A reflection of the PGC phase

This phase has been very interesting and a different experience for me. Coming from a different country and culture, I have a learnt a lot in the past couple of weeks. Starting with the "needs-must" project, I learnt how to work within a multi-disciplinary framework and how different people contribute different things to create a successful project. Contrary, to my professional experience before coming to the UK, where my colleagues were all from similar backgrounds, this was a different experience for me as I got to work with students from various backgrounds,cultures and interests.

As for my project, I had a basic idea of what I wanted to do as a part of my MA, but after researching and reading up on various articles, I realized that I had to narrow down my area of interest. I was extremely puzzled as I wanted to research into a varied number of topics and had no idea where to start or finish. This is where the tutorials came in, these tutorials helped me narrow down and focus on one topic that combined all of my interests. The discussions we had with each other and with Stuart, helped me get a clearer picture of what I wanted to do. Hence, I chose to create Brand identity and packaging for a luxury perfume brand as well as promotional material for the same. After deciding on the topic, I have been reading various books/journals/articles, looking at various designers/design companies to see how they have gone about carrying the whole design process, creating mood-boards, dabbling on various ideas etc.

The design process project was an unique experience as we worked on a brief for a period of 3 weeks, and it was really nice to see how our ideas and designs changed over that period. We gave and received feedback on each other's work and it was a great experience.

This phase has been a very busy and useful one,starting with a very confused state of mind, I' am now a lot clearer and now know what exactly I want to do for the next two terms. I hope to use what I've learnt this phase effectively and will continue learning through this MA.

Echo

http://www.karimrashid.com/

I've been looking at some famous package designs for fragrances and I noticed that Karim Rashid is a very prominent designer whose created some great packaging for brands like Issey Miyake, Hugo boss, Kenzo etc.

I found his packaging for Davidoff Echo, a fragrance for women, particularly interesting. The bottle is smooth and pebble-shaped with a pink tint and appears to be hollow in the center to give it a talisman-like quality. Its very feminine and absolutely magical.

The ‘Backwards Brief’

http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2009/06/kenzo-ryoko.html

1) Background - What do you think is the background, which has informed this work? (Market, Competition etc)

Kenzo is a very well established international brand. As a brand, they have always used very nature-inspired designs and colours. Most of their design uses a very abstract nature element in them. Kenzo is an internationally marketed brand and can be found in retail shops, designer boutiques etc.

2) Audience and context - Who do you believe is the target audience? What is the context for this piece of communication?

Kenzo Ryoko is targeted at young, hip, urban men and women. From the name of the perfume, ‘ryoko’ which translates as trip or ‘go on a trip’ I assume that this perfume is targeted at those people who love to carry their favourite fragrance with them wherever they go.

3) Executional guidelines – Describe the key words (mood, personality or visual qualities etc) that has informed this work? What are the materials, techniques and processes used to create this piece of communication?

The designer (Karim Rashid) has created this perfume to be “airport-friendly”, hence, the perfume is a pocketsize stone that easily fit in the palm of your hand. This perfume as other perfumes by Kenzo uses bright, vibrant and energetic colours and is nature-inspired. The combination of shapes of the outer cover and the perfume is contrasting and is very interesting. The designer, Karim Rashid has used pebbles as an inspiration to create this range of packaging designs.

The 2009 Ryoko Collection is saturated in high-gloss color. Fragrance pebbles are suspended in a see-through box, signifying one of the ironies of modern travel -motion without movement. This range of perfumes is a part of the summer collection and hence the bright colours.

http://talkingmakeup.com/celebrity-beauty-style/beauty-news/kenzo-ryoko-summer-collection/

4) If you were commissioned to design this work yourself – what are the stages in the research and design process you would use? List as bullet points:

Research processes

• To study the history and background of the company- what it stands for, what are the previous methods/tools used in creating packaging, what message they want to convey through this product etc.

• To study the target audience through focus groups, surveys etc.- learn what their needs are, what is their buying power, the demographics and psychographics.

• Observe the competitors and methods used by them to promote their product, current trends and styles etc. (market research)

• To conclude on what ‘problem’ needs to be solved.

Design processes

• To create a basic sketch of how the package is going to be.

• To develop a colour palette based on the mood/message that needs to be conveyed. As in this case, develop a colour palette for the package that is nature-inspired, connotes summer, vibrancy and energy.

• Create a few mock-ups.

• Present these mock-ups to a section of the audience and get their feedback.

• Make changes based on the feedback received.

• Experiment with textures/materials that can be used to create the package.

• Choose the best-suiting one that is economical and practical.

• Create 3D rendered images of the final image to present to the client.

5) How might these processes relate to your own research?

My aim for the MA project is to create packaging designs for international luxury brands and these processes will be very helpful in conducting my own research. Observing how the designer Karim Rashid has developed these designs is very inspiring. These processes are very similar to what I will be using in developing my project, as the target audience etc. are similar.

Tutorial 1 and 2

My first tutorial with Stuart Hodges was on the 26th of October, where a group of us met and discussed each of our project ideas/aims and what we were planning to do in the weeks to come. We also did a mind-map of one of our ideas and this gave me a clear understanding of how to go about doing a mind-map and how it will help in carrying out my research.

The second tutorial was on the 9th of November, and each of us discussed our ideas with Stuart and he helped us by telling us how to take what we had forward. I was very confused and puzzled with my project and this tutorial gave me a lot of clarity. I realized that although, I seemed quite clear about what I wanted to do in the beginning, once I started reading more into my area of interest, there were a lot of things that I wanted to explore into and narrowing it down to one specific topic seemed quite difficult. But, after this tutorial, I' am definitely a lot more clear. We agreed to create a specific research question or proposition and a series of mood boards to support our idea/research question.

Design process project

This post is long overdue. I somehow, never got to finish it. Its been saved in my drafts since last week.

Week 2 of the design process project was very useful as we got to share the ideas we had conceived and the designs we had made through the week. I had made a whole bunch of logos and this session was actually quite helpful for me to decide on which one to develop on. Based on the feedback I received I developed a final logo and applied it to various media. It was very interesting to see how my designs evolved through these 3 weeks and how the comments I got helped me in noticing things that I had not noticed before.

I decided on a final design that I thought portrayed the aspects of Scandinavian interior design. The curved lines, colours and the font are all elements inspired by scandinavian design. The lines I thought, would be easy to carry across various media.

The design process project learning session

This was a very interesting session for me as I learnt a lot of new things and it reiterated the importance of a lot of things that I had already learnt through my previous work experience and study.  What interested me most about Friday’s lecture was that I learnt about how the design process is a problem-solving process, how to use the perceptions of other designers and draw inspirations from that and the identification of the target audience, their tastes, preferences, etc. This is an interesting dimension that I have not explored before.  Although, I have used many of these processes in my previous work experience, there were some aspects that I have not looked at such as experimenting with forms, textures, styles and colours as all my works have mainly been “flat”. This is something I intend to use in my MA project. Gaining comments from my peers on the work that I had done at the session was very helpful. I intend to use these as tools and develop my ideas further to satisfy this brief effectively.

Hello!

Welcome to my blog!

I am a B.Sc Visual communication student from the city of Chennai India. I worked with JWT(an advertising agency) in the creative department for almost a year and I' am now in Nottingham to pursue my MA in Graphic Design at the Nottingham Trent university. I hope to reflect on my journey from Chennai to Nottingham, from 'filter kaapi' to 'Costa' and from 'vannakkam' to 'hello' through this blog.