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.