How To...?

This is our first brief that we have been set on the LCA BA Graphic Design course in which we worked in 11 groups with 5 been the average in each group. In our group we had to put 100 problems that a new student in Leeds on the LCA Graphic Design course would face during the first couple of weeks. From the 100 we had thought of and wrote down we then decided our favourite 10 problems as a group.We then passes our list of 100 problems with the 10 highlighted favourite to the next table clockwise so everyone would have another groups list of problems. From that we picked 3 from the other groups top 10 and wrote them down, each on an individual piece of paper and put them in a jar which would be randomly picked from th jar for each of the 11 groups within my class. Our question was revealed...

How to Survive When Your Maintenance Loan is Late?

Our group was number 7 and we didnt think we needed to do much research in the nature of what students need as we were the target audience. We then worked out some possible solutions of what we could do as helping them save such as Asda WHOOPIES! Or even having a traffic light system to tell a student how cheap it is as we thought as a student we didnt really know what was expensive and what was cheap?

We then came up with the idea of a survival pack kit, as we wanted to play on the word survival as we thought it seems more dramatic. So after we decided on the survival kit we needed to decided what we wanted to put in it. Some of our ideas where food and sweets etc... We didn't want to make it become a serious subject as then we thought students wouldn't accept the pack and therefore would not unknowling read up on some facts we wanted to slip into the bag. We didnt want to put all leaflets and flyers full of infomation as they would just get thrown away as we know from our own experiences.  

Our next big thought was where we was going to hand this out as that is the main target to our audience and we thought the freshers fair would be our best way to reach our target audience and therefore we came up with the idea to use a canvas bag as they are very popular wihtin the fair and also can be reused when the information has been taken in.

Our final ideas/products to put in our survival pack:

• A Flyer with a few tips that we thought would be the most useful to saving money as a student.
• A Discount Card that entitles 20% off at supermarkets such as Asda, Morrisons, Tesco & Sainsburys as when sarah researched there was no real discount to use within the supermarket chain. Only things such as NUS which entitles discount on book stores and retail.
• A Packet of 'Grow Your Own Loan' which would include apple or tomato seeds to grow their own fruit. Which is the undertone of the pack as we didnt want it to be formal.
• A Packet of Super Noodles which is probably the most common form of food as a student.
• A Bottle of Vitamins as then the student will still get essential nutrients even though low on budget for food.

What? Why? Who? How?

What is it? It is a survival kit containing a flyer with essental tips on saving, a bottle of vitamins to get students through the freshers when budget is low to ensure they are still getting nutrients. Also a pack of 'Grow your own loan' seeds to put the humourous factor and also enable tudents to grow their own fruit. A packet of typical student food, Super Noodles. Finally a discount card which enables students to get 20% off in 4 main supermarkets.

Why Do They Need to Know? To help them get through the freshers week without struggling to get necessities such as food which helps you function.

Who Needs to Know? Students who are waiting for their maintainance loan. Especially if it is late after other students have received theirs.

What Do They Need To Know? How to save money to ensure they can get through the freshers week confortably with the money they have saved or lent from others.

What is The Tone of Voice? We wanted to achieve a more comical tone to grab their attention which then helps with the flyer which has more formal information.

How Will We Know Its Working? We will know it is working du to if you are going to use the discount card in supermarkets you have to register them online first to receive the discount therefore we can compare the difference between the amount of cards given out and the amount of cards registered. Which therefore if the card is registered by more then 60% we could say that has been a successful distribution of information.

The Design Process

We firstly decided how we wanted to work whether we wanted to work as a group to make sure all the piece where consistant or whether we would all get individual tasks but keep a theme by tieing some themes throughout. We decided we would get more done if we worked individually and have designated tasks each. My Job was to do the packet for 'Grow your own Loan'.

We decided to tie the whole project together we would use the same theme of army which we thought it would be good as the idea of survival reminds us of army etc... So we chose a camouflage pattern as a group and used that as the backgroud throughout the kit whether it was the background or wihtin the title. Also the fonts we used for bodycopy and titles where the same throughout and the drawn images by Jake Greenhalgh.

This is Jake while he is drawing the images for the theme of the kit. The all are essentials or things that are important to students such as vodka etc...

This is the front of the Seed Pack, I drew the Tree Branches in illustrator and scanned the drawing of the plant pot in and ive traced it in illustrator too. The drawings that Jake Greenhalgh did was added on after they had been scanned in seperately we thought the white background made them stand out.

This is a photograph of the back of the seed packet on the screen as the file will not load of the actual file. This also has the camo on this side and the instructions on how to plant the seeds if they do wish to do so. Also a little warning saying "WARNING this does not grow real money!"

We used transfer paper to print onto the canvas bag as that was a quicker process due to the timescale of the project. Therefore Adam Garbutt Created the design and then transferred it to print it onto transfer paper to iron press onto the bag. Below is how it turned out...

This is how it turned out the print did come out a khaki colour which we didnt mind as the theme was camouflage which has greens and khakis within the colour scheme. Overall this was a very successful process.

Progress Crit

On Thursday we did a mini presentation of our ideas and mock-ups of our ideas to another group which they would give us feedback on. And then visa versa.. Here is two of the other groups feedback to our group.

We then was given an action plan to make sure we get everything ready for our presentation on Friday afternoon. So we designated roles within this table below.

Overall Final Student Survival Kit.

This is our overall final of the project this is everything we are going to put in the survival kit apart form the super noodles. I think i shows very good consistancy even though individual members of the team created each different part of the survival kit.

Group 7

Sarah Goldthorpe-Created the Discount Card.

Lizzie Gosner- Created the Double Sided Flyer.

Adam Garbutt-Created the Design for the Canvas Bag.

Jake Greenhalgh-Drew the images and created the Vitamin Pill Sleeve.

Melissa Gater-Created the front and back of the packet of Grow Your Own Seeds.

We then had to present it to the whole year so therefre we created a presentation and each had different parts to say. The presentation went quite well although we did go over the 5 minutes.

Self Evaluation

After the presentation we then had to do a self evaluation of what roles we did, how well you performed, how well you wokred as a group and what would we improve next time?

This is how i evaluated myself and my group...

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