Ohh deer final outcome

Above is my final design that i submitted for the ohh deer card competition along side my email confirmation of submission. I am very pleased with my final outcome as the text works well along side the illustration as it is in a similar style to the many illustration cards being sold on the ohh deer website. When receiving feedback from my target audience the feedback was positive as they liked the illustration and the contrast of the realistic card board background. If i was to re do this brief as a larger brief i would create a full range of designs based on the idea of pizza using my previously suggested tag lines. 

Studio brief 2 NHS research

A key part of my research was looking at the typefaces that the nhs use and their identity guid lines as the product that i was creating was for their patients and the patients careers, so an insight into how they design their information products was an interesting insight. 

I understand the importance of a unified and uniform approach when dealing with something in the size and scale of the NHS, however, I felt that the use of Frutiger was to clean and clinical when dealing with something such as Leukaemia and support around it. A much more colorful and friendly typeface would be more suitable to dealing with difficult issues. I also do not need to stick to the Frutiger as my work is not entirely NHS design, it is also co-created by Leukaemia Care.

After reading through this NHS typeface design Identity (images above), I want to use a similar style of sans serif typeface but I don't want it to look so clinical and be accosted with the hospital/NHS too much which was established when talking about the project with an actual carer. I also don't want it to be too bold/extreme when convaying support. 

NHS typeface identity: https://www.england.nhs.uk/nhsidentity/identity-guidelines/fonts/

studio brief 2 information pack research

After deciding to make a information pack i knew it was important to research information packs so that i had an idea of what they included and the look of them.

The Know Where To Go pack is a simple and effective information pack, all the leaflets, information booklets and infographics are placed inside of one convenient bag shaped folder with clear and effective typography placed upon the front of the bag. What I could see been a problem with this design is if there was a lot of infographics inside of the pack, that it may prove difficult to place back inside of the bag to store the information. 

This information pack is a more traditional design uses a single pocket to hold the infographics inside of the folder, the pocket is built into the center of the design with the use of card to encase and protect the infographic at the center becoming a traditional folder. 

This is an adaptation of the previous traditional design with the implication of more pockets to safely and easily store more information within the information pack, it's possibly a bit too traditional for the design that I'm wanting to create, as I want to create something unique and different that can't be seen as too clinical or unfriendly.
From these designs, I have come across a range of different approaches that I could take in designing my information packs, I would like to create something that in unique and not too clinical as I think this is crucial in order to create an effective care and support pack.

Ohh deer further development

After deciding on a typeface and finalising my pizza illustration i combined the two designs. I decided to split the text so that it was read in two parts to add to the humour as well as frame my illustration. I found that this worked well as it allowed my illustration to be the main focus of the card but also work alongside the text. Once completing this design i decided that the background looked too plain, and asked for feedback and suggestions on what would work best. Suggestions for the background were card boards as it is what pizzas commonly come in and also suggested was a single block colour of yellow to represent cheese. After trying out these two suggestions i decided that the pizza box/card board background look the best are it not only added texture it made the colour more vibrant and contrasted against the dark background.

Ohh Deer development

When developing my pizza slice idea i started by image tracing a photograph of a slice of pizza(left). Although the slice of pizza now didn’t look like a photographic, i decided that is was still too realistic and wasn’t as illustrative as the images found on ohh deers cards, because of this i decided that i would draw my own pizza slice in Photoshop. When doing to i decided that it would be a nice touch to add heart shaped pepperoni as this incorporated the valentine’s day theme more, as valentines day cards commonly feature hearts. I found that this was more successful when receiving feedback people really liked the added touch of heart pepperoni and found it humorous. It was mentioned when receiving feedback that the colours were slightly dull, when acting on this feedback i decided to add a filter called postervise, this made the colours more vibrant and made the pepperoni pop. 

A crucial design decision i had to make was on which typeface i would use, I took into consideration a range of typefaces such as Quick sand, Helvetica Neue thin, Amanda and Arial. I decided that a san-serif typeface would be most appropriate as a serif typeface would look too formal and not match the humorous aesthetic I was going for with this design. Out of these typefaces I chose to use Quick sand as the typeface had a hand written feel about it which matched the rough illustration style. 

Ohh deer idea generation

To start the idea generation i mind mapped related topics to valentines day and mothers day, here is the mind map of idea generation that I had. 

From this mind map I created a list of further ideas in which to choose my final idea from and develop into the card design. Below is my list of ideas for the greeting card.

Valentines: 

-Funny pizza card (i love you more than pizza)

-Love heart sweets (rude sayings)

-To do list: eat pizza, sleep, you

-I like you and naps

-Roses are red, violets are blue I love you

Mothers day:

- Breakfast in bad illustration (everything burnt) ‘i made you breakfast but...’

- A your mumma joke card

- Preseco themed card

- illustration of a new vase that has broken, with the type ‘i made this for you but...’

-Funny childlike drawing  for mothers day card

Out of the above design ideas I have decided to design and develop a valentines card on the theme of pizza, I have chosen to do this as pizza is a popular topic with students and young adults. 

Below is a list of pizza tag lines that I could base my card on:

-I know this is cheesy... But you stole a piece of my heart

-I love you more then I love pizza

-Let me get a pizza dat ass

-Can I get a pizza of your heart

-Pizza is my valentine 

I have chosen to create my card design based on the tag line I know this is cheesy... But you stole a piece of my heart. I chose this one as I thought it was the most humorous one from the list of my ideas as well it would fit with any illustration of pizza and that it would fit right in to the website as it is not crude. 

Ohh deer card research

As part of my incisal research, i decided to look at Ohh deers existing cards from valentines day and mothers day so that i could get a good idea of what style of design they prefer, so that i could trailer my design to that so that it had a better chance of being successful in the compotation. I looked at valentines and mothers day in particular as in their brief they stated that they would catch their eye. Above are screen shots for what i found when looking at their valentines day and mothers day cards. I found that most of their cards use a humorous line of text or a humorous illustration, or a combination of the two. When further researching design styles on their website i found that this style was common throughout, using a mixture of either bright envelopes or bright backgrounds. These were key research point to keep in mind when designing.

To further research card design i decided to look on a well-known website called moonpig, which has a large range of funny cards that can also be personalised, i thought that it was appropriate to look at these as humorous cards are what ohh deer sells. Above are screen shots of what i found while on te website, i found that similarly to ohh deer most of their cards have line of text or a humorous illustration, or a combination of the two with a select few cards have photographs on.

Ohh deer card brief

The Ohh deer brief was to design a card for any occasion. The brief states that all occasions such as birthday, wedding, engagement, age cards (18 / 21 / 30 / 40), congratulations, thank you, new baby, mum, dad, brother, sister, new home, love, good luck, academic (graduation / exams / thank you teacher), bon voyage, belated, and sorry are welcomed to be submitted but at the moment the company are designing and working on their mother’s day collection and valentines day, so any designs of that occasion will catch their eye. The deadline for submission is the 15 April 2017 Midnight. The brief also gave a list of sizes for the card design to be, and they were : 

PORTRAIT: 529X750PX

LANSCAPE: 750X529PX

SQUARE: 529X529PX

The design had to be submitted as a jpg and you can submit up to 4 designs.

Ohh Deer design team will pick one winner from the submitted work, but have said it could be more. If your work is selected to join ohh deers range, the prize it that you receive 20% of the profit from sales.

Studio brief 2 setting my brief

From my research i have chosen to create a product that benifits the carers of a leukaemia patient as well as the patient, hospitals and doctors. 

This product will be guided by the imput of a current carer of a leukaemia patient which will allow me to create a product that as success and appropriate as possible while addressing the issues that i found with information for carers in my research. 

I will look into finding a reliable source of information to use in my product as giving wrong information would defeat the point of the product. I also intent to research into what design features the NHS use as from research their information is very inpersonal and clinical looking. The purpose of the product is to be inviting and informatice as well as help the carer. 

key features the design should include:

- correct informative information

- relevant information

- friendly and welcoming appearance

- legible and clear in conveying the information 

Studio brief 1 lino printing poster

Hear is a image of all of the Lino cuts that I created to print my design, I experiment with composition to see which typographic layout worked best and which object represent certain letters best. A couple of errors occurred while I was making the Lino's, I made it backwards on my first attempt but realised the mistake before printing. It also needed to be very precise in order for the typeface to be correct which took a couple of attempts to get correct, also a lot of the background had to be removed to create the typography which was time consuming.

Hear is the first draft that I created of my Christmas market poster as you can see certain elements of it would require to be remade to become more legible and neater. The consistency of the ink was not right as some letters printed darker than others, this lead me to experiment with the application of the ink into the lino. Rolling and painting the ink onto the lino either made the ink too thick or too think and the consistency was still inconsistent i found that using a sponge worked the based as it made the ink consistent as well as giving an added texture. 

Studio brief 2 talking to a carer

A key part of my research i fro talking to a carer as they know what has been helpful from them and what would be, speaking on behalf of carers. As this topic is close to my heart it was easy finding someone to talk with about the project. My family and i are currently experiencing this ourselves. When discussing with a family member who is a key carer of a leukaemia patient, i had to be sensitive with my questions as not to upset them. i asked that a select few questions and below are my responses:

Q. what support have you been offered as a carer?
A. personally i have not been offered any support, i can ask questions but have not been offered anything myself.

Q. have you been informed about the illness?
A. i have when asking questions and from attending the meetings with the consultant

Q. do you think there needs to be more support for carers like yourself?
A. yes i do, i think it would be nice to be offered support as i need to be strong enough to support them as well as being able to answer questions they might have for me

Q. what support would you like?
A. possible someone to talk to, or somewhere/something i can get a few answers on certain concerns that i have so that i can be prepared.

Q. If you were given a booklet of information, what topics would you like it to cover?
A. ways to support someone or how to deal with feelings, side effects of the illness so i can look out for any signs for the illness getting worse, possibly a diary to write notes of medication or things said in consultations as there is sometimes a lot to take in.

Q.what are your opinions on the select information leaflets you have been given?
A. they are too vague and content a lot of information that is not properly explained and very clinical looking

From this conversation and these answers it become clear that my research was right in that information and support is limited for carers or at times not even offered, i mentioned about a website that i had found that had these resources are they were not aware of it and had never been told about it. This made my project clear as i wanted to create something that gave people answers to their questions, and was easily available.

studio brief 1 development

After receiving the feedback from my idea development I developed these into pieces of design, the first was the German Christmas market in typography in the shape of a christmas tree. I chose traditional German style typography to tie in and represent the German market. I chose simple and a limited range of colours as this design was developed so it could be created through the use of screen printing, it was also important that the colours represented christmas too as the design was for the German Christmas market. The typography was also set out to represent a christmas tree and create the simple and effective image.

The second design built upon using elements from the christmas market itself, for this I chose to create products that were been sold at the market. These were created to be relatively simple images as this design was created to be produced with Lino in mind. I chose the typeface Helvetica for this design as it is very legible which is important as the legibility is compromised by the mages as I used them to represent individual letters, so a legible typeface was required so it could be easily be interpreted correctly.

From feedback that I received it was positive toward the second design, as they believed it was more relevant to the christmas market because it features a lot more elements of the market it self rather then just a christmas themed poster. For this reason I will be taking this design further and creating a line cut of it.

studio brief 2 caring for cares research and leukaemia research

Leukaemia Research

Leukaemia is a type of blood cancer that affects your blood cells, usually white blood cells. These cells are an important part of your immune system that fight infection.There are many various symptoms for Leukaemia which may include bleeding and bruising problems, feeling tired, fever, and an increased risk of infections. On average Leukaemia kills 353,500 people per year and it is the most common cancer found amongst children, however 90% of cases are found in adults. 

There is no single known cause for any of the different types of leukemias. The few known causes, which are not generally factors within the control of the average person. The cause for most cases of Leukemia is unknown, and The different leukemias likely have different causes on each individual person

Carers Research

Carers Uk - https://www.carersuk.org/help-and-advice

I found an organization called Carers UK which I believe to be a community of carers that provide support for each other and it also provides information in various different methods of support for carers. 

Here is some of the support that Carers UK provide, this website does not provide specific support into treatments but rather practical support such as financial and health support. I believe this website to be a great tool towards carers and from my research, I found that it would be relevant towards carers but I found this to not fully support the care that they wanted.

Leukaemia Care - http://www.leukaemiacare.org.uk/carers

Leukaemia Care is an excellent source of information for patiants and carers, it provides a huge range of basic and advanced information for both patient and carers alike. 

I have noticed that there is a wide range of support for carers through Leukaemia Care in multiple different ways, there is support such as somebody to talk to about any problems that you are having weather they are emotional or physical.

Here is a breakdown of some of the support they provide for carers. 

They provide plenty of booklets to support carers through ever step of their jobs in caring for Leukaemia from 'Step by step on Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia' to 'Caring for Carers'.

Within this publication, they provide information in dealing with common issues that are common amongst carers emotions. I found this interesting to find as from my research I have found that support for carers or people caring is difficult to come by as I have not found that it not widely published.  

I believe Leukaemia Care is a really good source of information for both patients and carers as it provides a huge range of information covering, compared to Carers UK which is useful for carers but it doesn't provide the full support that carers want. From all this research I aim to do what they want and to be less clinical and more friendly for both carers and patients.