Brand Development

The first module in Year Two is Design & Production. Unlike last year rather than let the students select the topic our industry professional, Tony Lythgoe, created the briefs from his time-served experience, changed the name to protect the innocent and delivered to our three groups the opportunity to see how difficult it is to work as a team and to answer the specific requirements of a client.

The Teams called UpperCase / Blank Page / Creative Design Now had to tackle the rebrand of a independent financial advisor, a high-quality Italian restaurant take-away service and a commercial flooring contractor.

All very different challenges, all requiring research to establish just exactly what each does and their graphic profiles. Tony joined the groups and discussed the final goals and answered questions about the brief - as he hadn't told them everything when presenting the original document. It's all part of a designers life to extract as much information from the client - they know everything about the product and assume the designer does too . . . which is never the case.

UpperCase tackling the IFA project visited a number of local providers and considered the 'physical' elements that although moving to the digital arena the company would still have to provide to their customers who traditionally 'like paper'.

Blank Page considering a quality take-away service visited a local Italian restaurant [not the client] to discuss with the management costs, requirements, menus as well as sampling the very good fare at Fat Olive in Upper Diccinson Street - big thank you to the guys there for their assistance.

CDN had a wonderful opportunity via one of the Art Schools' industry 'friends' Will Bentley to visit Milliken Carpets in Gidlow Lane and meet up with the amazing Claire France to be blown away by the  technology that goes into the making of a 'simple' floor tile.

Once the research was complete the first task was to write a proposal - what were they going to deliver in the final presentation. Each group established [eventually] who would be doing what and built a production schedule. The proposal was sent to Tony for his thoughts and a second meeting was set up so he could view the progress and develop ideas the groups had come up with.

The groups will continue to develop and then finalise their designs before presenting their solutions to Tony in a client pitch in the new Business Centre on the Wigan campus.