OUGD502: PPP2 - Aviva

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I got into contact with Aviva in York to enquire about a placement in the web design sector of the company. I was given the contact details of the head of UI/UX, Kimberley by a relative. She had a few questions for me to answer in an e-mail.

- How long do you want the placement for?

- When are you available?

- Can you code?

- Do you have a portfolio?

I complied a portfolio of work and also a CV to reply to her as quickly as possible.

Creative CV:

CV:

Portfolio:

I did not have a response straight away which worried me so I sent another e-mail to see if she would reply.

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Second e-mail

Kimberley replied to this e-mail:

Her reply:

This e-mail presented me with some choices, if I were to travel to Norwich the placement would have to be paid so that travel costs could be included. If the placement turned out to be unpaid I would be unable to accept it. I wrote another e-mail to her asking if the placement would be paid.

My reply:

I am still awaiting a reply but I am hopeful that any placement I would be offered would be paid. If I do not get a reply in the next week I will send her another e-mail so that I can organise my time efficiently.

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E-mailing Kimberley again:

Her reply:

This was a disappointment but I plan to take it as a learning curve and plan to keep in touch with her into the future. 

OUGD502: PPP - Life's a Pitch Presentation

OUGD502: PPP - Life's a Pitch Evaluation

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The Life's a Pitch brief was very enjoyable and eye-opening. I worked in a team of 5 people (Laura, Issy, Sam and Harrison) we called ourselves two plus three. I was very happy with the name choice and felt confident with the group choice. Our time management was quite poor as we put together the presentation the day before the deadline due to other modules being due at the same time. In this case I feel that had the presentations been pushed back another week I would have felt more prepared and our group would have a more informed set of research. Though this was an issue I do think that I personally have a lot of research and understanding into my aspect of the project and I would be confident to use my research in the future. Communications within my group was okay but could have been improved, a lot of our chats were done over facebook and between certain members of the group, I think that we should have had more meetings and this would have allowed us to be more prepared and work better as a group. Overall, I think our presentation went really well and I am very happy with the outcome, even though it was last minute. I would be happy to work with these people again though I think that if I were to do this brief again I would have chosen to work with people who share a common interest with me, Web Design. My group was formed because we all knew that we would work hard and well together though I think we should have taken more time talking over what kind of work we produced whether it be web based on print based. 

OUGD502: PPP2 - Numiko

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Numiko visited the college back in December and I knew immediately that I wanted to work with them over the summer period. I sent the head of design, Matthew, an e-mail on the day of their presentation expressing my interest in the company and also to compliment them on their work. 

First e-mail:

Reply:

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I was very happy with the reply from Matthew and set out to produce work that I was happy with to show him at the end of the year. 

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Emailing David:

One of the current third year students work at Numiko and sent in some business cards for David, the creative director. I sent an e-mail to david as I had not had any contact from Matthew regarding a visit.

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David did not reply and neither did Matthew so I rung up the studio. I spoke to the secretary and left a message for Matthew to ring me.  Matthew replied to my phone message with an e-mail. 

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The visit:

I went into Numiko for a visit and was introduced to a few members of the staff. I expressed on the visit that I had an interest in UI/UX design and Matthew introduced me to his brother who is the head of UX at Numiko. Speaking to Daniel put things into perspective about UX research, I realised that this something that I am interested in but I do not want to abandon the design aspect of digital design and focus simply on research. I was then introduced to another Daniel who is responsible for wireframes and scamp designs, speaking to Daniel gave me an insight into what I want my future career to consist of. 

Matthew asked to view some of my work on my online portfolio (Behance). I talked through my recent projects, focusing on the web design briefs I had completed. Doing this I gained a one week placement with the hopes of extending if it goes well. 

OUGD502: PPP2 - Life's a Pitch Script

OUGD502: PPP - Life's a Pitch Research

After choosing our group we got together to come up with a list of jobs and research topics that we each needed to complete. Though it would be beneficial for us to research into each aspect of business we simply do not have the time as we have other modules and hand-ins at the same time.

I was given Target Audience to look into. I have completed an A-Level and GSCE in Media Studies where I was required to look into Target Audience quite extensively so I was very happy to look into this. There are a few main areas of the target audience that I need to look into in a lot of detail, these are:

• Demographic
• Income
• Gender
• Age
• Why they would want to work with us?
• Ethics of the company
• Where the company will be based - travel expenses and phone bill etc.

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Demographic:

- NRS social grades

The NRS social grades are a system of demographic classification used in the United Kingdom. They were originally developed by the National Readership Survey to classify readers, but are now used by many other organisations for wider applications and have become a standard for market research.^[1] They were developed over 50 years ago and achieved widespread usage in 20th Century Britain. Their definition is now maintained by the Market Research Society.^[2]

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After looking at these social grades I have come to the decision that, if we had to market to a specific demographic we would market for ABC1 social grade. This decision is based on the prices we have come up with to charge our clients. We are charging over £50 an hour per project which I personally think requires a larger disposable income as branding and graphic design is not considered to be a vital aspect of some peoples business plan.

I am prepared for the question of prejudice to be raised at the end of the presentation. I think that I should justify my choices and prove that we are not simply ruling out the working classes. 

I would consider myself and my family to be on the cusp of working class and middle class. Harrison and Sam would also consider their familes to be working class. Laura and Issy would be more likely to be within the demographic of our target audience which is incredibly beneficial for our group. They have a contextual knowledge of some companies and businesses that myself, Harrison and Sam do not have, and vise versa. 

I stand by my choice to define our target audience and have full support from my group to do so. 

Research on target audience:

I looked on the internet at effective ways to define a target audience, my findings brought me to a few documents with small tasks to complete in order to properly define a target audience. 

I printed this document purely for the line Targeting a specific market does not mean that you to exclude people that do not fit your criteria. 

I think that though it is important to have a defined target audience we cannot afford to be picky. Some members of the group disagree with me but I think that by being open to global clients specifically we are opening many more doors for our company.

Highlighting our skill set:

One of the tasks said that by drawing out a list of of our skills and pros of our company would help to set a target market as we would know what kind of person would be attracted to our company. 

Who are our target audience? 

Another task said to answer a series of questions that would help us to define a target audience. 

The second set of questions were much harder to fill in but I gave it my best shot.

Niche audiences:

I think that the best way to market ourselves would be to identify a niche audience and a gap in the market for our services. I found this article online:

Looking at this document I think that our niche is quite hard to define, I think that in the first year of business it is so competitve and hard to set a specific type of person that we would work for. My personal opinion would be to work for local independent business owners in Leeds as a start and then branch out to larger companies internationally. 

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To conclude I would say that our target audience would be independent business owners on a national scale, without the exclusion of global companies and people with quite a high disposable income to justify our costings. 

OUGD502: PPP2 - Life's a Pitch (emails)

Today we decided on e-mail addresses of each of the members of the team. I thought that it would be best that we had 6 e-mail addresses - one for each of and one for general enquiries. I think it is important to have this so that clients have an idea of who to contact first. Though we might have a managing director it would be beneficial for us all to be able to pick up on general e-mails from perspective clients. The team agreed with me on this and we created info@twoplusthree.com

OUGD502: PPP2 - Life's a Pitch (Defining roles)

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In our business I want to make sure that we all have our clear roles, just in case we are asked in the presentation. I devised a list of each of our responsibilities based on each persons strengths.

Harrison: Creative Director, Type and Layout Specialist, Editorial designer, Concept developer, Visual engineer. 

Samuel: Proof reader, Type and Layout specialist, Editorial designer, Client communicator, Print based imagery consultant

Laura: Proof reader, Packaging designer, Client communicator, Researcher, Copywriter

Issy: Packaging designer, Typographer, Concept developer, Visual engineer

Ellen: Digital designer, Concept developer, Client communicator, Web developer, Screen based imagery consultant.

OUGG502: PPP2 - Researching Into Aviva

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After getting the news from a relative about Kimberley at Aviva in York I have decided to carry out a quick search into her.

OUGD502: PPP - Life's a Pitch Choosing a Group

Today we were briefed for Life's a Pitch. This is a presentation based on research for our own business. We had to choose groups of 4/5 people to be in our groups and come up with a business from scratch. Choosing a group is, as always, very difficult as there is such a varied group of people in the class.

I chose to work with Laura and Issy who are my friends and housemates on the course. I chose to do this, against John's advice because I think that we will work well together. If this were to be a real business I do not think that I would make the same choice as I am more interested in Web design and they are both packaging designers. In our group of three we chose to work with Harrison and Sam, another friendship group. We did this because their work is similar to our own.

We wanted our business to be based on the two friendship groups coming together to work as a team. We are all very good friends with one another which I believe will help us massively in this brief. Coming up with a name was something that was done without my presence as I was busy on a Responsive brief and we had little time to come up with a name. The name that the group came up with was two plus three. I was very happy with the name because it is succinct and to the point which I think represents our group.

We have decided to market ourselves as a Branding and Identity company, this is purely down to the design disciplines that each of us possess. I am a web designer, Laura and Issy are packaging designers, Harrison and Sam are editorial designers, putting these together we think that Branding offers us the most options collectively.

OUGD502: PPP2 - Personal Branding (Behance)

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I have learnt the importance of having an online presence. I spent a lot of time photographing my work from the first year and also from the beginning of the second year.

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My Behance:

Since uploading my Behance portfolio I have had many views for my projects and also a direct message from a man in Germany who wants to use my coffee book from first year. 

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The message:

OUGD502: PPP2 - Creative Spark Research

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I have been researching some studios in Leeds and Manchester that I could contact for any placement opportunities. I came across Creative Spark which have offices in both Leeds and Manchester and also London. I wanted to look at them in more detail and also look at the work they produce with the hope of contacting them for a visit.

We don't start by designing, oh no, we start by asking questions and listening. We listen to you. Really hard. We dig and dig until we know everything about our clients - to make sure we know precisely how we can help them.

Then, it's all about the idea. The spark. The piece of excitement that draws people in. We produce sparks by working hard, hammering out ideas fanatically to create something special. Passionately exploring all the possibilities, we know everything starts with a spark. So there you go. No fluff. No flowery nonsense. Just honest hard work.

I liked the website because it gave some detail into the members of staff that work at the company. I think that by doing this it highlights the personality and also the working environment of the studio. 

The portfolio of work goes on and is all incredibly creative. I picked out a few of my favourite projects and some that I could see myself working on. 

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Visitor numbers to libraries across Trafford had been reducing, even though the facilities had received considerable investment. What they now offer is far more than just lending books, so we were asked to create a new brand that would encompass all the things available at Trafford’s community-focused libraries.

We started off by tackling their brand identity and brand guidelines. We supplemented this by creating a bank of icons to help people easily find their way around. We then worked on their interior signage and created a colour pallet that would be used across all 12 libraries in the region.

We came up with an adaptable brand because all of the individual libraries were different. And we gave them value for money moving forwards as the brand could be used online and in other marketing and promotions. Most importantly we created an engaging brand identity that appealed to a wide-range of people who live in the Trafford area.

“We were very impressed with the branding and signage ideas put forward by you and feel they embody what we are trying to achieve in our library modernisation strategy.” Nic Davies, Trafford Council

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Aura Healthcare

Website Design & Development

Aura Healthcare is an international healthcare software and IT services supplier. They support a range of IT solutions that help healthcare professionals and organisations primarily within the NHS.

Aura came to us with a brief to overhaul their current online presence and we jumped at the challenge. We came up with creative concepts for imagery and made sure it had clear call to actions therefore encouraging users to book demos through the website. We consolidated two of Aura’s websites to produce a responsive website which provides a balance between who Aura are as a company and the IT solutions they can provide. We are currently working with Aura to develop their overall digital strategy.

Click here to see the site.

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Hale Country Club

Print, Brand & Web Design

Hale Country Club & Spa is an independent, family-owned business that aims to be the very opposite of the large corporate chain clubs. Boasting an impressive 40,000 square feet over three floors and nestled in quiet countryside, the Hale Country Club provides indoor and outdoor swimming pools, and contemporary food and drink.

Their offering and their brand needed to feel more like a golf club with an element of family fun and friendliness. They knew that their audience would be brand savvy, so the new club had to have a brand and persona that reflected their professional and friendly approach as well as their premium services.

We created a crest logo that gave a sense of quality and heritage. We then used high quality photography combined with an approachable tone of voice in their copy to ensure a premium vibe, but also a friendly personality.

“We really loved the designs that Creative Spark produced. They brought through the heritage that the club wanted to represent but in a stylised, premium way”. Richard Edmunds, General Manager Hale Country Club

Spec for the website design:
WordPress including bespoke booking system / calendar

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Looking for who to contact about a placement:

I plan to contact Creative Spark in the future as I think that I would work well here.