Week 11

Through making a Cinematique ad slide, I was given the opportunity to work with the department head Dave Monahan. Zoë and I met with Dave in his office and shared with him information about the slide and Dave gave us his incite and expectations for the design. I showed Dave my designs and discussed the Film Studies Look so that I would be sure to keep with their brand.

Lucky for me, Dave is an awesome person to work with and he had very little guidelines and restrictions for the FST ad look. I showed him a portfolio of my work which helped him feel more confident about letting me design a  representation of UNCW Film Studies. This meeting also allowed me to ask about the FST Ad in the Program and if I could design that as well. I received his blessing and he even asked me to design more things that could be possibly be put on the website. 

This is my design so far. I'm working on a Cinematique Slide Ad counterpart and then I will email Dave for his thoughts and comments. 

Week 10

Now that badges are out of the way, this week I shifted my focus back to the program. Working on the program has been the hardest thing I have ever done because:

1. Art is in charge of taking the information (filmmaker info gathered by Hospitality, Marketing, and Operations) and putting it into an organized design...except everyone was behind and the information was constantly being updated, so I designed most pages 4/5 times with every new addition.

2. Things that were designated months prior to the programs creation changed. I decided that, with all of the information given to Grace and I, we would only need 24 pages. Then things such as: adding five more people to the Visionary Panel, adding installations, or not making quota for sponsorships, popped up and threw wrenches into everything.

3. It's just a lot of work that one person has to do. It takes time to design 24 pages.

This process started by presenting to the class there sample pages of how the program could be designed.

The class voted on a design that replicated the cityscape theme of the event poster (the left design). The cityscape changes on every pages, so it looks consistent, but interesting.

Something that I wanted to bring to this years program was taking the After Party two page spread and turning it into a color poster. Grace and I got the support of the team as well as the budget needed and made this dream and reality. I think it came out nice and will add more interest to the program.

Week 9

This week, I spent my time designing the badges. Shannon wanted the badges to reflect the shirt design in order to keep with the consistency in the overall look. However, I was inspired to do a space-scene badge look as well, so I ended up making two (typically, there is only one design to critique). I looked at other festivals badges (Tribeca, SXSW) and the badges that were designed for V5 in order to best understand what I needed to accomplish for my works.

The key in designing badges is to use a slight modification to each card (filmmaker, guest, scholar, ect.) so that the different types of attendees can be differentiated. The class ended up choosing the space-scene design, which I was excited about just because I felt the design was more interesting/conversational. Every badge has a different spaceship on it, which allows for people to
compare/discuss their designs (in an ideal world where people would care about that maybe?).  I sought design advice from Grace (fellow Art Director) and people from the class. The class recommended darkening the background and adding a black boarder, which I thought really helped strengthen the design. As for the back of the badges, I made a smaller version of the schedule from the program that is also color coordinated to the badge color.

Week 7

After presenting my Program samples to the class, the class voted for the first design.

The class also gave helpful comments which I used to improve upon my original designs. Firstly, the Visions Logo on the back on the Program was the same opacity as the tractor beam. Because the logo is such an important icon for Visions, because it represents Visions as a whole. I made the logo darker so that it's importance translated visually. The class also had a lot to say about the inside pages. Many people expressed that they wanted to make sure that the pages would have a lot of variety in their design. I then told them that the cityscape would vary from page to page as well as the "subject" of the scene. The subject in the sample page is a spaceship, but it could be anything. A few ideas are to have the spaceship land and for aliens to interact with the background. These details will be minor enough that they won't distract from the text, but also interesting so that the audience gets a fresh feeling from every page.

Week 6 Response

This week I accompanied Zoë, Kevin, Simone, and Grace to GMU in order to give a presentation about Visions Film Festival & Conference. The presentation consisted of information about Visions as well as a viewing of some of the films that showed at past Visions. The presentation went well with a lot of students approaching and talking to us afterwards. Kevin, who went on the Partner School Trip last year, said that the students responded a lot stronger this trip (which sounds like good news to me). We made many friends and even had people wanting to volunteer at the event. I had an amazing time and learned a lot about presenting as well as forming relationships with film students outside of Wilmington.

   

Even though I was in Virginia, I still had lot of design work that I needed to do for next weeks class. Currently, I am working on developing the program. I came up with three designs that I thought would work well with the cohesive, art design of V6.  I based them off of my original Event Poster Designs and the T-Shirt. I believe that the first design is the strongest because the Event Poster and Program having a cross consistency looks consistent and helps establish the look of the brand. I would also expand upon the city design within the pages, building the theme and almost making a visual narrative for the audience.

Week 5 Response

This week I took everything the class has to say about my designs and tweaked them accordingly. Overall, everyone was extremely positive about the designs and only had minor adjustments for me to make. With the t-shirt design, I had to change the ship drastically.



I wanted the ship to have more of an Art Deco feel which is shown with the ship's updated design. I also wanted it to look cleaner and to have a sense of motion throughout the piece. This design also takes into account the choice of a black shirt. I really feel like the shirt design is strong this year. Simone and I have been working together too, ensuring that the quality and color of the shirt will be desirable and up to our standards. I will consider my shirt design a success if all of the leftovers are missing in a couple of years (vintage Visions Swag).

I am also preparing for GMU this weekend by getting ready for the Classroom Presentation as well as the PA Training. I am super excited to represent Visions at Virginia and I can't wait to talk to the filmmakers that we met at VFF. Visions provides so many networking opportunities and the training will be incredibly helpful for my resumes. Honestly, it would have been crazy for me not to sign up.

Week 4

This week was a hectic to say the least. Two big projects are due next week, the Event Poster and the T-Shirt Designs. I spent a lot of time over the week and weekend researching Art Deco designs because I really wanted the look to feel genuine to that style. I also wanted to make sure and incorporate the logo as well as the color palette decided on last semester. Even though the look has shifted, I still want V6 to have some congruent-aspects to it's overall design. It's normal for companies to rebrand and shift their style, so if anything, I find this to be expected. I spent a lot of time with my designs and I think that it shows. Below are some images that I drew inspiration from:

I also worked on a bumper this weekend. I filmed a small segment of my cat chasing a laser a few weeks ago and later superimposed the logo over the laser. This assignment was my first time using After Effects which was both challenging and fun. I had to look up a lot of tutorials, but being a Creative Cloud user, I has a lot of access to free tutorials made by Adobe. They were extremely helpful and allowed me to complete the project in a pretty timely manner.

Week 3 and Helvetica Response

Visions is really kicking off with Art designing in the Space-Deco Style. This change came about because the directors did not feel like the campaign was cohesive in its design. By picking a more definitive theme, Art has a lot more direction. This week, I taught Jack how to use Photoshop and Illustrator. Now that Jack is making his own graphics which allows me to work on the campaign designs (such as the T Shirt and Event Poster). I have already started working on the program and have met with Evonne about prices as well as paper options. I asked about the addition of one color page and she told me that it would increase the price. I've been considering dropping a page (the film page before the list of films feels unnecessary) which would help balance out the additional cost of the color page. I've also been working on a bumper and learning AfterEffects in the process. It's a  relevant program that will be an asset on my resume.



Helvetica Response:
I throughly enjoyed the documentary "Helvetica" and it's safe to say that I will never look at font the same way again. The film brought up many interesting design factors that fonts possess, one being the thickness portraying an emotion/feeling or emphasis. I myself don't utilize font thickness within my design, so the examples shown within the film made me examine design in a new way. Readability was also ephasized in the film. V6 has had font issues in the past, so I'm really striving for readability with the 1950s fonts we are incorporating.

Week 2 - Programs Dirty Dozen

 1. What is the project supposed to achieve?

To allow V6 attendees to have an informative guide to this years festival. This program will also promote our sponsors.

2. Who is the customer?
All festival attendees are going to receive a program. 

3. What are the deliverables of the project?
The program itself is the only deliverable.

4. What is the budget?
$700

5. How long will it take?
The program cannot be completed until film selections as well as any other festival preparations (deciding the panel). But as long as everything has been decided, the programs will go out for printing after Spring Break.

6. What specific skills are needed?
I will need to be creative, but also thoughtful so that the design is successful. I will also need to be timely if I want to make my deadlines.  I will be using mostly Illustrator, but some Photoshop as well. 

7. What special resources are needed?
Class contacts for businesses will be quite helpful. I will also need to know sponsorship level information to properly acknowledge donating business.

8. Who is working the project? What is each person's job?
Jack has expressed an interest in helping with the programs, so I have been meeting with him to brainstorm about design. Jack also wants to do some of the writing for the program with the help of Zoe. Kevin will be writing the Welcome Page as festival director. Also, Adrienne will assist me with sponsor information.

9. What is the schedule?
Feb 23rd - Program Class Approval

March 1st - Program Class Approval
March 15th - Printing
March 22nd-29th - Get Programs back from Evonne

April 15th - Programs given to Festival attendees

10. What are the risks? (Small vs. large impact, likely vs. unlikely)

• Large Impact, not likely: I will be late in printing the programs and we won't have them in time for the festival. 
• Small Impact, unlikely: There could be a typo that I overlook that gets printed.
• Large Impact, Possible?: There could be a problem with printing where there is a defect in all copies of the program.

11. How will you communicate with your team?
I will talk closely with Jack, but will also contact the others involved as their pages are completed and require text. I will also utilize Facebook to make sure that I am open with my communications. 

12. How will you determine if the project is successful?

I want the program to be aesthetically pleasing as well as helpful. I want my program to set a precedent for programs to come. 

Week 1 - Spring Semester Starts

Spring Semester has commenced! Art has been in full force, with the Cinemixer flyers needing to be designed and voted on before classes started. Grace worked with Zoe in order to create the Art Calendar so that we can stay on track. I finished up Cinemixer this week and worked on getting Samantha set up with Bake Sale and Party Flyers. I also spoke with Carson about the website and about presenting web changes to the class. I also had house cleaning to take care of, such as giving new members the basics of Google Drive and cleaning up the Art Drive. As for my own tasks, I started work on the program. Jack and I talked about his part in the program with writing up content. We both came up with the idea of making the Party-2-Page Spread in the program into a pull-out poster. I want to step up the quality of the party graphic so that people would want to tear it out and display it. We could also improve this spread by adding color, which I have already mentioned to Grace. Grace and I are currently preparing for a meeting with Evonne about the Program as far as printing and design options. We want to do this early so that we can prepare a proper budget. As for Research, I looked at the past programs and thought of ways to improve the layout for our pages.