New Media Studies

This previous week, we met the client to present him all our projects in final version. It was interesting to showcase all the materials we have been working on since his last feedback. The client didn’t react on any design. We didn’t have any feelings from him regarding our works. Instead, we talk about technical aspect (“what is the size of the sign?”). I would have appreciate to have his final approval or his complete honestly to disapproved the design. I may misunderstood a part of this last meeting.

One last new material had been added at the last minute. I though that all the sign tasks were done, but at the end of the client meeting, I have been asked to create one more sign (above) with a new tagline “Come taste for  yourself”. I like this last one request that well illustrate the work of any person involve on a design. “It will takes you 5 minutes to do it” was the reason I had to do this last new sign. From this, I learned to put words on a feeling I didn’t understand while working on designing signs. Any final work has this main goal: to appear effortless to the people.

The team has decided to collect all projects on a DVD. I made sure to transfer correctly all the previous signs in their final version. I was also assigned to work on the design of the portfolio of the team.As soon as I will receive the template and wire-frame of the portfolio, I will propose a first draft of it.

Finally, after weeks of working for City Farm, some highlights regarding a project process has been learned. At the beginning of the project, it was very rich to share all the thoughts. At that point all the points weren’t clearly define. The brainstorming and talks about how we will organize our works was required: we all came from different background and there was too many factors unclear regarding the client expectations. After this short period, the process was smoother and more productive. From the readings we had to get through, people in the team had different opinions regarding the analysis of a design. It helped me to understand how to describes works that has been done with emotions and feelings. When we think about the impact a design has to have, the process of production is different and more restraint.

However, if we had to redo this same project, I would be definitely agree to work on it again. The choice of Basecamp as a management tool was a good idea. It helped to easily share files and comments on different materials at a same time. The interaction between all the team mates ran well. I appreciated the recap and agenda posts. It helped me to keep notified about the next steps on the project.

The main goal of this week was to rework on our sign from the client feedback. The signage team had to face the different critics even if some of them seemed to be out of sense. None of any design recommended by us was accepted in its whole aspect. It was disappointing to hear that City Farm preferred to go with a corporate image instead of a more current style communication. The tag lines and mock ups proposed were supposed to rejuvenate its weak brand awareness from the public. Previously, I felt that the signage team wanted to help City Farm to be more innovative, and now I have the sensation that the people in contact with the client simply took a step back. I thought that they would have the guts to stand up for our concept and explain our choices. Our vision of a fun and sexy campaign to work on turn out to be a simple and unattractive one.

The client reaction was not a real surprise. We expected to have this answer. One of the reason is clearly because the client brief was not enough analyzed. The client relationship was not close enough to clearly come up with a strong idea validated. Instead, we had only few clues to work on our designs.

I worked on the new signs with as directives to keep a constant color pattern and tag line. The client likes some parts of the previous design but some elements and the second level of reading wasn’t accepted. I felt that the main reason was simply because our contact at City Farm is scared of taking responsibilities from decisions that he has to justify to some other superior. I was convinced that City Farm tried to differentiate itself from other grocery stores. The task of the signage team was to recommend recognizable visuals and in the same time to create signs that people would like to talk to their friends..

When I asked others opinions from people who never heard of City Farm, they were more attracted to the previous signs. They liked the different situation of vegetables acting.

The next week, we will listen to our final client feedback. From that point, we will do our last modification if required.

From the last brainstorming, we focus our work to get ready to be presented to the client.
The last week, I have been more involved and interested in following the process of making the signs. Feedback and previous critics tend to guide the design team works to focus on a better prospective. Some of the messages convey by the signs were not enough efficient or relevant.
For my part, I made a set of 4 signs. I choose to bring each sign with a different color background (based on a pattern closed to the logo colors) and with a same main recognizable character.
The main goal was to bring visuals with more colors and simple designs easy to read. The design character was made with simple lines just to tell a story.

The team focusing on City Farm signs agreed on different visual prototypes. From that point, I had to rework on my first draft. On previous document, City farm didn’t have any graphic consistence. A recognizable color pattern will help visitors to identify the signs more easily. In that perspective, I focus my work on reusing the same color of the actual logo. The grunge effect is a reminder of the retro style and another important part of the visual identity. Later on, we will make sure that this visual aspect will be maintained on every document produced.
We received critics from others classmates. Their feelings and perceptions on the different signs made were important for us. This step, was a starting point for us to bringing new ideas for our next visuals.

While we are working on new signs, we also start to contact printers. One local based kept our attention because of his environment concern: Digital hub.

The next week, sign prototypes will be presented to the client.

Starting a new website requires a good use of CSS coding knowledge. That will help to make pages more readable and user experience easier to understand.

When the choice of all content is done, it is essential to spend time on the organization of it. Elements as title or menu items should be clearly identify on any pages.

As a guide, I will use for my recent website project the 960 grid system.

Being part of a new growing project feels like cooking.
Previously, we discussed a lot about the menu we wanted to serve. What special ingredients can we bring to our client to show off our skills?

This week, each team member was busy on slicing, boiling or mixing ideas (on video project and signs project). Before getting in a rush time, we decided to be more organized. We agreed to incorporate a new project management tool in our kitchen: Basecamp.
Now, we exchange files with each other and comments more easily and with more interactivity.

The client expect to get what he ordered but he let us surprise him by bringing some exotic ingredient on the table.
For the signs project, I was in charge of picking up some inspirational ideas and report them to the team. We wanted to keep the theme expressed through City Farm logo: a retro/vintage style. So, I look for some fresh fonts and vivid graphics to inspire us. Later on, this task helped me to create a first draft of a sign based on this retro style.

The next week, the team will have some more feedback from the client. It will help us to keep our project close to his expectations.

City Farm is a Chicago based farm who needed help to redefine their communication tools. Our team took this opportunity to explore different ways to resolve a major problem: explaining the purpose of City Farm existence this to the public.

The first steps of this project were to define the essentials needs of City Farm regarding its visual communication. We analyzed the actual documents available. Every information recently produced were gathered to understand how City Farm communicate. The The project manager of our team did a great job by keeping all team members informed about the client relationship.

I have been following up all the threads posted concerning the project, many brainstorming have been done too. Before starting any production, those previous analysis were essentials. Recently, the team took the initiative to invest social media as part of City Farm communication tools:

• A creation of a Facebook page.
• A twitter page

The next week, the project will be more interesting mainly because we will start the production part. A video project and visuals to be display on the farm location will be discussed.

A new web project started. It will be an opportunity for me to acquire more  knowledge in HTML and CSS coding. The project will be focusing on building a website from scratch focusing on usability. Above is my first draft of the homepage.

Basically, the purpose of the website will be a profile page on Chicago-based digital agencies.
As content, identification information of the agencies will be available and also more updates or related articles:
- name of the agencies
- date of creation
- skills
- clients, last projects

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Adobe CS5 new coming is really exciting, and I feel that it’s a good moment for me to step back and define what my design toolkit looks like.

Today:

• I explored (and used through many projects) all the Adobe suite focus on print and web design: Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign and Flash.
• I had also the opportunities to learn the basics and to work on video editing software such as Final Cut and After effect.
• More web projects were recently in progress, so I needed to keep learning more about HTML and CSS code.

Future:

• Photos and videos editing takes more and more importance in my projects, I will definitely keep learning how to use the all potential of Photoshop and After effect.
• Mobile technology will be my main interest. I will focus more to develop toolkit toward the use on mobile devices.