Sunday, 22 December 2013

Pattern Finalising




When I have been research, all sweet shops have stripey lines as a pattern on the sweet bags and then transferred onto the carrier bags etc... So I am think about doing a pattern but not putting it all over the branding products.



At first I wasn't been very adventurous and I thought that I would try out a typical stripey pattern but try more thin vertical or even horizontal. But I don't think this would work very well on all my products as I am thinking I want to put it on the sides of each 3d mock-ups.





Polka dots are a typical pattern but not necessarily used in sweet shops. I think this is a strong pattern as it has no end or beginning. I don't know if the pattern would benefit form the dots been smaller and therefore not as noticable.




I decided to try out chevrons this is a very modern pattern so I don't know if it would match my logo very well. As I want to keep it traditional as well as adding a little modern touch. But I think this is too modern.



Final Decision

I have decided to go with the polka dot as this is not typical sweet shop and therefore has an added touch without the pattern been too modern & chic. As the sweet shop doesn't need chic it needs to be cute & a touch of vintage.

Friday, 20 December 2013

Logo Development



So I have decided that I want to still keep the same name as this has been established over a long period of time & therefore is well know & loved by many customers. I am going to update the logo but keep some qualities about it such as the classic sweet shop with a twist.

I started by using a scripty font with all the name but that was too much! I then changed to top to the western look with curly serifs. This and he script font went well. I then thought about using a blocky text for the in England as this is a very patriotic factor and therefore needs to stand out. Although, the blockiness in this font is too heavy for the light top, especially because it doesn't have any counters, or bowls.


 I then decided to use the flag font as this is a representation for the word England and therefore fits in. Then this advanced to the edge as I wanted the flags to look like it had be put on a pole. So I added the line along the bottom and then created a frame around the text I think it looks more contained & fitting.


I then progressed upon this with the central focus as it looks like a crown like a queen of sweet shops etc.. I like this and think its a very strong design. I am happy I have been thinking of how to make the 100 more central to the logo.


This was what I though of putting the date in a scroll but this didn't with the framed text. And therefore I am going to stick with the original logo. I think that the date doesn't need to be a central focus due to the name been the oldest sweet shop and therefore you know what kind of year the sweet shop would have been around since.



The pink is more sweet shop & candy like as the purple is less gender bias. Although, I did ask boys and they said that they know the known colour for sweets & candy is pink & therefore would not be put off by going in.



This breaks down the pink and netrualises it a bit more. Although, I think that the rod at the bottom needs to be infront of the text as when it is behind it is not easy to the eye. I have lowered the thickness of the stroke of the frame due to you couldn't see the detail before. I think this makes it more delicate style.



Final Logo



Friday, 13 December 2013

Final




Final.


















Here above is my final. I am very happy with it. I have just decided to create a wooden box with the logo of how to... on to hold the how to... books together. So this will be added. Although, overall I am very happy because finishes are always hard to get perfect which made it extremely hard due to it been made from finishes therefore every page was difficult to perfect & not all of them are.

I have chose the best quality page for the finishings that have come out from the process as I did a couple of prints. Although, the spot varnish is very dull and not what I was expecting which I think was due to the quality of the varnish and also would have worked better on a dark stock.

I wasn't very happy with the binding of my little how to booklets due to them not been perfect and this is what is going to be facing you when you lift the lid on the box. It was hard because of all the pages been laminate to very hard to push the needle through to create the holes.

Finally the binding of my look book looks very professional although, every time I open it I think its going to break. The glue has seeped through to the pages and stuck them together I don't think I will be using this binding process again.

Thursday, 12 December 2013

Bottle Development


I have found a better image to mock my design onto, I have chosen to redesign the back of the bottle as when I read the back information there was information that was in relation to the bottle design currently therefore I thought I would included their logo at the moment at the back with slight touches of the current colour to make it flow throughout.

 I think the design looks a lot more cleaner now, The logo at the bottom I have changed as I have added the type of drink below the line which, I did try out before but not I have placed it in block capitals with a clean clear font due to the small point size.


Rewriting The Brief


So the brief so far tells me that it has to show 100 and how it is a significant number. 

We had to rewrite our brief to our own so therefore this is what I have wrote out:







This is what I have decided to  do, they said it had to be as accurate as possible and we have to stick to them. Just like if you was getting set a brief from another client.




Tuesday, 10 December 2013

Back Information developed





I have decided to develop upon the back design, this is because when I did read the back it was designed for the current design and therefore I though, it would make sense if I redesigned. I have chosen to attach the same colour scheme to the back to highlight certain points. Again I have made the design more justified so the edges don't indent at any point so therefore this makes the design easier to the eye.

Saturday, 7 December 2013

Imageslider Problems

I have started searching on how to include image slider. I have downloaded j.query & wowslider. But I just don't know where to start with the whole aim. I think that I have wasted too much time on something that I am not going to get anywhere with as I am not going to work this out anytime soon.


So now I have decided that I will try and work this out when I have more time and not when I have time restrictions as I have wasted around 6 hours on trying to work this out.

Laminating




Laminating.

So because I wanted to laminate my pages so that they could take in the booklets if they wanted to, to the workshop space. As then it will be wipe clean and worry-free.


So when I was trialing it.. 

I scored the paper before putting it through the laminator.
And also didn't and just scored the laminate after it came out.

Here are the results....


This is the colour of my stock I am using for my how to books.... I didnt score this before I folded it And it has come away at either side of the score. This tells me that I need to score the paper before and then fold the laminate.




I wasn't going to laminate the front cover of the booklets but then I realised the the inside stock with the printed material would be thicker than the cover which is obviously not very appropriate. So I decided to see if you can still see the emboss if I laminate it. And I think I just got away with it. Although you can't feel the emboss you can still see the blind emboss effect.






I didn't score this paper before laminating and and then after it came out of the laminator I scored it and folded it straight away so then because I didn't let it cool down before folding it just split and cracked down the outside edge of the fold.

Thursday, 5 December 2013

Development of Website & Problems Overcome

So to start my website up I thought if I got the basis right such as the container it would make my life a whole load easier down the line. So I chose to sue the same set-up as the one we did in the web design session. I had worked all my wireframes out to the same width of 1024px which this is the average width of computer screens.



So I started up the basic container and although I wanted it to be white background I filled it with a vibrant colour so that I could see where it would be placed.


This is how my website started which is exactly following the one we set in the session. Now I am going to input my logo & navigation bar. This i what is going to be hard as we didn't put our logo in the middle like I am wanting, we put it in the top left corner.



This is what I placed to put the logo in, I didn't put it in the same width box because it wasn't sitting in the right place. I didn't want it in the right at the top of the page so I put a margin above of 30px.
So in the HTML I placed the image in...


I placed the image as a rollover so I could attach a link so that you can go back to the index page as this is what most websites do when I have been researching. And I didn't know how to make a link when adding just an image.


So the this is my navigation bar and my buttons on the style sheet. I only did threes buttons as I realised that the gap was the same to the fourth, so I stopped. I could have not had a third but I had already done it so I decided to just keep it in. I have made my navigation bar the width of the page and the height of it just a bit bigger than the buttons as I wanted a gap between the logo and the nav bar.




This how I applied it in my HTML this I applied as a rollover as I had a rollover on them. Although, on the HTML it was I used the same image as I wanted to keep the rollover so this was the title of the page.




Then I wanted to add text so I had to choose my font family and the size so that this would not just be the automatic font and it stayed in the same style and matched the rest of the website as it needed a sans serif font to match the buttons & logo.




I tried to insert the images of the infographics separately and the text next to it. But I just couldn't get it right so I decided to make it easier for myself and create it as an image in illustrator and insert it in.


But I was now having a problem of scrolling because people are telling me it should scroll automatically but my website isn't. I have looked at online tutorials and these are not helping me as the way they are coding is totally different to the way we are doing it. So I looked in my HTML & CSS book. It told us to put overflow:scroll; into my container in the CSS file. This did help and then I just had to extend my container as it was set to only 768 as I was not going to have a scroll at first but then the infographics where too small.



Then I wanted to put on a PDF onto the website of the park maps so therefore they could download it and plan there day and print it out. But I didn't know how to do it so I looked in my HTML & CSS book of how to insert a PDF and this is why I inserted it in as a figure.

Then I wanted to create a link to the pdf so you can save it and print it out, zoom in & out. Therefore I created a hyperlink here again I found this out from the HTML & CSS book. As you can see the link is on the words to download a copy of the PDF maps.
 

To finish off the website I wanted to create a footer. with social media links on and link to get back to the top of the page.


I wrote all the code out but the footer was just not working when it was on the website so I asked one of my fellow students on my course Danielle Harrison to have a look as she had done coding before. She change a few things on my website such as using percentages rather than putting the px every time. The she showed me a feature which I think would have been really useful if knowing how to do it from the start.

The inspect element:
When she showed me this I was thinking it was a dream come true its no more guessing as you can align things and find out the size of padding and margin. It doesn't save but it saves a lot of time as its no more guessing game. I like the clear expression of the layout it shows different colours for what you have for the padding on the right hand side. And gives you your code so you can change it and see if it fixes it before saving it then undoing it.





This is what happens you can highlight over one part of your div and it will tell you where this div lies. The reason why my footer wasn't working is because it was sitting too high up & therefore the items that was inside the footer was getting squeezed out. So she told me to change my padding and then asked me to change all my boxes to relative as this is why I was having a problem with my scrolling.

Elegant Avenue Beauty Salon

During conversation to my nail technician I mentioned what I did at uni and what I would do after with this degree, in which I told her branding of shops etc.... She then went on to ask me if I would like to brand her salon when she finds a permanent unit, as at the moment she has a room in her family home for her salon.

So I asked her if she any name thoughts to call the shop and she hadn't thought about this although, once we got speaking about her moving into a permanent unit it became quite apparent that she knew how she wanted the salon to look. So I mentioned that we could work on a name from her aesthetics she would like the shop to be in. So I gave her the idea of been Avenue but then including another keyword to bring in the notion of Beauty Salon.

I mentioned my concern maybe if she kept something to do with Hannah because at the moment she is called Hannah's Nails. This also can be overcome by changing her photo on Facebook to the logo so people recognise her logo & the change in name and then people will ask questions and then pass the word on.

So we decided to meet over a coffee so I could take more detailed notes etc... Through this meeting I found out that she wanted it to look very clinical and wanted block sofas with a blocky desk. Which I thought personally was quite strange. So therefore she said she didn't like script fonts and that she wanted it to be in capitals. She also told me that she is currently taking more courses so she can do more treatment when she opens the shop rather than just the 2 she does at the moment, although, she is very established within these two treatments as she has been doing these for 7 years alongside a part-time job. Closing this meeting I told her to send me an email with her colour choices, name of salon, contact details & her price list.

We also talked about what she would like designing:

Business Card
Loyalty Card
Gift Voucher
Price List Big & Handheld
Appointment Card
Disclaimer


We have decided to send information over email due to the distance and due to our difficult schedules. Although, this might not be as beneficial as meeting up in person I think this is going to be more beneficial to us rather than waiting for the time we can both meet up, therefore wasting substantial development time.





This is the email she sent me... So I replied saying that I think elegant avenue due to the avenue is very vague and although from the outside you might be able to tell that it is a beauty salon, on your business card you might not know what it is from first glance and just pass it off. So she agreed with this and told me to pursue the design with elegant Avenue.

I then also asked Hannah if she would kindly fill out this blank brief for me so I can get a further understanding into her needs and what outcomes she would like, incase there is any vital information she has left out within our chat. Then she sent me in back through email, and here it is...







So I then started designing logos for the shop as a starting point as this is going to be on all the stationary etc..







So I decided to work on the word avenue first to get this American & New York theme across. I chose to minus the cross-bar from the A to match the V. This is connoting the avenues that are next to each other in New York as they are parallel streets that are long & thin. This was straight forward and I was very happy with this quick turnaround. 

I like both of the above, it will just depend on which one to what font I use for the elegant.

Now I need to work on the Elegant, which I think is going to be the hardest part due to the word itself been quite scripty and with Hannah not been keen on the scripty fonts I think this is going to be hard to make it work.





 I think this is very formal and that does work but doesn't have that wow factor.


 From viewing this with the Elegant title also, this is very overpowering & too much for the logo of the salon. Therefore this avenue has now been eliminated.
 Here I have tried to add a little elegant touch to the title without been too scripty but it just doesn't work. I am going to try a script font and see what Hannah thinks as she might turn to like it... But I will also give her other choices when I present her with them.
 I think the X high for the script font on this one is too low and the kerning is very wide..



 I think this one is too child like. Like the lines they follow when they are first learning how to join up their hand writing. I think the viewing of the elegant in grey is giving me more of a better outlook as I am think of foiling the elegant on the business cards.







 Now I have decided to create my own script to go with the Avenue. I have refined this to this final product and I think this is the strongest one! I am now going to send her the logo ideas and see which one she likes. I am also going to mention that if she uses my font I have created she will not have to pay for font licenses etc.. Although, it has the script font the block avenue balances it out and doesn't look too girly.