Twenty fourth day at work

Today consisted of more time doing the Truox icons, the job is such an easy one but it's beginning to bug me how easy it is yet it takes so long, a little frustrating but interesting at the same time. Did a little socializing with Jess, Andy and Aaron in the garden today because today is Aaron's last day, a little sad but we had a good time together talking about anything that comes to mind. Sunny weather as well so was good to get some fresh air after being stuck an office.

Truox icons examples:

Twenty third day at work

Did tiny amendments to the Jamm brochure because there were bits that I wasn't completely happy with in terms on composition and image quality. Afterwards got called by James to go through amendments for Truox icons. Quite a long meeting which then lead to the rest of the day editing icons which made time go by very quickly as there were a lot of icons to go through. No time for lunch. Wrote in Aaron's farewell card because he's leaving us tomorrow, sadface.

Truox Icons examples:

Twenty second day at work

Online blogging fest because have no idea what else I could get on with except for more Jamm brochure amendments but I've done so much of that recently I felt like I needed a break from it to refresh my mind a bit. Also wrote Top 10 Tips for how to become a good freelancer for Lucy to upload onto the CreativeBoom Reading website. Other than that, today was pretty much about reflecting on what I've done and achieved during my time here at Jammmedia.

Twenty first day at work

Spent the first part of the day designing the facebook fanpage for Jamm, I was in charge of designing the 'what we do' page whilst Aaron did the 'about us' page. I was a little stuck for ideas on what to do for my page, most of it would normally just be in a written format but I wanted to include imagery to make it more interesting. Here's the development process of the page:



Quite happy overall with how it looks though I think I need to look at how to structure the objects more so it doesn't look as if the imagery was just plonked in the middle without any consideration.

Other than doing the fanpage, I was then asked in for a meeting with the 3 staff members to talk about how I'm finding my experience at JammMedia and how long I intend to stay with them. During the meeting they explained how I was the most capable worker out of the 3 work experiencees. I generally don't think I'm that amazing at design and I have so much to learn so I was really taken back by their comments. They said they will probably have to cut the other's hours because they're running out of work to hand down to us. I felt really bad and explained to them I didn't want that to happen but they said they couldn't keep all 3 of us as they were getting distracted from their own work having to find unpaid work for us to do. I started feeling myself heating up, I think I was blushing a lot from all the compliments because I'm not used to receiving it.

They said my attitude towards each project was a really positive one. For example, James talked about how I was reliable when Lucy and Andy were on holiday. He didn't expect me to put that much effort into the wedding work I did for him when I was working at home. Apparently I put everything else aside on the day and focused on completing the project which was really helpful and a good quality in a good employee. Andy said the way I worked suited them best, he can give me a project to work on and I would go away, work on it then come back with potential ideas. He was then able to tweek minor areas of my idea and I would always get to a finished article he was pleased with. But with the other guys they asked questions right from the start and didn't discover mistakes and ideas on their own, he wasn't always happy with their final product either. Lucy said they were hoping I would be staying to help through the rest of the summer and if at christmas I wanted a job or freelance work during university I may get called back from them. Andy said he didn't want to cut contact straight from when I go back to university which made me feel so grateful that they would think that way. Everything they said seemed so positive, I should have asked them what I could do better, I really should have, but my mind was exploding at the time with all the comments that I completely forgot.

So now Aaron is on his last week here at JammMedia and Jess will only be coming in a few days a week. Feel really guilty but I've talked to friends and family about my situation and they all said I should cherish this opportunity and not feel bad because I have worked hard for this chance. I will do my best and not let the team down! Fingers crossed!

Twentieth day at work

Today I did 2 more hours of icon making which was fine, starting to get quite tired of constantly having to do icons, but there's 200 and we need to get it done! More examples:

Nineteenth day at work

Spent 7 hours straight fixing and creating icons, sometimes feels like tedious work but then again if I slack, the lines won't be crisp and the icons won't look professional so I have to put 100% effort into it so I don't have to redo them. Examples of the icons:

Eighteenth day at work

So, we started a new project today, which was to amend some icons for this IT firm. Overall there's about 200 icons, so a lot of amendments to be made. What's even better is that we're not completely sure how they want us to amend it, a little hit or miss but hopefully with the effort we put in they will like the icons. All we did today was change the icon's backgrounds from green to white so that no colour clashes would occur, also increased/decreased the shadows behind some of the icons to ensure you could see them from a distance. Example:

Seventeenth day at work

Spent the day editing the Jamm website design, a bit frustrating because Andy said he didn't want the animation on the homepage today after saying he did. A bit like a real client, not knowing what he really wants, so I don't know what we're going to do. Jess spent quite a bit of time making that animation, I'm sure it'll be used somewhere on the website either way, just a shame it's not going to be used for it's original purpose. But anyway, here's a screenshot of the original website, the developing website design, Aaron's new design and my amendments to the new design:

Sixteenth day at work

No one was in except for me and Andy today, made minor adjustments to the brochure then went home after half a day because had no other work to be getting on with. Very unproductive day unfortunately.

Fifteenth day at work

Not as productive as other days but managed to finish the Jamm poster which will be put in the gym to advertise JammMedia's service offerings. All that needed to be done was put the new style into the old poster. Aaron did animated characters and Jess came up with the idea of what textures to use in the background. I was in charge of fiddling with the typography and copywriting:

Poster:

(left = old poster, right = new poster)

Fourteenth day at work

Another productive day, finishing the last of the branding for Jamm. Proposal probably the most difficult part of the stationary because of having to use microsoft word instead of a design software. This was so that James could edit it and seeing as he's the commercial director of the company he has no experience with software like Illustrator or InDesign etc. so Word it was!

Trying to battle with Word was a tedious process, a lot of the time I just didn't understand why it did what it did, I swear I didn't even touch the mouse or keyboard and the images would just move or disappear into nothingness. But I knew I had to get it done so with a lot of patience I managed to create a good proposal design for the whole document:

Proposal:

Thirteenth day at work

Quite a productive day, spent most of time finalising the Jamm brochure because a lot of it wasn't consistent, for example on some of the pages the titles weren't centered and they were all different sizes. Had to make some more vector images because Andy previously said the tree vector worked well on the environment page so I decided to work from that and have more vectorised images at the bottom of some of the pages, mainly the ones that I didn't think worked well as they were. Took longer to create the images but I really thought it was necessary and it pulled the whole brochure together. I'm starting to think maybe the business card needs changing now, might give that a go and see what it looks like by adding some grey elements into it, but overall I don't think this is needed otherwise I'm pretty happy with how the business cards links in with the rest of the branding. Finally happy with how the brochure looks after much editing:

Brochure:


Proposal:


Business Card:

Twelfth day at work

Had very little to do today, just spent the time making minor adjustments to the Jamm's branding. Browsed a few animations online and looked at the website

Brochure:


Proposal:

Eleventh day at work

So, another potentially productive day, although neither Andy nor Lucy were in so I had to make sure that I kept myself motivated through the day. This proved to be quite difficult when it was mega hot outside and we were stuck in a garage. Twas rather steamy in the studio that day. Finalised the NLCH flyer for print and worked more on developing Jamm's stationary branding. I was having a bit of trouble dealing with doing all the NLCH stuff as well as keeping up with the brochure for Jamm's branding so Andy asked Aaron to help me with some of the brochure pages

Brochure:


Compliment Slip:
This is finally at the point where I can say 'yes, this is the one'. Fits well with the letterhead and proposal.

(right = final draft)

Letterhead:
Pretty much happy with this final draft too which was great because that meant I could concentrated on getting the brochure and proposal right.


Proposal:


Apart from doing Jamm's branding, James also suggested we think about what we could do to the black gates to make them look more appealing for clients when they come to visit. They look quite dull and intimidating and he thought we could somehow jazz them up with a funky design. My ideas are as follows:

1) Using blackboard paint- can use chalk over the top of paint to scribble and doodle on whenever we like. Quite a cool idea; personal , cute and quirky and gets everyone involved although could be problematic when it rains and ruins our work.
2) Graffiti- professional and modern style. Needs to be cleverly done as to not be mistaken by clients as bad graffiti and vandalism.
3) Windows- each segment of the gate represents a window- each member of studio draws their ideal scene as if they're looking out of the window- include objects of what you see poking out of the top of the gates in real life. So it's like we're looking out of the gates onto our ideal scene, not just the boring carpark which is actually there.