This brief had a range of weakness and issues, but overall these were then learnt from in my other brief and informed major issues in my practice that I can work on to fix. This was due to the communication issues with the client. The brief was for a logo design originally, which I won and then a set of posters/social content were also needed. This is a was thought to be about 3/4 weeks work, a week for each aspect. In the end, the brief took over 4 months to work out the final poster design. This was not constant work for 4 months but was draining and hard to get feedback, often thought to be finished only to then be changed again. The client was Jenny Beard, a fine art representative, and I was under the impression that it was her choice on the poster design. It turns out that the whole course of over 70 students with greatly different style had to decide on one poster together.
This is borderline was impossible, as some of the students also took out personal issues with Jenny on the brief, and regretted concepts due to trying to make her life harder. They also refused often to give constructive feedback, but just complain. There were polls set up on estudio and feedback boxes made, idea but no one reacted to these. The course also supplied the fee, these means they wanted more control over the design as they were paying for it themselves, which causes more complaints. Due to all these issues, 5 set of poster design was created, before the final idea selected. This has informed my practice as now when set a brief, the client will be defined more, a set of design stages organized before more payment is needed, and also how many people will have to approve the design will be decided. I really happy with the 4th set of design for the brief, so was Jenny and others and feel these would have been a better final outcome. Next, with a client, I will be more forceful when setting the final designs.
Another aspect of my practice this defined was the need for in-person meetings. During the 5th stages I was very annoyed with the brief and the client, due to this a meeting was organised with Jenny in person for the first time, rather than over facebook. This meeting was a turning point in the brief, as it allowed me to understand the issue with the course more. To realise the issue Jenny was facing to, and how we had to resolve this. It also was easier to define the set changes and explain these in person, in general, gave more clear insight into the brief. This should be done more with future briefs.
This briefs strength focused on the amount of development of my practice. I’ve learnt largely for the issues and this informed Olivia Marshalls and Meanwood farm brief, as I made sure the meeting focused on being in person and setting a list of outcomes at the start. I also do really like the 4th opinion I created and will use this in my portfolio as this is a big brief and client. This brief also allowed me to connect more with a different course at uni, creating connections with future artists I might work with. The design pushed me outside of my comfort zone, as it had to concentrate on visual design rather than conceptual advertising I prefer, but this showed I do like this and can do this style of design.
