This is just a quick post for now.
An hour ago, I had need of an A4 envelope for a CD and I didn’t have a template to hand. I had a quick search online, and found the tutorial to make a CD envelope out of an A4 piece of paper, but no templates with exact dimensions of each section once folded. So, I made my own. Since I had a need for it, perhaps you do too.
If you do, click here to download a PDF of an A4 CD envelope template.
This is a short post, but one which I think is important and experimental.
Today, I’m starting a small advertising campaign using Facebook’s advertising system and if you’re here because you happened to click on my ad, then thank you for taking the time to have a look at the site.
As Facebook is constantly being used to promote parties, weddings and gigs, I thought it may be a good idea to focus the advert on designing specifically for these things. For the next few weeks, I’ll be offering A3 event posters designed to your specifications for a fixed rate of £50. Provided that you’re not looking to have something too complex, I will charge £50 for designing you an A3 poster for pretty much anything you’d like. This could be an upcoming gig for your band, someone’s birthday or maybe something a bit more refined such as a wedding. Whatever it is, I will keep my price at £50 for the next few weeks while my advertising campaign is running.
If you’d like to get in touch, please email me at neil AT the workof.co.uk.
I’m sorry for the lack of posts recently. I have actually been quite busy working on a number of projects and will hopefully be able to find time to collate and upload them soon once they’ve all been signed off on.
Since January, I have been very lucky in the fact that I’ve had quite a number of people wanting me to work with them to develop some fantastic campaigns, logos and websites, all of which are going really well. I’m really looking forward to some of the projects going live and getting them out there into the public.
In the meantime, please stay tuned and I’ll be posting another update very shortly.
To compliment Ruby Jones’ new handmade jewellery website www.rubyandblue.com, I was hired to produce a range of gift vouchers with 5 different monetary values that customers could purchase and give as gifts for any occasion. You can see the project here.
I really enjoyed working on this project from the start as Ruby was one of those clients that there just aren’t enough of. Right at the start of the project, Ruby had already taken time to produce a detailed PDF of exactly what she wanted including links to things she liked the look of. This is really useful as a starting point for designing anything.
Upon starting the project, I already had an idea of what I had liked to try with the vouchers after Ruby had said that there were to be multiple values for each of the voucher. The first thing that came to mind was how banknotes are designed and in particular, the beautiful and intricate patterns formed by guilloches. Guilloches are the fine and complex lines that can be found on the likes of the £10 note.
I had first learned about guilloches a few months ago while reading a blog post by Aegir Hallmundur of Ministry of Type. Every one has of course seen guilloches before, but how many people know that they’re called guilloches? It was really interesting to discover that they even had a name!
I presented some very rough sketches to Ruby along with some information on guilloches and she liked the idea.
A bit more searching led me to this fantastic guilloche maker by Tom Beddard of www.subblue.com and I had fun making various shapes with increasing complexity. The one thing that this was missing though was the ability to actually save the design into an editable form such as an .ai or .pdf file.
Because I couldn’t save the guilloches made into a usable format, I unfortunately had to attempt to make them manually in Illustrator instead, which meant that they would be nowhere near as complex. I tried a few different things, but nothing looked quite as good as using mathmatical processes. I had a feeling that my wish to use guilloches in the design of the gift vouchers was going to be a dead end due to being unable to find something easy (and free) to use instead.
Not willing to be too dead in the water just yet, I looked again at the various design elements of a banknote and the main thing that stood out even more than the guilloches was Bank of England, in the custom script typeface. I decided to try and incorporate this into a gift voucher design. Ruby had already said that she wanted to use “Look Amazing” to support her logo and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to do so.
I began researching into some similar typefaces that might match the one used on banknotes and found one that might work quite well. What became apparent very quickly was that simply typing out “Look Amazing” and digitally adding some extra swirls wasn’t going to be enough. It didn’t look natural enough. So, I printed a few copies of “Look Amazing” and started adding the swirls manually instead.
After producing a number of these sketches, I scanned them back into Illustrator and began tracing the swirls of various revisions, before adding the final one to a voucher design that I had been working on and it looked quite fitting.
I was quite happy with how the voucher had turned out, even though the guilloches had been made manually instead of mathmatically. Additionally, although it didn’t look exactly like a banknote, it gave just the right feeling of one. A feeling that the voucher had value.
I wanted to present Ruby with three different concepts for her to choose from. As you can see above, Ruby&Blue’s logo focuses on making the ‘&’ out of small pebbles and for the next concept, I wanted to try and bring these into the design even more.
Although not as complex as the first voucher, this one actually reflected Ruby’s site in a better way because it was a little more contemporary than the guilloche design. However, I felt that it was a little too heavy handed and that the logo in particular was overshadowed by all of the surrounding pebbles. I liked the idea of keeping the voucher clean, but I also liked the idea of incorporating guilloches somehow and so for the third concept, I wanted to try and get a mix of both things.
In this design, I felt that the elements were much tighter and better reflected Ruby’s website. Although the guilloche version was visually interesting, it didn’t say the right things about Ruby’s brand, whereas I believe that this design does. Ruby agreed and we went forward with this design.
There were some small changes to the design. Because Ruby would be printing the vouchers herself, some of the finer typeface strokes would not print properly. This meant a change of typeface for something a little thicker that would print even at a tiny size.
For the main occasion messages such as “I love you”, “Happy Anniversary” and “Merry Christmas”, I wanted a typeface that would make the words stand out. I considered using the same typeface that I used for “Look Amazing” in the guilloche design, but it didn’t quite work. Instead, I opted for a font called Renaissance, which has some beautiful letterforms for its capital letters.
Once the front of the voucher was finalised, it was time to design the back of it. A much easier job. On the front of the voucher, I had included some hearts made out of the same pebbles that made up the ‘&’ in the Ruby&Blue logo so I included them on the back. However, after designing it, Ruby asked for space to be made to include a message box so that customers could use the back of the voucher to write something to whoever they were giving the voucher to. The back was redesigned to accomodate this.
The last thing to be designed was an envelope, which the gift voucher would be presented in. I didn’t want to make this as complex as the voucher, but to simply give a few hints as to what was inside. Three concepts were designed for the envelope and the second was chosen.
Both Ruby and myself were happy with how the design of the voucher and the envelope had progressed. For me personally, I had really enjoyed working on the project and I thought it was quite interesting to see how one of my early sketches ended up being the framework for the final design.
Ruby was a great client to work with and one which I ended up working with again to produce some of her site images. As Ruby has just officially launched the website, I’d like to wish her luck in her new business and hope that the gift vouchers are enjoyed by those customers wishing to purchase them.
With the Viral Man project completely finished, it was time to launch it, but not without a few changes.
Unfortunately, the symptom videos which we filmed were eventually not used as the committee thought that a lot of them weren’t as funny as intended. It’s a shame, as we thought that they really added to the project, rather than just the one interview video.
Additionally, Hannah had volunteered to dress up as Fresher’s Flu, a friend to Viral Man and together they’d infect students. We incorporated this into the script of the interview and Hannah volunteered to don some pink facepaint, pink clothes and even some pink hair extensions to become Fresher’s Flu for the day. Unfortunately, this didn’t make the cut and the committee requested that the interview video be reedited to remove references to this character.
Viral Man goes live
The Viral Man project was developed in the middle of July/August for a September launch and the committee had always intended us to be present at the student’s welcome meeting to introduce the video to them. Both Jerry and Will weren’t sure if they’d be around for the welcome meeting and Hannah didn’t want to do it by herself at one of the two campuses, but I was really keen on gauging the student’s reaction to the video, even if it meant standing in front of a few hundred people.
In preparation for the presentation, I made a very simple PDF with my name on it and some key points. Having sat through a similar welcome meeting when I was a new student, I knew that they wouldn’t want to listen to me go on and on and so my presentation would last no more than three minutes, though I had been told I had ten. I wanted to incorporate the video directly into my PDF, but unfortunately, I was told that there wouldn’t be time to give me a copy of it to do so. I was assured however that there would be AV technicians on the day to help make the presentation run smoothly.
On Sunday 20th September, I headed over to Chester and watched everyone start to gather in the large sports hall which was now home to around 700 seats. I spoke to one of the committee and she told me that the video was ready to play on disk. I just had to open it up. As I said, I was told that there would be AV guys there who would do that and so I wasn’t looking forward to having to close my presentation down, insert a disk and play it. In theory, that sounds like the easiest thing in the world, but when you’re on a stage in front of 700 students who just want to go for a drink, it’s much harder. I was also told that I would be presenting twice, as there would be two lots of 700 students to speak to. Something which no one had informed me about! This made things twice as nerve-wracking.
Once the hall was full, I realised just how daunting it was going to be to stand in front of everyone on my own. While other staff members had done this on a yearly basis, the most people I had presented to was 30 of my fellow classmates. 700 students was on another level!
On stage first was the Vice-Chancellor, Tim Wheeler and then followed other important staff, some of which I’d already met. I was up last, right after Gay Rabie had spoken to students about Swine Flu.
When Gay took to the stage and delivered her presentation, the first thing I noticed was that she had used an image of Viral Man in her presentation and while this in itself wasn’t a bad thing, it made my introduction of Viral Man a little less pronounced, especially since there was no explanation as to why the image of this green man was in the presentation.
And then suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I managed to see someone enter the sports hall. As I turned to look at them, I realised who they were. Viral Man. As someone who had been playing Viral Man for roughly two weeks of my life, it was absolutely surreal to see someone else dressed as him. Green face, the same wig I had worn, along with a stripey jumper, black pants and green gloves. And holding a green umbrella.
It was at this moment that I felt just as confused as the students sitting in the hall. I hadn’t expected him to make an appearance like this, especially before he had been properly introduced by me but because it was so unexpected, perhaps it worked.
Viral Man began walking towards the front of the hall. You could even say he was strutting, twirling his umbrella as he did so and making his way onto the stage where Gay Rabie was still speaking and coughing as loud as he could. I was bemused and so were the students. And full credit goes to the person who was playing Viral Man as he did a fantastic job.
Gay finished her presentation and suddenly I was introduced onto the stage. I could not believe how nervous I was. My hands were literally shaking. I was very thankful that I had a small script prepared for what I wanted to say and a presentation.
I said hello to everyone and explained who I was and why I was there. “And this is Viral Man”, I said to the crowd, but then had to fiddle about with a laptop to get it to play. As I said, this is usually the easier of actions, but when you’re literally shaking with nerves, it was like a lifetime waiting for the CD to load.
Finally, it played and I was able to take a 90 second breather as they watched the video. To my surprise they laughed. At the right parts. It’s a great feeling to know that something you’ve created has been enjoyed by so many people.
I would call the presentation a success for both the project and for me personally. For the project because it was a culmination of five weeks worth of work and for me personally because to speak in front of so many people was incredibly nerve-wracking. I knew I would be nervous beforehand but I still wanted to do it because what better way to overcome your fear of something than to confront it?
After the launch
Since introducing Viral Man to students, the project has been featured in numerous press articles including The Chester Chronicle, The National Student and Nursing Times. I also spent a fair amount of time regularly talking to students as Viral Man on Facebook and it was great to see him being mentioned in people’s status updates. Additionally, Viral Man was also tagged in a number of photos after students had taken some of the posters from various places just because they wanted them. I think this proves that Viral Man was indeed popular and successful.
In conclusion, my time spent on the Viral Man project was a hell of a lot of fun and resulted in a project that I’m very happy with. Given more time, I would have loved to have built a website around Viral Man to better focus all of the campaign assets such as the videos and perhaps some downloadable content. On the plus side, the Facebook profile for Viral Man proves continually popular, with more people adding him as a friend every day. My only hope is that the people responsible for updating the profile and interacting with students maintains the level of fun and quirkiness that Jerry Clark, Will Bollen, Hannah Bradshaw and myself managed to create over the course of five weeks. A fantastic project to work on.
