Little Thoughts…

Client Update

It’s good to be back after a refreshing Spring Break! I can’t believe the semester is already half way over, or more. I got to take a small trip to Reno, NV over break to watch my boyfriend and his Dad bowl in the USBC National Bowling Tournament. It was fun, they both did well and may have won some money. Reno itself is a smaller version of Las Vegas, we gambled but didn’t win anything! It was still a fun experience though.

My client update this week is going to be a bit short because I am still working on sketches for the packaging. I have just about completed the logo design after showing Gary my second round of comps. He picked a logo and now I just have to refine it and pick the final color scheme which is going to probably be a brown and a green or maybe 2 different greens.

Like I mentioned, I am working on 3 different designs for the package and I will post them as soon as I finish them up. I will also be showing them to Gary as soon as they are done. I want to give him a few different options to look at before deciding on one. After having a small meeting with him a week ago, he gave me the die cuts for a eco friendly package they designed at Libbey. It has no lid so it uses 18% less cardboard and I am going to use this layout for my design so it’s nice to have the die cuts and the files to work with so I know exactly what the final package design will look like! That’s all I have for my update for now, until next week!

We Have a Winner!

I am proud to blog about my client update for this week. I talked with Gary this morning for about a half hour on my packaging/logo project. I provided him with a new set up mock-up’s for the “Be Green” logo that is to accompany my new line of green friendly packaging. I am going to post a picture below of the logos I came up with so I can get everyone’s opinions!

I would love it if everyone could give me some feedback on this new set of logos! But I am proud to say that my client has chosen logo number…. 8! I am now going to work on refining that logo to his liking. I think I am going to dark up the “Be” section of the logo and make it the same weight as the word “Green” because it will be printed on a brown card board color so it will need to be nice and dark and a little more thick.

Now that the logo has been chosen, I am going to work on refining it and continue working on my package sketches/concepts/ideas. I have talked to Gary about the packaging and he has set down some ground rules for me. Because I am going for the cheapest and most eco friendly packaging I can come up with, I am going to follow some of the guidelines that Libbey has come up with for their packaging such as what type of die cut to use and the size, etc. I will be coming up with my own color scheme which may be limited to two colors due to costs and I will be coming up with the design/whole look and feel. As soon as I get some sketches drawn up I will post them here on my blog to get everyone’s inputs!

Thanks.

Specifications, Oh My!

Chapter 7 is all about specifications: how to write them, what they consist of, and how to use them effectively. I found this chapter to be quite interesting and insightful because I wasn’t quite sure what a “specification was exactly and after reading the chapter I have a much better understanding how what they are and how to use them. At first glance I thought a specification was more of a technical piece of writing that a Project Manager typed up to present to their client but it is much more than that. The author discusses how a specification is broken down into a few different sections and how each section needs to be differentiated because if they run together then the reader may get confused easily and lose interest in reading the specification.

Berkun tells his readers that there are four sections to a specification that must be written separately and they are: requirements, feature, technical, and work items. He also makes sure his readers understand the idea that writing a specification is not the same thing as designing. The specification is more about discussing the scope of the project as well as explaining to readers the technical aspects of the project. So all in all, it’s pretty much like the proposals we are writing for our Module 3 in this course. This is why this chapter has come in so handy for me because the details of a specification are pretty much the same thing as a proposal. Berkun goes on to tell us that there are three primary goals for writing a specification and they are:

• ensure that the right product gets built
• provide a schedule milestone that concludes a planning phase of a project
• and enable deep review and feedback from different individuals over the course of the project

Again, I feel these objectives tie in closely with our proposal writing for Module 3 so I will use all of the author’s advice when finishing up my proposal for my client!

Client Update

I am glad that I got some feedback on my logo designs! Thanks everyone. After reviewing the designs and getting some feedback, I had a meeting with my client. We looked over the designs together and Gary pretty much picked the one eveyone else did, the logo with the leaf symbol inside the lower section of the letter “g”. My next task it so begin refining the logo and tweaking it until it’s exactly what I want.

I got a few tips/ideas from my meeting with Gary so like I said I am going to refine the logo design. Besides that, I am starting to do some package design layout sketches. I am going to obtain the die cut and package set up file from Gary, I believe it’s an InDesign file so I can print them out and use them for my sketches. I can also use these InDesign files when I start designing the packages which will be a big help!

Over the next few days I will work on the logo design refinements and I will get them posted here on my blog so everyone can take a look at it and give me some more feedback. Thanks!

Chatper 6 Goodness

The act of managing ideas can be very difficult, especially when you are not the only one working on a project. When there is a team of people who are trying to come up with a design for a client, everyone is going to have different ideas and the hard part is coming together as a whole to decide on one design. Chapter 6 focuses on how teams should follow the decision process in order to manager their ideas and come up with a clear problem statement. Burken says understanding the problem can be difficult because new information becomes available at certain times and conflicts can be found within different solutions.

Burken talks about how creative work can pick up momentum and how trying to narrow down your design to the final one can be a problem for inexperienced designers. The author then goes on the discuss the steps you should take in narrowing down your decision on the final design. You start out with a few good designs, you research them, and then a final design should be chosen. I really like Burken’s explanation of steps in this section of the chapter because I feel I can apply them to my project for this class. I would like to use his steps when I start designing my packaging in order to help me narrow down my designs to the final one. Next, Burken talks about using a KJ Diagram to help consolidate ideas. You take a bunch of sticky notes and write ideas on them and stick them to the wall. Next, the lead designer starts moving ideas around and allows the rest of the team to move them around until they come up with something they are satisfied with. This is a great way to help team members stand back and look at their ideas and let them group the ideas together to get a better view of the “bigger picture.”

The final section of Chapter 6 talks about using prototypes and how they can help you confront problems head on. The author also talks about how using iterations can help people ask questions and evaluate the problem of the project in order to move forward. I feel I can use prototypes and iterations in my project to help me as I get closer to finalizing my designs.

Logo Designs Reviewed

Today I had a small meeting with my client to discuss the logo designs that I posted on here last week. After reviewing them carefully, Gary decided on the logo with the leaf in the G, like most of the people who posted on the blog! I am happy because I really like that idea/concept and now I am going to continue working on refining it and we will see what I end up producing! I want to mess around with that design a bit more and see how I can make it look more professional/clean/interesting. I don’t know if that means cleaning it up some or adding another design element to the logo. I also am going to experiment with making the word “Green” a bit more bold.

Gary and I also talked about the packaging I am going to design and we went over some of the budget details and what makes packaging cheaper to produce. I decided that I wanted to go with a more “recycled paper” look where the packaging will be a rough brown paper, not the typical white boxes that Libbey has right now for their packages. We talked about how to print on them, using Flexography. I am still researching and coming up with how I want to design the packages and I will hopefully have some roughs up by before or after Spring Break!

In the meantime, if anyone else has any comments on my logo designs that would be great!

The Vision… And Where Do Ideas Come From?

Chapter 4 of Making Things Happen begins with a few key points that everyone should follow when it comes to working in teams or groups. First off, it’s always best to write your ideas down because as the author points out, it’s better to rely on writing than the unstable human mind. For me, writing my thoughts down helps out because then I don’t have to worry about trying to store all of that information in my mind where it can easily get lost. The author goes on to explain how each group working together is going to write things down differently, it can be in a bulleted list form or a 50 page document. Everyone does not work the same and because each team may be a different size, recording your goals and objectives can be done in a number of ways.

There are 5 goals of good vision, they are simplifying, intentional, consolidated, inspirational, and memorable. Simplifying is all about talking the vision up to other team members and getting familiar with it. Berkun says it should get used to much that it gets memorized and that way the Project Manager can make adjustments to it as needed. Intentional is all about getting the goals for the vision. Consolidation is all about having the ideas come together, from one place. Inspirational deals with having a problem that let’s everyone connect to help solve. And Memorable deals with the goals and objectives making sense and staying with the group members throughout the duration of the project.

The next section of the chapter talks about writing the vision. There is no set length or detail, but overall length does not equal quality. After the vision is written it should be revised and worked on. Also, it’s a good idea to have one person do all of the writing to keep things consistent and together. Mission statements should be clear and concise, the author gives some examples of what not to write inside this chapter. It’s good to keep the MS short, to the point, and strong. Overall, I feel this chapter has helped give me clarity when it comes to writing mission statements and goals and the vision of a project. I am sure I will use this information when writing the rest of my modules for this class!

Chatper 5 in Making Things Happen is all about the design process and how to go about getting to that stage. Berkun talks about the design stage as being something people are afraid of. They usually don’t know where to start which is why they need to have a firm vision and goals in place to start with. Ideas come from people and everyone is capable of coming up with greats things, it’s executing them that takes practice and time. I know when I design things, I am very critical on myself and I like to show my work to others to get different opinions I hadn’t though of before. Not all designs are good, either. It’s OK to come up with bad designs because you will learn from them. Believe me, I know! =p Also, don’t always think “inside the box.” It’s alright to think of strange and weird ideas because you never know what’s going to work and what won’t. Berkun tells us that sometimes when we think “inside the box” we may pass up good ideas that we could have achieved by thinking differently.

Another big topic covered in this chapter is designing for the customer. The author tells us that designing with the customer in mind will yield promising results and if one part of the project is designed without the other in mind, one of them is bound to fail. I completely agree with this idea because the customer is the person you are creating the project for in the first place and if it doesn’t work for them then you’re whole idea is blown. If you design with the customer in mind then your project is bound to work as long as you put a lot of thought, time and effort into it.

Logo Designs Galore!

Lately I have been working hard on coming up with logo concepts for my project with Libbey Glass. They are pretty much leaving it all in my hands so I have some creative freedom. I want to stick with the company’s clean and simplistic style while adding a bit of flare. I am going to post a link to the PDF containing my logos and I would love some feedback from everyone. What logo do you like best? Do you have improvements on one of the existing designs? I wanted to go with the words “Be Green” because I feel they fit the project and are pretty recognizable by most customers.

Logo Design Concepts

Besides working on my logos, I have been doing some research on sustainable packaging in order to see if I can come up with an alternative way of creating my line of packaging for my client. I plan on looking into the subject much further to see if I can find something different that hasn’t been done before or something that Libbey has never tried before. The company may not have the budget to print the packages on certain materials or such but they said they would print a few samples for me so I can add them to my portfolio.

I know this blog is a little short but I am pretty much working on logos and waiting on everyone’s feedback! Please leave comments with your ideas and concerns. In the meantime I am going to continue developing the logos and hopefully I will come across something I like and something that will work! Thanks everyone.

How To Figure This Stuff Out

When people get together to start working on a project it is always hard to agree on one idea or theme and Berkun discusses this in detail within this chapter. Like he says, all planning and organizing books are different because there is no true or right way to go about planning a project. He goes on to list 3 different types of projects that are Solo-Superman, Small Contract Team, and Big Staff Team. I agree that most teams and projects can be split into one of those 3 areas. When Berkun goes on to talk about the planning deliverables it reminds me of writing the modules in class because for module 1 we had to have a set of deliverables that we will be turning over to our clients at the end of the semester. I see how this topic can carry over from class to the work world.

I feel that our Synthesis project is the Solo-Superman project type because we are all working on them individually. As far as the business perspective is concerned I feel we also have used that in creating module 1. We had to ask all of those questions of ourselves and answer them within the module. It’s neat to see how people out in the business world follow the same model that we are for our modules. In Chapter 3 the author also talks about the customer perspective and the questions that must be answered. I agree with all of the questions and I feel that sometimes when people work on projects they lose sight of the customer who is the most important person because the project is being created for them. It’s easy to lose sight! Overall I feel that this chapter has helped shape my outlook on this course and on the modules we will be writing. Again, the author has a great style of writing and I think this book is enjoyable to read, it’s not stuffy like a lot of textbooks can be.

Moving Along!

So far this week has been super hectic as far as trying to complete my homework and juggle my new job. I started on Monday and my first day went very well. Everyone at Libbey is very polite and I feel like I am going to fit in nicely. There is a lot for me to learn about the job, mostly printing stuff but I think I can handle it. I get to handle preparing customer’s artwork to be screened onto glassware. Sometimes I have to redraw their logos and other times I just have to place it in a form to get it ready to print. It’s nothing glamorous but it is a job!

As far as my client update is concerned, I am moving right along! I am sketching and mocking up a logo for the Be Green line of packaging that I will be working on shortly. Besides that I am working on Module 2 and my discussion board posts. I will try and have my logos up here on my blog so everyone can comment and tell me what they think. I did find out that once I create my line of packaging, Libbey is going to print it for me for free! That’s exciting.

My ideas for my logos are pretty clean and simple. I want to try and stick to the Libbey corporate identity as much as I can while still putting my design flare on the logo. I am going to use the words “Be Green” within the logo. Like I said, I will try and have something up and posted by this Thursday!