Progress this week has been slower than I would have liked. My target was to have this finish by the end of last week but it has taken longer than I anticipated. However the style guide is just about completed now and that means that I can finally start working on my CD artwork during self study.

Creating the style guide has been something I have really enjoyed. Designing the business cards, letterheads, envelope etc... has helped to allow me to get into a more professional mind set and approach the work from a more commercial viewpoint.

After the presentation on how to set work up properly for the commercial print process I feel ready to begin designing the CD artwork but I don't won't to have to listen to the CD again!

I have already got some ideas of what the artwork should look like but I plan to try a number of different designs before settling on the final one. Designing the artwork is the task I have been most looking forward to since I first read the assignment so I can't wait to start.

As well as working A7 this week I needed to do A6 presentation again as my previous attempt was only around 3 minutes. My second attempt didn't much better either and I was disappointed as I knew that there was sufficient content in the presentation to last to 5 minutes due to my practice runs.

I also received feedback on the A5 assignment and I was pleased with the merit grade I achieved. Looking back on the website now the only major change I would make would be t o change the shade of blue to something that is more suitable to the target audience and not quite as bright.

My targets for next week:

• Complete style guide
• Create initial sketches for CD artwork
• Develop CD artwork using Adobe Photoshop

After choosing a different logo to my original design I now feel happy with it and this week I have started to create my corporate style guide

Due to the last three weeks of developing my logo I now feel I have a much larger appreciation of the difficulty of the designing logos. Previously I had a very naive view of logo design and I had never considered the intricacies involved.

The major problem I have had with my logo is reducing it down to 1cm whilst still maintaining its presence and suitable weight. For the majority of Monday morning this was my main focus was adding extra weight to the symbol.

Once I had finished my logo I moved onto creating the corporate style guide. This involves stipulating things such as: how to use the logo effectively, what the corporate fonts and colours are etc... I have enjoyed this and I am looking forward to the challenge of creating my business cards, letterheads etc... to meet the standards I have set in the corporate guide.

Initially I have been focusing on the content of the style guide and during the week I am going to focus on the design. Once this is complete I will move on to designing the letterhead, business cards etc...

I am happy with my progress so far on this assignment but I would like to have my style guide completed by the end of the week so that I can create my letterheads and business cards etc... This means that I can spend the next few weeks designing my CD artwork and preparing my work properly for print.

My targets for next week are:

• Make final adjustments to logo
• Complete corporate style
• Begin designing business cards, letterheads etc...
• Start generate ideas for CD artwork
• Practice presentation from A6 assignment in preparation for presenting on
  

Here is a developed version of my chosen logo so any feedback would appreciated.

I will also be posting it in a range of colours tomorrow so let me know what you think.

Thanks

These are four of my final design and I would really appreciate any feedback before I develop them and begin to add colour.

Thanks

Another week focused on logo designs and there development and this means that I have had the chance to use my sketchbook for large amounts of the week. Developing the logo this week has caused me some frustration as I have a design I like and I have found it difficult to deviate from this idea as I have wanted to develop it further.

To help develop the logos we had two tutorials on Macromedia Freehand this week. I have never used Macromedia Freehand and it lacks the familiarity of the more modern Adobe products and this has been frustrating at time. Although I prefer Adobe Illustrator I do feel that it will be beneficial for me in the future as I will be able to use a larger range of software applications and this will be an advantage when it come to gaining employment.

Like last week we had an ex-student of the course, Mark Feather, visit us and talk about the work he does for Empire Direct. The work that Mark does consists of web banners, html emails, image manipulation etc... This variety of work appealed to me as I think it would allow a larger learning curve in a much shorter time span compared and it would allow a broader range of skills to be obtained.

My targets for next week are:

• Have a completed version of logo
• To have chosen the Emit colour scheme and corporate typeface/s
• Develop initial ideas for style guide
• Plan content for style guide
• Build on current knowledge of Freehand
  

With the emphasis this week being on logos I have spent a large amount of the week focusing on my sketchbook and developing initial ideas for my 'Emit' logo. I have enjoyed this and I have already generated a number of ideas which I am going to develop during the week. I will be posting some scans of my initial designs from sketchbook, so feel free to leave and feedback you have.

Initial ideas:


I have found the case studies from the lectures very interesting especially seeing how the logos have developed over the years as the logos have been redesigned to meet with current attitudes and trends.

During the first lecture, this featured an overview of the four basic types of logos (wordmarks, lettermarks, graphic and new generation). I was a big fan of the graphic only logos as I felt that they provided the best impact, where the easiest to recognise and often the most simplistic.

Examples of graphic only logos:


Most of my initial ideas have focused on the words Emit and playing around with the letters to see what logos I could come up with. I plan to start thinking about graphic only logos that will represent the company Emit but I am not sure whether a graphic only logo would be the best option as I am not sure if the company is strong enough to be easily recognised.

This week we also had a visit from Jonny Haynes a previous student on the course who now works at Technophobia. The meeting was really interesting and provided a great insight into the work he does and the work of Technophobia.

My targets for next week are:

• Develop my initial logo ideas and hopefully have a number of possible logos
• Start thinking about the typefaces that the company will use and the colour scheme
• Continue to research logos and annotate them
• Research style guides and what they contain in preparation for the Emit style
  

Monday morning's tasks finally gave me a chance to the listen to the CD, Lucid Dreams. After listening to the CD I soon found out it was defiantly not the type of music I would normally listen to.

The album focuses around the act of Lucid dreaming and features voice overs and exerts from case studies from the institute of psychophysical research in Oxford.

Although I wasn't really a fan of the music it did provide me a lot thoughts and feelings which I was able to use when creating my minds and mood boards.


I have never used the idea of creating mood boards before but I have found it really interesting and I feel that they will be very useful for the remainder of the project. I will be able look back at them and remember my first impression of the music and the thoughts and feelings which it provoked.

Logos
Looking at logos this week as shown me that it is often the very simple logos that we most recognise and are the easiest to remember; a few examples of this are below.




All of these logos use the company name as the main focus of the logo and only use simple shapes and colours to make them stand out from the crowd. Some are even made purely using type, such as; coca-cola, ebay, google.


This follows through to the logos used for record label and more specifically ambient and electronic music record labels.

During the Easter break I am going to:

• collect more examples of logos and annotate them
• read the A7 assignment and build up a list of questions about it
  
• continue to develop my mind maps and mood boards