Graphic Design BA (Hons)
Advanced Professional Project
Background Information
Tea and coffee seem to be rising in popularity; it isn’t unusual to see a person stumbling into work or class with a mug of coffee or tea in hand to wake them up. It is also an easy way to relax with friends after a hard day of work. We often look upon inspirational quotes to boost our motivation to get us through the week long of reports or essays we have in our workplace and yet they can even go to the lengths of providing us with the courage to pursue our life long dreams.
Twinings is a British-based company that specialises in tea, and due to their interest in the environment they would like to have a travel mug that would appeal to students. Their aim is to help students cut down from continuously buying paper cups and save money by using their own tea bags. The student could always have a part of home with them in their travel mug, even when they’re far away from it.
The Brief
You are to design the outer design of a travel mug using inspirational words integrating illustration where possible. To reach a wider audience you may design an appropriate unisex design, as the company (Twinings) that would be supplying this product could maximise the potential to sell. You should associate this project with the idea of “Words” theme that is outlined in the learning outcomes.
Research and Methodology
I’ll be looking into existing designs of both travel mugs and ‘normal’ mugs, and as the inspirational quote/illustration will be the main theme of the mug I’ll also be looking at hand lettering tutorials and books. Here are some websites and books I’ll be looking at:
“Hand Job: A Catalogue of Type” by Michael Perry
The Association of Illustrators - http://www.theaoi.com/
Behance – http://behance.net/
Hand Lettering by Sean Wes - https://seanwes.com/
Linzie Hunter - http://www.linziehunter.co.uk/
By researching into existing designs will give me a general idea on how much space is on the coffee mug – so the dimensions of that and the wrapping – and would also help me figure out what people are looking for in a mug. Do they want it to be incredibly decorative, or simple?
I haven’t yet dabbled in hand lettering and hand type so it would be good if I could practice and gain inspiration from people who are experienced in this field. By looking at books like “Hand Job” will help me out with this as well as being a source of inspiration.
I could also talk to my fellow classmates to see what they are looking for in coffee mug designs so that I could do some primary research on it. This is quite important because they will be my target market.
Reflection, Testing and Learning Outcomes
At the end of each research stage I would draw up conclusions to see if they contribute to my designing process. This would also ensure that the research is relevant because even if it doesn’t appear to be at the beginning I would still include it in my sketchpad just in case it helped me out in future. In my conclusions I could also mention how they are relevant to the project, for example: Does this help me understand hand lettering? About the current trends in illustration? Even during my sketching stage I could write annotations of where I got my inspiration.
As seen in a previous post, I have analysed each learning outcome to ensure that I fully understand it. For example, one of my learning outcomes is: “Develop skills of independent study, resource utilisation, problem solving and decision taking”. To cover this learning outcome I could make continuous analysis of everything I had done and draw up conclusions to show how I have solved each ‘problem’.
Experimentation
I would test my product by showing it to the majority of students that I know of and – as I have mentioned above – to my classmates as they are a part of my target market. I could also talk to those who aren’t necessarily students but in full-time work and around that age (so up to their mid-twenties). I know that A Level students would require the same inspiration, so I’ll be testing them as well.
Another sort of experimentation I would like to carry out is doing lots of hand lettering sketches and illustrations so that I could expand my knowledge in combining them. This project will be a bit challenging for me as I haven’t done it before which gives me more reason to do lots of experiments and research on it.
Professional Practice
After I have done all of my research, sketches, and final design I would like to actually make the coffee mug wrap by purchasing a plain travel mug and some paper to wrap around it, or find websites where I could customize travel mugs. This means that I have to plan ahead to ensure that I have all of the materials in time in a couple of weeks before the deadline date.
Production and Contingency Planning
Here I have drafted out a timetable to cover all of my APP projects as I aim to handle each one the same. I had already displayed this on a previous post but here it is on it’s own:
I shall stick to this schedule because if it might cause some complications for me in future if I keep putting a particular project, especially because I’ll be working alongside my dissertation. I can do this by writing up daily to-do lists to keep at a calm pace.
N.B Please note that this is a university project, meaning that this isn't a brief provided by Twinings. I am just using them as a potential client.
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