OUGD503- Studio Brief 02 Collaboration Evaluation

OUGD503- Studio Brief 02

D&AD – Design Bridge

Collaboration Evaluation

This brief was set to create a unisex brand in the cosmetic industry.  My collaborative group was Dan Hart-Davies and Aaron Major; I wanted to collaborate with two graphic designers for this brief as it would fit with the subject matter better than working with an animator. Also I worked with these two graphic designers as they wanted to do this brief too.

To start off Aaron and I began brainstorming about cosmetic products and we decided to do a hair care range as we came to realise, why do we need gender specific shampoos and conditioners as between genders hair is the same.  From this we brainstormed names, after coming up with a few Dan then came up with the name Uniform, we felt this was gender neutral but wasn’t too obviously unisex. Once we had the name and our product area we then began researching into hair care products, we didn’t get much inspiration from the current market though.  We then looked into pharmaceutical label layouts as we thought this would be minimal and medicine products are mostly gender neutral in their packaging so this was a good route to go down.

I designed the labels that would be on each bottle.  We chose to do a shampoo, conditioner and repair oil, the layout needed to work on all three so I chose to keep the design simple and legible whilst also keeping a high-quality style.  I am glad with the final design; it definitely follows its function and works on all three.  Once the designs were done we all started to create the advertising materials, we created magazine, billboard and web banner advertisements.  We also came up with a slogan “it’s for everyone”, we thought this was catchy and would also be a good hashtag.  From looking at an array of bottle types, a simple bottle design would work best with the label style and look we were going for. We found amber bottles that were the right weight and look for our products, after purchasing them we made proper mock ups of each product to present our ideas properly in physical format.

I found this collaboration enjoyable and an easy process, everyone pitched in and pulled their weight, which helped make the project run smoothly.  We used Google drive so that we could constantly work on the project, even if we were separate, this was really helpful as we don’t all live together so meant the work was constantly being produced and we were all kept in the loop.  However even thought we worked separate a lot we met in the studio regularly to talk about what needed to be done and generate ideas and improvements.

In conclusion I was happy that I put in a lot of effort along with the other members in my team. The final result came out exactly how I wanted it to be, this brief has also made it easier to collaborate with people and has given me confidence to do so in the future, I would definitely work with Dan and Aaron again as I think we worked really well together.