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Final Outcome

Finally after this whole processes and at least 70 hours (if not more) of working hard on this Live Brief I have finally created this final animated Gif/Video for Batty M.

Overall I am really pleased with my final outcome for this live brief. I am also satisfied that I have learnt the process it takes in order to complete an industry standard live brief. This module as a whole has been really enjoyable and after completing the module I feel that the work experience I have undertaken has taught me many new skills that are required in order to become a successful illustrator. Such as being shown that I can remain fully committed and productive even when I am working independently, which is exactly what I will need no matter what sort of illustrator I decided to be.

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Digital Progress

At this point I had decided that I would commence with Idea 5, which is a Animated Gif/ Video. Therefore before I could start to digitalise my sketches I needed to research what file size and file format that my illustrations would need to be saved in. 

I found out that instagram needs to be 1080px and for facebook the file size needs to be 1280px as both the file sizes where different I decided that it would be best to chose the smaller file size of the both to ensure that it would be playable on both social media sites. Also the file format that the Animated Gif/ Video needed to be saved in is Mp4. 

Now I knew what file size and format was needed I was able to start the digital process.

I began the process initially by opening my final bunny sketch into Adobe Illustrator and started to digitally draw out the lines for the bunny.

After spending a while outlining my Barry M bunny, I spent an even longer time colouring the bunny in with solid colour initially then after the bunny was fully coloured in solid colours I added a bit of shadow and highlight. I tend to do this with all my illustrations as I think it gives them a bit more characteristic.

This is also why I decided that I would add more detail to the eyes and to completely re-illustrate the nose of the bunny, As shown below these changes made a significant difference to my bunny illustration. I believe it gives my character more of a personality.

Once my bunny was pretty much finished I decided that something was missing. This is when I decided that I would add a cute, girly touch by adding two cute Barry M bright pink hair bows. I thought this made the bunny more relatable to the Barry M brand identity.

Now that the bunny was completed it was time to illustrate all the make up that I would apply to the bunnies face. This was by far my favourite part of the whole process. Make-up if my favourite thing to illustrate and I spent a long time on this part of the illustrating. 

Next it was time to move all the make-up elements and add the make up to the bunny’s face, also I didn't really take any screenshots but I also spent a lot of time adding quite a lot of blood to the illustration as a symbol of the cruelty, pain and hurt that comes along with animal testing and animal cruelty. 

I then saved all the images individually so that they could be used as a stop motion animation. This was by far the most tedious part of the whole processes and took up almost half of the 70 hours of this live brief. 

Lastly I took all of the stop motion images that I individually saved and used Adobe Photoshop to animate the final Gif/video. This also was a long tedious processes. But after it was completed I knew it would all be worth the final outcome.

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Barry M Brief Ideas

After reading the Barry M brief that my tutor Matt emailed to me I decided that I would use this as my live brief and I was very excited to get started with my 70 hour Live Brief.

The first thing I needed to do was ensure I fully understood what the brief was asking for so I re read the brief and highlighted all the most important information. 

Next I thought It was important to do some further research into the Barry M brand. Alongside some other internet searches, I researched their social media pages and their website and started to build a image of their brand identity as a whole.

The one thing that I noticed was how important being a cruelty free brand was to them. I thought this would be a good thing to focus on when coming up with ideas and designs later on.

Following all of my research I decided it would be a good idea to create a word diagram in relation to Barry M and the slogan for this brief, Be Kind Be Beautiful. I noticed again that the common theme of cruelty free was prominent and knew that this would be the theme for my illustrations.

I then used this word diagram as inspiration for a mood-board. Usually I create some sketches first and then make mood-board to further plan my designs.

But this time I decided that I would create a mood-board for the overall theme that I wanted to go for and then used the mood-board to create my sketches. I found that this worked a lot better for me and I assume that Is how most people use mood-boards. 

I really liked most of these sketches that I came up with but there were definitely some stronger ideas than others. I really liked the 4th and 5th but thought that the 4th idea was to gruesome for the Barry M social media pages as you can see through my annotations.

As also shown In the above sketches all the sketches had bunnies in them, so I thought it would be a good idea to experiment with how I wanted the bunnies too look.

I drew all the bunnies frontward facing, because I was gravitating towards the 5th idea of a gif or video. I liked the top left bunny on the second page of sketches.

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Finding my Brief

So I printed out the brief’s from the previous post and took them with me to uni the next day with the intention to present my idea to my tutor Sarah about combining all the briefs together to build up the full 70 hours and also to express the concerns I was having with this module up until that point in order to gather some advice moving forward.

Sadly once I had got to uni my tutor Sarah was absent, but fortunately my other tutors Liam and Matt were present and willing to assists me. 

I firstly told them about why work placement falling through and my concerns that I would fail the module because I didn't have enough time left to complete a work placement, They both calmed me down and assured me that I wouldn't fail that I did have enough time and they knew I would get whatever needed to be done completed.

Then I told them about my idea of combining smaller briefs to cover the 70 hours and showed them the printout of the briefs I had in mind. This is when Liam told me that these brief were not exactly live briefs but more competitions and he reminded me that the live brief needed to be set by industry standard. 

But thankfully Matt told me about the Barry M Live brief that had just started, and informed me that although I had missed the presentation a few days earlier I could still take part in the live brief. He forwarded an email to me of the brief and told me to read the brief through and see what I thought. He also informed me of a upcoming brief with the BBC that I cold take part in if I didn't think the Barry M brief was applicable to me. 

I was so relieved that I still had options and was really interested in the Barry M brief as I already know and use their products and know that the brief was likely to be quite fitting with my interests in beauty and make-up.

Therefore Liam and myself proceeded to tear up the printouts I came in with and put them in the bin along with the previous worries and concerns that I had. I was excited at the idea of illustrating for a brand such as Barry M.

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Feeling Defeated

It was finally time to accept that It was very unlikely that I was going to be successful in securing a work placement in such a short space of time, so  I had to finally admit to myself that my only option left was to do a 70 hour Live Brief instead of the 70 hour work placement. 

Feeling defeated I began researching Live Brief’s online and I found plenty of websites hosting competitions or live briefs. Although after hours of researching most of them were not particularly of my interest. However I did find a few I liked the look on a website call brief box but they were all shorter briefs rather that long 70 hour ones such as;

this first one that was for a greek natural cosmetics company that wanted a new packaging design illustrated for both soap wrapping paper and a shampoo bottle, For the purpose of the company re-banding their cosmetic line to appeal to a younger audience.

Then there was this really fun brief for “Tatties’ who wanted some designs to be made into temporary tattoos around the theme of food.

Next there was ‘Hitched’ which are a wedding company that were looking for a designer to build and create a splash page for couples to use and an online invitation. Which would then possibly lead on to you being commissioned to design the full website and brand identity.

Lastly there was this iconic landmark brief, that simply wanted you to choose and illustrate an iconic landmark in any style but it has to be finished in only four colours.

I was really interested in all of these briefs and thought they all fitted me quite well but as they were all short and standing alone they were nowhere near substantial enough to fulfil the requirements of the 70 hour live brief, I thought that completing them all and combining the hours could possibly work. 

But first I would need to confirm this with my tutor...

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More Disappointment !

After looking at my modules and my university time table I figured out that the best possible time for me to fit the work experience around my studies was around the end of December or the beginning of January. So I phoned the nursery to confirm these were the dates that I would undertake my work experience, they confirmed these date would be noted and that everything was set to go ahead.

But unfortunately on the first week of December I received a very disappointing phone call from my friend, in regards to the placement at the nursery. She had contacted me to inform me that the current nursery was going to be shutting down during the last weeks of December and the first few weeks of January as they were moving locations, She did say that I could still come along and help them prepare the nursery designing the wall display’s, painting the walls etc but this is not the sort of experience I needed so although I was very disappointed I congratulated them on expanding but politely declined the offer and confirmed that I would not be completing my work experience with them.

Therefore again I was back to square one, I had no work placement and I had contacted all the places I could think of and I only had 5 week left to complete a 70 hour work placement and one of those weeks was Christmas. At that present time I was extremely anxious that I would fail this module due to not finding a work placement.

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Stage One - Pre Placement: Finding my Placement

After a few more days of searching and contacting more and more establishments and receiving more and more rejections I was stating to become really worried that I wouldn't be able to find a placement.

But just as I was losing hope I was offered a work placement from a friend who owns their own nursery. We spoke over the phone and she confirmed that as long as I had all the valid documentation that I needed then I could most definitely have a placement at the nursery.

We discussed the role that I would have on the placement and It was confirmed that I would shadow a staff member for a day or two just to see how the nursery was run and how they teach the children throughout the day. Then I would assists staff member during lessons throughout the day such as arts and craft classes. Then I would create a lesson plan/task for the children to do and lead the lesson. Also she said that I could do a circle time story daily. 

I thought this placement would be a great opportunity. The tasks and observations I make during the placement whilst working with the children would be relevant to both my dissertation module and my final major project module.

I was really excited about this placement and started the processes of getting all the correct documents I would need before starting this placement. This was a long process for me and I had some assistants from David and Glesni from the careers team. I am thankful for their help and I am pleased that I am now aware of the services they provide in order to help me as a student.

Once I had all the documents I needed I was just waiting for a good time to fit in the placement around my ongoing studies.

(I will not be mentioning the names of my friend or the nursery due to requests of privacy reasons)

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Stage One - Pre Placement: Rejections

At this point I had contacted all the previous establishments mentioned to try and secure as a placement. Then some of them required me to have face-to-face interviews. But as I previously mentioned I had a rough plan of what I needed say and was prepared for this follow up contact with these placements.

But unfortunately although I did tried my best none of these establishments were able to offer me a placement. Therefore I had to do some more searching for another placement.

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Stage One - Pre Placement:

Stage One - Pre Placement:

As I mentioned previously in my blog posts for this module we will be undertaking two different work experiences. Therefore Alongside the Pop up Exhibition I have also been searching for a 70 hour work placement. Again the idea of this placement is to help me recognise and develop my personal practice, skills, knowledge, strengths and weaknesses. Allowing me to identify what makes me desirable to potential employers. It will also give me a chance to explore my potential career pathways as a creative practitioner/entrepreneur and understand what is required of me in my potential work environments.

This blog post will be where I document my experience of searching for potential placements.

Before I actively started searching for a placement I needed to make a decision on what sort of areas I would like to potentially work in as an illustrator and think of possible placements that would be relevant to these areas of work. Then I would need to search for these kinds of placements and follow the necessary steps in order for me to secure the placement. In order to do this I made a bubble diagram of possible sectors I would like to go into as an illustrator.

Here Is that bubble diagram:

Now that I had a rough Idea for the type of areas I would like to work in I could start researching placements in these areas. Initially finding possible placements was a lot more difficult than I anticipated it to be because, although I knew the areas I wanted to go into I still didn't have any ideas where to start searching for these types of placements. To overcome this I decided that I would speak to some of my tutors and see if they could give me a better idea of any places that they could suggest that they thought I would enjoy or be best fitting to the areas I had listed. They suggested a few companies to me and then I went online and did some background research into them. This really helped in starting the research process, because whilst researching these places they suggested I also found other possible places. Also this helped me decide exactly what area I wanted to focus on, which was Education.

At this point I now had three ideas for my placement relating to education. The companies were ThudMedia, Sun&Moon and Coleg Gwent.

The first placement that I really liked the look of was the in the ThudMedia studio.Thud Media are a studio based in Cardiff, Wales in the GloWorks media hub. They are a studio that collaborate with clients using their diverse skillset in design, animation and VFX and combine this with their technical expertise to develop personally designed and innovative interactive content and experiences. Some examples of content they create for clients are animated games for all ages (especially preschool), Websites or Apps for iOS, Android and browser platforms, interactive eBooks and second screen experiences etc.

I thought this would be an appropriate placement because they work in two areas that I am interested in, creating interactive content and in education. It would be amazing to learn the exact process of creating interactive content such as websites, Apps or iBooks. I have had a little insight of the process due to the creative media course I took at college but I would love to explore it at industry standard. The placements would also be appropriate because it would enable me to use and develop my existing skills in digital softwares such as adobe illustrator, Photoshop, AfterEffects etc and see how they are used at a professional industry standard. Lastly I would really like to experience the roles and responsibilities that an illustrator has within companies like ThudMedia.

The next placement that I really liked the look of was the in the Sun & Moon studios.Sun & Moon studios are a creative-led animation production studio based in Bristol. There studio works with many different clients and organisations such as broadcasters, retailers, ad agencies, corporates, communications consultancies and production companies. Their team of experienced directors, animators and designers, led by founders Dylan Shipley and Louis Jones work with these clients to inform, inspire and entertain through the power of 2D and 3D animation by produce films, tell stories or bring ideas to life in an inspiring, charming and emotive way. They also provide what is known as a full-service by supporting their in-house animation services with a network of tried, tested and highly capable partners in scriptwriting, sound production and voice over.

I thought this would be an appropriate placement because as I said above they do work with illustrators, which would show me exactly what roles and responsibilities are expected of illustrators in the professional industry. It would also be a great experience to see how lots of different creatives collaborate to create something from an idea to a actual product such as social media campaigns, Informational videos, video game assets, motion graphics, storyboards and character designs etc. Again this placements would let me use and develop my existing skills in digital softwares such as adobe illustrator, Photoshop, AfterEffects etc and see how they are used at a professional industry standard.

Then my third idea for a possible placement that I thought would be a really good opportunity for me was to go back to my old college city of Newport campus, Coleg Gwent. To do a work placement with you within either the Art and Design department or the creative media department Both of these departments of creative industries would be the most relevant to my career path.I really enjoyed the environment at college and think I would enjoy a placement there because I would like to inspire others creativity and encourage there passions in the same way the staff at the city of Newport campus did with me. As I said before I am interested in education and I am considering following my illustration career into teaching by completing a Postgraduate Certificate in Education and becoming a  illustration teacher as a possible career path. This work placement experience would give me real insight into he processes involved in teaching within the creative industries.

Lastly I found an art centre when I was researching art centres in my area. I found one called the Hera Art Centre, run by a lady called Hilda. This Placement would be rewarding to be part of a placement that helps to inspire others creativity and encourage their passion. This Placement would again allow me to experience a real insight into the teaching industry. I also think it would be a really nice environment to be in with lots of people who are interested in the same subjects as I am.

It took so much time to research possible places and now that I have found four possible places and I am hoping that one of them leads to me achieving a 70 hour placement.

Now that I decided what places I wanted to try and secure as a placement. I needed to plan how I was going to make initial contact with whether that be by email, telephone conversations, letter or face-to-face interviews. I knew that I would use Email and Phone to make initial contact, but I needed to make sure I had a rough plan of what I needed to include in these telephone calls and emails. I will also needed to be prepared for the follow up contact with possible placements. There could have be many requirements that I needed to meet in order to secure a placement therefore I needed to be prepared with an up to date CV, cover letter and portfolio. I may have also needed to have a brief plan for interviews because the possible placements may have want me to visit them and have an interview. All there were a lot of preparations and some of them I may not be 100 percent confident in such as speaking on the Phone, Face-to-Face interviews I know I am capable of building the confidence I need to be able to overcome my uncertainties. Allowing me to meet all the possible necessary requirements in order to secure the placement.

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Reflecting on Exhibition Placement

This 3 week Exhibition Placement has without a doubt has been challenging, but I have enjoyed the journey thoroughly. Through the process of setting up this exhibition I have now learnt the appropriate steps needed in order to curate an industry standard Exhibition, which looking back at these photos I took on opening night I think we managed to` achieve.

 Starting with making sure you are prepared by having researched and planned each task that need to be completed and understanding how they piece together to make sure every element of the exhibit comes together smoothly. I have also learnt that in regard to communicating with external organisations as long you remain polite and confident they are always willing to consider the offer you are proposing and will try their best to accommodate you.

I have to say working with this Location & logistics team has been an absolute pleasure. My preconceived ideas were that people in my groups/teams would not work as efficiently or passionately as I wanted them to, resulting in us not achieving our full potential for the exhibition. But this experience has given me a new outlook on working in groups that I did not have before as I assumed the experience would be the same as it has been when i’ve perviously worked in groups and hated the experience as a whole. This time though I am pleased to say my group was different. We all came together and all shared the responsibility of the role we had equally, with everyone doing their part to get the jobs we needed to do done. As a result of how well we all worked together we were able to get our location confirmed in just over a week which I am really proud of us for. I think one of the biggest reasons we worked so well as a group was because our communication skills we were constantly using our Facebook chat to discuss our options, to make decisions, overcome any minor issues and to keep one another updated.

The exhibition has developed my competencies because I was able to utilise them successfully. Personally I think my skill strengths have been researching different venues, because I was able to put forward as many possible venue options for the team/group, giving us lots of options to choose from. Allowing us to secure the best exhibition location available. I feel confident that my communication skills were a strength too as I was able to both listen and understand others and reflect on this before communicating my own thoughts and feeling back to them. I also used motivational techniques as a strength to help other stay focused. Another Strength was my problem solving skills when any little limitation or restriction arose, I successfully contributed my Ideas or took action to overcome the issues. I believe that any issues we had have been dealt with proving that we all used our problem solving skills well. The skills I have used during this module so far will be transferable skills that I can apply to most potential career paths in future.

With hindsight, If we were to revisit this experience again there are a few changes that I would like to make. Firstly I would ensure that we had more time, because I feel like although we did amazing with the time we had, more time would have allowed us to secure a bigger and better location. Secondly I would have liked to have had a bigger budget. But as these two areas were not really in our control this was not something we as a class could really change. All we can do is hope that when we have our show later on in this year the time we have is longer and the budget is higher, therefore going forward I’m going to leave this behind and move on from in this experience. 

Another area I had weaknesses in and would change was not being a point of contact with a possible venue. I should of nominated myself as a point of contact. But I struggle with speaking on the phone because I am self conscious of my voice and my Lisp. The one thing I have learnt from this weakness and will take with me from this experience is that I need to work on my self confidence in speaking, because this time I let my confidence in speaking on the phone get the better of me. This meant that I haven't really had the opportunity to experience what It is like to independently make a contact with a client and follow up the contact, with emails and phone calls. Going forward this will be one of the main things I recognise that I need to develop in order to be a professional creative practitioner/entrepreneur. I will do this by maybe approaching the careers department in the university and asking for help in building upon my confidence in speaking on the phone through practicing making phone calls. Because If I don't develop my confidence of speaking on the phone this could hold me back and make me less desirable to potential employers, or even become a problem when I trying to get work as a freelancer.

Lastly I would have liked to improve on my own actual personal practice at producing work/material to exhibit. I put all my attention on arranging the exhibition and as a result only produced a mediocre illustration, I should of equally focused on both elements of curating an exhibition as I believe if I had my work would of been chosen to exhibit and would of resulted in possible illustration work opportunities.

The illustration I submitted was a wild fairy. When Initially thinking about my interpretation of the word “Wild” I was thinking about jungle animals and leaf prints or wild flowers and waterfalls and was focused a lot on wild nature. But I was then Inspired by my two nieces playing in the garden, They were letting the Imaginations run wild, This is when I started to realise my interpretation of ‘Wild’  could focus on wild imaginations, fantasies and dreams. I found myself thinking of unicorns, mermaids, dragons, goblins and fairies. I sketched some very rough ideas until I came up with this sketch of a Wild fairy sleeping on a wild mushroom, amongst some wild flowers.

I Then decided I was happy enough with this sketch and scanned it into the computer and used my skills in illustrator to reproduce the image digitally.

I am happy with my final Illustration concept and I do like how the illustration looks. But I think that If I put more time into the image and worked the illustration harder by adding details such as shadows, Highlights and some more textures It could turn into a beautiful illustration that would fit perfectly into a children's book.

In conclusion I think actively participated in the organising and curating of the exhibition. Together the students of illustration year 3 have combined our skills, knowledge and strengths to entirely planned, curated, promoted and hosted a great exhibition. The exhibition process has helped me to recognise and develop my own personal practice, skills, knowledge, strengths and weaknesses. Also it has helped me identify what skills I have that I can apply to different career pathways in the future. Overall I am really happy with the experience and how the overall exhibition came together. I am really excited to work on and see how our next exhibition will comes together.

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Working with my team

Once we decided on the roles and responsibilities were decided upon. We could now get together with our teams. Our teams will consist of all the members within the groups that all have all been allocates the same roles. In our teams we will distribute the responsibilities of the roles. We will be working with our teams most and Then using our groups to deliberate what each team has been up to.

Meet my Location & Logistics Team:

With this Location and Logistics team I will work on organising and leasing with a venue for the event to take place. The role of my team is really important because the rest of the class is really relying on us to find the best place possible to hold the exhibition. Also we are the team that really need to act the fastest because the other teams are relying on the information of the confirmed venue in order to start/continue with their roles. For example Promotion will need to have a confirmed location and time for the event before they can go ahead with printing the posters, flyers for advertisements. Also curation will need to know where the venue is so that they can find out what amount of space we have to showcase the work, this will help them to decide on how many pieces they can pick to exhibit.

Also as it just so happens Ginnie, Reiss and myself volunteered to share the role of project manager. So the three of us will oversee the event as a whole and ensuring that things are being done. We will also be the ones communicating the most with the tutors the most, also each team will nominate a team leader who will also be the ones communicating to us to ensure everything is being done at a professional standard and in an appropriate time frame.

Meet the Project Managers:

Now that everyone knew their roles and responsibilities it was time for each of us to show our capabilities to work both fast and efficiently. Everyone was doing whatever they could to get started on piecing the show together. Curation set a brief for all individual illustrations from students to be submitted by the 3rd of October. Branding and Design were set dates to finish their designs for poster,invites,logo and other promotion material. Promotion were making social media accounts ready to advertise sneak peeks of work and also the designs that branding and design were producing them with. Private viewing/Events were producing Ideas and researching opportunities for the private viewing.

Here is a screenshot of the Instagram page that promotion set up:

Because it was crucial that the location and logistics team came together immediately and worked together effectively to secure a location, I arranged and held a meeting. In this meeting we discussed exactly what preparations we would need to make in order to secure a venue for the exhibition and how we would work together to get it done. We decided it was best to come together as a whole and work on every task together. Such as all of us splitting into pairs to go out into Cardiff and all look for possible venues. Making initial contact with the venues by having informal face to face interviews if it was possible. If not possible then we would decide amongst the pairs who would email, call and be point of contact for each venue. This would also apply for following up initial contacts with the possible venues. We may also need to have a portfolio preparation available if contacts where to ask for us to showcase the type of work we were going to be displaying. Being prepared and having these preparations in order before hand, As well as working together as a whole allowed us to be in contact with many venues at once allowing us to make the most of the short time frame we have.

Personally I prepared for these preparations by being involved in visits and Making initial contact with the venues by having informal face to face interviews. Also I collected some previous personal and project work together ready to be sent to whom ever may need it. These preparation were the easy part for me but having to be a point of contact with a possible venue on my own was something I was not looking forward to because I really struggle with speaking on the phone because I am self conscious of my voice and my Lisp. I didn't bring this issue up to any member of my group but I just avoided the issue by not really offering myself to be point of contact and allowing the other members in my group to do so. Looking back I should have spoke with my team to ask for help and guidance as I am sure they would have been more than willing to help me to build my confidence allowing me to , next time I am going to make a conscious effort to do so.

As we were trying to all do things at the same time it was important to keep track and document who was doing what so in somewhat of chronological order here is a log of the process that location and logistics took.

Ceiran & Reiss Visited urban outfitters, whilst there they received some information about the space available and were asked to follow up with an email to the events manager. Reiss decided he would be the one that followed the email up and become the direct contact with urban outfitters on behalf of us all.

Whilst they did that Ginnie decided she would follow up with little man coffee shop after we previously visited them with our group. Also she found another possible venue at this point but we didn't follow this through they only hired it out on a 2 week basis for £29 a day which worked out too much for our budget. She also volunteered to email Bett to keep her in updated on our progress so far.

The next day Ginnie and myself decided to visit little man coffee shop as they hadn't emailed us back yet. When we arrived we were introduced to the events manager who told us she was just about to reply to our email and we discussed with her what we were hoping to achieve with this exhibition and what we wanted from them as a venue such as time and dates, it was during the discussion of time and dates that we realised we were not going to be able to have the event at the coffee shop as unfortunately it was fully booked out for the whole month of October.

Also the both of us headed to 3 doors down, which is a creative space where there is ofter art exhibitions and activities going on this would be the perfect venue for us. We spoke to 2 employers that confirmed that the store is unfortunately closed on the dates we wanted but told us that the manager might be willing to open for us as he tends to be quite flexible. They gave us his contact information but unfortunately we never had a reply.

Meanwhile Reiss had contacted john lewis to enquire about spaces they had available, the dates and times available and the prices. It ended up being way too expensive. He had also received an email from urban outfitters by this point asking for us to send them some examples of the type of work that we would be showing at the exhibition. They had also let Reiss know that he would need to contact the head office in London before he could have the space. This was a bit of a set back for us as the whole class was kind of hoping to secure urban outfitters as our first choice, and by having to contact head office our chances of securing the venue were becoming slim.

As most of our original ideas for venues had pretty much fallen through we decided to look for a few more options. I suggested kin & ilk and tom made contact with them but they didn't have any of the dates available. Because we had a lot of the venues saying the dates were unavailable we tried to work out if we could make any changes to the dates. Tom posted into the group page and tried to find out what dates worked out best for the majority of the class. After deliberation with class it was decided that  the 9th and 10th would probably be the best. Later on the dates were questioned again and the idea of having the exhibition at the weekend were presented.

Ginnie suggested the Castle Emporium as venue and emailed them. Shortly she received a response from them asking for someone to pop by for a visit the next day to view the space they had available from the 12th of October.

 A little problem then occurred for us as originally none of us from location and logistics had time to go the Castle Emporium that day. To overcome this problem I posted into the group Facebook page and asked if someone from another team preferably the curation team and lucky Lorna and Rebecca offered to go along for us. Then as it turned out the next day Reiss was able to go along with Lorna and Rebecca which was really good for us because he was able to tell us that the venue looked good for what we wanted to do with it. Also he was able to get all the information we needed such as;

Cost: £50 for a 3 day period Dates: Thursday 12th October 3pm - 5:30pm/6:00pm(Private Viewing) 
            Friday 13th & Saturday 14th October 10am - 5:30pm/6:00pm(Open Viewing) Venue Opening Times: 10am Venue Closing Time: Between 5:30pm/6:00pm Set-up Date of Exhibition: Thursday 12th October 10am until 3pm Takedown date & time: Monday 16th October

Here are the photo’s they took to show us what the place looked like:

It was looking as if the Castle Emporium was going to be out chosen location but before we could confirm it we needed to find out from Sarah what our budget was, It turned out that the budget was £100. This meant that the venue was going to cost half of our budget as it was originally agreed at £50 for the Castle Emporium, we thought that this might cause a little bit of an issue with the rest of the class because they obviously all needed some of the budget for their teams. So we had to get the class together and discuss the budget and how we were going to divide it. During this discussion we all decide that we would put our own contribution towards the budget and then split that amongst us all. It was also decided that we could go ahead and confirm the location.

After the meeting a few more of us went to visit the Castle Emporium and we took the opportunity to briefly confirm that we wanted to use the space as out venue. The manager said that was fantastic and told Reiss who was now her point of contact on behalf of us all to email her if he needed any more details or wanted any more questions answered.

Location & Logistics now came together and made the final decision that the Castle Emporium was our chosen venue and that the dates where the 12th,13th and 14th and as a team our main role was completed and it was now time to start working with the other teams. We needed to firstly figure out the logistics, facilities and decorating of the space along with the Curation team. We will also be handing in our individual illustrations to the Curation team so that they can decide what pieces to show at the expedition. Then the Promotion team will also need to be sent our illustrations so they can advertise speak peaks for the expedition. Another thing we will also need to do is discuss the capacity allowance of the venue and the facilities available in regard to catering with  the Events team.

Our Team had now pretty much completed everything that we needed to and were on hand to just assists and help out any individuals or teams with anything that they needed. 

Personally I helped the Promotion by handing out and distributing leaflets leaflets. 

Also the day before the exhibition I went along to the venue and asked if curation needed any help at all, they said they didn't need my help but It gave me a chance to take some photos of the setting up in progress. 

Then on the night of the show I arrived a little while before opening I contributed some Alcoholic beverages, Also Ginnie and myself went along to tiger to collect the items they donated to us as our sponsor for the goody bags. The items they gave us were very random but we did all have fun with these at our after party.

. I was also helping out with serving drinks and handing out goody bags. It was a really fun opening night and I really enjoyed seeing everybody work displayed. The exhibition gave me the chance to speak to a few new people and I really enjoyed myself. I will be showing Images I took of the final set up in a later post when I reflect on the exhibition on the whole.

[sdclientstudies-blog]

Welcome to my Client studies blog

Welcome to my Client studies blog, These posts will help me to prepare for employment and joining the creative industry, with the appropriate skills and knowledge for the roles.

For this module we will be undertaking two different work experiences. The first being a three week exhibition, the second being an independently sourced 70 hour placement. This blog will be where I document my experience. It will help enable me to recognise and develop my personal practice, skills, knowledge, strengths and weaknesses allowing me to identify what makes me desirable to potential employers. It will also give me a chance to explore my potential career pathways as a creative practitioner/entrepreneur.

This first blog post will reflect on my personal practice as a team/group member for the first placment. This placement will be the 3 week exhibition. I will actively be involved in the organising and curating of an exhibition. Together the students of illustration year 3 we will entirely plan, curate, promote and host the exhibition between the dates of 09.10.17 - 16.10.17.

In order for this to work effectively we as a class will need to all work together with industry standard professionalism. In order for the event to run smoothly we will all need to be allocated groups, who together we will work on display boards with, that will showcase all the illustrations of our own interpretations of the word ‘WILD’. These illustrations can be created solely for the exhibit or you can put forward existing illustrations along as they collate with the theme. The class was split up into 8 of these groups of 3 - 4 members.

Meet my Group:

As a group the first task we did was to come up with a group name. After a short discussion we decided on the group name ‘Oohsh’. During the dissection we were struggling to find a good interesting name and I just started making random noises when I was trying to think of possible group names and when I said “Oohsh” The rest of the group decided that they liked it and it stuck.

Next we started curating possible themes for the whole exhibit. Initially we had ideas for autumnal, seasonal, halloween inspired themes and originally we were set on these themes as we thought it would relate to the time of year and it would be a theme that all students in the class could relate to and interoperate in their own way. It didn't take us very long to decide these were our themes so as a group we decided that to focus on suitable locations to present to the group.

So The four of us headed out into Cardiff City Centre and tries to source possible venues. The first place we visited was little man coffee shop, They were very enthusiastic when we primitively approached them and asked us to email their events manager before they could confirm whether the venue was available. Ginnie decided that she was going to be the one to be in contact with them through email, and later on that day emailed them with our enquiries.

The next place we went to was Queens Arcade where we found an empty retail premises, But unfortunately we couldn't find the management offices so we decided to move on to Yr Hen Lyfrgell, unfortunately the did not have any available space during the times and dates we were looking for either.

We then visited 3 DoorsUp but it was closed. Ginnie and myself volunteered to come back later that week when it was open, as there was no email address or contact number in the window for us to be able to contact.

It was when we were heading back to the uni that I spotted a student accommodation reception (that looked a lot like a art gallery than a student accommodation reception) that had just opened in the town centre. I thought that the space looked like a good possibility as it was really spacious and the walls where practically empty they might have let us use the space. But as it happens they said they couldn't do that but gave us a name of another student accommodation premises that may be able to accommodate us, due to the premises having more communal student space.

The place was called winsor house and it was only around the corner. On arrival we bumped into a lovely lady who pointed us in the direction of the area manager of the student accommodation premises. After explaining what our intensions where for the exhibit he agreed that he could make the space available to us free of charge along as we get people into the establishment to advertise it, which worked out great with us. He just told us to confirm with the rest of our team and if they wanted to go ahead with using his venue to just email him and let him know. This is amazing as it gives us atlas one venue option. The only concern I have is that the space in the venue is separated into little rooms and the communal sofa space area is quite crowded, so I am not sure how we would set up our work in the space. It would be possible to overcome this problem as long as we really evaluated the space available.

Overall at this point I think we have done a really good job in starting the process of finding a location for our exhibition.

The next thing that not only our group but all 8 groups needed to do was to allocate key roles and responsibilities to each member of the group. The roles are;

Branding and Design Curation Promotion Private viewing/Events Location and logistics

Amongst my group we decided that the roles would be Rory for both branding and design and also for promotion. Katie had the curation role and Ginnie and myself were sharing the roles of Location and logistics and Private viewing/Events.

Ginnie and myself decided to share our roles as we were both very interested in taking part in both roles and we were both willing to share the roles and responsibilities for each role.We will mainly be working with the location and logistics but will be on hand to help out with private viewing and events.