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Evaluation

For the past 2 months, I have been working on a Graphic Media and Emerging Technologies project all on the word ‘Beauty’. 

This module offered my the opportunity to design a integrated promotional campaign using Graphic Media and Emerging Technologies for the Virtue we were given at the beginning of the project.

My main deliverables were:

1) An initial ‘hook’

2) A 1 minute presentation video that effectively communicates all elements of my campaign.

3) A website for my campaign that includes a Home page, About page and other pages specific to my campaign.

4) A research and idea development blog that documents my design processes.

I needed to make sure that my final outcomes were to a professional standard as they would be seen and critiqued by a team of specialists working in the field of contemporary media. I needed to make sure I had a better understanding of this with lots and research and investigating into a range of different design alternatives to direct me to where I could take my project.

From this, my first task was to explore into different emerging technologies within the world of beauty and what sort of things are already being used today and what there is for the future. I was able to find out quite a lot of information and I was able to write about all of my findings in my blog. 

Once I believed I had completed all aspects of my research, I could start designing and developing a campaign that linked with my research. 

My first idea I had, was very complicated and was very hard to make sense. I was not able to go along with this, even though I had started a design for an app for this. 

In the end I came up with a much more of a simple idea that I could work and develop all my deliverables I needed to complete. 

Overall, I was very happy with the way my project came together in the end. It was a very long process at the start but once I had my final idea, it all came together to create a fun and pleasing project. 

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My Website

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Professional Printing - Deny Bros

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Printing the Card Myself - Mistakes/Issues

As I only had a couple of days to complete my visual hook, I needed to find a very easy way to print out my card as good quality paper in a shape of a card. 

At first, I tried calling up a ‘same day’ printing company to see if they were able to print this for me, but unfortunately they were completely stacked with work and was not able to print this for me as, I needed it for the next day. 

So my next idea was to print this myself on normal paper and stick this onto card afterwards. The first copy I printed, I found my first issue and this one that the white text on the green did not show up because it was too thin. (as you can see in the pictures above). I was so glad that I did not send this off to the printer or I would have had a bigger problem. So from this, I had to go back to the design and change this to a heavier font, so hopefully this would of been more visual than my first design.

When I had printed this design out, I was a lot more happier as the font was a lot more visual and it also made the whole page stand out more. I now had to find a way to put this onto card to make the card quality thicker and better. This is were I had my next issue. I could not transfer this onto better paper without you being able to see the glue lines or when you fold the paper, it creased up the whole page. None of my ideas were woking and I needed to find an idea fast and I was running out of time.

In the end, I needed to find a printers that would be able to do it for me there and then. I phoned up a number a companies and none of them were able to help my at that time. I last phone call I made was to Deny Bros, and this was my only hope left and I found that they were able to help me. I was able to get my work printed with them within 20 mins which was a big relief.

Overall I have learnt from this that I should not leave printing to the last minute and my sure I give myself plenty of time to get things completed instead of leaving it to the last day.

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Final Mockups - School Campaigns 

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Card Development - Front and Back

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Visual Hook - Step by Step 

I decided, from my step by step in my animation, I wanted to incorporate this into my Visual Hook in some way. In the end I came up with the idea of make a long strip with the 4 stages, using the same format as my video with colours and the information, to create an ongoing piece that could in some way for into a card. 

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Presenting to RPM

At the end of November, we were given an amazing opportunity to present our final campaign videos to a marketing company in London, who would critic us and give us advise on how we could make our videos better for our final hand-in.  

When we arrived at RPM we were greeted by Greg Bennett, the Head of Design, who first showed us around the whole building and explained each blocks roles and jobs for the company. This was a very interesting part of the tour because it was interesting to find out what they did as a team and as individuals.

Once we had finished our tour, we were shown to a conference room and we all took a sit round a table were we had a little presentation about the company and the work they have produced for clients. I was very impression with the sort of work that they were creating but it also worried me because the quality and standards were incredible. 

When this was finished, it was then time to start our campaign presentations to both Greg and a lady who I believed was a Art Director. We were asked one at a time to give an little explanation on what our campaign was about and then we played our video. After the video was finished, they gave us feedback on things they liked and things they thought we could improve on. 

I was very nervous for when it came to my turn because i’m not very confident talking in front of people and I was worried about explaining my idea because I believe my idea was the weakest. I needed to somehow make it sounded like I have an passion for my idea and make it sound like it could be something that is possible.

My feedback in note form:

1) Liked the idea and concept of helping older people 2) Maybe explain more about how inner beauty links in with the idea 3) Liked the stats at the beginning of the video to help give an indication that      they are people in need. 4) Liked mu colour choice as it was a calm and peaceful. 5) Thought my transitions to each section were clean 6) Show more about how people can find out about the app. 7) Look into showing the charity link more and how they are planning to help.

I was very happy with the feedback I received and if I have the chance, I will make these changes to my video so that my video has all I need to explain an inform the viewer within them needing to ask questions. 

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FINAL VIDEO

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Videoing my own footage for my video

When recording my video, I needed to make it as simple and easy to understand for all viewers so they would be able to understand my concept.  I only gave myself a 10 sec time frame to do this in.

As I only had a short amount of time to get this done, I had to get my dad to play the ‘older’ person for this video. In my original idea, I was going to show the face to show a happy facial expression, but because my dad did not look old enough, I just had to show him from behind, opening and looking at the card. I believe this still gave a good effect to the video because it makes it look personal. Overall, I was happy with the way this turned out and I will be placing this at the end of my video.

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Props for the video

When I was creating my video, I always wanted an element of my own video footage in my animation because it makes it more real and personal to the viewer if they can see what it is going by helping the people. 

When I was creating each step by step stage, I wanted it to look like it was an ongoing animation being made for just the one person, and this person would be shown at the end of the video opening the card. I also wanted to show the same card from my animation as a prop in my video. 

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All Assats in a folder 

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Video Development on After Effects

Once I had designed a story board that I was happy with, I start making up some compositions pages with the time I had given for each section of my animation. 

For my animation, the key elements I wanted to show in my presentation were: 1) My Virtue   2) My Campaign/App idea    3) My Visual Hook    4) Step by Step        5) Short video of the app does   6) Logo Animation

I knew I needed to give myself a long time to do this because I have no good skill or knowledge in this field of design. I needed to teach myself the basics first to I could actually start making something and than work on the harder bits at a later stage.

I decided to use the same colour palette throughout to make it constant and connected as a composition. I also used white and grey to mixed it up a little so i wasn’t constantly the same.

As I was putting each composition together, writing up the keys facts and information that explained each stage of the app, I found that the time I had given was not long enough and you could not read it in time. I had to make each composition longer which meant the time for my animation was also getting much longer than it should have been. By the end of my first draft for my animation, I found it to be over an minute and I hadn’t even adding in the part where it explained my visual hook. 

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Video Part 2 Development - The beginning 

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Video Part 1 Development  - The Beginning 

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Logo Animation 

How I got my idea for my logo animation.

The next step for my project was to start creating elements for a video presentation about the campaign and app idea. I wanted to try and make my video different from others that I had seen but using the different steps as different sections and splitting this up with clean transitions. 

For my first step I needed to teach myself how to use after effects and I thought the best way to do this was by making a short animation of my logo to get myself started. This went watching youtube videos and experiencing within the programme. 

I new the very simple effects with the programme, as I was shown this in my first year of uni but I wanted to make a bigger step and push myself. 

As I was making my logo appear onto the page using the effects I already knew, I wanted to try something different with the font I had chosen for the word ‘Beauty’. This was in a hand written font which mean’t the effect I wanted to teach myself was to make it look like it was being written on the page. I found a very easy to follow youtube video that gave me exactly what I needed for my last part of the animation for my logo. 

In the end I was very happy with the way my logo turned out but I found this to be very time consuming so I was a little worried about how the rest of the video would take and turn out if something so small, took so long to put together. 

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App Development 2

As my development started to come together, I really started to like my designs and how simple they were for my campaign. I needed to make everything very easy to used and make steps that were easy to chose from and easy to manage. 

From my development at the beginning, I did not make a lot of big changes such as layout and colours but I needed to play around with shapes and if i needed to use icons within this. 

With using the icons, I believed they were not needed because each occasions was very clear to see what they were just by the word and I also believed that it make it look quite tacky. This is not the impression I wanted to come away from this as I wanted to show simplicity and elegance. 

For the shapes for my occasions, I wanted them to be a bit more quirky and I believed the only way to do this was by adding a rounded edge to the end and make it look like it was coming from the one side and not just a plain rectangle. I was quite pleased with the way this turned out.

I then tried to carry this theme on throughout the app design, using the same colours, fonts etc until I was happy with everything. 

This was the most time consuming part of the process because I wanted everything to be perfect before I went any further with other elements of the project.