OUGD602 PPP3 EVALUATION

Through out my time at university the PPP module has been beneficial to my growth as both a person and a designer. This year in particular I have used the module to self reflect on my practice and professionalism.

One particular strength I have developed through this year is my presentation skills. I feel I can deliver a strong, concise and clear presentation. These are skills i have developed through various presentations for PPP and extended practice. I can utilise this skills in my professional career when delivering client pitches or potential employer interviews. I think I could further improve my skills by making sure I prepare prior to an presentation. Presentational skills have helped me grow in confidence when conducting myself in a professional environment.

I have taken many opportunities this year out side of university such as attending Design Manchester and Neubau - year in the forest. These events have been really useful to my professionalism. They are a great opportunity to network, as well as a good chance to meet like minded and passionate people.

The PPP module has pushed me to network and connect with industry professionals. At the start of the year this was something I actively avoided, worried about putting my self out there to be judged. However over time i have grown proud of the work i have amassed over the last year and am more than happy to connect with professionals and ask to visit their studios to talk through my work and enquire about internships and jobs. As of this I recently secured two placements for the summer after my course, I am quite apprehensive about them, but excited to experience graphic design out side of education. I feel that i could have engaged with networking and placements earlier on in the year, but feel more confident now to carry them out.

My personal branding this year is a true reflection of me. In previous years I have tried to design an identity that was to stylistic and not a true reflection of my design practice. This year however I have designed an identity that is clean, minimal and timeless. 

Over all i think that this module has really helped me develop as a designer. It has set me up for the future and prepared me to take the step in to industry. I think it has been a great opportunity to reflect on my practice and evaluate my personal and professional growth from 1st year to this point. I now view my self as a young professional rather than a student and am ready to progress, using the reflective devises learnt throughout this module to evaluate my progression and growth through out my career.

OUGD602 PERSONAL BRANDING WEB PRESENCE

OUGD602
PESONAL BRANDING 
WEB PRESENCE

I have recently purchased the domain name samcook.co and the email address hello@samcook.co. I am now developing my website. I also rely on Behance as an online platform. I decided to keep the design of the website very structured and gridded and keep to the colour schemes of my branding.

This is the homepage interface, the images are all examples of my work and will work as links to the main work page with more information of the project. The grid structure in place displays m work in a uniformed and tidy manner, it will also scroll to show more projects.

The image will fade and a short header will appear when you hover over the image, each image will also be a link to the work page providing more information on the brief and more images of the project.

The about page uses to columns one for the image and one for the information. The information provided includes an overview accompanied by a short bio.

The contact page includes an interactive google map with an icon to show where i am based, it follows the same column and grid structure as the previous page in order to create a uniformed and cohesive design.


Over all i am really happy with the proposed web site. I have utilised cannons and grids through experiment with wireframes, as a result I think the website perfectly suits my design style. It is neat, structured and gridded. It also fits with my brand identity and creates synthesis between my online presence and printed presence. At this moment in time I do not have the skills to code this website, however i have made a contact who will help develop it for a small fee.

OUGD602 PERSONAL BRANDING PPP3

OUGD602
PERSONAL BRANDING
PPP3


Over all when i started my personal branding i wanted some clean, concise and to the point. I am really happy with the end result and think it reflects my design practice very well.

OUGD602 PERSONAL BRANDING - PRINT TESTS

OUGD602
PESONAL BRANDING 
PRINT TESTS

From my research I really liked a business card that was spot varnished black on black. This was a technique I really liked. However due to time constraints and costing I decided to print black on to black. The technique worked really well for the front of the logo, however the back, where all the important information was wasn't as clear.

I then decided to try creating a duplex stock. I tried with a mixture of grey and white tones. I then decided that the white business card was by far the strongest. I am really pleased to have discovered this technique. They are easy to recreate and inexpensive to print.

OUGD602 - PLACEMENT OPPERTUNITY - B&W STUDIO

OUGD602
PLACEMENT OPPERTUNITY
B&W STUDIO

B&W studio is another studio that i have been following closely they are a small studio based in Leeds but have some great clients. I see my self fitting in to a smaller studio far more than a large one. I feel that i would be more of a valid member of a design team in a small studio rather than a large one. I used the same PDF portfolio that i used for Uniform studio as it had been successful for me then.

I sent an email and digital portfolio to the studio and had a quick response, I have planned to visit the studio at the end of May, this gives me time to develop my portfolio and prepare for the interview.

OUGD602 - PLACEMENT OPPERTUNITY - UNIFORM STUDIO

OUGD602
PLACEMENT OPPERTUNITY
UNIFORM

Uniform in Liverpool is unlike the other studios i have been looking in to. It is a much larger company with some great clients. I feel that i could learn a lot from this studio so took the decision to get in contact with them. I feel like I learnt a lot from The Archipelago conversations and feel better equipped for this one.

For this interview I decided to create a small PDF portfolio to send to Uniform studio. I decided to do this so I have a wider range of design to show them when i visit.

Because of the high amount of work and stress that i am currently under due to the looming deadline i asked Pete if i could visit at the end of may after my hand in. He obliged and a date was set for the 27th of May. Due to the positive feedback from Pete i am very confident and looking forward to the opportunity to show my work and hopefully secure the placement.

OUGD602 - PERSONAL BRANDING - DEVELOPMENT

OUGD602
PESONAL BRANDING 
DEVELOPMENT


For my personal branding I knew 2 things. I knew that I wanted it to be simple and clean, and I knew that I wanted it to be monochrome. From this I created a large variety of visual developments.

In the end I decided to make it as functional and concise as possible I chose a clean, modern an serif typeface Apercu. 

Front:

Back:

These are the final logo designs. I find it always best to start a branding project by focusing on the business cards. In my opinion business cards are one of the most important tools for networking, and the rest of the branding can grow from there.

OUGD602 - DIGITAL PORTFOLIO

OUGD602
PPP3
DIGITAL PORTFOLIO

This is a small digital portfolio that I plan to use to send to prospective studios. I have decided to use a range of projects show casing the wide variety of strengths that I have.

OUGD602 - PERSONAL BRANDING - RESEARCH

OUGD602
PERSONAL BRANDIND
RESEARCH

OUGD602 - PPP3 - INTERVIEW LIST

Throughout this year I have conducted a number of interviews in response to a brief I wrote. These interviews have been beneficial to my practice and also helped me network with a wide range of professionals, from magazine editors to architects. I have corresponded with a number of these people on more than one occasion and plan to keep the conversation going.

OUGD602 - PLACEMENT INTERVIEW - THE ARCHIPELAGO

OUGD602
PLACEMENT INTERVIEW
THE ARCHIPELAGO

The Archipelago is a studio that I have followed for a while. I really like their clean aesthetic, as well as the client base they work for. I recently decided to get in contact with them in regards to placement and job opportunities.

I reached out via email to Michael Lewis attaching my bechance portfolio link.

I received a quick response and Mike seemed to be impressed with my work, and invited me in to the studio for an interview.

I arranged a small printed portfolio, and also took some examples of real work. The interview went really well and lasted well over 2 hours. This was one of my first real interviews so I was nervous going in. I found that the various presentations i had done over the past 3 years at uni were really beneficial and i soon felt confident talking through my work.

The interview was successful and I was invited in to the studio to meet the studios project manager. After the second interview I was invited in for a week work experience in June followed by a 6 month placement after the summer.

This placement offer has left me with a lot to think about.

The placement is nominal payment at £10 a day. This would be a great financial strain and i would have to get a part time job to support my self.

At the moment I am struggling whether the experience is worth the financial strain, as I will be a graduate by the time of the placement and would expect more.

I plan to keep my options open for now and see if anything else comes up

OUGD602 - PERSONAL BRANDING - ONLINE PRESENCE

OUGD602
PERSONAL BRANDING
ONLINE PRESENCE

Over the past year I have learned that having various online outlets is a great way to network and promote myself. Consequently I have made my self present on a number of different online platforms.

LinkedIn -

Behance -

Instagram -

Twitter -

I am also currently building my self a website, I recently bought the domain name of samcook.co. My web page is still under development, but i feel it will be a great tool when it is completed for networking and promotional purposes.

OUGD602 - PPP PRESENTATION 2 - THIS IS WHERE WE LEAVE YOU

OUGD602
PPP PRESENTATION 2
THIS IS WHERE WE LEAVE YOU

Over all i am really happy with how this presentation went. I feel my presentation skills have grown enormously over the course of these three years. I now feel very confident in projecting my voice and actually enjoy performing a fluent presentation. I think this may be due to feeling confident around my peers, however i have also been involved in numerous pitches and presentations for clients this year and felt confident in them too.

OUGD602 - INTERN MAGAZINE - FEATURE

OUGD602
INTERN MAGAZINE
FEATURE

During my dissertation research I interviewed Alec Dudson the editor of Intern magazine. The advice and guidance I received for both the written element and practical work for the module was invaluable. After I had completed the module I decided to get in touch with Alec to say thank you and also to see if he could provide any feedback on an independent magazine concept I had created.

The response from Alec came quick. He was impressed with my work and my online portfolio and said that he would like to feature me under the talent section of his website. Not only was it an honour to be recognised but i thought it would also provide great exposure. Alec Dudson is someone I admire, and editorial design and independent magazines are a particular passion of mine.

Another factor was the theme of his magazine. It looks to discover and promote young student and graduate talent to potential employers. 

The website had a great write up about my practice as well as direct links to my online presence. Consequently I noticed that my work online was getting more attention.

Alec also used social media platforms such as twitter and instagram in order to promote my work.

Overall this feature has been a real confidence booster in my ability. It has also taught me the importance in gratitude and creating lasting connections with the industry. It has also taught me to always be aware of the people around you and how impactful it can be to talk to professionals. I was able to talk to Alec off the cuff at the end of a workshop he had ran at uni. Talking to him in regards of my dissertation and taking the time to show interest in what he does and learning from his expertise in the editorial industry really paid off.

OUGD602 - PPP3 - FINAL PRESENTAION

OUGD602
PPP3
FINAL PRESENTATION

OUGD602 - PRINT MAG - FEATURE

OUGD602
PRINT MAG
FEATURE

I was recently contacted by Jessica Farris the online editor of PrintMag.com regarding one of my projects that they had discovered on my online portfolio. It was featured in an article about the use of QR codes with in printed graphic design.

I was more than happy for them to use my work in an article. I think that it is always important to reply and keep in contact with people that are reaching out to you.

Overall It was great to gain some exposure on my work, and it is always a good feeling to have your work featured in an article. This incident has really concreted in my mind the importance of having an online presence in this day and age the internet is at our disposal to connect and network with people world over.

OUGD602 - BEN FREEMAN - INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

OUGD602
BEN FREEMAN
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

In your opinion how are new magazines becoming successful? 

I think they are tapping in to a desire for consumers to have and buy in to variety of personally curated publications that give a really interesting personal take on any giving subject. Its good that by virtue of being independent they are free willed in subject matter and it boils down to human interest. People are often a lot better represented by new independent magazines because they cater to a far smaller portion of readers than something like vogue or GQ. 

With the breadth of magazines in circulation how important is it to define your audience and how do you go about it? 

The more that come out the more competition there is generally. If you are in to independent magazines then naturally you are open to new ones and find them interesting and keen to see what’s going on. So the trick is not just to nail down that audience, but to pull your self out as being the publication to go to on that specific theme. How you go about it is having a really clear voice. For instance there is a lot of travel magazines out there so if you are a travel magazine you need to be the travel magazine that does things differently and build up your audience and your audiences loyalty through the strengths and consistency. 
How can you insure longevity for independent magazines due to the niche information? 
These are all factors you have to consider when coming up with your concept. For me at intern magazine if tomorrow morning unpaid internships were made illegal and that was enforced to be honest there would probably be one more issue in the magazine and then it would seize to exist because the discussion is no longer there. You always run the risk of that happening. But from the people I have met that make magazines are so in to what they make magazines about, that if they were out of the industry for too long they would look to get back in to it through another title. Longevity is something you have to aspire to. A lot of magazines don’t make it past the first issue, which is a shame because there is a lot of good ideas out there, however the financial reality of it all is often a great shock. The only safe guard against that is to research, not just in to content and design but in to the market and the process. Everything from between the idea generation to getting it in someone’s hands. Distributers, Subscription, online sales, over seas distribution. As soon as possible you have to consider the bigger picture, you have to be open to learning as you go along.

The importance of printing your work as opposed to blogs? 

There is a lot of Internet content out there. The great thing about the Internet is it gives everyone a voice. However it also inevitable drags down the over all quality of the content because peoples motivations are completely different some people will publish stuff online because they feel strongly about a certain matter, some will publish online for a laugh, some for a joke. The bigger financial commitment that comes with printing your work weeds a lot of that out, if you are going to the trouble of printing stuff your editorial bar is raised so the need for it to stand out is greater. It is a really nice affirmation for people with talent that I try to make a point that not only are these people good enough to go in to print, but they can go in to print and hold their own with the industry that they feel locked out of. 

Is print more validated? 

There are situations where that is not the case. There isn’t any critical value for being printed in the daily star for instance. Print has different functions and implications and with in the realm independent magazines there is that personally curated feel. The fact that most of the magazines you see on shelves are treated as a tactile object there is care that has gone in to them. Unit costs is through the roof for independent magazines, they are printing a lot less and paying a lot more compared to large commercial magazines. It’s a labour of love and that is what makes them really attractive to customers that’s what makes them such a nice thing to be involved in as a contributor, so the jostle for positions with in them is greater, so that often drives the standards up. 
It was always intended to be a niche topic in order to give me a chance to define a readership. The content kind of follows that. The challenge of the content is for it to remain fresh. In one sense we have a slender and narrow focus but with in that there is a constant effort to provide some consistency so that the issues follow on from one another in a coherent manor but also to go down different avenues of inquiry and keep the audience guessing to a certain degree. But your readerships response to your content affects how you curate it moving forward. The beauty of being an independent magazine is that you are a lot more nimble than a grand old institution in the fact that if users don’t like one thing but not another you can just change it. That is the beauty of being able to retain complete creative control that you can move with the times. Once you have identified your topic you need to retain an element of elasticity in order to move with the times. 

Have you utilised the Internet to advertise and distribute your magazine?

Primary means of doing it was kick-starter, but that was always in conjunction with social media. Again if you have zero budget to start with you have to realise that there is a huge difference between online sentiment for example likes and retweets to people actually buying the magazine. People can like everything I post and don’t buy the mag. It is a really great tool to increase visibility but not for profit to a degree it is designed for the people selling advertising space for example facebook who are chasing clicks. Clicks don’t mean anything. I paid £8 for 8000 people to see one of our posts in their newsfeed, but no one clicks on sponsored links. The people who work on marketing these things will have you believe that it is guaranteed sales, but it is nothing of the sort. But it is all part of the risk of advertising, last time I saw a billboard I didn’t buy what was on it but its job is to increase brand visibility. The most direct sales knock on for us is online press. If I get interviewed on New York Times or similar I will sell 30 magazines that day. 

How do you sell the tactile nature of a magazine online? 

People who are interested in print magazines still use the Internet I don’t think one must exist with out the other or one must be better. There are something’s that the Internet is better suited to and something’s id rather read in a magazine. You cant give too much content away online because then no one will buy the magazine, so it is an altered content online, bonus interviews and so on. It’s almost like bonus content online; you try and feed people by enticing them, if you want to get to the juice of the matter and get to the story then you have to buy the magazine. There are many strategies of trying to make the two mediums dovetail. 

Do you have a digital magazine in conjunction to your printed one? 

We have an IPad issue of our first issue, I creatively directed this project with the early Domus magazine in mind. It was beautiful interactive and you could slide away aspects, spin things. The concept was interactive design and trying to make it tactile in another, you need to get people drawn in. Apple have neglected newsstand from day one, if they’d paid the same amount of attention as the app store it could have been huge for independent publishers. They don’t market it at all, we designed it for the IPad and it exists as a stand- alone app. By the time we’ve sold that, 50% of the profit goes back to apple, the same as if it were an app, so you have to sell thousands of it to make any profit. A separate design team is needed and cost thousands of pounds. We charge £2.99 and id be amazed if I’ve sold 250 copies and that has been around for almost a year. Fundamentality if companies like apple invested more time and interest in those platforms, I think a lot more independent publishers would be looking to utilise that platform. When so many people are giving away things for free on the Internet it becomes hard to sell digital copies of magazines to that market. 

OUGD602 - COLOURS MAY VARY - INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

OUGD602
COLOURS MAY VARY
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

As part of my ongoing research in to independent magazines I decided to get in contact with Becky Palfrey of Colours May Vary. I find that interviewing is the best way to get relevant information on any given topic. It also helps to improve my communication and networking skills, as well as preparing me for how to ask good questions as well as give good answers.

What makes a good independent magazine? 

Style and Content. Reliable standards, exclusive content. We often have beautiful magazines submitted with poor content and likewise, great content in ill designed publications. For us the balance has to be right. 

How do you select the magazines you stock in your store? 

We decide together (Andy and I). The title has to do something different or better than titles already in stock and has to cover all the points raised above! 

Do you think people buy independent magazines based on their design alone if not why else do you think people buy independent magazines? 

I would like to think that like us most people buy according to both design and content. Some titles are meant to be looked at more than read and in this case of course. The titles we stock are very different from those available on the high street and this is what people that buy them expect from us. 

Do you think digital magazine apps are affecting stores that stack independent magazines? 

I don't really know to be honest! I have no benchmark, we have only been open 2 years, I do know that there are a lot more printed publications available in this sector than when we opened and this leads us to believe that print is not dead.
Had we been in the business of selling Independent titles for 10 years I would be able to answer the question more fully.
I think some titles rely on a physical interaction with the reader, some are purely content and this can be replicated digitally of course but the vast majority of the titles we stock we do because we believe they are best enjoyed in that format. 

Do you think Digital magazines will replace printed magazines making them become redundant? 

No, I really don't. I think the more technology becomes part of our lives the stronger the urge will be to escape it.
Our relationship to books and journals is very different to our relationship with on screen information, we absorb it in a very different and I would say more contemplative way. It enables focus. There is a huge growth in self publishing and whilst e books are growing and may eventually outstrip printed sales I cannot see print becoming redundant. I think the publications that do well in our market are the ones that pay attention to the book or magazine as a physical object, they make it something to treasure. It's like the difference between a letter and an email. A letter is something to treasure, it might have a scent, be written on something with an emotional connection. We engage with it in a different way, It becomes something valuable and therefore, to my mind a sustainable and precious medium.