Evaluation

The brief of my project was to create a product or service that would improve the sustainability of a company. I initially chose Oxfam as my company but there were communication problems that leaded to one needing to chose another company to work for. I chose BANES after thinking about the possibilities of what I could create with all the companies. I knew i wanted to create an advertisement and the food recycling bins that were being released in October was the perfect opportunity to base my advertisement on.

I began my process by researching other food companies such as 'Love food hate waste" to look at their current advertisements. I also looked at the ways other companies advertise, mostly government run companies and charities such as Sustrans. I noticed a pattern of positive messages portrayed in pictures and colourful writing and found a niche: Scare tactics.

Overall I feel my poster was success full. It followed my personal brief of using scare tactics to portray a different side of recycling. My final outcome has a similarity to my drafts which shows I followed them well but also allowed room for improvement. The fact that my images were hand drawn allowed me to create the poster exactly how I wanted it.

Judging by the feedback that was left by our partner, I did very well at communication with my partner in BANES. The problems faced with Oxfam showed me the importance of strong communication which helped me with my relationship with BANES.

"I thought you conducted yourself very well at the meetings. You were prompt, welcomed me and explained what was needed from me. You had clear ideas about what they wanted to do/achieve and all ideas were relative and played to your individual strengths"

However, the feedback given from Tim and his boss from BANES was not positive. They felt that my idea would not be well received by the public as the message wasn't clear enough that pests out be prevented by using the food bins. In a professional situation the company creating the product would have had a more detailed brief and many meetings to discuss the progress.

If I could do the project again, there are a few things I would do differently:

• A strong communication between partners is very important, If I had the chance to work with Oxfam again i would ensure that my partner would be up to date with my progress and both sides knew about meetings and deadlines to ensure a strong partnership throughout.
• I would have a variation of ideas to show my partner. Tim was not keen on my idea when i first showed it to him but unfortunately joining the group late resulted in no time to change the idea.
• I would have spent more time on research into other food posters to use as insperation as I struggled to think of a strong idea at the begining.

Overall I think my project went well during the process. Having problems with the first partner helped me understand the importance of having regular contact with the partner your working with. My poster turned out well, although the concept was lost in the process, if i had more time i would make the message clearer for what i needed to portray. I am pleased I did this project as it has allowed me to cover all the areas I am interested in, such as fashion, advertising, drawing and photo editing.

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Final meeting 3/11/2010

Timothy rawlings from BANES sat down with the group to look at our final peices, and then took them with him to show his boss to get overall feedback on our outcomes and the processes to get there.

From: Timothy Rawlings
To: Charlie Williams

Charlie joined the working group late and as a consequence had less time to get an idea on the table to discuss with me. Her idea was relevant to the Council's current Food Waste recycling campaign and she presented two posters of the same concept, one with maggots and one with rats.

Her idea was to highlight a common problem associated with Food Waste, that being human food waste ending up as food for rodents and pests. While the idea is relevant, I was not sure if the messgae was clear. Given that we need to promote a recycling collection, highlighting a negative aspect may not be the best way to pursuade people. The message hinted that "if you use the collections you are not feeding the rodents" which is more positive (the trouble is the Council is not keen to point out that there would be any pests or maggots in our neighbourhood!). With more time and guidance from the client Charlie could have made the message clearer.

The design of the poster was good and the use of the cooperate style was spot on. The Colours of the poster tied into the current promotional material being issued and the pictures were interesting. Charlie took suggestions about the cooperate style and applied them well into her final design. she was also good at communicating her ideas initially and catching up with the progress of the other two in our working group.

Keynotes

We created a keynote presentation in lesson that had to include some information on each company, and also 5 other creative workers within the community.

Interaction keynote

View more presentations from Charlie Williams.

Draft Analysis

I analyzed my draft poster, asking other peoples opinions on what I needed to change. It is important to get other peoples opinions on a piece of work as it gives a wider veiwpoint, and they are more likely to see what the audience will see.
As both of my potential posters are very similar, they had many of the same problems i needed to change. One of which was the taglines 'one mans trash...' was hard to read. It took a lot of experimenting using illistrator to try and find a font colour which would stand out over the picture.

Another problem with both posters was the top section, It was pointed out that there was too much information. After moving around the different sections of font I decided to delete the 'your new food recycling service', as this has already been featured on one of their current posters.

Maggot Drawing

I needed to draw a large amount of maggots for my piece. I decided to fill a 5cm X 5cm area with maggots to provide some variety to my image. I then scanned the image into Photoshop and used the copy, paste and free transform tools to tile my maggots without creating a visible pattern.




I then used various filters to define my image to avoid it looking too much like a drawing. I used the contrast tool to darken the lines of my image to remove any pencil marks. I used the plastic wrap filter to try and provide some 3D texture to my Maggots to make them look more realistic whilst still in keeping with the illustrated theme.







I used a paintbrush set to a high opacity to colour my maggots. I had to research images of maggots on the internet to try and find the common colour. I then used the colour sampler tool to extract a colour to use. I washed the colour over a separate layer and placed it behind the maggot image as to not lose the dark lines of the image, which i would have done if i had placed the colour on top of the same image.

Rat drawing

Before i began to draw my image, i looked at actual photos of rats as i needed my image to look as realistic as possible, so it would still have a strong message but would not affect the audience.


I then scanned the image onto Photoshop and used different filters and techniques to try and make the rat look defined and detailed. I used a paintbrush with a high opacity setting to achieve the colouring.


I then wanted a kitchen background. I found an image on the internet of the style kitchen i wanted to use. I used the tracing paper tool in painter to create an outline of my kitchen using the image off the internet, and then added to it myself to create my background.

14/10/2010

Today I had a meeting with my teacher about my progress so far. I showed Jo my blog and then my poster. We discussed the Practical, Financial and Legal obstructions of the poster and how to go around them. We also spoke about the layout and content of my poster, including the font and colour choice and the overall presentation. It is important that i make it clear that the maggots poster must be clear that the food bins are an aim to avoid the maggots. This must be made more obvious by using slogans.
There is also a problem with the colour of my writing, as it is not readable.

Me and a member of my group debated about the information given to us about what fonts to use. I thought that we had to use Ariel as the set font, as used in all other BANES posters, however she thought it wast compulsory. We emailed Tim from BANES to sort out our query.
This is a list of all the things i need to do to compete the project

Experiment with the poster layout using Photoshop
-moving around fonts
-changing the shape of the picture

Make the writing clearer
-Experiment with different fonts
-Experiment with different colours
-Move around the fonts
-Change the size of the fonts