Final Project Overview

Week 1:
create concept, begin brainstorming names and moch ups for logo

decided on the same SESSIONS for the bar and decided to focus mainly on off roading and 4 wheeling

Week 2:
Have at least 3 versions of logo to critique in class by Wednesday
research bar menus and establish the items I will be including
come up with creative copy based around theme

Had 3 logo ideas finished and ready for review (don’t have the images because they were only saved on my laptop which I don’t have anymore)

Week 3:
Finalize logo
Build menu

Started finding ideas for menu items, logo almost finalized

Week 4:
Menu Critique
create a list of events that the bar will host weekly/monthly
design an announcement board that will display events, pictures, comments/stats/specials

started building menu design, finished all the items and copy that would be included logo completely done

Week 5:
MID TERM EVALUATION OF EVERYTHING THUS FAR (I feel that my schedule about might be too ambitious for me as far as time line goes so I would like to take this week to evaluate everything I have so far and build my remaining weeks schedules accordingly) =]

menu and logo ready for evaluation only minor revisions needed to be made after in class critique.

Week 6:

Finnish menu and post to blog for crit.

make coasters

met with Nicole from the photography department to discuss logo ideas

Week 7:

Finnish coasters by monday

start website mock-up

began early versions of logo ideas for Nicole’s food photography promo

Week 8:

continue website mock-up

Place signage on different elements ie building, street sign, t-shirt?

decided that website wasnt the way I wanted to go with this project so I began investing all my time in Nicole’s logo, gave her several versions to work with and build a series she could use for different types of food photography.

Week 9-10:

finish website

refine details

take a nap.

Made the coasters for the sessions bar and applied logo to beer mug printed and photographed menu and coasters for portfolio and presentation.

Did you do everything you set out to do?

I did almost everything I set out to do on this project, my most successful part was the menu and all the copy for the menu, and I was really pleased with the way it turned out.

What were the challenges?

The biggest challenge I had was finding enough elements to incorporate the logo and branding with.  Time was the biggest factor in the end.  Also when I began to do the website I realized that I just wasnt confident and skilled enough to produce something portfolio worthy and that was sort of the point of this project was to fill in missing holes in our portfolios.  At some point I would like to do web but for right now I needed to stay focused on things that I was good at and confident in.

What went well? Not so well?

I think my menu and logo both turned out really well I just wish I made more time to apply it to other things, honestly I think I was getting a little burnt out on this project and that’s when I sort of shifted gears and started a new project working with one of the photography students on her logo design.  Overall working on my own timeline instead of one that was given to me was a challenge because that meant that a lot of the work for this class got put on the back burner.  But in the end I think everything that I ended up with was successful, I just didn’t have as many elements as I wish I would have

What did you learn during the process?

I learned a lot about self management and the importance of sticking to a timeline whether you are excited about the project or not.  Sometimes you just need to push through even when its hard and you don’t want to.

What would you do differently?

Things I would do differently would be to set more specific guidelines on my timeline and STICK TO THEM I would also probably plan for two projects, because I went into this knowing that I can get burnt out on things easily and it would have been nice to have planned to do two things because I think I would have been more motivated and had at least one more thing for my portfolio.

Overall feelings and final grade:

At this point in the game my brain is so fried its hard to have any feelings about anything, overall I am moderately satisfied with the way my project turned out, but my enthusiasm about it has gone way down.  And I realized a lot about my work ethic through this project and learned that it’s something that I am always going to have to work on.  I hope that someday my family will actually persue opening this bar, because I would love to see this project come to life!  In the end I think I would give myself a B or a C on this project I know I didn’t work to my full potential or complete everything on my timeline but I did work really hard on the things that I did get finished. After the final presentation my plan was to go back and refine my presentation and build some more things for the final, but as most of you may know by now I ran into some major issues the last week of school with pretty much everything important to me getting stolen.  So instead of refining things further I have spent the last week just trying to catch back up enough to be on track for the portfolio show.

Site Structure Analysis

I chose to analyze the HoverKraft site http://www.hoverkraft.nl/

The site over all has pretty good structure. all the pages are justified to the left and you can see that they are using a really good grid structure, everything lines up really well, when you condense the page the images on the outside column drop down to the bottom, so that tells you there is a fixed width for that column, the rest of them stay the same.

The logo is in a good spot and a decent size, its typical to place the logo in the upper left corner because that’s where our eyes go first.  They use a simple roll over image replacement method for their navigation.  But they do not have an active button for when you are on a specific page, the only thing that changes in the navigation is that it is moved to the left hand side rather than on top of the page, and is used more as a side bar then top navigation.  I think that it’s an obvious enough change where it works ok this way.  All of their other links are just standard except the color is yellow instead of blue.  You can also click on the titles on the main page and that will take you to the other pages as well, this was harder for me to notice, because there is no roll over state for the button.  They simply used a link replacement for the title.

The only page that stands out to be as being different then the others is the work page; in all of their other pages they use a vertical structure, which is normal but for some reason they decided to use a horizontal layout for this page, which seems odd to me since it is one of the most important pages and you have to scroll to the right to see the majority of it.  The set up they have used with their images and text would work perfectly fine going straight down, so I think that would be a better option for this page.

They don’t use a background image, it is simply a sold color, and all of their text is basic font substitution using arial, and a smaller pt size and simple color change. Also there is no footer image being used.  I think this website is a good example of being simple and clean and I like it.  They use a grid for their images and their column widths are a good size.  It goes to show that you don’t always have to have a million things to look at or a lot of detail to get a good design across.

MID TERM OVERVIEW

Ok well as most of you can imagine this term is kicking all of our butts and my timing of things has gotten a little off.  I only wrote out my schedule until week 5 and at this point I am supposed to be finished with my menu and working on the event board.  And where I actually am at is still working on my menu, and havent even thought about my event board.  Below is what I have done so far I know it still needs a lot of work.  I want to figure out how this will play into my portfolio because it is a piece I want to include and I dont have any brand identity pieces, and I am wondering what type of elements will be good to use for it? I think besides the logo and menu, I will do coasters, signage, and a mock up website. Any other suggestions would be helpful as well! My thoughts on this term so far are…;KLASDFJ;AKLDSJFLKSDJFKLDS;JF;.  That’s how I feel about that! Since I am in the mindset that this is something I want in my portfolio I really need to buckle down and finalize some stuff and make sure I have all the elements because without them its just a logo and that’s lame.

Week 6:

finish menu and post to blog for crit.

make coasters

Week 7:

finish coasters by monday

start website mock up

Week 8:

continue website mock up

place signage on different elements ie building, street sign, t-shirt?

Week 9-10:

finish website

refine details

take a nap.

Site Analysis

So I picked this design website, its a site by a company who designs websites, so I am guessing it should be good since it’s what they do! And after looking into it I really do think its a good website, its simple and clean and easy to navigate through.  It looks like a pretty simple website to break down as well everything is broken up very nicely.  Looks like they maybe used 3 different backgrounds for the header main body and footer.  They have multiple places where you can find the links to be directed somewhere else, at the top, bottom, and side.  The only negative or con I can really see is that the links at the top are kind of hard to locate, but since they have them in so many spots I am not sure if it would be an issue.  And this is just a personal preference but I would have liked to see a little more treatment on the h1 and h2 text at the top, it just looks a little bleh to me. Well thats all I have to say about that!

Project update

Well I have my final logo done that I am going to be using so as far as that goes I am still on track, my schedule said to begin menu design and I haven’t quite gotten that far yet, I want to have creative names to go with all of my menu items to add a little “copy writing” elements to my project so I have been doing some research on like 4wheeling terms and stuff that I can use, I have also been putting a list together of items that will be on the menu.  Since it is just a bar I’m not sure what is an appropriate amount of items to have? I was thinking of having just typical bar grub..about 10-15 items. Then maybe having a separate beer/cocktail menu.  So I have plenty of stuff to work on this week =]

Project Proposal

So my family and I have always had an ambitious dream of opening up an extreme sports bar. A bar that didn’t show your typical sports. It would showcase sports like quading, wheeling, snowmobiling, wakeboarding ect. My goal for this term is to develop the identity of this bar by building the logo, the menu, event planning, maybe some package designing and some other misc things that would apply to creating the overall concept of the bar. I have been leaning more towards finding a career in project management, or public relations and I want this project to reflect not only my creativity with the designs but also my ability to develop that design into a cohesive theme throughout the bar.

Week 1:
create concept, begin brainstorming names and moch ups for logo

Week 2:
Have at least 3 versions of logo to critique in class by Wednesday
research bar menus and establish the items I will be including
come up with creative copy based around theme

Week 3:
Finalize logo
Build menu

Week 4:
Menu Critique
create a list of events that the bar will host weekly/monthly
design an announcement board that will display events, pictures, comments/stats/specials

Week 5:
MID TERM EVALUATION OF EVERYTHING THUS FAR (I feel that my schedule about might be too ambitious for me as far as time line goes so I would like to take this week to evaluate everything I have so far and build my remaining weeks schedules accordingly) =]

Ethiopia Book round 2

ok this is what i’ve come up with, feedback is much appreciated!

Ethiopia Book

Well this still needs a lot of work obviously but its what I have so far.

dragon update

well here is my redesign of my dragon logo let me know what you think. I’m kind of stuck right now I think I have been staring at it for too long so a new perspective would help a lot!

Gresham Fire

here is my first go at the logo. i know it needs a lot of work but i hope you get the idea.