Wednesday 21 May 2014

Brief 8 // DR. ME Flag // Evaluation (new)

Brief 08: DR Me Flag
This brief was a day long brief. We had DR Me in for the day who presented us with a brief that focused on the idea of a concept and how to produce a product within a short period of time and have a design ready within one day.

This was a collaborative brief, which I worked with Greg. We had previously worked together on other briefs, so I was looking forward to doing it again, as it was a good experience last time. I enjoy doing collaborations as I feel that the outcomes are always much better because of the fact you have two people working on the products but you have a constant generation of idea and critique within the work because there are two of you.

The brief focused in the early stages on research, idea generation and development. This was great for me as I always find working on brief in this way produced a more considered product with a better understanding behind it. Its also good practice for me to do development on paper as I tend to jump onto the computer and do my development digitally. So this was an improvement for me, as it showed me that spending a couple of hours on the research / initial ideas, really does help with the idea generation and scoping out the product for the brief.

At first Greg and I struggled with the idea behind our flag, but we soon realised it was because we were trying to create something too complicated and something that wasn’t actually possible for us to do. After realising this, we went for a simpler approach and the flag started to develop.  I think going through this process was a good experience, the first idea isn’t always the best and as much as you think about it and try to develop it into a usable idea, its not always possible. Doing this it made our final idea a much stronger concept and the production of the design was a lot better. This was defiantly a good lesson learnt and something to take with me to future briefs.

A new process I learnt within this brief was using a digital fabric printer. Instead of getting the flag printed online, we decided to do it within the university facilities. The process was no different to designing for print, but it was sent to a fabric printer instead, this was really interesting to watch being printed and the result of the print on the fabric was really impressive. The colours were really vibrant and it worked well for our particular design. Learning new process is always a good thing within a brief and now I know for future that this is a option I could always use for relevant products.

The brief was a fun one, the collaboration was a great success and me and Greg were both happy with the final result of the flag. Whilst DR Me were in with us doing the brief it was a great experience to see previous university students setting up and working for themselves. I do think that they lacked time management and a little experience within the industry as after they had spent the day with us working on the brief, we heard nothing from them afterwards, which was a shame as they were really good guys and created a great atmosphere within the studio for the day. I think this brief has taught me some good lessons within the design process and proved evident to me that spending longer on the initial stages of the brief is very valuable and helps further on in the brief.

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