Recent Handmade Things

Here are some finished orders!

Firstly a book for a customer who wanted a unique present to give to the Bride on her Hen night! The book contains a photo of the bride with each hen, space for each hen to write a lovely message to the bride and an extra 10 pages for the bride to attach photographs of the hen party at the back.

The pages have been decorated with beautiful paper from the Papermania collection from Hobby Craft. I then used matching flowers to give the layout a bit or sparkle.

For the front of the book I have used ribbon to keep the book together, it became quite bulky with the photos, paper and flowers.

Beautifully packaged and ready for delivery!

Now here is a card order, my mum wanted a birthday card for her friend Ange and this is what I came up with! Very girly and sparkly love it 🙂 

For my Boyfriends birthday we are going to London for the weekend, he does not know this yet hence the London themed birthday card!

Inside I have used a pop up card that I bought from a little shop in Canterbury. We are going on the London eye for his birthday so I decided to include this in his card.

Again another little london themed card, this is for mum and dad to give to Mark as they have tickets for him to do something in London also on that weekend!

Handmade Things

Since finishing uni in May I have decided to start my own little ‘business’ making greeting cards, books and invitations for friends and family.

My first order was for a friend who wanted a guestbook for her 21st birthday party.  The theme was festivals so I downloaded a free brush for photoshop of a crowd and used it at the bottom of the topper.

This is my way of packaging all handmade things for my customers, it includes ribbon and a bow that says handmade, a small hand with handmade engraved and one of my business cards.

After my fantastic holiday to New Zealand inMay I decided to print off all my pictures and make a scrapbook, I am using the Urban Traveller collection from Simple Stories. Here is a sneaky preview:

This was a book I made to show potential customers what I can make.

Wedding cards/could be used for invitations??

A couple of weeks ago my dad told me that for his wedding anniversary, he and my mum bought each other a ring, it didn’t come in a box which was strange so I decided to make them a box each to give to each other. Sweet ay!

For another customer, a summer book to keep those all important summer memories together!

Dads xmas present, a typography piece with all the places and numbers relevant to his time in the Air Force! 

Books do not have to be square or rectangle, how about a circle? could be used for photographs or secret notes!

My little collection of books!

The Star book!

For my dear friend, 

https://www.facebook.com/Chelseashandmadethings

Evaluation

For this project I decided to work in a group with 10 other people to produce a book. We decided the theme would be ‘Why I hate to love design’. I was really happy with the name of the publication and already I started getting ideas and quotes in my mind to work on. The quotes I worked on were:

The variety of colour can make choosing the right one challenging

The work of others inspires me to do something truly amazing

and

I like buying new design materials however there is always a budget limitation.

I quite liked working within a group, if I was unsure on an idea that I had I could always rely on my peers to give me feedback and suggestions.

In the production I was part of the team that looked at the size of the book which would really show our work off well. We discussed sizes and then I made mock ups of the size using paper so we could get an idea of the size, what would be easy to hold, what margins would work well and the overall expectation of the book. We agreed to go for a larger size however due to cost reasons we had to make the book and margins smaller to keep the cost low.

Quite recently I have become very interested in handmade book binding and therefore this production has really helped me to understand what needs to be considered when printing the pages. For example if one page needs to come out of an A4 or bigger piece of paper then the cost will be more expensive. It also come to my attention that if you make a book which is a one off and only have a couple of copies, It actually works out much more expensive that what it does if you were to buy 100 or more copies.

Over the easter holidays it was quite difficult to keep in contact and get feedback from peers on ideas etc so we created the Contemporary Graphic Design Facebook page where we uploaded our work and was able to keep in contact with everyone. This worked really well as the notifications came through to my phone and therefore I kept up to date with everyone and with all the work being produced.

 

I am really excited to pick up my copies tomorrow we all worked really hard to complete the work and to get the book sent off to the printers. Thank you to everyone who contributed, either with work or the cost of the publication.

SWOT Analysis

What is a SWOT analysis?

• Strengths: characteristics of the business or project that give it an advantage over others
• Weaknesses: are characteristics that place the team at a disadvantage relative to others
• Opportunities: elements that the project could exploit to its advantage
• Threats: elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business or project

 

Strengths
In this project, I decided to work with 10 other people as a group and we decided to make a book on why we hate to love design. The strengths of working in a group rather than on a project on my own, was the feedback I was able to receive from my peers on my ideas of spreads to go in the book. We were able to throw ideas around which gave others inspiration for another idea and therefore we were able to come up with quotes and relevant work that supported the idea and the book well. We all kept in contact over Facebook which was really handy, this allowed us to communicate quickly and efficiently when needed.

Weaknesses
The weaknesses of working in a group on the book was time management, not living locally I found it difficult to always be at the meetings as they were not in uni hours and due to work I was unable to make some of the meetings. Even though Facebook is a quick way to communicate with everyone it was not always easy to understand whether or not we were actually meeting on certain days.

The easter break made it difficult to receive feedback therefore the whole gathering of final work and putting it together was slow.

Opportunities
When I looked over the brief and saw the option to work with a group of talented people, I was delighted that it would enable me to develop my skills in working in a group. This opportunity will look good on my CV for future jobs.

Threats
Personally I think that my ideas are not as strong as others in the production, however they represent me and what I like to do so to me they work well in the book.

Development sketches

Here are the sketches from my sketch book when trying to work out symbols etc:

Range Name: Passions

I have been thinking about how the perfume could be despensed from the bottle and decided to use the idea that it could be taken from the bottle with a pippett. This way it still keeps with the ‘scientific/chemical’ theme. The bottle would be glass with the logo etched on the front and a cork for the lid. I did order both the pippetts and the bottles to also be submitted witht he packages I have made however there has been a delay in posting and they have not arrived on time! Below are the sketches D&AD asked for:

Package design:

Bottle and dispenser design:

Final

After working out the colours and symbols for the graphics I then worked on the logo. I decided to use the logo that was given to me by D&AD, and I added an oval with a black border round it eith the emotion in french written underneith in the colour that represented that emotion. I also included on the back a barcode and the ml of the perfume inside.

Logo: Here are my four packages. As stated previously I used a lazer cutter to cut out these packages so that they would all be the same shape and size.

I like to include tabs, tucks and slots of packages that I do so I decided to to do that for these packages. Now they can easily be assembled without any glue or tape. 

A perfect Sublime Love: 

For the joining of the symbols like a scientific symbol, I used black and white string that would stand out. My idea was to create something that stood out on the shelves. Where most perfume packages are flat or have embossed graphics, I wanted to use sticky foam pads to  raise the graphics from the package.

Passion and Desire: 

Elegant and Dignified: 

Fear and Excitement:    

My four packages ready for submission:

The back of the packages: 

Symbols

After seeing the adrenaline symbold I decided to create my own symbols for each emotion that will be displayed on the packages:

I want my symbols to be in circles so that it would be easier to join them together.

For the adrenaline symbol, I found a circle symbol that had an ‘A’ and a heart monitor going through it. I quite liked this idea however because I did not come up with it I do not want to take it. I then started thinking of what you can do that gets adrenaline going, I thought of roller coasters and therefore used an image of a circular roller coaster as the symbol. For Passion and desire I used lips, for elegant and dignified I used a white flower and for a perfect sublime love I used a love heart. The symbols together with the colour for each of the packages works really well and I think that it gets the message across for what the emotion is.

Net design

I decided to try and cut out the 4 packages with a ruler and craft knife which left me with 4 rather unusual packages that did not all look the same! I am currently doing work experience at my old secondary school and they have allowed me to used 2D design tools and the lazer cutter so that every net will be the same and then the packages will all be the same size etc. Here is a screen shot of the net in 2D design tools. The red lines are to indicate to the lazer cutter that they are cut lines and the blue are fold lines.

Here are my four packages:

 

 

 

The laser cutter proved to be very helpful, the 4 packages are all the same shape and size and look much better. I wanted these packages to be easily assembled so i decided to include a tuck and slot rather than a glue tab. This way the packages can be flattened with ease if necessary:

 

Now all I need to do is print off the symbols and the logos and attach them onto the packages! In the brief It has asked me to break the rules of conventional perfume packaging. To do this I am bringing in what I like to do which is manmade items such as greeting cards, invitations, book binding etc and I am going to have a 3D front to my perfume packaging.

Waypoint 2