Portfolio Progress #2

Design & Thinking Documentary

Design & Thinking is an interesting documentary to watch as a designer because it has designers in the working field that agree and disagree with it, and designers who don’t know exactly what it is. I’m always fascinated when we get to hear from other designers in a visual sense, much more so than the written word. I thought some interesting things were said, here are some ideas that I really quite liked.

“Design Thinking is applying design methods to the working class and world.”

I thought that this was a neat little concept because it really helps me as a designer understand more what Design Thinking is and what we’re trying to do with it. This makes it feel like Design Thinking is less a scientific method and more of a way to bridge a gap.

“Design is a sport where you have to participate.”

I think a lot of designers, myself included, feel like we have to figure everything out on our own but Design Thinking really cements the idea that design thinking is a team effort. I really like how this phrase puts it into such easy terms. 

“Rapid Prototyping: It’s ok to have a bad idea.”

Luckily, this is something we’re taught well in our program but it’s nice to see this concept out in the real world. I’m so nervous about having to be perfect when I leave school but making wrong decisions seem inevitable. 

“Ask Why”

This I think, is my favourite idea from the documentary. I feel like it’s so easy to just take a client’s request and push it out without thought to exactly what they asked for. It’s easy to fall into a rhythm and just forget how to use our design minds, but I never want to forget how to be creative.

We’ve Got Colour

So with a chosen logo to work with, I now have to figure out colour. I know these posts have been a little bit long-winded but bear with me here, typing all this out is helping me think as well. 

When working with colour, it’s important to think about emotions you’re trying to get across as well as what your audience is. Since my audience is the community, I want to use colours that are welcoming and friendly.

I started by collecting some colours that I like. I usually do this by looking at other work I’ve done and picking from photos that fit the mood of the project.

Lately, I’ve been really into softer, bright colours. 

These are some of the colour combos that I played with for this project but ultimately, I’ve ended up on the pale yellow, red and blue. They’re a softer take on a fully saturated primary palette. I may use the light pink as well later in some pattern work. 

Yellow = optimism, happiness, enthusiasm, hope red = passion, love, fire, determination blue = sea, sky, confidence, calm

Here are some vector versions of the logos I have chosen to work with and some possible colours to use as well. I plan to choose one of these and work on it further, I’m sure I’ll have a better idea of what I can do with these options after some feedback from my peers.

DT: Secondary Research

So last time I posted about this, you know, before the world was ending, I was talking about the importance of coffee valves in a bag of coffee beans to keep the bag from exploding from the buildup of gasses. The valve allows carbon dioxide from the beans to escape, making it necessary. The problem with this, is that means it’s one of the things that makes a coffee bag not entirely compostable. So I was looking into that in particular and found that there’s a company called TricorBraun Flex that is working on a sustainable bag line called Biotrē that currently has a 60% compostable coffee bag and is working on a 100% compostable bag, so that’s great for the future of coffee. 

On that note, we researched what’s already out there for improving the coffee making process and I found it interesting that despite how old coffee is and the multitude of different ways of brewing it, most cultures have a certain way of doing it and have predominantly stuck to their methods and tools through history. Of course things have updated as technology evolved but there’s definitely been an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach to at home brewing or, people have developed their own methods.

Of course, there are many influential coffee shops and brew masters out there, even on the west coast, that are constantly developing new methods and shortcuts that often make their way to the home via baristas but we’ve yet to see a significant, single method in coffee brewing. 

The reason for this is that brewing is a very personal, particular thing. People like their coffee a certain way and everyone stores it, grinds it and prepares it differently. Still, I did find some neat little things that have been introduced to the brewing world in the last century!

I mainly looked at spoons when doing my secondary research and really enjoyed this concept:

Using the spoon as a clip as well to keep the coffee bag closed is a neat idea because the spoon would always be around for measuring and the bag gets closed, meaning the coffee keeps fresh for longer.

Alternatively, a coffee scoop with a sliding lid could help when scooping coffee. This is a picture of one used for medicine. 

Another cool thing is that there are a few drip coffee makers out there that actually grind the beans for you. It’s a no mess method because it also portions out the beans, making a pot of coffee is just keeping the water tank full and clicking a button.

In a world where most people have access to the internet, having an opinion is a dangerous thing. Bringing facts to the table along with your viewpoint is essential for anyone who wants to start a conversation on a topic and while there were some points that I thought made sense in Natasha Jen’s talk, I can’t help agreeing with Richard Banfield’s critique of her critique. 

While I’m not a person who really believes in the use of ‘buzz words’ to prove my point, I think that in some cases buzz words just appear naturally in conversation between two graphic designers. Buzz words are also often important to the client, depending on who you’re working with, they want to know the mystical process behind the design work. 

Now, I don’t personally believe that just because you’re using a design term it’s a buzz word. I was looking at Natasha’s list of words and while some of her concerns seem to be valid, a lot of the words she listed are common, easily understood terms. (scale, empathy, user outcomes, etc.) I’d have to agree with Richard that her talk leaned more towards making jokes it seemed than actually proving anything.

I’m open to see both sides of the story, and I do think that there are probably some cases where a process is mislabeled as design thinking because it’s trendy, but I think it’s incorrect to write off a whole process just because of some outliers. 

Also, though it’s popular to say so, a messy or cluttered space does not necessarily mean that the designer is a genius, nor does it mean that the designer did not use design thinking. (That felt like a desperate point in Natasha’s talk.)

The issue of ‘where crit fits’ in the process too is an odd one to me. Obviously, as a trained graphic designer, I know that crit comes at any and all stages of the process whether you’re asking for it or not. As someone who regularly critique’s my colleague’s work, I know that as soon as I show anything to them I will receive crit. Crit is in every single step of the process, for Natasha to focus so directly on where it fits almost makes me feel like she does not actually have a full understanding of her own design process, despite her lofty position. 

Perhaps that is incorrect of me to say, but hey, it’s just a little bit of crit for her.

I think that everyone is entitled to their own opinions and can certainly choose to follow their design process how they see fit. Critique on a process is always welcome at any time and will be thoroughly dissected, ingested and critiqued in return by the graphic design community. The coolest part about graphic design is that we are a collection of creatives, all with different opinions and ways of doing things. If you’re going to give a talk where you critique an entire school of thought though, it’s probably best to come prepared with more than just some jokes about post it notes, buzz words and demands to see evidence when you could just google search some case studies.

Design For Business

One of the biggest things that people think of when they think of graphic design is logo design. I must admit that it isn’t necessarily an area that I feel particularly strong in. Conceptualizing a logo isn’t easy though, I shouldn’t speak like it is. Sure, you can go online and pay someone five dollars for a logo for your business, but when you do that, you’re getting the quality of work that you pay for.

The process of branding a business is definitely more than a five dollar job. A logo takes thought and care, it shouldn’t be taken lightly because a logo can and usually stick with a business forever, depending on how successful the logo is. A logo can even add to the success of the business it’s for. 

The current project that I’m working on to develop my branding skills, is creating the logo for a business designed to promote tourism for Vancouver Island. 

Because I noticed a real lack of it and I love taking the opportunity to promote tourism within my own city, I decided to imagine a venue downtown that could be used for a multitude of things, its main purpose being to promote a sense of place and provide a venue for activities in Nanaimo such as open mics, community classes, receptions, showcases, art shows, intimate concerts, etc. The opportunities are pretty endless. In the summer it could double as an information center downtown for tourists and hold informative talks about Nanaimo’s history. It could be a gathering place for those that come in on cruise ships and a banquet hall. 

I decided to keep it simple and name it ‘Place’. As in, “That could be a good place”, “This is your place”, “This Place is so cool.” I felt that calling it Place gives it almost a sense of ownership to Nanaimo.

Before getting into sketching, I started with a mind map. Mind maps are a really good way to get some concepts and ideas down on paper, things that you maybe didn’t even realize were connected before can all come together in a mind map. I also filled out the survey seen in the post previous to this one. I decided to focus on uses, anatomy of the place, emotions that should be evoked when thinking about the Place and associations I wanted to be made with it. 

Then I went on to starting to draw out some logo concepts. These all look a little goofy but there’s a reason to the rhyme and a rhyme to the reason. Before you can have some truly good ideas, sometimes you need to get rid of the excess thinking in your brain. I worked fast to try and get some of the bad ideas out first and tried a lot of different things, in some simply trying symbols, and others only trying word marks.

I’ve got a couple of pages more of these little logo sketches but they aren’t much better. While I worked on them, despite getting out a lot of ideas, in some instances I only felt frustrated. I know there’s a logo concept there that’s truly great but just out of reach. If I need to get all of these ones out first before I can get at it, then so be it. In the end, I wound up with around 100 little sketches, give or take. 

Having definitely exhausted my creativity when it comes to the letter ‘P’, I’ll probably work on narrowing these concepts down to just three choices and develop them for the next step in the logo process. If I don’t like anything I have, I’ll just have to sketch another hundred up. (The joys of being a graphic designer. :)

We were asked to think about where we’d be in 5-10 years and what we’d like to be doing. This is a good tool for portfolio work because it can help guide what you want others to get out of it.

My Vision:

I want to be changing the world in a positive way through design.

Steps:

Work full time at Common Foundry and develop my design skills.

Create work for clients and passion projects for myself that is effective.

Involve myself in the community and take initiative.

Create every single day and travel often, meet new people, learn, grow, adapt and problem solve as best I can. 

Day One - Blog Post #1

I knew that class would be good today when we walked in and there was a picture of an egg on the powerpoint. I thought we were probably going to talk abt how an egg is a naturally good package, I didn’t think that we were going to have the opportunity to try and design a safe package for an egg in 20 minutes!

We weren’t given a lot of direction other than to make the package, so my group wondered if we were supposed to focus on appearance, function or perhaps both. We decided to go for both and used two rolls of duck tape to encase the egg, paper to cushion it and then we wrapped it in foam. We also gave our package a little bit of decoration in the form of a pipecleaner bow and an origami butterfly. 

I think we focused too much on the appearance of the package instead of putting as much focus on the function. Our package was poorly taped and when Nancy shoved it off the table, unfortunately, the package burst a bit and the eggshell got a crack in it.

It was really fun to do something so fast and right away and got our brains thinking for the rest of the day!

We learned how to score paper using a bone tool and tried it out ourselves on a box shape. So far, I’m really enjoying how hands on this class is.

Our assignment for this next week is to take a package that we were given in class and reproduce it three times, let’s see how it turns out!

Something to reflect on: We’re always wanting to think of the environment as graphic designers but when it comes to packaging and brand, brand needs to come first for a corporation. I think that makes it the graphic designer’s job, to provide a sustainable design for the company in question from the get-go. When redesigning for a brand, however, and working for someone like coca-cola who uses tons and tons of plastic each year but is so iconic, how much room does a designer have to play and is it that designer’s duty to do what they can to help the environment even if it means deviating from brand standards? Is it possible to stick to brand standards with the environment in mind?

When I think about Design Thinking, I mainly just think about a circle. A circle represents fullness, infinite and the feeling of being complete. It also has no actual beginning or end, much like the design thinking process. Sure, you start with a problem and you end with a solution to the problem (hopefully) but your path to get there isn’t always linear and can involve a lot of back and forth. Or, you get there in one full turn. Either way, each step of the process is connected. Whether you choose to believe in design thinking or not, you most likely have a loose concept of it that you follow anyway.

Refined Rationales Blog Post #5B

Project Title: The Nav

The Nav is a unique project because it undergoes a visual identity change yearly. The challenge lies in creating new energy for the student-led press while keeping it recognizable as The Nav but it is also an opportunity to push myself as a design student and push the boundaries. This year I had the task of redesigning my own design from the previous year. The goal was to reign it in and give it a cleaner look from last year while maintaining the distinct personality within. I also needed to make sure that the layout was simple enough that a team of three could ay the 40 page magazine out in one day. 

Project Title: Balanced

Overwork is a worldwide social stigma that promotes an unhealthy lifestyle. Through this project, I wanted to work on a solution for people who lead an unbalanced life by giving them tools to change their relationship with work. The challenge lay in creating something usable that could be integrated easily into a busy lifestyle. I decided to create a scheduling app that would guide users to make healthier choices through education on mental health and forced rests. To this end, I designed a smart ecosystem that learns and adapts to the user through use. 

Project Title: Fox & Koi

Last year, I realized that I needed a way to reconnect with my passion for graphic design and push myself to create outside of classwork. I’ve always loved enamel pins and so along with a business partner, I began an enamel pin shop. There’s a lot that goes into a pin from conception to iteration and the final physical object. Through Fox & Koi I’ve not only worked on my illustration skills but my business skills as well. I run the business side of fox & koi. I speak to the manufacturers, find new manufacturers, coordinate locations and markets for selling the pins, create the websites, package the pins, do the marketing and I also design pins, stickers and prints.