This is it, our last Guest Speaker of the module and indeed 1st year. This week we had Fiona Harte from Palm who are a company that specialises in mobile phones and other handheld devices.
She started her presentation by giving us a rundown of the company’s history since 1996, she also talked about their webstore which operates in 16 countries around the world.
Next she talked about key areas for eCommerice managers to monitor, these include:
Data Protection & Privacy Law
Accessibility
Brand & Trademark Protection
Intellectual Property Rights
Contract Law
Online Advertising Law
Next we are shown diagrams about Media Channels that drive online traffic, these include:
Search Marketing (Search Engine Optimisation, Paid Search)
Online PR (Portal representation, Social Media Blogs & Feeds, Brand Protection)
Online Partnership (Sponsorship, Affiliate Marketing, Co-Branding)
Interactive Ads (Site specific media buys, Ad networks, sponsorship)
Opt-in Email (House list emails, co-branded, E-newsletter advertising)
Viral Marketing (Pass along emails, buzz marketing,)
She claims that 85% of people online navigate using a search engine and points out how important search engine marketing is. Search Marketing has to be done correctly tho and this is achieved first by finding ut who you are selling to. We need to find out what is the target audience through age, gender, nationality. We also find out what search terms were used, what products are used and what other websites are visited. Picking the right keywards are important in search engine marketing. Keywords can also include people’s mis-spellings.
When writing adverts they should have primary keywords used, the advert should look good as well as give good description of services/features as well as testimonials and prcing and to show the correct website link.
In Affiliate programmes visitors come to the Palm store by clicking on links, banners from other websites. When these visitors buy a product at the Palm store, Palm pays back 4% of the commission back to the other websites where the visitors clicked from.
Palm are involved with advertising on social networking including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Linkedin, Flickr etc.
My Thoughts
I thought it was a fairly interesting lecture. I doubt I will end up doing marketing when I leave college but it’s important to know how it works when studying digital media. I have worked on a few websites before, some for hotels and when I worked on those we always had to include a page with banners and adverts that worked on the click-through formula, and the hotel got paid for anything bought on the other websites. I didnt really understand how it worked at the time but now I do after seeing this lecture. This lecture was heavy going in places as marketing can sound complicated, altho I was at the lecture my mind was more focused on my Interview which was taking place right after the lecture so I didnt pick up on everything in the lecture. It was good to read over it again.
This was our Interview week and for preparation we had Maria Brown help us by giving us a one hour lecture all about Interviews.
Interview Preparation
The key areas she talked about included preparation before the interview, during the interview and interview questions. We were told that is very important to research the company we are applying for before the interview and that we should go into the interview knowing as much as possible about the company. We were also advised to know our own CV, know everything about it for the interview and read up fully on the job specification and requirements. We were asked to think about how much we want the job, to really convince the employer that we are the right person for the job and to have this prepared going into the interview. We were also given the very good advice of writing out and practicing interview style questions that may come up in the interview as this would help us alot during the interview.
During the Interview
We were now given advice on the interview stage. We were advised to arrive wearing smart clothing and that wearing a suit would make the best initial impression as first impressions are very important. We were told to give the interviewer a warm shake, to be alert and to maintain eye contact throughout the interview. We were told it is a good idea to elaborate on questions asked at the interview which the interviewer is interesting in and not to waffle on. If we were not sure about a question it is best to ask for clarification on that question. We were also told it was a good idea to speak calmly and clearly during the interview and to appear relaxed but not overly relaxed.
Interview Questions We were given these interview questions as common questions that arise regularly at interviews:
Tell me about yourself
What do you know about our company?
Can you take us through your work experience to date
What are your strong points?
What are your weak points?
How did you do in your third level studies?
What kind of people do you find difficult to work with?
Why do you want to work for this company?
Where do you hope to be in 5 years time?
What is the most difficult situation you had to deal with (job related or other)?
Describe situation / worked under pressure? (meeting deadlines)
Why should we hire you?
Tell us about an achievement/proud of?
My Thoughts
I have always found interviews to be daunting but this was a very usefull lecture and provided good information on how we should prepare ourselves for the interview. We had our interview’s a few days following this lecture and the advice that we received from Maria definitely helped. I was quite nervous during the interview and I think this is only natural, but with more practice they do get easier. I had some very tough questions about conflict and teamworking but I think I did good in the end, well I hope so!.
Guest Speaker this week was Robbie Ward from BPM MEDIA. BPM Stands for Beats Per Minute and the company is located in Blanchardstown. BPM Media are market leaders providing in-store media playback systems which is starting to replace the DJ.
Basically what they do is make a ‘TV Channel’ style multimedia presentation for specific venues, many of them are pubs, and these presentations can play many music videos and advertisments for products in the venue.
Next Robbie showed us a video that his company did for a large pub in Dublin featuring many music videos. The presentation almost looks like a localized MTV featuring videos from Rihanna, Lady Gaga and The Pussycat Dolls. The music videos would play and then one would mix into the other providing a suitable quick transition between videos. At the bottom of the screen is an area of scrolling text, where the customers can text requests and messages to their friends, these can be seen by everyone in the premises and leads to a good interactive experience.
BPM often place adverts during these presentations, Robbie tells us that most viewers attention for adverts is only about 3 seconds long. These adverts promote certain products on sale in the venue and these adverts can be changed on the spot in some cases depending on how successful a product is on the night. Special Offers will often appear and these special offers can change or be withdrawn at any stage. In some cases like BB’s which is a coffee venue, they can advertise different products or special offers and the space that this is used for gets changed depending on the time of day e.g. that space may be used in the morning for the specials then it changes to lunch specials and then evening specials etc.
Robbie also explains that certain types of music can lead to a customer staying longer in the venue than they intended to and this is the main reason why BPM get hired, so that their multimedia presentations will attract customers to stay in the pubs and clubs for as long as possible spending money on special offers and promotions.
BPM choose the music very carefully, they have to make sure that the music selection is correct for the venue’s target audience. They also have to make the presentations as interesting as possible to hold the audiences attention.
My Thoughts
I think this is a very clever form of advertising, I can see alot of potential in it. I can see why venue’s would rather use this system than pay for a DJ 7 days a week, but I dont like the whole idea behind it that, the placement of certain adverts and the use of certain styles of music is there to trick the customer into buying more than they initially intended. It’s a bit like having the sweets at the check-out in the supermarket, all these marketing tricks I find a bit unfair on the consumer and so many of us fall for this. Having said that, I think this is the future of advertising in pubs and clubs around the country and I think it’s smart the way if a certain promotion is not working or is sold out, that they can change it instantly with a new one so that the entire system is instantly updateable making it highly interactive.
We got up bright and early for a college trip to the Dail. I arrived with friends about 15 minutes early and waited for everyone else outside.
There seem to be a lot of security outside the Dail so we had to wait in a small waiting area outside the Dail before we were allowed to go inside.
Ronan Mullen our lecturer who is also a member of the Dail, talked to us briefly before bringing us inside the Dail. Once inside we were brought to the bar, my eyes went wildly excited as soon as I saw the Beer pumps but we were given the choice of Coffee or Tea instead. I hate tea so my choice was a very direct route to the coffee seats. The coffee was rather nice, a tasty blend and kept the addiction alive (I drink about 20 mugs of coffee a day, this increase’s depending on the amount of assignments I work on).
Once I drank my coffee it was time to move on with the tour although I could have done with another cup of coffee to help me on my way.
The first thing I noticed was the dark blue carpet along the stairs and corridors, it seemed very stained in places and was wondering to myself were these beer stains from the Dail parties or wear and tear from the many feet that have graced these floors over the years!
We then arrived at the Dáil chamber. We sat down on hard wooden seats, the seat wasn’t very comfortable, thankfully we didn’t have to watch the extended version of Lord of the Rings on these seats. Instead we were given the history of the Dáil. We heard that Michael Collins originally picked it as the House of Parliament and that it was a lecture hall before it became the Dáil, holding up to 500 students. The chamber was smaller than I expected and no business was being conducted at the time.
After this we walked on further past a lot of paintings of ex-taoiseachs, we were told that the paintings on the wall only go up when you retire.
Then we were brought up a narrow stair case that did not seem very stable. This lead us up to the Séanad which is a highly decorative room, far more elaborate looking than the rest of the building, the ceiling is covered with sculptures and very large and fancy chandeliers.
This was the end of the tour and we were brought downstairs into a waiting room were we happened to meet the very bubbly David Norris, he really is every bit as over the top as he appears on TV, a very funny character.
Lunch
This brought us to lunch, as we were a big group we all split up and friends mainly stuck together, we ended up going to Bruxelles off Grafton Street, I was starving by this stage and enjoyed a plate of very chunky chips. After and hour of chit chat it was time to head to Trinity College for the science end of the trip.
Trinity
Myself and 3 other buddies walked to Trinity College and arrived 5 minutes early to find nobody we recognised. We walked all around Trinity looking for our group and even texted a few people to find out where to go, nobody could tell us where to go so after 20 minutes we gave up and went home. This was dissapointing as I was looking forward to this part of the trip.
My Thoughts
I have no interest in politics and it does not quite fit in with Digital Media but I enjoyed the Day out despite not being able to find the meeting point at Trinity for the science end.
This week we had no guest speaker so it was time to write a blog on another digital media video for Creative Inspiration.
Tokidoki
Tokidoki is the Japanese inspired lifestyle brand featuring the designs of Italian artist Simone Legno. Its a company that produces clothes and other products using art and characters such as Adios, Mozzarella and Sandy.
Simon Legno is a designer from Rome who is known for his unique characters and colourful style, this has grown into a global brand.
We first hear about his background, his mother was a painter, as a kid Simon was always sketching, his drawings often going around the corridors of his school.
He loved using Adobe Illustrator and saved up money to go to a design school. During college, he became excited when he learned about Flash and how it could animate his designs. He then started his first website Tokidoki.it, it started out as his portfolio which then transformed into a business brand. He was getting a lot of freelance work though his website doing various projects such as web, mobile phone content etc. He was very lucky to meet the right business partners to help grow his brand and business. His work is highly inspired from Japan and people often mistake him as Japanese. He still uses some influences from his home country such as pizza, spagetti, scooters etc.
He advises designers to keep improving their skills and learning new skills, looking for new ideas and to keep working as much as possible as there is always somebody better than you out there. He also advices to look out for people who might try to take advantage of artists. He wants to discover new artists and teach them, this was how he learned and he wants others to learn this way.
Cactus Rocker
He always starts his sketchs on paper. He shows us how he sketchs a new character called the Cactus Rocker. He will sketch anywhere like when he’s on the bus etc. He draws with pencils a lot as they are easy to draw with. He sketchs a lot when he go’s to Japan. He likes to keep his characters simple in design so that the lend well both to print design and to be simple enough to be able to animated easily in Adobe Flash. Once he has finished sketching his characters, he scans them and then imports them into Adobe Illustrator.
Mozzarella
Next he shows us the colouring in process with a character called Mozzarella. He traces his characters from the scan using Adobe Illustrator. He does the outline tracing using the pen tool drawing in the basic vector shapes which will be coloured later on. He use’s different strokes and colours to colour his characters. He uses a lot of keyboard shortcuts to send selections forward and back, to cut selections and to change colours etc.
He then refines a lot of selections making sure that lines are correct and then starts the shading of the character.
Preparing for Print Production
He then moves on to talk about the preparing for production phase. He explains that many of his designs has more than 12 colours but for some publications only 4 or 6 colours may be allowed in the printing process so in those case’s he makes a 2nd version and scales down the colours to meet those printing requirements. He uses swatchs of 6 colours to clarify the colours used on a project. He often changes his colour to the pantone colour system which is a colour reference often used in the print and design industry.
What is the importance of branding? It’s very important to put your name out there so that people recognise it and your own style.
What should you start designing on? Tshirts are great medium for displaying your design ideas.
Whats it like designing for an Event?
You have to design the entrance of the event, the guest/staff pass’s, the staff t-shirts.
What does he hope to do in the future?
He wants to keep doing what he is doing but also spend alot of time painting because spending 14 hours a day infront of the computer is alot.
Skate Design
Now he shows us how to apply his designs to a skateboard. He starts off in Illustrator by using guidelines to outline the skateboard. He then traces the shape of the skateboard using the pen tool and applies a random colour initially. He then uses a large compilation of his own image designs and imports the characters one by one into the skateboard design and moves around the characters to best suit the design of the skateboard. He then blends the colour of the skateboard to the characters he is using so that it all matchs well. He brings in lots of little elements into the skateboard design that mix’s well with the design and then places his Logo at the side of the Skateboard. He then use’s the knife tool in Adobe Illustrator to divide areas into different colour areas. Using the knife tool makes one path into several unique paths which can be modified.
When printing for Skateboards there are many 100s of colours and all these are made up of CMYK colours (mixture of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black colours). CMYK is a widely used colour system used in the print process.
He advices that when designing for T-shirts to keep the designs simple and not to throw everything at the Tshirt as that will make it look confusing and overcrowded.
Skate Design – Shaping the Design
He refines his designs but getting rid of awkward areas or colours, he sends elements forward or back, he also moves stuff around more a little bit creating a more balanced design. He then needs to mask the graphic so that areas of colour overflowing the Skateboard template are removed. He does this by grouping everything, he copies the shape of the skateboard and pastes it infront of everything and then selects everything on the artboard and then press’s command 7 on mac to mask. He then uses the guidelines on the skateboard to match up his design to where he wants it placed in the final print document for the design.
My thoughts
I really enjoyed this video. I learned alot from the video because he showed us alot about how to use Adobe Illustrator more efficiently with shortcuts and many tips that I did not know about. Sketching characters and bringing them into Illustrator is something I would like to try out sometime and this video shows you everything about how to go about the whole process.
I also have a soft spot for Japan and most things Japanese so I liked his designs. If I came across this artwork without seeing this video I would have presumed he was Japanese because his designs really do look like they were created by someone who has lived in Japan all their lives.
It seems like Simone has been lucky in that he made the right friends who introduced him to Adobe Illustrator then he went to college and made the right contacts that helped him build his brand. It really shows that he loves what he does and has alot of control over his characters and his business in general. I would love if I could make a success of myself in the digital media industry doing something either freelance or through my own business to the same degree of success as Simone. This looks alot more rewarding and enjoyable compared to working in the very tough world of being in a high powered Advertising Agency were you have to constantly perform to the best of the employer’s expectations all the time.
This weeks guest speaker is Fiona Kelly She is a digital media artist with an honours degree in Interactive Media from DIT. She works as a designer in web, motion and print graphics and Glimmer.ie is here Freelance website where she showcase’s all her work. http://www.glimmer.ie/
She opens her lecture with a quote from Jim Jarmusch, an independent American film maker
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it.”
This basically says that we should borrow ideas and inspiration from others and then make it your own so that it’s authentic. This makes a very good starting point when your stuck instead of sitting staring at a blank A4 page in Illustrator or Photoshop for hours on end.
Smashing Magazine
Fiona told us that an excellent source of inspiration is a website called Smashing Magazine http://www.smashingmagazine.com/. I had never heard of this website before and did not realise during this lecture just how amazing this website is but more on that at the end of this blog post.
iStockPhoto
Another recommendation from Fiona, this website features photos and images both vector and bitmap on sale for commercial use. This is a great way of building up a library of graphics and inspirations, they are free to use in your artwork once purchased but at around 10 dollers each these get expensive and make some projects not as profitable if alot of these images are bought.
She suggested some other websites including delicious.com, FFFOUND.com, Digg.com and twitter
FatKitty Films
Fiona then talked to us about the logo of another company she is involved with called Fatkitty Films. She got inspiration from various websites and initially had many different but quite similar cats for the logo. She wanted a 1950s style look and feel to this logo choosing a suitable font to match the cat character. They narrowed down the selection of cats and in the end decided that in the final selection that the cat was not fat enough, so Fiona made that cat slightly fatter and it ended up in the final logo design.
Dublin Gay Theatre Festival
Next she showed us her designs for the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, this involved a re-design of their old website. She looked around other Gay Festival websites and website layouts in general for an idea of how to make this website more impressive than the other websites. Her re-design was much improved and the client was very happy with it.
Scooter Island
Fiona was required to develop a new logo for Scooter Island. She brought us through her design process from concepts to finished artwork. She sourced many different styles of graphics and images.
Scooters
Vespa Adverts
Retro Style Websites
Style Elements
Fiona then designed 3 developmental ideas for the client
and this is the final design used on their webpage which has a wordpress deisgn theme to it.
MyHome.ie Banner
Her next project was to design a flash banner for myhome.ie. She started off with initial artwork for inspiration.
She then came up with here flash banner which is divided up into different stages and represented it as a storyboard for her client.
Puca Website and Logo
This project required a re-design of the Puca website which was good in the first place but they wanted something more impressive. The clients showed Fiona some websites which they liked. Fiona described Puca as a tough client to work for, they had alot of branding guidelines which had to be followed. She then made a wireframe representation of the new website and Fiona also designed a set of cartoon ghosts (puca is Irish for Ghosts). These graphics added lots of character to the website.
Developmental Design.
Final Puca Website Design
Fiona described her project with Puca as difficult but dealing with difficult clients is a learning process and makes you stronger in dealing with future clients.
My thoughts
This was my favourite Guest Speaker session in the module. It helped me alot especially the links that Fiona gave us such as Smashing Magazine. That website has 100s of tutorials and 1000s of examples of flash, photoshop and websites from all around the world. Fiona’s advice has been great and it has made creating new graphics easier with so much inspiration to look at through these websites. Her method of developing graphics and websites for clients is also very interesting, she advised us to make folders with lots of inspirations in them broken into categorys that we can use as a reference in future projects. I have started doing this and it is making the design process more interesting and more creative.
We had no guest speaker this week so instead we were asked to blog about one of 3 companies. I choose Troika, a TV-Station graphic design company.
Troika Design Group are an american company that create’s tv graphics (Station Idents) for Satellite/Cable and Aerial TV.
They start off by looking at how other companies do TV branding and then they look at the project at hand visually.
Troika have recently designed the new look branding/network packages for US Stations, Fox, ABC. Oxygen, Starz, ESPN, Sportscentre, TruTV, – ABC, Fox and ESPN are very well known TV stations around the world as well as in America so they are a serious design group to have these stations as clients.
Troika are located in Hollywood, they have about 25 employees – they have designers, animaters, producers, creative directors and editors. Each type of employee is grouped together in same rooms seperate from the other groups so they can work together and share ideas – It’s all about teamwork working together on projects. They work together with their own staff but also rely on freelancers from the creative community. All projects have an executive producer, a producer and a co-ordinator assigned to them. They work with the client to make sure the project is being handled in an organised fashion. Working in Troika is alot of fun but at same time they are a very professional, well managed company.
We see a tour of the Troika buildings, its 3 buildings joined together, one used to be a restaurant and the other used to be a doctors studio, now Trokia own it all and the 3 buildings are interlinked. Everyone works in a creative environment with the grouping of each type of employee into their own rooms. Every computer workstation can be accessed by each employee to share ideas. The employee’s do alot of storyboarding with projects and they pin these to the walls around where they work so other employee’s can take a look and see how projects evolve.
Troika have a demo reel where they show the outside world/clients all their work, it keeps everyone upto-date with what Troika are working on. Here is one of their demo reels.
Clients pay Troika for a process in trying to understand what their needs are, what they want to communicate with their audience. Troika go through steps with their clients to help gain an understanding of what the project involves. They manage their projects by turning them into segments that are manageable. After this they go into the design phase (conceptual) and the Production Phase. Both the creative team and the client gets to understand the project much better by dividing everything into their own segments. This makes the end result of a project much more achieveable and delivers a better product.
Troika like to maintain a creative culture within the company – they have a meeting every few weeks were artists may learn from animators etc, they run class’s for the various applications they use so everyone in the company can get a good creative undertanding at how all the applications work – knowing what each team member can achieve.
In Troika its great to watch individuals come together and work as a team, all brainstorming out ideas. There is alot of energy and freedom around the work environment where employee’s are allowed to play their own music while they work but not too loud to interfer with other employee’s. The atmosphere within the company is casual but becomes serious in a conference room when it needs’s to be serious. They feel that this creative, casual and fun environment brings out the best in a persons creativity rather than making the workplace all sterile and strict. Everyone helps each other within the company and because of this each employee improves their creative quality’s and is able to do stuff that they could not have imagined a year ago.
Troika’s main business is tv network rebrands and network launchs. Many of these projects can take as long as a year to develop. They get through these projects using a collabrative environment where they all get together and start off by brainstorming ideas. During production week’s they may require extra people and free up others to get the work done. The creative directors all have very different skillsets from very different backgrounds, they all reach out to each other to solve problems, they challenge and advice each other to get the best possible result out of the projects they are working on. The designers work this way too, they are all seated together where they share ideas even if they are not all working on the same project. The animators are also seated together in a couple of different areas, this idea of people working collabratively is totally fostered in Troika, it bring’s out the best in their employee’s through creativity and teamwork.
Recently the CW was a rebranding of 2 former tvnetworks and Troika won the pitch to develop their branding and network tv idents. This was a very large project and involved everyone in Troika. They had a ‘warroom’ where they put up their ideas, suggestions, storyboards all over the walls of the room, they could move ideas interactively and bring the client into the room, the client could point at ideas on the wall and say what they liked and what they didnt like moving different ideas from category to category. The size of the projects support this mutual support and involvement from everyone in the company as well as the client themselves.
What is Network Branding?
Branding is the connection made between the TV Channel and its audience. Your asking the audience to invite you into their home. They recently rebranded the Fox Network in USA and they also did Fox’s three previous brandings. They have had a great partnership with Fox and this is really important, a big trust level is there. ‘So Fox’ was the new platform that Troika worked on for Fox.
So Fox defines all of Fox’s branding and TV Shows. They last rebanding was very 3D intensive with millions of effects and particle effects stacked on top of each other.
For the latest branding for Fox, Troika wanted to keep it close and personal, showing close up shots of the tv shows stars/characters. This is a very different approach to the previous branding, the closeup shots have alot of lighting and contast to make it visually striking and unique. This images are stuck on white backgrounds with strong font colours for the text. These graphics are used in all of Fox’s Tv Programme adverts and ‘opening nights’ where Fox introduce the programming for the night. At Troika they treat each project very differently to create a very unique look for each of their clients.
Projects at Troika are getting bigger and bigger and their Starz project is a good example of one of their year long projects coming up with brand themes. Starz is a delivery network for movies, Troika wanted to make it a much more emotional brand to connect it with it’s audience. Troika started off by thinking visually using conceptual moodboards. It took 6 months to establish the direction and look the client was after.
They reworked the Starz Logo which is now much simpler to use in media, the Logo is based on light and the beauty that light brings everyday. They spent alot of time trying to show this light, how to make it unique. They used shapes and lens flairs to represent forms of light making the light look natural.
Oxygen was a fun project which started as a tight deadline of a few weeks to get the pitch together. This also started off with moodboards and clipping ideas to the walls around the building. They initially had 3 concepts, Oxygen is a network for women. There was alot of product design involved, working with 3D animators to help come up with the objects used in the design. It used objects that would represent women as a collection of graphics that helped bring the branding together.
Techniques
Troika find out who is best suited to work on each project, making sure that person use’s the best of their abilitys. Troika solves each project from a unique point of view, that is what marketing branding is all about. It is important that their studio has a team of wide ranging diverse talents offering different techniques and skillsets, these can be blended and merged together. They try to avoid repetition in projectsStoryboards and ideas are mixed around untill the correct sequence of events in a theme evolves. Working outside of the box is something that happens alot in Troika. Broadcast design brings a wide set of skills, learning how music and sound works together with the graphic design, typography, colour. There is also a large understanding of live action, animation, character movement is very important. Alot of employee’s have a good command of many different techniques. This helps in working with another employee in the company who is an expert of a specific area.
In Troika applications used include the Full Adobe software range including After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator. They have Maya, Cinema 4D, Keynote etc. Everything is uptodate, everyone has the applications they need to get the job done.
Tv Broadcasting is something that constantly evolves and changes everyday. Troika meet up with clients to check out their facilities, to see what software they have and Troika take the clients technical requirements into consideration when designing. The technology of TV is changing all the time and designs have to change all the time to reflect this. Troika also build styleguides which can be tedious to setup, it is a summary of the entire project from concept, writing, typefaces, colours. Its a method other companies use to look at projects that Troika have completed and style them they way Troika intended.
Shooting Live Action
This involves having a real life human element to their identities especially on bigger campaigns with big talent shoots. It can be small shoot setup at the office to greenscreens, location/environmental shoots.
Troika have a large range of books in their building which helps them with choosing colours, fonts, graphics, photography, references etc. For inspiration they have alot of books and objects to help with their creativity when coming up with concepts for projects.
My Thoughts
TV Idents is something I have always been interested in. This started back in the early 90s when I had Sky back in it’s very early days. Back then Sky’s branding was very exciting and made you want the channel compared to the very dull branding on RTE, ITV and BBC back in those days. Other European channels that we had at the time included MTV Europe, Filmnet, RTL Veronica all had very strong branding with fantastic graphic design, some use of 3D and soundtracks to go along with the montages. I wanted to know how these were put together but at the time there was no Internet! Now many years later things have changed alot, branding has become really good across all channels with BBC, RTE, Canal+ and especially the american TV networks all showcasting fantastic often award winning design/branding/logos. The Video on Troika was a fantastic insight into what Life might be like in a cool, open-plan, casual design studio. Altho it looks like there would be some very stressfull days, I love the way their building does not look all corporate and business like. I think this more casual approach to a graphic design business would inspire more creativity amongst the staff rather than having that ‘accountants office look and feel’. I really liked the idea that storyboards/wireframes and mock-ups are stuck on walls for all to see in a large room where the creative director and client can go through stuff at early stages with a mix and match approach leading to a much better design in the end.
This week our guest speaker was an artist called Emma Wade. She talked about her experience in college and her working career as a designer and an artist.
Emma graduated from the Institute of Art and Design (NCAD) in 2002. After she graduated she worked for 2 years as a Creative Director in a company dealing with clients and fulfilling their requirements. The company didn’t work out too well after 2 years so she went and worked for a High Street Printer where a very quick turnover/work-rate was required, here she became faster at her work.
In 2006 she put her design skills to the max by working for a marketing company. She ended up learning a very valuable lesson which she wasn’t thought in college. She learned that very few companies come up with something totally original, companies look for inspiration from other companies work and ‘creatively borrow’ ideas and make them their own.
After this she looked to get a Masters in Art, she applied for a masters in NCAD (National College of Art and Design) which was a 2 year masters. She felt out of place in NCAD as she was primarily a designer but everyone else in the college was an artist. She explains that artists only think creatively and designers think logically, so that’s 2 very different forms of thinking about projects.
She decided in one of her college projects to mix her understanding of technology with her artistic side. During this project she invented the Cheer Up which is a pressure pad on the ground with speakers either side of it. When the pad is stepped upon, the electrical circuits connects resulting in a crowd of people cheering. The more excited you get by jumping and standing on the pad, the louder the cheer.
IN her final year project she mixed her technological skills with her creativity and came up with the REXATREC. She was walking her dog one day, noticed he was frisky and thought it would be cool it people could experience and see stuff from the dog’s field of vision. She put a camera on his collar and followed him for a few months, edited the footage.
So people had to get on there hands and knees like a dog to experience what a dog experiences. (I have slight epilepsy and found this extremely shakey video hard to watch on the large projecters in college)
She has a website for this project: http://www.rexotrek.com/
After she got her masters, Emma did a 3 month unpaid internship in New York where she was thought Photoshop and Sound Editing. She learned a lot through this. Then she moved on and worked in Red Space Studios in Dublin. She made some really good friends in this company. Red Space has everything got to do with art, a recording studio for musicians. She describes it as a arty place for arty people.
She did a few gallery exhibitions but the most noticeable is the Free Hugs exhibition (picture below)
Week 4 we had a guest speaker called Ian Chutney. He started off by telling us his working life between the end of college and now. He studied Industrial Design/Product Design as well as music and media technology. He completed a degree in NCAD, this was followed by a 2 years masters degree in Trinity College, Dublin.
He started off wanting to do mainly music but he kept an open mind with everything and started working in Video Production. He explains that we as Digital Media students are in a really good position as we get to know about everything in this sector. e.g. there are brilliant cameramen out there but they know nothing about the editing and vice versa, but we get our chance to know both the video editing and the camera work involved as well as everything else such as applications, flash, animation, photography etc etc.
Ian completed an internship at One Productions for 3 months making Flash adverts. He then was employed in Hyper Production company were he worked with Sound, flash, banner ads, telephone text ads. The business went bust and both employee’s and clients were left in the air. This was his chance to try his hand at being a freelancer.
He describes freelance as working on stuff that you want to work at on your on – be your own employer. He claims that there is nothing stopping us from making a big splash/presence if we want – its all about luck and perseverance.
While in college, Ian used to spend a lot of time making Music Videos. He made a video of James Yorkston which he uploaded through MySpace. James replied back to Ian and liked his work so he asked Ian to do a documentary for him. He did this for the fun and one thing led to another. The video was edited with Final Cut Pro over a few days. James did tour in Ireland. Ian says that people out there are nicer than we think.
James asked Ian to produce a EPK – Electronic Press Kit. This gets passed around radio stations when a new album or single is soon to be released so the DJ has an idea what the artist is like.A EPK is a good way for small artists to make a splash/get noticed.
Ian says its a good idea to pick an idea you like and make people aware of your existence.
Ian meet a guy called Donal Dinan through James, Donal does photography at concerts and Ian followed him around for no money and put together another documentary. They had a small set up with both himself and a friend to help with the cameras. Donal did background for Lisa Hannigan’s first gig. Lisa got back on to Ian and Donal to do an EPK for her and she released her album a year ago.
Ian then talks to us about another documentry project he worked on in Kerry during a weekend. They had a small crew with better cameras than the Donal/Lisa project in Dublin. The weekend in Kerry was a documentry on interviews and music. It was mostly filmed on the beach and took one week to edit. They went back the next weekend for another trip followed by another week of editing. There wasnt much money earned in this project but it was great experience. The music video filmed in Kerry was uploaded to Youtube, it got a lot of hits and a talk show host in America saw it online and invited her onto his show.
Ian then explained that later he meet up with Maeve Higgins, an Irish comedian who got him involved with Liam McGrath from Scratch Films. Ian was asked to work on a single episode of Maeve’s show called Fancy Littles. This was a success and they later received a commission to do a four-part series. This led to them getting much better equipment. The production took 3 to 4 months which involved a lot of editing, filming and archive footage. He explains that Final Cut Pro is the application that he used for editing and that it’s the best application on the market for video editing. On the show he did a scene of stop motion which took him 12 hours to do. They used an application called Istop Motion to produce this.
After this he got to make a documentary for RTE called Meet the Neighbours. He describes that during a daily shoot there are 3 editors working together as a team. There is an assistant editor, an assembly editor and the editor. He says that its quite normal practice to shoot 20 times more film than you need to so that there is enough quality footage for the documentry, good organisation is needed with the footage. He describes life in RTE and tells us that all the different genre’s of programming in RTE are managed by what is like almost totally seperate companys within RTE such as RTE Factual, Drama, News etc etc.
He describes working within RTE as a great experience, He did a. Christmas episode for Maeve which took 3 weeks to cut. Week one involves rough cuts which the director sees. Week 2 this is cut down to 40 minutes. He says it starts to get serious when RTE gets involved in the editing process. He describes the final editing as the hardest part such as going from 28 mins to 24 mins.
He talks finally about more what life is like to be a freelancer. He asked how many of us are planning on being a freelancer when we finish college. He says life without having a boss is brilliant, to be in controll of your own work but that it is a double edged sword. There is alot of Self-discipline involved. You have to motivate yourself to work to a structure that works. It can involve working mostly at night or during the day depending on the person and that sometimes there is no work but other times there is so much to do that it all comes at once, a bit like being in college.
My Thoughts
This was a very interesting guest speaker, after some several months working doing flash adverts and telephone text ads he found something that he enjoyed alot more – working with music and video. It seems he really enjoys working as a freelancer , altho as he says alot of self-discipline would be required to make sure you get all your work done on time and in budget. Not having a boss sounds great but I am not sure I want to be always in this position of looking for the next project/income worrying that projects may not always be around especially in today’s economic climate. He told us we are in a great position as digital media students because we get involved in everything rather than focusing on only some sections of the industry, this is a big advantage to us.
I also thought it was interesting that he describes each section of RTE such as RTE drama, RTE Factual etc as almost seperate companies. I also learned that there is a great stopmotion application called iStopmotion which I will be trying out during the summer.
In week 3 we watched a lecture from Edward Melvins. He is Project Manager of ICAN. His lecture is about what’s it like to work in digital media industry, his role in ICAN and what work he carries out in the company ICAN. He has been working as a project manager for 8 years and got into it with his Arts Degree. After college he worked at Windmill Lane then got involved with some web development agencies then got involved with ICAN and became the project manager. ICAN is an advertising agency. They are involved with advertising and communications. Clients of ICAN need advise about how to conduct their business online, how to advertise online to increase their sales etc. The provide understanding and advisement on how the whole online digital world works and how it can be used effectively for clients business.
They help clients define a vision, come up with a strategy. They sit with the client and advise them whats the best way to achieve their goals and find out what does the client really want to achieve. They realise this vision by achieving tasks online, communication, team-working, skills, creativity and planning. Every client works with Ican and this forms a project.
Services that they provide include Web Design, Online Strategy, Advertising online, marketing, email marketing, online public relations, search engine optimisation, project management and multimedia design. He tells us that web design is a very interactive medium not just pictures on a page, he gives an example of Apple Computers as a company that has leading edge design with its nice interfaces and a great brand. He describes design as a very interactive process, its how something works, how something is used,how it feels to the user, how we interact with it.
He describes advertising online as a huge growth area and is ICAN’s main business. Advertising online is achieved through banner adverts, google advertising campaigns, interactive flash adverts, microsites etc. He describes Google as a key channel for advertising and search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the key aspects in gaining your online presence in google and other search engines. He shows us examples of websites that ICAN have designed in providing clients with their online presence. He tells us that its very important to create content that is suitable for its target market/audience. Many of their projects are interactive where users and clients can log into the website using username and password to retrieve information on the website. They provide email marketing where they may send 1000s of emails around advertising a shop or product in the hope of increasing sales.
He shows us some of the multimedia design work that ICAN have done, they look like very fancy flash based interfaces that move and rotate, each link opens up another page of sections all with content and information including content from podcasts, forum chats etc. He shows us some of the interactive flash based adverts they have designed for companies like Eircom where the user can controll what happens in the advert, the advert is used to drive an overall message to the user.
Ican focus on engaging people to the online content. They work on converting people this is achieved by a sale, download, click, visit, enquiry, booking , email etc.
He describes the people employed at the company, there is a Managing Director, Creative, Production, Client Services, Media Bookers, Search Marketing and an accountant.
Why do people advertise online?
Advertising online provides a clear return on investment, audiences are using online more, engagement is possible online and online campaigns are alot more flexible than print based campaigns.
How Campaigns are run
First stage is meetings with the clients to define a strategy and set of goals. Some clients may already present a brief at this stage and find out how are Icann going to execute the brief. The brief is very important as it forms the concept. A good brief provides clarity and what the end goal should be, some clients gave great briefs with clear objectives, others not so great and Icann needs to work with them to come up with a realistic brief. A bad brief is an opportunity for Icann to work out with the client what they really want, what the end goal should be. After the briefing session, Icann usually hold a meeting and brainstorm the brief for about 90 minutes to think creatively about what the client wants to achieve. The next stage is the proposal where they work on a concept. A concept is an idea of how the project will work. The concept is communicated through a statement, storyboarding ideas, a visual design ‘mock-up’, the mechanics of the project and how it should work, and then the reason behind it all. Icann often show during the concept what their clients competitors are doing in the market. After the concept the next stages are planning, creating the project, appoving, testing the project and then finally releasing the project.
The campaign team is usually made up of Account Manager, Art Director, Copywriter, Media planner and production team. He shows us some advertising campaigns such as in-game advertising promoting Eircom Broadband, other campaigns involve immersive environments giving the user a very realistic view on what the product is about.
How Web Projects are run?
The Stages are planning, design, develop, deliver, partner. The plan is the most important stage because its there where changes are less costly, its important to get all the stages of development correct at this stage as it gets alot more expensive to make changes as a project evolves. The planning stage is crucial to a projects success, the costs of making changes gets very expensive towards the end of a project and can lead to alot of problems so its very important to have good planning. The planning stage involves the scope of the project and how it should work, a schedule, time-management, risks, assumptions.
Web Project teams are made up of Project Managers, designers, developers, production, creative teams.
The project managers main role is to manage the project and to deliver a profitable project on time for the agency within budget and to clients expectations.
Projects are successful through:
Realistic estimation
Detailed planning
Client Involvement
Good Project Management
Effective Communication
Identifying risks and assumptions.
Challenges During a Project
Estimating
Planning
Communication
Time Management
Assumptions
Risks
Constraints
Scope Creep (adding on extra work to the project)
External Threats
Difficult Clients
Next he shows us Sitemaps and Wireframes. These are used alot in web design and show the focus of information, it helps the client understand what is being achieved by the page. Sketching ideas out on a page also helps the client to think visually about what they want from their webpages.
Whats it like to work in an Agency?
Working in an agency is fast-paced, stressful, rapidly changing, pressurised, and frenetic. It is also fun, rewarding, challenging, varied, exciting and creative.
My Thoughts
This guest speaker provided very valuable information about what life is like in a highly successfull Design/Advertising Agency. Of all the guest speakers we had during this module, this one was the most serious, he went indepth into how complex projects are run to a strict deadline and on budget while satisfying both the company and client at the same time. Life inside this company sounds very stressfull indeed but rewarding if you are the top of your game every single day in the company.
It gives me the impression that if a project go’s wrong or if delays happen that the ‘shit’ will hit the fan!. This all sounds fine for designers/digital media artists who are aged about 25-45 but the highly challenging and strict deadlines that constantly revolve around projects in Advertising Agencys may be a bit too much when you are in your late 40s and 50s leading to burn-out.
The advice in this lecture about setting up and running projects is very usefull for everyone in the digital media industry and can be applied to freelance designers as well. Follow the guidelines and projects are less likely to go wrong.
