My Reflective Journal

So I’ve added some widgets and worked on my portfolio page to make it even better. It’s not finished yet and I havent added every subject going into it, but the look is going to be something like this. You can see it at «kristin.graphics.one»

Here is the document with all the details over what I’ve used in my website until now.

This week I have created the website that will later be filled with my designs for my digital portfolio. If you check it out now there will not be any designs yet, but i’ve added some information to the about page. 🙂 Here’s how it looks right now.

Creating a store display and a point to sale strategy was probably the most foreign thing in this whole brand process.

The first thing I did was decide the point to sale elements I wanted to create to make my product stand out in the store. I decided I wanted a extra display that would go on the front of the store shelves so it stands out. I wanted paw prints on the floor going to the display. and a little stand to hold brochures on the side of the display so people can easily read about the product as well. The display on the shelves will make the product stand out and make buyers notice it when they walk by even more. The paw prints on the floor leading up to the shelves also have this effect.

After getting some information I tried sketching out some of my own ideas. I ended up choosing my favorite, but trying some different versions of how it could be structured before picking the final idea. After sketching some small thumbnail ideas I chose my favorite and sketched it out in a bigger form and added more
detail to get more of the final display idea. Here are the sketches I made in the beginning process of the design.

After sketching out the final idea, I actually tested out the design and made a little cut out paper version of it. This makes it easier to see how the display would really look against the shelves and everything with it. I didn’t have the exact colours I needed to recreate it, but you can see the colours and the details in the flat design after this.

After making the paper version and checking if the design would work in teh store, I created the flat design of the diplay as well. In this process I really got to make and show the final details in the display and the right colours that would be shown in the store. I wanted the design to tie everything together and finish of the whole brand with a positive vibe. I wanted the whole brand to be fun and playful with bright nice colours and fun illustrations. Giving the customers a smile on their face like when they see a puppy.

This was the last step of creating this brand for dog food. It’s been a month of designing different products and trying to make a brand that looks united and good together with every element. Below you can see the brand manual i’ve created as well as the report if you want to read about the whole process from start to finish.

1. Exploration

Starting the process of the packaging design, I began by sketching out some thumbnails. The thumbnails are often a really rough idea of different design concept I am considering. First I made some different sketches for the front design of the packaging, trying different layouts and playing with different elements together. I also did some thumbnails for the back design. For this I mostly wanted to figure out the layout of how the information would be. Below you can see the thumbnails in pdf.

2. Brand Integration

After finishing the thumbnails I had to choose my favorites for the back/front design and refine the design idea even more. The goal in this step is to refine your design idea until you have pretty much the finished idea of how the product will look. At this stage I used my Ipad and the program Procreate to refine my design idea and really see it come to life. I wanted the desing to really go along with my logo and brochure, so I stuck to the same colours as well as the illustration of the dog on the packaging as well. Here are the refined design ideas from my ipad session.

I also put my designs in a mockup of the packaging desing I had in mind. I wanted a packaging bag with a sealed zip lock design, because its important for the treats to stay good when allready opened. Especially since the main ingredient in the dog treats are chicken meat, its important to have a good packaging that helps keep the product last. I made the mockups after I finished the flat design, so it would look as it should. Here are the mockups of the Puppy sweets packaging:

Last but not least, here are alle the elements together! the logo, brochure, mockups and thumbnails.

3. Design

After finally getting the design idea refined and finalized it was time to make it digitally on my computer. I used illustrator to create the complete flat design of the front and back of the Puppy Sweets Packaging. This was a pretty straightforward process and went smoothly once I was curtain of my design. I ended up doing some small changes at the finish line, like adding the small info on the top of the front desing «Dog food, snacks, premium quality» which added some more information to the buyer at first glance. You can check out the flat designs below in pdf files.

4. Presentation

In the final step I had to print out a life size version of my product and take a photo of it. Because of the corona virus and the fact that we have to stay inside and things are closed, I did the best that I could with my printer I have at home and things to my access. I decided to take the photos outside and try to make it more creative that way. I also thought it fit the product since its supplementary snacks keeping your dog healthy and active. This is something people associate with the outside and the natural elements of trees and snow. Here are the photos I took.

That was all for this weeks assignment, hope you liked the result!

When I was starting the process of creating the brochure I had already created a dog illustration for one of my logo ideas. I really liked it, but didn’t get to use it in the finished logo so I knew i wanted to make it a part of the brochure design. This is the illustration you can see on the front page of the brochure.

I used the blue from the logo as the main colour for the focus points, as well as a beige as a complimentary colour as well. This created som contrast in the brochure and makes the eye travel across the page with new interest when reading the information. I aslo made three different dog illustrations inside the brochure to be in the «Feeding amount» This illustrates how much you should give your dog, considering it’s size and it made the brochure more fun as well.

Here is the finished brochure:

Exploration

I started by thinking of the name i wanted for the dog food product I was going to design. This can be a little challanging so I decided to do some brainstorming on which words I associate when I think about dog food and see if something came together. After doing this I came up with two options for the product. Puppy Bites or Puppy Sweets. The assignment is to make a dog food product so I wanted to focus on dog treats.

After that I did some really rough sketches of different logo ideas for the dog treats. I tried sketching some ideas with different elements that could be fitting and ended up with these.

Focus

After generating some different sketch ideas for the logo I had to pick my top three favorites and explain why I thought these were the most fitting for my product. Below you can see that I’ve marked my top three sketches and i’ll explain why those are my favorites.

Circle paw: I really liked the idea of using a paw in the logo, but at the same time it had been done several times before. It was very fitting to the product and people would easily connect what the logo was connected to.

Circle with dog: With this idea I wanted to really illustrate the dog in the middle of the circle with flat colours. This was probably my favorite idea in the beginning, but it turned out as more of an illustration than a logo.

Minimalistic dog & type: I really liked the concept of using the dog element as the p in «puppy». It also has a nice connection to the «people saving pets» logo that we were asked to take inspiration from, from the teachers. It doesn’t show that great in the sketch but I always wanted just the lines in the dog for a more minimalistic feel in the logo. In the end, this is the sketch idea I decided to design.

Construction

Now was the time to pick my favorite idea and redraw it until I have my finished drawing of a successfull logo design. I did som changes in the way the logo was structured and added some elements to really bring it together. I decided to put the word «sweets» right below the first line and make it more structured. I also put my slogan «For your best friend» underneath because we all know dogs are mans best friends. I think this added a nice touch to the logo. I ended up having the logo in a white circle bringin it all together, and making sure it would stand out on the package design as well.

Testing

After getting the hang of the design I started asking for opinions of it and the name choices I had as well. A lot of people really liked the little element of the dog creating the «p» and really thought that worked well. After some discussion about the names they also thought the «puppy sweets» was more fitting because puppies are also considered sweet/cute by people so they really liked that concept. Because of this I finalized the logo sketch and official logo with the name «Puppy Sweets».

Refinement

The last step was to create the logo design in Adobe illustrator and finalize the design there. Here is the finished logo design!

Here are all the pdf’s from the process:

In todays society, social media marketing is where you’re going to find most people and get them interested in your product. Because of this I think it’s important to do a lot of marketing online as well as the other traditional marketing platforms. Digitial marketing comes at a price, but there can also be a lot done independently using different social media.

I did some research online and found a lot of different information about the prices for ads, page spreads in magazines/newspapers, radio time and other possibilities of marketing. A lot of these options are rather pricey and I would need a bigger budget to really use some of them to their best ability. Even so, I found some marketing options that fit for the marketing of the website and my budget as well.

1800 dollar budget

It was important for me to cover a lot of digital marketing because that’s where a lot of possible consumers are spending their time. That’s why i’ve put 400 dollars to google ads using the CPC pricing option. This is the best fit for marketing websites using price/ per click. In addition to this I would use another 400 dollars for facebook ads as well. When I was researching this was a great platform to find interested consumers and it’s very affordable and effective. I would also creative different media profiles (facebook, instagram) to market the website as well. This does not take anything from the budget, but is a great way to interact with the consumers and do some marketing at the same time. You could even bring in giveaways, links to the website, contests etc making it more interactive.

To try and reach more consumers outside of just digital marketing, I would use 1000 dollars from my budget on radio time. This is a platform that can get more interested consumers aware of the website while driving to work, sitting at home etc. Radio time is the most expensive markting on my list, and it takes the most out of the budget.

3600 dollar budget

With this bigger budget I would increase the amount of money for google/facebook ads to 500 dollars each, using 1000 dollars of my budget on that. I would also increase the amount on radio time to 2000 dollars to get a longer radio time and maybe a better time of the day. The last 600 dollars of the budget I would use on a section in a magazine to try and reach even more interested consumers.

Viral idea

For the viral idea I have two different directions I think could work. The first idea is to make a video that’s inspiring and kinda heartfelt of families, couples and people biking through Bergen and capturing the experience their having. Use of the right music is a big part of enhancing the video as well.

Another direction I was considering is making a video of two people riding around the city on a tandem bicycle with posters on the side, marketing the website and experience. The video would have a more funny approach using more interview styles and capturing peoples reactions. (Here it would be great to have someone a little known to the public to make it even more funny, interesting and viral)

This week we had to set up our html files and make it ready for coding for our website. We also had to update our website sketches if we wanted to do some changes, or just explain more of the usability in the website. I didn’t do a lot of changes to the designs, but i did add some comments about how i want the different elements to work for the user and the coding i want to achieve. Here are the sketches.

And here are the file setup for the website i have so far.

Framing

Depth of Field

Lines

Texture

Symmetry

Balance

Perspective

Pattern

Colour

Space

In this weeks learning assignment we’ve learned about studio lights and different light sources. To learn the difference between the different lights and the effects they give i’ve done some reading and answered the given questions about the subject.

Question 1

1. Write three different light sources and their functions.

There’s a lot of different light sources but one of the most natural ones is Daylight. This light source varies with the weather and time. You can take advantage of beautiful sunshine or a overcast evening. We also have artificial light that include normal light, photoflood lights, flashlights and many more. You can control these light sources much more and use them however you like for your photos. Another light source is a bright/brief photographic flash from 1 position. This can give you a really dramatic feel and create harsh contrast in the photos.

2. Name two light modifiers and explain the difference between them.

The most common light modifiers are the umbrellas and softboxes. The reflecting umbrellas produce a diffuse and soft light because of it’s size and reflection surface. The light flies from the strobe head, hitting the inside of the umbrella and bounces back towards the subject. There are different types of umbrellas that create different effects. There are white, silver lined and gold tinted umbrellas. White umbrella (wider spread of reflection light.) silver lined umbrella (efficient, focused light that’s more narrow.) Gold tinted umbrella (warmer light tone).

The softboxes come in squares or rectangles. They are lightweight boxes with a reflective inside and a translucent front attached in front of the strobe light. The light gets reflected inside the walls and diffuse through the transparent front. This creates a soft, focused light illuminating the subject. The sofboxes and ubrellas have different light boundries and the softboxes are easier to controll.

3. Draw a diagram of and describe the three-point lighting setup.

The three-point lighting setup is one of the most common setups when it comes to illuminating a subject. The setup contains three lights and a camera that surround the subject. It is effective and pleasing by using by using the three different light sources. The setup consists of a main light on the right front creating the most light. Then you have the fill light on the left side, and the hair light in the back. By using this setup you get a lot of control over how the light shall look on the model. You can easily modify the light by moving them around or closer to the model. Taking away the fill light for example, can create some great contrast with shadows.

Question 2

1. Draw three studio setups for the following subject matters and list all the equipment that you would use to light your subjects:-Portrait-Fashion-Beauty

2. In a magazine or on the Internet, find one fashion shot, a beauty shot and a portrait shot and explain how you think the lighting was set up in each shot

Fashion Shot

Looking at this photo I think they have the main light on the right side illuminating the model. I don’t think they have used a fill light on the other side considering the shadows and contrast shown in the shoot. They do have a backdrop and I think they might have used a hair light filling in light at the top on the right side.

Beauty shot

Here I think they have the main light on the left side of the model. I think they have a little fill light on the right side creating a little light on the other side of the model.

Portrait shot

This shoot was interesting because they’ve used some really pretty colored lights. They have used a main blue light to illuminate the top and face of the model on the right side. On the left side they have a red fill light illuminating the side of her hair.

Question 3

The last assignment was a practical task where I had to take some portrait photos and focus on the lights illuminating the subject. I had to take one photo with a soft light and another one with more contrast and harsh light. Here are the two portraits I took:

I set up a little home studio and used a main light and a fill light to illuminate the subject. This was the perfect combination to create the soft light you see in the photo below. There’s also some natural light from the windows behind her that also helps the lighting.

To create a more dramatic feeling with the lights I decided to turn off the fill light and only use the main light as the light source. This created some really dark shadows on her face that made a good contrast.