Business Cards

I've also made a few designs for my business cards. These are all the front design, the back will be of screenshots from my animations to showcase my work.

  I'm still unsure of which design is best.

New Website Design

I've spent a lot of time on Weebly and have tried my best to customise this particular theme to suit me through the Html coding. It's been slow but it is going well:

I've made quite a lot of progress. The main things left to do here is my Animations page, my Concept page and upload my CV to 'About me'.

I'm not quite happy with the drop down menu (it's an off white and I can't find how to alter this).

I'd also like a sweeping transition between pages.

I'd also like the words to be closer to the images on my Home page (Showreel, Work, Contact).

Website Development from Scratch

I've found that I can no longer make my website with Wix. Not only because I have to upgrade to attach my domain which costs a lot of money, I've also seen an overwhelming amount of negative reviews from customers of Wix. No customer service and problems with the sites in general (in some cases customers are paying £40 a month and suddenly their website has gone offline and they cannot contact anyone to help at Wix).

Therefore I've decided I'm going to have to develop my website elsewhere.

I'm looking into Weebly, although you still have to upgrade, it is much much cheaper and the reviews are a lot more positive. I also have some friends who use it.

Website Update

Unfortunately it seems that Anne and I have come a cross a bit of an issue concerning attaching a domain name to Wix; they charge a fee to do it which is a shame. We're going to see what I can do, in the cheapest way possible.

In the mean time, I do need to complete more of my website. Particularly as the presentations are very soon.

Pathways Event

Today was really good, I got the opportunity to speak with a few people relevant to my industry. Ideas Tap were extremely friendly and helpful; they're a creative network that help people find jobs, internships, advice and funding.

I spoke with The Children's Media Conference and I'm hoping to get involved in volunteering for them this summer. The woman on the stall was brilliant and very friendly and explained how I can get involved and what the voluntary work actually consists of.

I also spoke to Talenthouse a great deal as I'm working on a brief that they've given to the Motion Graphics module.

I also got the chance to have a chat with Tommy Robin, it was interesting to find out a little more about him.

Overall, it went really well and I feel I'll get a lot out of it!

CV Improvements

I've had some advice from my tutor and help in arrangement of layout and I think we've about cracked it.

It's feeling much more spacious and everything is nice and cohesive in appearance. I'm not 100% about my name and specialty at the top but I've tried playing around with the layout and nothing seems to work as well as this.

Also, I'm unsure about keeping everything in the Work Experience section, however the part-time work shows dedication, perseverance and the ability to work collaboratively. I may perhaps eliminate the 'student representative' as the role isn't that demanding so I won't have much to say about it...

I'll see tomorrow in class.

Website and CV Development

Here's what I've done so far

I'm quite happy with it at this point. The transition between the pages is a swipe to the left, which I thing brings more personality and looks the best.

I've also made a start on my CV design. I'm again having trouble deciding which looks the best.

I really like the first one but it doesn't really work/match with my style of circles. I like the combination of the second but I thing the circles will be a problem concerning layout as they take up a large amount of space. I tried the opposite compromise which I feel works quite nicely but I do prefer the grey box at the bottom. Unsure of how to approach it; I may have to look into an entirely different layout.

I'm finding InDesign quite nice to use but it can be somewhat temperamental. I found that importing my logo as an image file causes it's quality to lessen in certain parts of the logo when I export the document. A solution I found though, is that if I import my Illustrator file straight in I don't seem to encounter these problems.

Everything else seem relatively simple to figure out most of the time. I had to ask how to wrap text but everything is in there you just have to take time to find it. I like the use of grids and guides to help with alignment of layout. Resizing images seems pretty odd to me; I'm not sure why it isn't as straight forward as the other Adobe programmes.

I also made these to use in my CV, Website and business cards.

I've made a few more changes to my CV to see if I could get the design right. I'm still not sure about it though.

It's feeling a bit cluttered at the top. I'm not sure how to arrange everything to keep it feeling clean and light.

ISSUU

Today we looked at ways of developing our portfolio further by looking at ISSUU books that people have made.

It's basically a book filled with work; displayed in any way you wish and the ISSUU transforms the PDF pages into a virtual book.

It's a nice idea but I don't think I'll be considering making one until my main project is finished. Not only because of the workload but I'll have more finished pieces/shots to show at that time.

Inspiration for CV

I've been looking at some creative CVs to give me some ideas about layout and incorporating my own style. I want it to be clean clear to read the individual sections separately.

One that was shown in class really caught my eye as I really like her style:

I particularly like how she separates her 'About Me' section really obviously to make it feel more personal. The way she implemented her style of drawing works really well but I want to keep mine quite simple in comparison.

I also don't particularly want a 'Star rating' system as I don't feel that knowledge can be calculated very accurately in this way; it's all very subjective and I think it's a bit risky.

I also saw this from another illustrator:

I'm not sure I'll take anything specifically from it but I like how loud it is and speaks volumes for her personality. I'm not sure it's particularly suitable for me as the information given is quite brief. At least from both, I feel that my name and specialty will probably end up on the top right of the page.

Tutorial

Today I had a tutorial with Anne to take a look at what I'd done so far.

I've also been looking into Wix and trying to choose a website template to use. I'm finding it really difficult to make a decision because there are so many that look nice. I've also made a drawing of myself that I could use to make it more personal and also it's something that can be transferable to my CV.

I know that I want my colour palette to be very simple; white, black, grey and purple. I tried various frames for this image.

I like both but again the square feels to rigid and sharp like my logo designs before. I think the circle works better for the style I'd like. Plus, a circle represents openness.

This was my first quick experiment with a template that I showed Anne. I like how simple and clean it is, but I felt that the template was very symmetrical which contrasted too much with my logo. That's when I remembered another I came across that contained circles. I spoke with Anne about my ideas for the style and she was very positive about the idea of basing things around circles and creating uniformity in that way.

We discussed how I could create all of my icons including buttons for my work; as circles.

Looking at Other Websites

I wanted to revisit the websites we had a quick exercise on in the first lesson. 

I wanted to clarify what I liked and hopefully it will help me further realise what design aspects I wanted in my own website.

Although the website is colourful and really shows off Bryony's talent and personality, I would prefer for mine to not appear like a blog, the way this does. I'd like it to be cleaner and something I would update periodically with complete pieces of work rather than regular updates - like a blog.

These examples are much more to my taste. Clean, lots of white and - in Jason Brobert's case - with an accent of colour. I want to do something similar to this as it appears very professional but simple. I also like the idea of panels which have a rollover image but I'm not sure I would have enough work to display in this way.

Again this is similar but with a lot more colour. It's really nice and uniformed to his brand - even in his showreel - which works really well. However, once again I would like less on mine.

This is an example of clean and professional but I feel a tad boring. But then again, it is all about the work and not the web design.

More Brand Development

Greys

There was mixed opinion about 'all purple' or purple and black. I tried it with various shades of grey but I think it weakened it so I abandoned that.

Stroke Styles

I then used Illustrator's vector tools to try various styles to the stroke. Again I got mixed opinions but I did agree with someone that the central style feels more like a logo rather than a handwritten piece of text. But I didn't want it so uniformed, I wanted it to have some 'written' quality, some personality.

Personality

I'd decided that separation with colour was what I wanted. I tried this stroke and I really like it. I think I'm very close to finalising now.

Almost there

This one is definitely my favourite so far. I've tampered with it repeatedly in Illustrator to try and make it more polished and I think I've about cracked it.