Week three @ Collective London: Challenge Everything
Awesome weekend with Mikey, relishing in an early night and two amazing lie ins, followed by Field day festival in the rain on Saturday, efterklang were amazing in particular and we also bumped into barkey and crew as well as collective team mates…on Sunday we went shoe shopping and to see Batman (AWESOME!).
I started week three with a new project, an in-house Collective brief, concept, design and hopefully producing an induction pack for new employees….the perfect project for me really, starting off with illustration and layout designs.
I had a breakthrough today, I realised I was spending too much time reading and thinking over what I wanted to do rather then practising and just letting my ideas flourish as I go…so I went in today with a fresh attitude and began an illustration with a concept that was the first thing that turned out really well. Me and Steve then had a chat where he opened my eyes to thinking outside the box. I’m learning a lot from him and hes really pushing me to think differently, and it’s probably the best day and the most important thing I’ve learned so far. Always think outside the brief, theres always something more you can bring or offer to the client, that’s what a designers job is…”students should spend less time doing up their work perfectly and concentrate on getting the idea right in the first place.” The D&Ad awards book completely inspired me and made me realise just how important the idea is. The idea and the concept always before the design…The trick is to create an concept that jumps out at you, that’s clever and makes you think, wow I wish id thought of that!! (I relate!). An idea that is simple yet effective, that makes a good point, that gets people to think about themselves, and ask themselves questions…they turn typically dark topics into something that makes you smile. Positive designs are effective designs, that make the viewer feel good. Ideas that make you think differently about something… Surprise people with fresh ideas… And this applies to anything, if you have a good concept it will work with any medium…an illustration without a good concept won’t be that effective,
…and from here intergrated communication...a challenge, but with a good concept u can engage ideas strongly across various mediums…web, print and product campaign…This is ideally what I want to do for my final major project…
So we started to think of the induction as more than a pack but an experience to offer, how can we welcome people, what can we offer, what can we design that says something about the company, the personality, and screams good design, simplicity, passion, thought and delivery. I came up with an idea of designing something useful for the desk space that incorporated the useful welcome information with something to connect everyone together, something funny, and imaginative…Steve really liked the idea and told me to explore it, he seemed happy! I’d almost lost hope for myself and thinking up ideas so this made me feel so happy!!!
We went for drinkys on Thursday again which was brilliant and I had some really inspiring chats with people particularly Serena and Kenta.
