Personal branding: Web

Working from some very rough scamps I began to quickly throw together some potential layouts for the website

After not being happy with these quick throw togethers I quickly sketched this thumbnail of a centrally aligned page that I wanted to try out

I am much happier with the way this looks, and the larger amount of white space gives the page a bit of space to breath.

This is the basic grid for every page of the website

Each page of the website works by the user scrolling down, the navigation bar at the top stays fixed throughout

The place where the images scroll under has a subtle grey gradient on it to add a bit of depth to the page.

The site will feature an interests page, to get across a bit of who I am and what I am interested in, this will be updated regularly

This page will use lightbox to display information about each specific interests.

FInished Mock Ups

Info Pack

This is my info pack that will be sent to potential studios. As the people that will be receiving this pack will get an awful lot of similar things I decided to start the pack with an interactive game that involves the user ripping out the perforated page and placing it on the floor and then trying to land the business card on the zone. The pack then goes on to deliver CV information and samples of work.

As there has been some confusion about howe to fire the cards I did some diagrammatic illustrations to explain the procedure:

This is where the business card will sit, either it will be held by these tabs or a small sticky tab to avoid damaging the aesthetics of the reverse side of the page.

The samples of work give a taster of some of my successful projects and then the user is directed to my website which will feature the projects in greater depth.

Other products that could accompany this pack are, pop-up fingers, shuttle finger puppets, posters, cd etc.

Self Branding

Over the past few weeks I have been working on creating an identity for myself as a designer, I wanted something that would stand out against the majority of modernist and 'robotic' kind of branding, such as:

etc.

I have decided to stick with the name of 'Shuttlefingers' as this is memorable and would get more search results that Chris Shuttleworth, who sounds like a bit of a bore anyway.

I wanted a simple but bold logo that could be used for a variety of applications, after a few attempts this is the basic idea that I decided to stick with:

To make my business cards unique I wanted them to fly through the air, which would suit the 'shuttle' theme. I initially wanted the finger to be perforated so that it could be popped out and fired somewhere and the user would be left with details on the rest of the card, however I didn't have the means to produce this in a professional way so I decided to look into firing the whole card.

The plan was to hole punch the card and feed an elastic band through it so the user could fire it.

This is the finished design of my business cards, before ordering them I tested firing some business cards with the free pack that Moo send out, I was initially going to order rounded corner business cards but when I tried firing them they just span around and hit the floor, the only option that had enough rigidity to make the cards control themselves in the air was the 600gsm Luxe cards that flew through the air like majestic eagles. I also discovered that making two small cuts in the sides of the cards rather than a hole in the centre made the card fly straighter and easier to control.

These are the printed cards & giant pop up finger:

Shuttlefingers HQ

Study Task - Samples of Work

Based on the exercises, feedback and discussion in the module so far:

Part 1 - Identify document and evaluate a minimum of 10 examples of professional designer's and/or design studios who have used a range of media and formats to distribute samples of their work. You should aim to select a range of examples using a rage of media.

Part 2 - Produce a short (50 word) SWOT analysis of each example in order to analysis its relative merits and effectiveness as a promotional tool or strategy. 

• 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

Printing onto products such as bags: This gives the target audience something they can actually use and keep which will recurrently bring you promotion, as opposed to a mail out that may get binned or looked at once and ignored. If the audience is interacting with your brand etc. regularly then you will be at the forefront of their mind when they have a space for a placement.

Opposing this it may be forgotten that it has anything to do with somebody after a placement and just be used for its functionality

Standard mail out with business card insert:

This comes across as very mature and professional, targeted at the right audience this would be effective, to a company that specialise in considered and minimalistic design.
This will be mailed and may get lost in the rest of mail outs the company receives.

Adding little features will make the work stand out against the norm, this person has used wax stamps to give the work more importance and also used a concertina fold which makes the work more interesting than just a standard leaflet etc.
A potential threat with this is that the audience wont read it all and the work that is pictured is only snippets and you can't instantly gauge what sort of designer this person is.

This designer has packaged herself as a product, this explains what the target audience will be receiving if they offer her a placement and also illustrates her creativity. Somebody receiving this would be a lot more likely to be inquisitive and interact with the product rather than something more ephemeral like a leaflet etc.

This designer has put his CV in info graphic format and used a simple brand with basic mailers. This is quite boring in comparison to some other CV's and the skills that are listed are expected of designers asking for placements. I don't think this branding and these formats are effective enough for grabbing attention and standing out from the crowd.

This mail out is quite elaborate, giving the audience free things is bound to get you on their good side.

This pack is really interactive and would get the audience engaging with the products. However as there are a lot of loose bits of material it will be easy for them to get lost or ignored. I think that it is more effective to create a bold statement that is memorable rather than bombarding them with loads of bits.

This is quite a poor mail out, apart from being aesthetically boring it is a very standard format and doesn't provoke the user to follow anything up or look any further into the persons work.

This mail out takes a much more modernist and mature approach, again, this will be very effective if sent to the right people, it shows the designer has a good understanding of grid and typography and instantly communicates what sort of work he is interested in.

I think that this is a very effective send out pack, it is instantly engaging and stands out from the rest. This gives an impression of the character of the person, the only negative with this is that it is quite small and could easily be lost or forgotten

I think this is the worst mail out, there is no chance anybody is going to stick this up on their walls apart from maybe this guys mum. And because it is so big it would be difficult to handle and read the information. Inappropriate format for the function of a mail out.

Using a CD to deliver work is a bit different to just a leaflet and there is an air of mystery around what might be on the CD so this may encourage the audience to play it and look at it.

It is also a nice idea to wrap the disc in samples of her work as this is much more considered and nicer to handle than if it were in a clunky plastic case

This girl has also branded herself as a product this raises the opportunity to put together an elaborate pack of lots of things that the audience can interact with. Targeted at the right peoples this would be effective.

This is promotional material done by Two Times Elliot, making a range of deliverables that come together to make a coherent whole is quite effective. The problem with mailing multiple things to a studio may be that they don't make the connection between the separate pieces or they are read in the wrong order etc.

Although info graphic CV's often look tacky and crap I think this one is done well, mainly because the designer is proficient in a lot of software and can actually brag about it, when the info graphics for DW or Flash are about 2/10 it doesn't look great at all. This CV would also work very well as a digital mail out.