of the designs that I have drawn are full scenes that would be stitched and framed, these ones are naturally more complex than the single ones. These full images will be very large and time consuming pieces for an advanced stitcher who is looking for a new project. I have also done some medium sized patterns as you can see by the tree and dogs, these can be taken on as a small project or as a welcome challenge for someone new to cross stitch. The other designs that I have done are small singular designs that can be done by all abilities from beginner to expert, these designs are great to use on things such as birthday cards, but can also be added together to create a scene if wanted. These small fun designs will be cheap for customers to buy and quick enough that they will return for more.

Logo Designs

After brainstorming some company names based around the idea of pixel art and stitching as you can see below

 I came up with the name "Pixel Stitch" What I like about this is that it tells the customer what I do straight away, this name combines the two elements of my interest and suits the business perfectly.

Having picked this name I started to do some sketches, from those I have created a few simple logo ideas that I could move forward with.

I started by looking at different fonts that suited the theme of pixels and cross stitch, here are some of the best ones I found on dafont.com

These fonts all show promise as they speak exactly what they will se saying. Mix Stitch, is a nice easy to read font, however it does show the wrong type of stitch as this is more like a running stitch than cross. The next font called Stitches is very pretty and light, however it is much too dainty to be a stand out logo, I feel this font would get lost on the page even though it would suit it nicely. The next font is the best of both worlds, Mesh Stitch, is a font made up of crosses, but they are thick enough to stand out without looking too fat. It also looks home stitched with its slight uneven finish and over crossing on the E. Cross Stitch which is the next font down has the same positive qualities as Mesh Stitch, but has lost the home stitched feeling, this looks very machine made and the spacing is too wide for what I had imagined. Pixelsplitter, however is exactly what I had envisioned, this pixelated font is bold and big without being hard to read and gappy. With a combination of this and Mesh Stitch, the logo should look exactly how I had hoped. 

Using the fonts I selected above, I have come up with a few variations on how to lay them out,

The first two designs are as you would think, pixel font for the word pixel and stitched font for the word stitch, I did try out the running stitch font as it is very easy to read while still saying the right thing, however now seeing it in the logo, I think I was right originally to say that it wont work because of the running rather than cross stitch design. The one below that however is using the two fonts decided earlier. The other two examples are to get an idea of what the logo would look like all in one font and next to eachother rather than ontop. I am still confident with my font choices, however I can't quite grasp why Im not in love with these designs. I have also tried them in colour below to see if that will liven them up.

I do much prefer these logos in colour but I still feel like something is missing to make these really stand out and be different. I have decided to present them to the class and tutors to see what they think of them. To get an idea of what they might look like for the class to see, I have drawn up some mock ups from rough wireframes.

Using these simple mock ups will give the class more of an idea of how these logos will be used on the site and what sort of size they will be in comparison to other elements on the screen. I look forward to hearing the feedback so I can work out what is not sitting quite right with these logos.