OUAN503 - UCC Coffee, Brief Summary

For the responsive module I saw an opportunity to try things I haven't had the chance to before and improve my skill set - even potentially produce something portfolio worthy. I took the UCC Coffee brief as a good chance to try and create a brand identity for a brand, and the freedom that they gave in the brief meant that I could try anything I liked. I tried to use my strengths at the same time and chose to create a typeface, a logo, packaging, a website and a promotion video for the brand. For me, this was one of the hardest briefs that I've undertaken because I decided to undertake it quite close to the brief deadline, because before this I was working exclusively on the collaborative brief. In addition to this it's not something I do on a daily basis so finding a good workflow and discovering the correct processes to work to was one of the most difficult and restricting factors for me when I was creating content and material.

Over the course of this brief I've been fortunate enough to work in a range of ways and a range of materials. I started creating a font using inks and paint, I've drawn designs and elements of the packaging by hand using biro and pencil, I've created packaging from scratch using a combination of research and materials such as brown paper. Finally, I've used software I'm familiar with such as Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro and now thanks to this project Illustrator. Illustrator is something that I've not used that frequently in the past but it was a great tool when I was looking at type faces and experimenting with logo designs. In reflection this project was very intense in that I was trying to complete certain elements of the project such as the logo for example in a one to two day time frame. Working in this way definitely made me less of a perfectionist and forced me to work in a way where I had to accept something even if I wasn't 100% happy with the out come and move on, because there simply wasn't time to redo something two or three times. Once the work was complete the submission process was very straight forward and I simply created PDF's with my work on and submitted online. I'm pleased that I challenged myself and undertook this type of brief. I think the work I produced was relatively effective and suited the requirements of the brief quite well. If I were to do this type of brief again there are certainly things I would do differently - for example I wouldn't have spent a large portion of time looking at packing and instead would have just used a template online. In this instance however, I did learn a lot about packaging itself so it wasn't all for nothing. The UCC Coffee brief probably had the biggest learning curve in the types of work I was doing for the brief, and I'm glad I was able to stick it out until the end.