Time to get online session

Have a live draft online on 29.11.18 to be submitted on e-studio.

Design and produce a live personal website, featuring your work/portfolio.

This can be a website you already have live edited to make it more apropriate.

Requirements:

• Consistentcy with personal branding, and style of work.
• A selection of your work, most appropriate
• An information section about yourself
• Include contact details
• Include email address - mailto link
• Custom domain 
• Give projects the same mockups to give visual consistency

Website Editing Material - 

Squarespace

Cargo Collective

Adobe portfolio 

ReadyMag

Images - get professional mockups, unless photos are the best dont use them.

Look at for ideas:

https://www.awwwards.com

http://www.goodweb.design

https://readymag.com/explore/

6A2, 6B2, 6D2

Feedback from site submitted:

• Be more concise in the projects that are being presented. 
• Use mockups to offer more consistency in the visuals where the photographs arent the best they can be. 
• Change the about section
• Add a mail to link, rather than a contact form, makes it more personal 

ILO's Notes

6a2

• studios
• inspiration from peoples work

6b2

• skills youre learning
• how you position yourself in the world of design
• work/flow/planning
• contacting and building a network
• anything oyu do off your own back

6c2

• personal branding
• website
• the way that the brand has been done, getting your brand out there

6d2

• post about new things youre trying on social media e.g. 20 days of type or like a poster a day
• taking a little personal time - that is relevant to your practice and the promotion of such
• again bit of personal branding
• personal branding brief - anything and eveything that you are and develop and want to tell the world that you do.
• Any interaction that you have with the professional sphere, glug, contact, etc. 

PPP - We are impression

Agency Name: We Are Impression

Time spent at the agency: 10 Working Days

Level: Intern

As we were told in the second term of 2nd year, we would need to complete a minimum of two weeks work experience over 3rd year in order to pass PPP module, and begin to engage with the industry in a professional manner, the opportunity would also allow us to experience an element of the industry that we may want to work in, through getting this extra experience, we may be able to determine if that part of the industry is right for us.

After e-mailing back and forth with quite a few companies, I managed to get in touch with Impression Digital Marketing. They are an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Harrogate. They specialise in growing brands through creative thinking and a digital-first approach to marketing. As my practice in the second year had begun to explore web design and UX/UI design, I felt it the experience to be hands-on learning design from an agency of such calibre would be an invaluable experience I had to take up. 

Initial Contact:

Initial e-mail

Reply

Week One:

rebuilding david wallobourhg

autumn campaign estate agents

wireframing whitetail gin

Week Two:

Pure skin lab

northern energy

the ice co

Statement Post Internship: Charlie the CEO of the business asked me to create a statement that could be posted to the website, alongside a blog post about my time with the company 

As I was entering my third and final year at Leeds Arts University, I wanted to begin to find my place in the industry, so I went on a mission to find a successful agency to get a taste of agency life. 

Impression gave me the opportunity to do just this. Unlike other internships and experience, you may find at this level, I was taken into the agency on an equal level, allowing me to truly see the industry I am about to enter. Across two weeks I worked on a plethora of briefs that gave me an insight into design for the print, web. I worked on everything from wireframe planning, to rolling out an advertising campaign to completion, from planning stages. As part of working on these briefs, I was included in the communications with clients, allowing me to see how to overcome any obstacles with clients; including being invited to client meetings. The experience didn’t only expand my skills as a designer but opened my eyes to how an agency can run successfully in a productive environment. 

The process of working at Impression is massively based on collaboration, it's made me more professional and given me the sense of direction I will continue aim towards. It was so beneficial to be able to work closely with strategists, planners, designers, developers on a face to face level, through the process of each brief. This gave me the confidence to be able to approach others in the industry to work with them and unlock the potential of my design work and give the client the best outcome possible. 

I most enjoyed the close-knit sense of working alongside others in the agency, it showed me that agency life doesn’t need to be boring, quite the opposite! You can work at the top of your game, working in a fun environment that enhances the whole experience. 

I couldn’t have asked for a better experience then my time at Impression, it led to a massive boost in confidence in my own work, as well as some freelance work; working on some projects I started at Impression. Impression has let me walk into my third year with the drive and ambition to become part of the industry in a place that I feel as productive and happy as I did at Impression.

Reference from CEO:

Callum was a delight to have with us at Impression. His creativity & passion for design shone through and he was an asset to the team during his time here. We throw him in at the deep end working on some live client projects and the work he produced was to a good standard. I hope we can do more with Callum in the future as he’s got a bright future ahead of him!

Feedback E-Mail

Design your career

Allows for a design role generation: https://designtitles.com/

Tongue and cheek but make an important point, you have the power to define your career. You have the power to be able to shape your own career if you're going to design your own jobs a title gives you direction and an ethos to be able to work towards.

Task one:
If you could be anything, use loose guide thinking, don't pay any intention to your own thoughts of your design, or what you believe your capabilities are. Doesn't need to be one thing, brainstorm what your ideal might be. 

Ideas:

• Creative director of something beautiful and expensive 
• Creative director of international business 
• Art director of a huge communication company - McCann I'm coming for you
• Art direction and creative consultant 

Chosen name: 

Alchemist of Creative Direction

Art Direction Alchemist

Four Stage Plan

Set annual goals:

1. Complete my degree with a first.
2. Have a job/prospects ready for the completion of my degree.
3. Find an apartment/move in with my partner in London.
4. Get better control over my health.

Set goals for each term:
Term 1 - Complete CoP with enough time to evaluate the essay and visual response with enough time to change it and make it something that is the best quality I can possibly complete.
Term 2 - Get in touch with a larger studio/get a placement ready for abroad. Research and get in contact with some professionals in Australia/Paris. Try and get a placement in Paris during Easter. 
Term 3 - Complete projects that reflect my practice but also my beliefs, to represent my practice in a portfolio that speaks for my personality. 

Create an hourly plan for next week:

Weekly Example

Test and identify some productivity tools that will help you stay focused:

• Must start planning weekly.
• Seperate briefs into stages, planning, doing, completing/production.
• Use free time for motivating activities. 
• Throw myself into freelance work I enjoy, to be able to keep my practice going outside of uni briefs.  
• Claim back my weekends to do other things than work! 

Hawraf - Client Ipsum

To be able to get a clear idea of the clients they are creating work for they ask clients to fill in a questionnaire/booklet. Once completed the studio would read through, get a feel for the client and the type of work they would want to complete and make a decision on whether or no they would like to work with them. 

The 'Kickoff' booklet asked various questions, some based on personality and some based on the aims and goals of the business itself. From which they wouldn't only have an idea of the client themselves, but at what level their expectations of the work they need to be done is set at. 

It starts the process by questioning the core values and origins of the business itself. Short snappy questions are asked to be able to get a concise view on exactly how the MD's of these businesses see themselves, their position in the market and their goals. e.g.

• How did - come about?
• How would you describe - in one sentence?
• What are you most proud of?
• Weakness?
• Who is your dream interview?

These questions may seem like a standard interview technique that you would need to take into consideration when initiating a project with a client. Although by getting a client to fill it out themselves you gain a more insightful, meaningful and accurate representation from the people who know them best. Therefore allowing you to ply your design work with work that is most representative and thus most effective. 

The questionnaire goes on to discuss the future of the clients from their perspective, including what do you think the business' next big challenge will be. Asking questions like this gives the studio an idea of where the client wants to be, and preempt issues that may arise so they can be dealt with in an efficient manner to be able to continue to push progression. 

The lightning round consists of small short and snappy questions to get to know the client's ethos, which in turn may reflect the ethos of the brand itself. Again giving a deeper insight into the type of client you are working with and the levels of what they require in the most efficient way. This method takes out the guesswork of who the client is.

The questionnaire follows on asking about the strengths and weaknesses of the business, targeting online presence, logistics and the bad and negative points of the business, by understanding these the studio can make a more solid decision on whether or not they want to take on a project. As well as understanding if things were to go wrong how could that be dealt with, ensuring a project is worthwhile sticking with and continuing. 

This is something I would like to carry into my own practice as at this stage I do research into the client myself, but the legitimacy of the information that is being collected can always be questioned due to the nature of having to research online. Through creating a similar style questionnaire (possibly online) to send to potential clients, I can gain better information on starting a breif with the clearest idea of who they are and the business they are getting me involved with. 

Hawraf - Competitive Analysis

Hawraf takes an interesting approach when considering the competition that is approaching a similar brief to ensure that they offer a point of difference that the competition can not. This is something I include in my process of creation within research. Although the research is done in a looser context, rather than having a set table that would allow me to strategically approach it, I more approach the context that I think would be relevant to the brief itself. Through adopting this method it would strengthen my research process and allow me to give the client something superior to their competitors on a scale that can be translated across any brief for any industry.

Questions Asked: The benefit 

• What does the sales process look like? Allows the studio to create an innovative technique that will grab the attention of the client and allow for an overall unique pitch that will more likely hold the minds of the decision makers.
• What channels are they selling through? How is the competition getting their product out there, assessing if they're missing a niche in the market which the current client could take on and adapt to? Therefore reaching a larger audience or tapping into the audience of the competition and therefore gaining their attention, and in the long run loyalty in comparison to the competitions.
• Do they have multiple locations and how does this give them an advantage? What locations are theses, and how can you offer the client a solution to tap into that location market, combatting the competition in areas they thought they were exclusive to them. Which then leads to a question of how can the work be presented in that area, giving the possibility of different outcomes. 
• Are they expanding? Scaling down? This gives the studio the possibility of looking at either combatting the growth of the competitor in a way that directly tackles the competitor's project. If they're scaling down, it gives the consideration of how they can capitalise on the new gap in the market. 
• Do they have partner reselling programs? If the competition has a reseller how do they let the partner present the brand, how much flexibility does the brand allow for giving an idea for how flexible this brand also needs to be. 
• What are their customers' reasons for not buying? Gives the opportunity to expand the research with a further survey, giving the opportunity for first-hand research. 
• For ending their relationship with the company? What reasons would a consumer have to leave a brand/service and how can visual language and strategic approach combat this. 
• What are their revenues each year? What about total sales volume? How can this be pushed for gradual progressive growth, what are the targets of the client to grow over the next annum.
• Do they regularly discount their products or services? How diluted does the brand become when products are discounted, or is this part of the business controlled to a level where brand visual integrity can remain post-sale. 
• How involved is a salesperson in the process? In what way is human interaction of the process of selling, how reliant is the brand on e-commerce and selling through the sole aid of visual aids.