Semester Three Nearly Over
As semester three draws to a close I am starting to feel ready for the world of work in the design industry.
Since we have started back we have undertaken various tasks which have helped to boost my confidence and strengthen my knowledge and abilities. Our first task was to produce and present a presentation of a Design Icon of the 20th or 21st Century. For this I chose the mini which I personally thought would be a great choice as it is something of a national treasure and has cult status.
The presentation I produced I was very happy with but unfortunately I practised this on my own and when it came to doing the presentation to somebody else I realised that saying the words to myself in my head was quicker than saying them aloud. What this underestimation resulted in was an overlap on the time allotted to me. I have now to do this presentation again which isn’t great news but I will chose to see it as an opportunity to improve…
What I will do this time to ensure this doesn’t happen again is rope in an unfortunate soul to listen to me practise my presentation. By doing this I will be able to gage accurately the time it will take. Also a problem I had last time was that I was referring to my notes too much so I will concentrate on learning the speech by heart this time also.
Overall this aspect of the semester was interesting, especially seeing what people chose as their icons.
Once the presentations were over we started the next aspect of the project which was in essence to come up with a product packaging without knowing the product until we had completed the design.
The purpose of this reverse design project was to help us tap into our inner creativity. Being creative is not always something I suffer from but I have still found this to be a really helpful exercise.
To help get our juices flowing, so that we could express ourselves, we all produced a CD of music that we felt would help us get into the groove. I really enjoyed doing this as it gave us an insight into each others tastes in music which I always think has a good reflection of a person’s character. The music brought about a nice change to the atmosphere in class which was one that was more relaxed, a relaxed atmosphere is something I definitely feel is required to be creative.
Initially I did find it hard to start; this was because we had absolutely no indication of where our design was to end up. This caused me a slight sensation of being lost because I could have drawn anything in the world and didn’t know which thing to draw first. In addition to feeling lost though this did add an element of excitement and it pushed all of us to come up with as many ideas as we could so that we could have a decent selection at the end of the process.
I was very pleased with the sketchbook work that I produced on this project and felt that having been very thorough with this part of the project enabled me to select the most appropriate theme/design for the resulting brief. The only thing that I might do different is to get off the starting block a bit quicker. Something that I always feel hinders me is that I tend to spend too much time perfecting one little drawing as I like to make each drawing look perfect. In addition to this I can stand my sketchbook not being sequential or when my ideas are mixed between pages. I tried to let go of this on this project and my sketchbook doesn’t appear to be in any kind of order and my ideas are spread all over. I think letting go of this has helped my creative process as often I won’t progress an idea because I have started another idea in the following page and so to progress the idea would mean that they were mixed together, this stresses me out because I like things to be consecutive.
The product we were finally given was the M5 Coke Bottle. This is a project that has been done by students in previous years and when I had seen their work for it I had been desperate to have a go so naturally I was very pleased by this.
I feel that my natural style of working was obviously well suited to this as I am somebody who likes to work with Vector art anyway and this was the brief. Students who had chosen the alternative option had been given the chance to design a vinyl toy. Although this looks really interesting I am so pleased I chose the Coke Bottle as I am much more interested in commercial design.
On this project I drew inspiration from various sources and looked to magazine cover design, T-shirt design and various Illustrators, I think it is important to look for inspiration in other peoples work in the design process.
There have been some interesting methods suggested along the term like the time the class all added a scribble each to a big sheet of paper. When the piece started going round I thought ‘this could end up looking really interesting’ unfortunately it looked like a child’s drawing.
Overall it has been a great second half to the semester which has flown by. I am looking forward to finishing my design and posting it on my website I only wish we were getting the opportunity to submit them to Coca-Cola.
Since we have started back we have undertaken various tasks which have helped to boost my confidence and strengthen my knowledge and abilities. Our first task was to produce and present a presentation of a Design Icon of the 20th or 21st Century. For this I chose the mini which I personally thought would be a great choice as it is something of a national treasure and has cult status.
The presentation I produced I was very happy with but unfortunately I practised this on my own and when it came to doing the presentation to somebody else I realised that saying the words to myself in my head was quicker than saying them aloud. What this underestimation resulted in was an overlap on the time allotted to me. I have now to do this presentation again which isn’t great news but I will chose to see it as an opportunity to improve…
What I will do this time to ensure this doesn’t happen again is rope in an unfortunate soul to listen to me practise my presentation. By doing this I will be able to gage accurately the time it will take. Also a problem I had last time was that I was referring to my notes too much so I will concentrate on learning the speech by heart this time also.
Overall this aspect of the semester was interesting, especially seeing what people chose as their icons.
Once the presentations were over we started the next aspect of the project which was in essence to come up with a product packaging without knowing the product until we had completed the design.
The purpose of this reverse design project was to help us tap into our inner creativity. Being creative is not always something I suffer from but I have still found this to be a really helpful exercise.
To help get our juices flowing, so that we could express ourselves, we all produced a CD of music that we felt would help us get into the groove. I really enjoyed doing this as it gave us an insight into each others tastes in music which I always think has a good reflection of a person’s character. The music brought about a nice change to the atmosphere in class which was one that was more relaxed, a relaxed atmosphere is something I definitely feel is required to be creative.
Initially I did find it hard to start; this was because we had absolutely no indication of where our design was to end up. This caused me a slight sensation of being lost because I could have drawn anything in the world and didn’t know which thing to draw first. In addition to feeling lost though this did add an element of excitement and it pushed all of us to come up with as many ideas as we could so that we could have a decent selection at the end of the process.
I was very pleased with the sketchbook work that I produced on this project and felt that having been very thorough with this part of the project enabled me to select the most appropriate theme/design for the resulting brief. The only thing that I might do different is to get off the starting block a bit quicker. Something that I always feel hinders me is that I tend to spend too much time perfecting one little drawing as I like to make each drawing look perfect. In addition to this I can stand my sketchbook not being sequential or when my ideas are mixed between pages. I tried to let go of this on this project and my sketchbook doesn’t appear to be in any kind of order and my ideas are spread all over. I think letting go of this has helped my creative process as often I won’t progress an idea because I have started another idea in the following page and so to progress the idea would mean that they were mixed together, this stresses me out because I like things to be consecutive.
The product we were finally given was the M5 Coke Bottle. This is a project that has been done by students in previous years and when I had seen their work for it I had been desperate to have a go so naturally I was very pleased by this.
I feel that my natural style of working was obviously well suited to this as I am somebody who likes to work with Vector art anyway and this was the brief. Students who had chosen the alternative option had been given the chance to design a vinyl toy. Although this looks really interesting I am so pleased I chose the Coke Bottle as I am much more interested in commercial design.
On this project I drew inspiration from various sources and looked to magazine cover design, T-shirt design and various Illustrators, I think it is important to look for inspiration in other peoples work in the design process.
There have been some interesting methods suggested along the term like the time the class all added a scribble each to a big sheet of paper. When the piece started going round I thought ‘this could end up looking really interesting’ unfortunately it looked like a child’s drawing.
Overall it has been a great second half to the semester which has flown by. I am looking forward to finishing my design and posting it on my website I only wish we were getting the opportunity to submit them to Coca-Cola.
Here is a copy of my design so far, feedback is welcome.
posted by DREW @ 2:53 PM
9 Comments:
Hey Drew, sorry to hear your presentation didn't go to plan. I am some what of a nervous motormouth, but I dont know where that came from (smirk).
I must say I'm realy liking your design here and would one day hope to see this on an actual coke can!!!
I dare you to submit it :P
Oh. Im not sure if Steve has mentioned anything but, Thomas Wealthy is no longer on this course as he realised this is not the rigth carrer choice for him. We (the 1st years) have been asked to take his name of our journal links. Has this been mentioned to you???
Thanks, I was going to do some further work on my design but as the deadline is so close now I'm just going to go ahead with this version.
I'll remove the link, thanks for the heads up. It may have been mentioned on a Thursday or else I wasn't paying attention...
This design is a credit to your illustration Degree. The simplicity of your design works effective with the flat colours. The curved shapes support the music flow and compliment the Coca-Cola logo.
Excellent work!
I love your design drew, but from here it looks really washed out and faded.
Is that just the image compression or is that the intended effect?
I think that your design looks really professional and would not look out of place with the bottles that were eventually released by Coca Cola.
I like the way the you have incorporated the red Coca Cola curve into the design along with the curve of the musical notes.
Thankyou everyone for the feedback and compliments. I know what you are saying Craig about the design looking washed out, I think you are referring to the white on the grey, the grey is just something I added for the blog so it should be an issue otherwise.
I think you design looks professional and you have used the right colour combination for the product.
I also agree with Ben I think you have used the curve to your advantage more than any other design I have seen.
I'm afraid this isn't a very constructive comment but a pleasant one none the less. I think your coke bottle design is absolutely cracking and shows a great deal of talent and promise. It has excellent flow and consistency across all elements and although it is simplistic it has a really strong concept. Well done!
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