Reading notes...

Robert Collier:
'Every contrivance of man, every tool, every instrument, every utensil, every article designed for use, of each and every kind, evolved from very simple beginnings.'

David Stuart:
' The best graphic design does more than capture attention & make the audience linger. It prolongs the encounter, compelling the reader not only to notice, but to remember.'
'Designers play tunes on an idea. They may use a constant, a fixed element, which takes on a new meaning each time it appears; or they may use a theme and provide the variations'
'Unexpectedly seeing this and that delivers both recognition and surprise.'

Edward de Bono:
'Thank goodness the brain is designed to be uncreative. With eleven items of clothing to put on there would be 39,916,800 ways of getting dressed.'
'I believe that design as such is grossly undervalued....Most of the major problems in the world will not be solved by further analysis. They need design.'

Frank Chimero:

'People ignore design that ignores people'

Picasso:

'Good designers copy, great designers steal'

Brian Reed

'Everything is designed, few things are designed well'

Brenda Laurel

'A design isn't finished until somebody is using it'

Paul Rand

'Dsign, as the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, thats why it is so complicated'

Evaluation

My original proposal was to create a map and consistent print campaign for Duvel Moortgat. My ideas have changed and developed slightly on the way but I have kept my original design ideas and changed small ideas to make them work better. ‘A DUVEL LONDON’ campaign crosses various formats of print and screen design. I have explored and practiced various printing techniques, both by research and visiting printing warehouses. Also by trimming and mounting all my work, this helped me see how things could have been done slightly differently to make the finishing of the prints a lot easier. I have pitched my campaign to the UK manager of Duvel Moortgat, who wants to eventually make this campaign a reality which is great news for my portfolio. After seeing early stages of designs he has already asked me to start incorporating them into Duvel Moortgat’s branding, including business cards and compliment slips. Overall I have learnt a great deal in this project. I have discovered that although how free you can be with your own brief it can also make it quite challenging as the options are endless. (Although the money is not!) Part 2 Project Review

Proposal

With all my prints and digital submissions I thought it would be a nice touch to hand in a kind of proposal. I made a PDF going through the campaign from start to finish. Only with minimum description, but this is something my old company used to do and I think it is quite professional to carry out as the campaign develops... I have had it bound and it looks pretty professional.

Bottles going further...

I showed my boss my bottle designs as I was starting. He loved them, He wanted me to incorporate them into Duvel Moortgat branding pretty much immediately!

I have completely re designed Duvel's business cards and compliment slips....

The front of the new cards are just a simple row of the bottles. I had to change the Duvel logo to red and the Vedett logos to the full ones as he is very 'on brand'. I selected a lovely 'white frost colourplan' card, which is 350gsm and slightly textured. The bottles are to be printed with litho.

The information side of the card is to be printed litho but the Duvel logo and crest is to be foil embossed with red, gold and black foil. I can't wait to see the finished result. I have standard card proofs in my sketchbook...

The compliment slips below keep the look and feel of the cards although they wanted the corporate logo which I am not a fan of. This is to be printed digitally with only the red line to be foiled.

App

So, my tutor made me see sense that it would be a stupid idea not to produce an app that accompanies this campaign, its the perfect combination and I don't know why I ever thought about not including it!

I have designed the app and added developer notes so it could be passed on to be made if needed.

The main features of the app are:
A brand selector (Allowing the user to pick the brand they fancy drinking)
Brand information and food matching menu.
'Pub locator' - Showing the particular 'line' for the brand selected.
Pub information, address and gallery.
Book a table

I wanted to keep the app simple and have key features that fit with campaign. The whole idea is to travel round London and try out pubs you may not normally visit and this is the perfect tool to help along the way!

I have submitted a PDF of the different app screens that include developer notes.

A3 Folding Flyer

So originally my intention was to create a 'Duvel Map'. What I have actually decided to go with is to create an almost store locator or 'pub locator'. I decided on this as once I had been through all the brands stockists I realised how messy it would look. Some brands have only 8 stockist when others have up to 300. I decided on picking 8 pubs per brand and sticking with that. All I wanted to include was the pub name and postcode. It is not in perspective and I have gone along with an almost tube map look and feel.

I love all the colour coded 'lines' per brand, I think when all placed together they fit together well. I have added small filled in bottles as the 'stops'  and decided on putting the pub info on the top & bottom of each 'stop'

As Bar Music Hall stocks all the brands I thought it would be a good idea for all the lines to flow into a giant Bar Music Hall 'stop' letting the viewer know that they stock everything.

The flyer will be A3 when open, which will display the full 'locator'. When folded it will be A6. So I have divided the front of the A3 into 8 equal sections and placed one bottle brand per section. This allowed me to add a front cover of the classic 'A DUVEL LONDON' and the QR code to the front.

A6 Cards

The A6 cards are to be used as menu's in all the participating pubs. They have exactly the same artwork as the larger A2 prints but include a menu on the reverse. The typeface used is Champagne & Limousines again, and I have added a 1pt stroke as its fairly hard to read so thin on the textured background.
Again very simple to fit in with the rest of the campaign.

Again all of my campaign is to be printed on the same matt laminate vinyl. These will be on a sticky back vinyl so I can mount them to a card. The card I have selected is slightly thicker than a postcard. The surface of the card isn't particularly important as it will be covered although I have specified a silk finish as the vinyl is so thin I don't want any kind of texture to show through when they have been mounted.

Teaser Poster

As I am now creating an app to go with the campaign, I thought it would be a good idea to make a teaser poster to get the public interested. The poster consists of the bottle designs , the QR code and the title I have come up with for the campaign 'A DUVEL LONDON' I came up up with this after a lot of word association in my sketchbook. Although a very simple name, its very to the point and brings the whole campaign together nicely.

The poster will be printed from any size from A4 to A0 depending on where they will be displayed. For Vedett we have just paid a company to fly poster for us, a similar idea applies for 'A DUVEL LONDON'

I have chosen a type called 'Champagne & Limousines' for the poster and this will stretch across the whole campaign keeping it all consistent. I have used this typeface in Bar Music Hall a few times. Its a very clean cut thin sans that I absolutely love. For this particular poster I have added a 2pt stroke...

A2 Prints

So I have made my main design elements of the project.... The bottles! I did this by placing an image of each brand in Illustrator and using the pen tool to trace around the edges. I have also traced the outline shape of the bottle labels and logos but removing all other element s of the bottle designs. Using a thick stroke and the colour's I selected for each brand I think they have come out really well. They are very simple but very effective and memorable. A very modern take on a very corporate brand.

Originally I wanted to emboss these prints and either use a UV gloss over the ink or a coloured foil on the outlines, this meant that I could pick a tinted,textured board to print on. However seeing as I am only producing one or two of each print and not mass producing them , this is just too pricey. I had a quote of £250 for just one board!

SO.... My plan is to print everything on a lovely matt laminate sticky back vinyl and mount everything up individually onto the right thickness board/paper. This means that for the background I will create my own textured background. I think the outlines need some kind of textured to stand out of/from. I've made a simple grey flecked texture using effects in Illustrator, it gives the prints a canvas type feel with the outlines a smooth colour, it almost looks as though they are printed differently anyway which I'm pretty pleased about!

To Print!

I was lucky enough to visit a massive printing warehouse in Kent. The company is called Creo, here's a link to their website: CREO. My Dad does some freelance work for them, so managed to get me in. I was in there on a night shift from 8pm to about 3am! This is where my prints were produced and I could explore the different machines, papers and be nosey at the whole printing process in general...

As I wanted all of my various prints on different thickness and some single sided, some double sided, they were printed on a super thin sticky back matt laminate vinyl (a kind of plastic). They were printed on a HUGE digital machine mainly all on one run.

I then took to the job of mounting everything individually by hand. This took hours! For the A6's I chose a card slightly thicker then an average postcard. I stuck one row down at a time onto the card. I had to be so careful with this and ended up using a squeegee and cloths. The vinyl is so thin once the backing is off that it easily puckers up beneath your fingers and ends up creating bubbles. This happened several times and it took a good few tries to get it right. I then had to measure up borders and place the back menus on individually. I then trimmed everything down. I left a 3mm bleed on everything and used trim lines in the print files to make sure it was all even.

For the A2s I chose a thick folding box board. A nice thickness to displays the large prints behind the bar in pubs, they will be able to just lean against back walls without creasing.

The standard teaser posters I printed on A3, but they are made for pretty much any size up to A0. These were printed on the same matt laminate but on a non sticky vinyl. So these were very simple and only needed trimming...

The A3 folding flyer was hell however! So, the front of the A3 had been printed on a sticky vinyl and the back on a non-sticky. So I need to peel off the backing and place on the non-sticky surface. This took so many tries for me to get right. I kept placing it in the wrong position or it kept bubbling as the A6s. The vinyl is so so thin which makes it super tricky. I ended up hijacking one of Creo's enormous lightboxes which allowed me to see through the vinyl and line it up properly. After all this messing around though, the 2 sides stuck together made the A3 way to thick to be used as a folding flyer. The first couple of creases were OK ( I made them on the sharp edge handle of a scalpel) The rest however was just not going to happen....

I've ended up having to print the folding flyer on a standard silk A3 white paper from a printers in London. I've matched up the paper as much as I could but it's not ideal...

Of course if this campaign was mass produced and not a one of uni project this would've been manufactured differently. The double sided would have been pressed in the same run without faffing around matching up edges by eye! They would've also been trimmed by machines. I would've had to set the artwork up with a particular bleed and specific margins. Although most large printing companies will do this for you.

I have taken samples of the paper, cards and laminates and put them in my sketchbook.