Some logos so far...

Still haven't found what they're looking for.

Vicky, Megan, Luke, James and myself have been grinding out the Ink Bar logo's for the past couple of days and they still haven't settled on one in particular! We must have given them about 30 pages of great logos between us and still no one can decide on a specific logo. Personally I would rather just get going on some of the media work they need finished in a couple of days before the launch.

They still need invitations printed up and sent out,

menus ready for the 20th November,

an ad banner to go on Nationwides intranet and

a website up and running preferably before they open.

I can't remember the last time I worked on our 'Vis Com in context' unit. That's also got to be handed in on the 20th November!

The ink Rooms Expand!

Doing this Ink Bar re-branding brief may have opened up a world of opportunity for me and everyone else working on this with me! Here's an email I received from Chloe;

Hey guys

Thanks for all your work to date, the ideas and the debates are very
inspiring. As I mentioned to you I am having a meeting at 10am
tomorrow to discuss, I will let you know following that. I do have
some other projects on the go, so if you are interested in getting
some live briefs to work on, then let me know. These are much more
specific with content and far more brand identity and some you maybe
able to incorporate into your units for uni.

So keep intouch and catch up soon


Chloe Parmiter
Events Manager
The Print Room, Ink Bar, Aruba & WestBeach

PAL (Round 3)

Last week some of the first years mentioned they didn't really know how to personalise their blog for PPRD and some of them said they didn't even have a blog yet! So Luke, Vicky and I thought it would be best if we tried to help them get the ball rolling on their blogs because, if we were all honest, we didn't have a blog last year and I definitely wish I had done one!

So, we sat down and decided we should make them a little PDF about blogger and the easiest way to personalise it. This way were not trying to teach them, they have to read it for themselves and they can have something to keep and reference back to whenever they get stuck.

This went down an absolute treat! We had everyone working away at a computer personalising their blogs, using their handouts whilst us three went round the room chatting to all of them and helping anyone stuck. they all seemed to really get into it because after the hour was up, none of them wanted to leave. When Kit came up to talk to us about how it went, she was very impressed (thanks guys!).

If anyone wants a copy of our handout for blogger, don't hesitate to ask!

Greetings Cards Critique.

These are the final designs I chose to take forward to the critique. The rude ones are more of an example of how far this idea can be stretched.

The feedback I got from Sally, Neil & Claire was very positive. Claire believed they would be best suited in places like borders or even the Design Museum because they are so innovative. Sally thought it might be nice to have the same colour envelope and card but I think if that were so it would almost spoil the surprise of the card, giving away what's inside it, that's why I just used a general colour all the way through.

All thats left for me to do is to make the print spec up and annotate the rest of my work.

ISTD Overview with Sally.

Basically Sally just wanted to talk to all the people who wanted to have a go at entering into the ISTD 2009 project this year and as she is an examiner for them, who better to talk to!

She gave us some key points to consider when producing our piece for it;

• Prove you can handle typography,
• Be clear on your outcomes,
• Do lots of research (keep it too!),
• Produce a type spec,
• Making your own typeface isn't needed!
• You can do an animation if you want,
• Avoid imagery (20%-30% at most)
• Don't go for the obvious!

I'm going for it this year. I want I.S.T.D. at the end of my name!

Ink Rooms; Live Brief!

I said to myself at the start of the year, 'put yourself forward for everything' and that is what I'm doing!

Neil came to the class with Mat Desmier about a bar in Bournemouth town centre in need of re-branding. They're currently called 'The Ink Room' and they aren't making any money. Basically they want us to design them a completely new identity, logo, menu, artwork, themes, flyers, everything!

I'm really looking forward to getting into this but we hardly have enough time as it is, it's going t be a struggle to fit at all in. Hopefully it should be alright because I'm pretty far ahead on the greetings card project at the moment so hopefully I wont fall behind!

We've already had a group ideas generation for the Ink Rooms with Neil and we all came up with some great ideas but for their old name, not their new one! I think we can persuade them to keep their old name!

We have broken off into smaller groups for this, with each group developing one name. Luke, Meg, James, Vicky and me are developing the old Ink Room name (yes!). We shall see how it goes!