Unfortunately, I Still Have A Lot To Do On My Portfolio But I’m Not Really Mad About It. I Chose To

Day Two - Blog Post #3

Today we swapped the packages we’d worked on this past week and our assignment was to recreate the new package but digitally! My new package is fun because each text block has a gradient colour scheme. After getting a close to accurate digital outline, I made sure to grab the correct swatches for the gradient from the Pantene swatch books that my professor provided in class.

I’m lucky that I’ve had quite a bit of practice with the pen tool this past summer or I may have found this a bit more frustrating. At this point, I think that illustrator is my favourite program to work in. I still need to get on buying some replacement blades for next week to ensure a good cut. I really want to make sure I get this package as accurate as possible so I’ve scanned the package itself to double check my work.

Reflection: Taking this tactile work back to digital adds a fluidity from hands-on to computer work, something that I’ve always appreciated about design work. 

We’ve Got Shapes

So step one was to make some rough shapes on my ipad and then bring them into illustrator to make them into vectors. I tried to keep the style similar to the circle so that they would all match well and ended up with this:

Alright, not bad. You’ve got a square to promote balance, structure and in a more abstract sense, community and integrity. The circle represents wholeness, infinity, oneness. The triangle is known to be the strongest shape to build with as any weight placed on them is evenly distributed amongst the sides. Triangles also represent harmony.

Placing them in a line like this makes them look a little like building blocks, or children’s toys. The idea is that you can build Place into a space you need it to be.

Rough: verb.work or shape (something) in a rough, preliminary fashion."flat surfaces of wood are roughed down"

That’s a cool meaning and it applies well to Place because it’s supposed to be a space that you can make your own during use. 

Just to be sure, I also tried out smoothing out the shapes so that I could see whether a rough shape or a smooth shape would be better.

At this point, I’m still undecided. I feel like rough and smooth have very different meenings to me. I like the way the rough one looks because it feels more organic and handmade, which is the type of community I’m trying to promote and reach with place. I want Place to be like a community hub and don’t want it to come across too polished.

On the other hand, I want Place to still appeal to higher-end events as well, despite the playful atmosphere of the logo shapes. In that sense, I think the smoother shapes could do better. I also know that the smoother shape would shrink down easier, and probably be easier to work within the long run. That being said, I don’t think it’s necessary to choose one or the other. There may be opportunities to use both styles depending on the event. 

We’ve Got Colour

So with a chosen logo to work with, I now have to figure out colour. I know these posts have been a little bit long-winded but bear with me here, typing all this out is helping me think as well. 

When working with colour, it’s important to think about emotions you’re trying to get across as well as what your audience is. Since my audience is the community, I want to use colours that are welcoming and friendly.

I started by collecting some colours that I like. I usually do this by looking at other work I’ve done and picking from photos that fit the mood of the project.

Lately, I’ve been really into softer, bright colours. 

These are some of the colour combos that I played with for this project but ultimately, I’ve ended up on the pale yellow, red and blue. They’re a softer take on a fully saturated primary palette. I may use the light pink as well later in some pattern work. 

Yellow = optimism, happiness, enthusiasm, hope red = passion, love, fire, determination blue = sea, sky, confidence, calm

Client Survey

General Company Info 

What is the name of your company?  Place

What is your business/what do you do?  Place provides a single location for a range of events in Nanaimo’s downtown core. It can be a pop-up market, a venue for a reception, an intimate concert, a wedding, a dance, an art class, the possibilities are endless.

How old is your company?  The company has yet to exist.

What is the size of your company? A small core of people involved in bettering downtown Nanaimo. two people leading a small team of 5-6.

Are there specific dates the project needs to be completed?  No.

Your budget dictates how much time can be spent on your project. What is the budget?  Open

Describe your business in one sentence.  No matter what event you are hosting, this is the place for it.

Describe your business in two words? Convenient, Reliable

Describe your business in one word? Perfect

What doesn’t your business do, or do well? Does not host large concerts, or sporting events.

What differentiates your business from competitors? Ease of access, Place’s main interest isn’t how much money can be made but in creating a place for the community to use without burning a hole in people’s wallets.

Is there a story that is unique to your company? When searching for a location for a grad show, Sara realized that there really wasn't’ anywhere in the downtown core that was appropriately sized or available for a small reception.

Or perhaps a unique story to the company name?  Every city should have a place, somewhere that you can go that would be good for a range of events, but also a safe please for youth to hang out and host community events.

What are your business objectives?  To create a beautiful place to host events that can host a range of things from shows, events, receptions, to tourist attractions in the summer months like a large market or informational sessions.

What do you want the design/redesign to do for your company?  I want it to give the company a modern look and feel that is also welcoming to the community.

General Image of Company 

If you company/brand was a person who would it be? Why? I don’t know if it would be a person so much as a representation or even an animal. Place should be able to represent Nanaimo and the future of Nanaimo and its community. If anything, I’d say that I’d want it to be represented by the Orca because of its sense of community and ties to the Salish sea.

Is there an important object, building or person for your business? The building for this business is what makes the business and it would be located right downtown, on the water.

How do you want the public to perceive your image?  A meeting hall, a place that represents Nanaimo, a sense of place for Nanaimo. It should feel like home but also fresh.

What do you want to be famous for?  Being the place that people go to when they need a place.

What words should the general public associate your business with? Name at least 3. Modern, Inviting, Perfect

How do you want your image to be seen in 2 years? 10 years?  Comfortable, familiar, renowned

Competitors 

Who are your competitors?  Vancouver Island Conference Center, Port Theatre

How are they better/worse than your product/service?  Vancouver Island Conference Center has a larger space to host larger events, Port theatre has better space for theatrical events.

Who might you compete with in the future? More developments. 

The Target Audience 

Who is your customer? Describe in detail. My customer is anyone who is looking to use a space but is having trouble finding a good venue for it. A lot of people in Nanaimo have to settle for a venue that isn’t necessarily ideal and we are lacking a community spot. 

What do they do?  Live in Nanaimo and actively work towards bettering the downtown community via productions or events.

What do they watch? Community productions, local musicians, short plays, open mics.

Who is the ideal customer? Someone who perhaps wants to bring more culture to the city but lacks the funding/space.

How old is your ideal customer? 20-60

How do they find out about you? Through advertisements downtown, facebook, Nanaimo’s website

What do they want from you?  A place to host an event.

What customers do you not want to attract?  People who want to host an extremely large event or have the money to do so elsewhere. (Large corporate events that exceed capacity)  

What do you offer your customers that your competition does not? A place that can be molded easily to fit their needs. The place isn’t designed a certain way to format one specific thing so it means its a space that can be used for a variety of things without many spacial issues.

Current identity 

Do you have an identity?  No

What are two identities or logos that you like? Dislike? I like the CBC logo and the CNR logo. I don’t like the Nanaimo Chamber logo   

What colours do you like? Dislike?  I like sunset colours and when you just use multiple shades. I don’t like intense greens or dull colours.

Anything else? 

What did we not ask that you want us to understand? The Place isn’t like anything that’s already in Nanaimo because it isn’t held back by a small size or a regular business, it isn’t meant to make money from events, just enough to cover expenses. It’s meant to be somewhere rentable that people can use to host a variety of events and promote community within Nanaimo.

Design & Thinking Documentary

Design & Thinking is an interesting documentary to watch as a designer because it has designers in the working field that agree and disagree with it, and designers who don’t know exactly what it is. I’m always fascinated when we get to hear from other designers in a visual sense, much more so than the written word. I thought some interesting things were said, here are some ideas that I really quite liked.

“Design Thinking is applying design methods to the working class and world.”

I thought that this was a neat little concept because it really helps me as a designer understand more what Design Thinking is and what we’re trying to do with it. This makes it feel like Design Thinking is less a scientific method and more of a way to bridge a gap.

“Design is a sport where you have to participate.”

I think a lot of designers, myself included, feel like we have to figure everything out on our own but Design Thinking really cements the idea that design thinking is a team effort. I really like how this phrase puts it into such easy terms. 

“Rapid Prototyping: It’s ok to have a bad idea.”

Luckily, this is something we’re taught well in our program but it’s nice to see this concept out in the real world. I’m so nervous about having to be perfect when I leave school but making wrong decisions seem inevitable. 

“Ask Why”

This I think, is my favourite idea from the documentary. I feel like it’s so easy to just take a client’s request and push it out without thought to exactly what they asked for. It’s easy to fall into a rhythm and just forget how to use our design minds, but I never want to forget how to be creative.

Opportunities for Change & Innovation

This seems like a very self-centred approach to this project because I might be one of the select few that faces this problem. But hey, I think it’s important to do a passion project every now and again.

Portfolio Website

The Links I’ll Use

about me, small joys, resumé

Which 3 (or more) projects will you showcase on your site?

Balanced Balanced is a project that I did last semester where we had to choose an issue and then try and solve it as best we could through graphic design. Balanced ended up being an integrative system to promote a healthy work/life balance for the issue. It showcases an app design, web page, smart watch, smart speaker and welcome pamphlet as well as a colour brand.

The Nav The Nav Student Press is a magazine that I have been art directing the past two years and worked on for the last three. It showcases my editorial skills and features two different base designs for me to show on my website.

Place Place is a branding project that I am currently working on for design for business. At the end of this project I will have a fully branded guide for a new business. This will include a logo, a pattern, style guide and branding elements. I will add it at the end of the term.

Fox & Koi Fox & Koi is the enamel pin business that I run with Teigan Mudle. Through fox & koi, we have designed over 30 pins and I have personally been responsible for 15 of them and collaborated on 5. I have also done some illustrative print work, designed backing cards and created stickers.

Where do you need to fill holes in your showcase?

photography

mockups

sketches/roughs for all projects

more active dribble, design instagram

What will you do specifically to fill holes?

write rationals

do photography of products and/or mockups

post more on my design instagram

post more on dribbble

organize past sketches and roughs into something legible.

What platform will you use?

Wordpress, powered by semplice

What is your domain name?

saraholmes.design

Design For Business

One of the biggest things that people think of when they think of graphic design is logo design. I must admit that it isn’t necessarily an area that I feel particularly strong in. Conceptualizing a logo isn’t easy though, I shouldn’t speak like it is. Sure, you can go online and pay someone five dollars for a logo for your business, but when you do that, you’re getting the quality of work that you pay for.

The process of branding a business is definitely more than a five dollar job. A logo takes thought and care, it shouldn’t be taken lightly because a logo can and usually stick with a business forever, depending on how successful the logo is. A logo can even add to the success of the business it’s for. 

The current project that I’m working on to develop my branding skills, is creating the logo for a business designed to promote tourism for Vancouver Island. 

Because I noticed a real lack of it and I love taking the opportunity to promote tourism within my own city, I decided to imagine a venue downtown that could be used for a multitude of things, its main purpose being to promote a sense of place and provide a venue for activities in Nanaimo such as open mics, community classes, receptions, showcases, art shows, intimate concerts, etc. The opportunities are pretty endless. In the summer it could double as an information center downtown for tourists and hold informative talks about Nanaimo’s history. It could be a gathering place for those that come in on cruise ships and a banquet hall. 

I decided to keep it simple and name it ‘Place’. As in, “That could be a good place”, “This is your place”, “This Place is so cool.” I felt that calling it Place gives it almost a sense of ownership to Nanaimo.

Before getting into sketching, I started with a mind map. Mind maps are a really good way to get some concepts and ideas down on paper, things that you maybe didn’t even realize were connected before can all come together in a mind map. I also filled out the survey seen in the post previous to this one. I decided to focus on uses, anatomy of the place, emotions that should be evoked when thinking about the Place and associations I wanted to be made with it. 

Then I went on to starting to draw out some logo concepts. These all look a little goofy but there’s a reason to the rhyme and a rhyme to the reason. Before you can have some truly good ideas, sometimes you need to get rid of the excess thinking in your brain. I worked fast to try and get some of the bad ideas out first and tried a lot of different things, in some simply trying symbols, and others only trying word marks.

I’ve got a couple of pages more of these little logo sketches but they aren’t much better. While I worked on them, despite getting out a lot of ideas, in some instances I only felt frustrated. I know there’s a logo concept there that’s truly great but just out of reach. If I need to get all of these ones out first before I can get at it, then so be it. In the end, I wound up with around 100 little sketches, give or take. 

Having definitely exhausted my creativity when it comes to the letter ‘P’, I’ll probably work on narrowing these concepts down to just three choices and develop them for the next step in the logo process. If I don’t like anything I have, I’ll just have to sketch another hundred up. (The joys of being a graphic designer. :)

Brand Statement

Hi, my name is Sara. I am a graphic design graduate. When I’m not designing, I’m running my small enamel pin business or slinging coffee at White rabbit Coffee Co. No matter what the task, I put my all into it with gusto. I work bright and fast. I want to create real, positive change through my work, no matter how small. 

Brand Promise

I’ll always do better than before. (WIP)

Pushing the limits on every project. (possibility?)