Planning Sheets (Update 3)

Planning sheets

From having completed my mood boards and taking research in America, I moved on to the second stage. This involved me to start sketching my idea onto paper and placing my ideas onto a design sheet. From this I could start to see how my ideas would fit onto a bus blueprint. Underneath I analysed my ideas. This helped me understand the key points to my ideas and what the unique selling points were. From getting my ideas onto paper, I could identify the flaws and change them to fit.

A problem I came across when going through this process was that I struggled to get my ideas to fit around the door and wheels of the bus. When I included graphics on the wheels, they started to look tacky. To over come this, I changed the design so it worked around this.

Another problem I had was that I got a illness bug during this week. This made me very ill and meant that I was unable to work as efficiently as I would have been able to otherwise. The plan is to work double time next week to make up for the work i'm behind on. 

Although there was many problems, I hit success with the idea of having barbed wire across the windows of the bus. This makes it look like the passengers are prisoners on the bus and fits in with The Walking Dead theme which is Cult.

Designing Graphics for a Bus and a professional magazine

Researching into American audiences! 

This an ongoing diary of my research and pre-productiuon leading up to me creating digital graphics for  a bus and a professional magazine. 

Once I had completed my Mood-boards, I took two weeks out travelling to America. The purpose of the trip was to explore different cultures and what audiences are looking for abroad and what attracts different audiences. The aim of the trip was to broaden my knowledge on advertising and digital graphics in different countries.

Whilst in America, my tasks included reading and researching American Magazines and Journals. From this I learnt how digital graphics were used in the magazines and how they were edited/made to look aesthetically pleasing. 

I also went bus spotting and took notes of the graphics used on busses. Again this helped me understand what was successful in America. Whilst I was in Florida, many of the graphics on the busses included themes and images relating to parks in the area. This may be because Florida is world famous for its parks and people often travel there because of the many parks.  

Finally I relaxed and enjoyed the tourist life in America. Many people may think that this is slacking off the job and taking advantage of my time abroad. In fact, this allowed me to clear my mind allow me to arrange what i's found in America into creative ideas and solutions.

The successes of this trip was that I came back to the UK with an understanding of American audiences and how I can create my digital graphics to attract a larger audience. This in turn should mean that I make a larger overall profit from selling these graphics.

But I also encountered set-backs and problems from being in America for two weeks. The main one being that I was behind on work that needed doing in the UK. For example, my colleagues had started the designing stage of their graphics, getting their ideas onto paper and planning out how there graphics would look. This meant that when I got back I had to start playing catch up.  

Not only does this give me a larger work load for a tight time schedule, but my work may become more rushed because of this. Although the hope is that my ideas will be more creative because of my time away. 

Although this set back can also be used to my advantage. From everyone else being ahead of me, I can see first hand which of their ideas are successful and which ones flop. I can bare this in mind when designing my ideas to decrease the chance of failure. 

Mood Boards for Digital Graphics

For an upcoming project I have been tasked with creating a digital graphic for a bus and a magazine that will attract audiences and promote a new BBC channel; BBC Cult. My first task was to generate ideas and I did this by creating Mood-boards and following the unit below:  

The aim of this unit is to give learners the knowledge and skills needed to produce, process, control and

manipulate digital graphics used for a range of print, interactive and moving image media. On completion of this unit you should:

1.     Understand graphic file formats and applications

2.     Be able to use appropriate image design and manipulation software

3.     Be able to produce digital graphics in response to a brief

4.     Be able to reflect on own digital graphics work.

These Mood-boards will help me generate ideas when creating my digital graphics.