Studio Brief 02- Self Branding

Introduction to our studio brief on self-branding on ourselves, think about how we identify ourselves and how we want other people to look at us. 

Think about

• Word association      
• Purpose/focus         -what are you wanting to challenge? How do you want your work to be seen?
• Audience                  -building your network/making connections 
• Tone of voice           -tonality of your work- humorous/friendly/first person?
• Imagery
• Colours
• Methods

Questions to consider?

• Why did I choose graphic design?
• Think of my identity?
• Where do I see myself?
• How do you want to be perceived?
• Know your ideas
• Consider visual appearance  (something that stands out)
• Develop a tailored font and colour pallet 
• Be consistent - can appear on any form
• What platforms are you using? (Online/zine/business card)

Mini mind-map about myself and mostly what makes me happy

From this we were asked to produce a little story about ourselves...

My name is Ciara, I would not necessarily consider myself as someone who is completely confident in myself and my work. I am forever comparing my work against others, maybe I see that they've creating something so amazing that I do not have the skills to have... However, one quality which I really value about myself is making others happy and will spare no costs in doing so. I consider myself a kind and trustworthy person, I often find people come to me for advice or if they just want to talk about something. Aside from always being there for others, I also have lots of other hobbies and interests, the past few years I have learnt to do what makes me happy. This includes spending time with my family, walking my dog. I love going to gigs and I do with my close friends and boyfriend, I would consider this a happy place where I become content. I like to do things that help me escape and switch my mind off from uni work, whether it being reading a book, watching a film or even having a nap. I would confidently consider myself a friendly and approachable person therefore I would like to brand myself as someone who you could always rely on and would never let you down

Nest submission- Focus

Initial Sketches

 The theme for the Nest submission was 'focus', my immediate thoughts were focusing on a goal and aiming high to achieve many things. I began to draw typographic responses to the word focus and small illustrations to highlight the idea of growing into a better person. Instead of going with the obvious definition of focus and including a photograph, I have decided to look at focusing on the positive and to keep growing in all aspects of your life.

Screenshots of developments

Screenshots of my developments within Photoshop, putting the designs into a more postcard size and adding a slight colour to them.

Final Design

The final design is more colourful and interesting compared to it in black and white. I think this will be a successful submission in postcard size because it would be something that would be found in a small size and used to inspire people in university within their work. 

Brand Nu

Radim Malinic from Brand Nu visited the studio to talk about his career and book. He is an award winning art director, illustrator, graphic designer and web designer yet he talked about his early career did not involve much creativity and it was not until he got a job in t-shirt printing did he realise  he found design interesting and wanted to pursue it. The talk was interesting and beneficial in terms of my own practice because he discussed how to manage your time and prioritise which is most important to complete. The talk was inspiring because it gave me the confidence that some people will engage in my work and that clients will be difficult to work with but also really interesting because you may form new ideas between the both of you. It has also cemented my belief that client work may not be the kind of style I want to go into, I am not very keen on commercialised graphic design- however the work he has produced is very different and unique to the stylised graphic design. He told us he always goes with the opposite and never goes with the obvious when it comes to being given a brief.

Time management

Time planning:

This session was about the importance of time management and how it is beneficial to plan your week ahead to ensure each piece of work gets completed in time but also ensure you still have time to relax and do things outside of work and university. I like to write a lot of to-do lists so I can see what I have to complete by the end of the week, I think I will carry on with the time-table like this because you can keep to a stricter timetable so you are not tempted to go off task. 

Stress

For this PPP lecture we were asked 4 different questions regarding the issue of stress:

1. What scares you?
2. What negative thought have you had today?
3. What stresses you out?
4. How do you de-stress?

All of our answers were put anonymously in a pile and we were able to see everyones responses...

We then selected a few from each and turned it into a haiku my response was:

Your work not good enough

Too much to do not enough time

Write it all down

-Write it down

Selection of all our Haikus

Our group then decided how these could be used to help others battle stress and worry. We decided on turning them into a little book that would be sent in the post to each student before starting at university as we were sent a freshers booklet from LCA therefore it would be the same idea. We thought it would be important to send this to students before they start so any worries they may be having would be addressed before they started. The haikus would be postcard size with a mixture of screen prints and letterpress outcomes.

 

Identity

This session was all about identity and understanding we have to present ourselves in different ways and how to come about that, especially when it comes to post-university. This was a short introduction to the brief we will be completing during PPP, all about creating our own identity/brand for ourselves that would suit our current work. Our task was to write about one another, looking at physical qualities but also other attributes we recognise in one another.

The qualities I got were:

• Brown hair
• Quiet
• Curly hair
• Good eyebrows
• Vintage fashion
• Quiet
• Cute glasses
• Vintage
• Music
• Kind
• Friendly
• Calm
• Easy going
• Creative
• Chilled out
• Generally good at life
• Fun
• Brown hair
• Friendly
• Quite quiet
• Presentable
• Approachable

Each quality or appearance I got were all positive which I was happy about therefore I can bring this positivity into the brand or identity I created. It could be something that creates a great impact to the target audience.