Job Application

Today I seen a post on Instagram from a the studio nu agency in Sheffield, advertising that they was looking for a creative junior designer. So therefore, I thought I would apply as they wasn't asking for anything other than a CV & Portfolio. 

I had to quickly change my CV as it still had my old logo on but I just kept my old colour scheme as this would have been a long time consuming thing to change.

This is my email I sent with my application.

I am not expecting anything to come from it but I didn't lose anything from doing it. Experience can only be gained by taking leaps of faith. 

Big Fish Placement

The walk this morning took me around 20minutes, although it was an enjoyable walk as there was lots of things to soak in...
When I got there, another also was walking into the grounds. She looked a little lost and therefore I asked her where she was looking for she also said Big Fish. So I told her I was too and where we needed to go. She was called Catalin and she was from Germany.

We then walked into the studio and went to the receptionist to find out where we needed to go etc... We asked for Emma, they seemed rather shocked that there was two of us here so I started to panic a little. They told us to take a sit next to there range of work they had done...

We sat there for a while admiring their work. Then Emma came over & took us for a tour of the studio. The studio was on four levels. On the entrance level was the designers and the photographers. They also had a cute little library and a small meeting room. Then the next level down was the web designers and social media people. Then the level below them was the artworkers & the copywriters. Then the level below them was the large meeting room.

This is their mini library, which was also stacked very tall.

Then Emma let us present our portfolios, I found myself not as nervous as other presentation as I felt more prepared and I could just follow the paragraph on the previous page but just in more detail to make sure I got everything in. So this is something that has definitely benefited me I noticed. The only feedback she gave me was that she would have took out the bottom box on my campaign posters for whistles as they looked like an afterthought. Although she mentioned it was due to the lack of capital letters so I told her this is something that was mention in the Whistles brand guidelines as they don't like the use of upper case letters.

Catalin then presented her portfolio, it was good to see where she was at due to her being currently doing a BA masters in illustration. She has done a little story through illustration about her finding big fish and how it has effected her design, which I thought was very clever. Her portfolio was very different to mine due to focussing only on one style of illustration in which I don't know if this is a good thing or not with it being a different course.

So then I was sat at the placement mac which was attached to the scanner as this would be one of my jobs while on placement. I was then told about the scanner and what they would expect me to ensure.. She then told me to occupy myself for a little while, till she finds some work for us to do.. She told us it was a bad time as this is a low week for work due to just having a long weekend off.

At dinnertime I was sent on a mission by Mark one of the designers, he gave me a map & a list of boxes of cereals they needed. He explained that the had applied for the Dieline Awards & now they have come back to them asking for samples and therefore this normally means that they have won something. But they was already late for the deadline due to forgetting about this before the weekend & they didn't have all the samples they needed in the studio. So he gave me his oyster card a business card & a map with a list of shops to try that stock the dorset cereals. The main thing he told me was to make sure that the boxes look like the original ones on the pictures he gave me as they have currently added a woodland advertisement and this is not the packaging they submitted.

 This is the original packaging without the advertisement on... These are the ones we want.

These are the woodland advertisements with the little trees placed on the front.. These are the ones we don't want.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find all of the cereal he wanted without the advertisements on. I got two of the four they requested.

When I got back Emma briefed me on a brief that two other designers where working on. This was very interesting as I got to know how they started a brief with the client etc...

The brief was starting from complete scratch because the company that has come to them, don't have a name and want Big Fish to help them to come up with it. It is a s healthy juice & nut milk company. They will be made fresh everyday and will have nothing but healthy nutrients in them. They want them to be extremely enjoyable and healthy! These bottles will be charged at £8 per 330ml.

The current names they have are:

The Juice Spa
Grace Under Pressure
Florence
Avalon

Emma gave me a print out of a presentation they give out to everyone working on the project after the position with the client. Positioning is where they work out what the client wants, where they think they are going to be? What they think the are etc...

They print out lots of inspiration pictures of the internet and cut them up and put them into sections according to the brief.. then the client can go to each category and say yes they like that and no they don't like this can also be done with keywords.

This was very interesting as this is helping quicken the process rather than developing a range of ideas that they might not necessarily like all together.

JJJ BRIEF

Emma told me to work on The Juice Spa as a name, as this is the name they had the least work on... This is not a name I would pick as I don't think it represents the brand as a whole as they also create nut milks too.

I started with creating a logo today...

Day Two
On my second day I carried on working on the juice spa brief... Today I moved onto applying the logo onto packaging....

Here is my packaging design I did...

Here's the first design that I did, they had already taken images of the juices within different bottles so they had lots of clean mock-ups to use from scratch... This was a very good idea... And something I didn't expect the studio to have done.

I thought I would go the foraging look, I wanted it too look spa like but not too spa like that you wouldn't want to drink it....I liked the use of the opacity of the floral pattern in the background with the pure white logo overlaying it. Although, this works very well with the orange I don't think it would work very well with the almond milk.

This is my second design, I decided to use the same imagery but change the use of the type. I created a new logo as I found that the square bottle didn't really work with the circular logos I created. I like the use of the square bottles I think they feel a little more durable in your hand.

Then I heard Emma & Ruth talking about there work and they was saying how they wanted to work with something new, they wanted to be different from all the other drinks out there that are just printing white onto the bottles as this seems to be the hip thing to do.

So there I began to work with something new...

This is my innovative idea thats different & will set this product aside from all the others. I like he use of the string holding on the wrap as this would be cardboard. The ability to apply a batch number I found was a good selling point as creating fresh juices is something they pride themselves on..

Then I got sent to go shopping for a brief that Nicole was working on... I rang around shops first to make sure they had them in as these where quite high end desserts and therefore only stocked in certain stores. A lot of the stores had only one or two of the three flavours and therefore pointless. It was a photoshoot that needed to happen for a new GÜ pud packaging they was creating. I again took the oyster card and went with business card shopping. I also had a list of things such as lemons & hazelnuts & dark chocolate to get as they wanted to a little food photography such as lemon curls to include on the packaging.

Day three
On the third day I was again working on the JJ brief & therefore I decided to do some more logo variations to inspire me again.... From the pictures they said they liked the aesthetic of the blue & white morrocan pattern seemed to be prominant and therefore I thought this could be a good starting point for the design.

Mid day I was sent to go and get some food for a client meeting they was having as they ordered food but one of the people was dairy intolerant and therefore the food that had been ordered was not appropriate.

I then had to go to the shop & find something that was dairy free. I couldn't find anything that was prepared that I knew was dairy free so therefore I decided to just get some bread & salad with ham.

This is my logos that I had been working on throughout the day..

These where inspired by Moroccan titles & patterns. I like use of the overlay drawing creates a night cast of shadow. I like shape as it is unusual and not the typical circle or label that wraps around. The sticker would have a white background with the navy detail over laying. 

I then started working on something else that I noticed that they had pointed out that they liked collage style design therefore inspired me to do another logo design.

I like how the orange plant overlays and underlays the outline of the logo but the writing is all sitting on top. I think this is the strongest logo yet although I think the font needs to be a stronger maybe a serif font to highlight the name more.

Then I found a paper with the flavours within each drink, I then came to realise that these where not your average juices and therefore had veg within them so I decided to create the same kind of look but with multiple food.

At the end of the night we had to move the studio around as they where changing the layout of the office. They was changing it so the copywriters where moving into the same studio as the designers and then the art workers would be able to expand. 



Day Four
Today I was sat in a different place as my seat where I sat had moved due to the copywriters needing the space. So I sat next to Catalin on my mac. I didn't like my seat today as much as I coudln't see everyone and take in what was happening behind me.. Where I was placed before although everyone was not sociable or welcoming I could see around me and still take in what was happening.

Then Ruth came up to me and told me that she had been looking on the placement mac that I had been working on all week and that she had been working on something similar to my design and therefore she would like me to prepare the design style as a root for their client.

This was a massive boost of confidence and I felt like I was actually getting somewhere, which is typical on the last day! She told me she wanted a serif font with images of all of the ingredients overlapping and underlapping the words. 

Another key thing was that she wanted the word DEW on the front of the bottle & the word SPA on the back of the bottle. This is so when they sit in the shop it can say DEW SPA next to each other.

Here is my design I created for her...


I wasn't able to get all the files as I was unsure if I was allow to take them & didn't feel confident enough to ask them. This is the spa variations but sadly I didn't get the dew variations.

 I like the bottom variation best as some overlapping happened on each letter.


I then decided to mock it up as it was nearly finishing time and therefore found that it would be best if I had something to show Ruth all together than something broken & something half finished.

This is the mock-up I created I would have liked to carried on this brief when I got home but this is when uni started to get pretty full on as deadlines started to occur....

When I approached Ruth to tell her that I hadn't finished my task but I had done the juices bottle. She seemed very shocked that I was asking to go home, I would have stayed but I had a train to catch & therefore this made it unachievable. She asked if I had put the work onto the server so she could see what I had done. 

She seemed very impressed and said that she was happy with what I had done which was a relief as I felt very on edge when I first approached her as I thought she might have been a little more understanding with it being my last day. 





Overall, I think I have learnt a lot while on my placement but I feel that the experience wasn't as good as I felt it was going to be as they didn't have much time to spend with us and I felt I was used mainly just to do herons not just for the design team but for the receptionist too. 

I think the last day was when i felt most comfortable as after moving the studio round it was a bit of bonding and people started to know my name but this was just a little too late. They told me on many occasions throughout the week that they was going to look at what I had done but they didn't check once until the final day when Ruth asked me to do a task that I thought was worthwhile and what I was there expecting to do....

I felt that they gave me that brief to occupy me but didn't expect my ideas or opinions to matter as they didn't once ask me how it was going and what my ideas was.

Big Fish Stay Planning

Firstly I did research whereabouts that Big Fish where based in London. It is based in Chelsea, so started looking at hotels around this area, but they where very limited and the ones that where quite near by where very expensive due to being boutique hotels. 

So therefore started looking further out, and the next district to Chelsea is Fulham which is slightly cheaper and therefore I thought this would be the best option as long as my work place would be in walking distance. 

There seemed to be quite a few hostels that was very cheap but wanted my own space and these also had quite a long walk and would not benefit me cost while with travel to & from work.

Sara Hotel

£230.00 

En suite

21mins walk.

23 Hotel

£196.00

Shared Bathroom

36 mins walk.

I then came across a travel lodge in Fulham which seemed to be a reasonable price, slightly more expensive than some but had an en-suite & a well known chain so therefore know what to expect. 

This was quite important to me as I was nervous about getting down there on my own and therefore didn't want the added worry of if I would be safe and comfortable in my room etc...

So I decided to go with the Travelodge in Fulham which is a 21 min walk.


Now moving on to trains, I have had to do some research into which station will be the best due to me going straight to my hotel on my outward journey but on return I will be going from my work place and therefore I need to find a balance. 

So there is Imperial Wharf & West Brompton

West Brompton is 3 mins from Hotel & 21 mins from Big Fish.
Imperial Wharf is 9 mins from Big Fish & 23 mins from Hotel.

So I have decided that I am going to get my train to & from West Brompton, but on the way home I am going to walk to the Imperial Wharf & get a train from there to West Brompton, but I will pay on the day for this journey.

I have to have 3 changes on train to get from this train station. This is to & from, even though the routes are different each way. This is making me very nervous due to never being to London on my own before and therefore this is a big step for me for my career.