My Design Process 1 Week Brief Intro & Design Process Study Task 1 & 2

You My Design Process 1 Week Brief Intro & Design Process Study Task 1 & 2

Initial Thoughts, Problem/Brief Analyse
I am required to make a folded leaflet that describes my design process and how I apply it to my own work. I am not limited to the typical folded leaflet, I will experiment with more 3D structures alongside flat structures through experimentation with folding techniques, paper stocks, color, typography and the usual design elements. So long as the visual production represents my design process in a clearly communicated way.

This brief is something very self directed in terms of what I need to produce, the outcome needs to represent my design process. How I go about solving a design problem from the briefing all the way to the final production and presentation of the product. So the target audience will be myself so I don't need to really focus attention on pleasing a particular audience. 

As usual I need to be critical with my analyze of my ideas, develop on strengths and improve or discard things that done work to create a finalized piece of work. Play to my strengths, develop and finalize elements that suit my design style the most as this is a personal self directed product.

Considerations

• When experimenting with fold techniques and production methods I think it would be good to look into available production methods in a professional output through print companies and internal resources within college. It would be good to compare the services i have at my disposal and how they compare with recourses outside of college, what benefits would I have from both (Cost, quality, volume, timescale, techniques and construction methods availables
• Consider stocks.
• Color combinations.
• Showing my process within a visual outcome with elements that communicate me as a person as well as my practice (If both are possible in a legible manner)
• Usual design elements (Typography, Layout, Hierarchy, Image etc)
• Research inspiration & idea generation and how it all ties together to create a final product.
• When do I work best (Conditions, Time of day, Boosters like coffee, after I have had a break off the work etc)

Studio Task 1
To help us kick start things we did a small studio task in pairs making a brainstorm of elements of the design process. While outlining my creative process I think its important to stay true to my word and follow the process through the brief.

We then split off from our pairs and began creating a flow chart style diagram that demonstrates our individual process. I feel mine is relatively straight forward in comparison with other peoples in the class who's seemed random and chaotic. 

Its obviously a personal thing how you work best to your own styles though so expressing this in the final outcome is important. 

Design Process 

1. Receive Brief.
2. Analyse The Brief to define the problem.
3. Research conceptual and visual research for inspiration.
4. How can I approach the problem considering things like: Location & Target Audience.
5. Ideas generation by the use of Mind mapping, Word Association.
6. Develop a Concept Idea and begin making rough preliminary sketches and thumbnails by experimenting with all design aspects. 
7. Select the best ideas and critically analyze and take peer feedback on board to advance and develop them.
8. Develop Ideas into final ideas while still taking on peer feedback and personal analyze.
9. Perfect Idea.
10. Present & Evaluate my final outcome

Rough Idea I made in the session we were required to turn the flat diagram flowchart into a folded construction. It failed miserably though my idea was to show the 1st stage and the final stage when the construction was closed up. This was based on an idea of hiding irrelevant elements that are the in-between section of the project and showing the First and Last stage to allow the user to be intrigued and interact with the product to find out the middle/connecting stages.

Studio Task 2

The second studio task required us to think a lot more about the construction of our leaflet. It still wasn't a very good final outcome though due to me not really having time to properly go through my design process of thinking ideas through mind mapping and lots of sketches and taking in inspiration.

But for a quick top of my head idea it turned out OK I guess. 

The ideas was to create a simple 3 Fold construction that when folded up and the sleeves stored inside the constriction it appeared simplistic 

This is a good way of looking at design I think, while something looks simple at first glance its hard for a bystander to appreciate the effort the designer or artist has gone through to achieve this final design. Simple design is always passed off as a quick fix approach so demonstrating an idea of complex simplicity would be cool. 

Simple 3 fold construction with simple primary shapes coupled with simplistic colors the neutral white contrasts nice with the shapes and colors, it was just a rough start but I could demonstrate more important stages of the design process through a more defined colour scheme, different shapes to symbolize importance, or a consistent shape or color with different sizes to demonstrate importance. 

Each sleeve pulls out to reveal the description of that stage, its obviously very scruffy at the moment but with experimentation with actual type and properly considered shape, colour and size this idea could develop into something good. 

Its a little bit too "cut & stick" as apposed to folding though so this is were theres an obvious problem. 

Folds up simply enough hiding middle stages and showing the first section of the design process. Would be good if I could incorporate the final 7, 8 & 9 stages onto the back page thats blank at the moment. 

Obvious layout and typography considerations need to be taken into account this was just an experimentation with the construction and fold methods. 

Tried out black instead of reversed out type on the coloured shapes isn't as legible though but obviously this isn't an accurate representation of the typesetting I will use. 

I picked up this cool promotion card by last years graduates Hungry Sandwich Club, pretty nice way of an interactive promotional product. A way in wich a simple flat 2D construction can be produced into a variety of 3D outcomes. The simplistic 1 color and stock for the robot construction helps you appreciate the vector imagery. 

Would like to use the laser cutter to achieve outcomes like this. 

Now I have tried out a few ideas my next stage is to begin my design process properly, I will need to quickly discard bad ideas though and develop quickly as I only have a few days so it will be intense. I will begin to brainstorm lots of ideas and start creating alot of thumbnails to refine and advance from. To support this next stage some research would be good I got a good book out on promotional package design that has a lot of 3D based and flat structures with templates that will help me get my head around some interesting folds. 

I will also support this idea generation stage with the usual blog based internet research inspiration.