Tag: Branding

Vistaprint Review

In May/June of this year, for my end of year exhibition, through Vistaprint, I had created a portfolio book and a set of business cards.

Although I have had a change of heart with the design/pattern of the original business cards and the cover of the portfolio book, I do not believe that was the fault of Vistaprint, as I actually loved the quality of my products, and the time in which it took to deliver the items was quite efficient. Vistaprint are specific on their website about their delivery times and for me, the estimated delivery dates were spot on.

It was from my experience with this company, (and the enticing black Friday sales) that I had wanted to use the site again, as to order new business cards. I had also checked out a company called ‘Moo’, as suggested by one of my tutors, but when comparing prices, at that current time, Vistaprint was cheaper for the quantity of product I was getting. I believe with Moo, I could get 50 for the price of £15, whereas on Vistaprint I could get 100 for the same price, this including the extra price for the design on both sides. 

If anything, when designing the product on the layout of the website, I wish you could zoom in to see for yourself if the quality of your image is good or not, rather than the site just saying ‘this image is good quality’. I believe if I was able to do this, I would have been able to see that the original business cards I had created in May/June, were a bit blurry in the text, and I may have been able to make changes at that time, as opposed to ordering them then noticing the problem after it was too late. However, I probably still would have fallen out of love with the overall design, so it’s all good.

Review of the product.

My business cards have arrived, 3 business days after ordering them; I had ordered them on Friday night, the 23rd, and the delivery date was estimated to be for the 30th, but they have come today on Wednesday the 28th, so I have had good experiences with their deliveries, both with this order and my previous. I believe the delivery times do change depending on the item you’re expecting, for instance with my last order, I had ordered both my cards and book at the same time, but the cards had arrived well before my book, but I do feel they are good with their estimated times, if not better as shown by my early delivery today.

I was so nervous to receive these cards after my previous experience, but when opening the box, the quality is SOOOO much better than my last business cards! This just proves to me that it was just a problem on my side, with the quality of the image within my last set of business cards, as opposed to the problem coming from the companies end.

Now looking over the card, if I can nitpick at anything, I would say that the black and grey tones have come out a bit warmer than I had intended, but its not a huge problem in my eyes, it would have been more annoying if it had only happened in a specific area, or only on one side, however as it is the same throughout and on both sides, there is more cohesion to it so it is less noticeable.

Personal opinions (Not concerning the company)

I am absolutely IN LOVE with the results of these prints! I feel in comparison to my previous business cards, it is much more simple, minimal and professional, but still shows my work and what a potential client can expect from me. I feel with my old business cards, they were a bit too overpowering and did not really show my work within the design. Although yes, I did create the pattern, I do not feel it was visible enough for someone to say ‘ooh yes, I like this person’s work’, so I do like these new cards, as it is almost like a product in itself.

In the past, I have collected other artists business cards, as it is still a piece of their artwork, so I feel in a similar way, if someone were to take my business card, they could potentially want to keep it, as it is a piece of my artwork in itself, even if it is smaller than my average print.

I feel I will be much more confident to give people my business cards now, as I am more happy with the design and quality of the imagery, whereas I was a bit more embarrassed to give away my cards previously, as I was less proud of the design and the text did have a slight blur, so I did not feel as if it were the best representation of myself.

 

Business Cards

From the pressures of Black Friday, and with the desire to make new business cards, as I can’t find or remember where the last ones are, and the fact that I had ended up not really liking them when comparing them to the rest of my classes, they did match my portfolio book, however by themselves, the pattern was a bit busy and over overpowering in a sense, I decided to take this opportunity to design new business cards, and potentially get a good deal for them.

Recently, I had seen an artist I follow on Instagram, by the name of @Imzeferino post an image of her new business cards, and I had really enjoyed the layout of them.  As shown in the images below, she had created a character, which may be a representation of herself, on the front of her card and had put all of her information on the back. I like the idea of this, as her business card is so beautiful that it is almost a print in itself, so when people receive her work, they would also receive the business card, which in my mind, would be like getting two prints for the price of one, even if the second is smaller.

 

Isadora Zeferino – Business Card Front
Isadora Zeferino – Business Card Back

business cards woman

So taking inspiration from this layout, I tried choosing one of my own designs, that could be the best representation of my work. I had initially planned to use one of my queens, click here to see which, but I could not seem to fit her correctly into the template I was using, and I had started to lose faith in her, whether she was, in fact, the best representation of myself and my work. So back to the drawing board, I decided that I would use a different design, one which I am quite proud of, which I have not seemed to get sick of as of yet. I am talking about the piece to the right, which I had initially designed to go on the window inside of my classroom, using a vinyl, but as that was a representation of my work during the exhibition and will be until it is taken down, and as I have not fallen out of love with it yet, after seeing it in class for the past however many weeks I have been back at college for, I decided it will be a good motif to use for my business card.

When first designing this, using the templates on Vistaprint, (review possibly coming when the business cards arrive?) due to pressures of the Black Friday sales, as I had started this process on Wednesday night, I did partially rush the process, basically only using sources available to hand, as opposed to putting some actual time and effort into the design, which I do regret now looking back, but I have gone back into the design and refined it further, putting the actual time and effort into it, as I should have done in the beginning, so, as the woman did not need much work, other than positioning her on the layout, I tried taking shortcuts with the back of the card, using the fonts available from the website for the titles, and for the social links I had tried to take the ones I had hand-drawn for my inktober zine, which were pretty rough but at that time, I just thought ‘it’ll do’.

 

I am so glad that I had decided to get a second opinion the following day, however, as there was a lack of effort within the design, and I believe it would have been visible if I had sent them off, which would not have been a good selling point to potential clients, for them to see that if I can not put the effort into my own branding, why would they want to hire me. So, my second opinion had come from my tutor Laura during a one to one, who had suggested that I have look on google fonts. This suggestion was mostly directed at the font I had used for the social links as the one I had drawn is very common and quite ‘indie/hipster’ these days, (if the term hipster is still even used nowadays?). So once home, I had searched google fonts and found a couple which could work. The sans serif ones were more directed at the titles, as my tutor said that since I create more fantasy inspired pieces, I would be more able to get away with this type of font, but personally sans serif fonts are my favourite, as I feel they are more historical or fantasy inspired than serif fonts? The serif fonts I had selected were more directed at the social links. Taking inspiration from the original (but rough) layout, I still wanted to use a thin and slightly elongated text. Again when talking to Laura, I had found this was another preference of mine, as I do tend to like tall and slim things, like models or illustrations of women with elongated necks, or creepy hands with long thin fingers, (I’m trying my hardest not to make this sound weird).46849209_206065056988570_6106583255912284160_n.jpg

So I had decided to work with both types of fonts, but from a list of options, I had asked my friend Kellie if she thought the fonts would work together or whether she thought I should keep looking. My friend is currently studying Graphic Design at Lincoln University but has more knowledge, more love and a better eye for typography so her opinion was very valuable to me! From the options I had shown her, she had selected two fonts that she felt would work together, one being a serif and the other being sans serif, and I had very much agreed with her choices beforehand, but I did want her genuine opinion so did not tell her until afterwards.

So getting back to my design, using the two new fonts, I had redesigned the information side of my business cards, and I had also created new social icons by using a watercolour brush in photoshop, taking a swatch from the red on the woman, then I painted it into a selected area that I had made from a specific icon.

 

From Laura’s advice, once I had recreated my business card, (with more effort this time) she had told me to ask one of my other tutors, Sarah, who teaches graphic design, and will have a better idea about layout, typography and so on, so I had asked her the following day.  Although we were both somewhat sidetracked at that time, more focused on creating zines with the risograph, she had explained to me the improvements I could make, one being making more difference between each set of words, my name, job title, then the social links, and she had drawn me a diagram which did help in showing her view, but as I had gotten sidetracked for a while then came back to it, I was more confused than I originally was, wondering whether I had actually gotten the layout correct and so on. At this point of the day, Sarah had already gone home, so it was too late to get her opinion again.

So, I had rallied up a few classmates, Katie and Grant, to try to get their opinion and potentially make any more improvements. From this, I had moved together with the spacing between my forename and surname, I had resized the job title and had repositioned the social media links. Then, with the help and suggestion of Grant, I had added in a line between my name and job title, so that they would be more separate from one another, this did make it look more professional, but also helped in tying the design together, especially as Grant was experimenting with the line, and had turned it into a textured brush stroke instead. This again made my business card look more professional, but also gave a hint to my job with the brush stroke.

For a final nod of approval, I sent the design back to my friend Kellie to get her opinion of the design, and all she had suggested was centring the design so that there was the same amount of white space above as there was below, but other than that, she loved it. So after making this final adjustment, I uploaded the designs to Vistaprint and have now sent them off. From my email, the expected delivery date will be on the 30th, so next Friday, so I will potentially review the company and the quality of my business cards then.

 

I would like to say a great big thank you to all of the people who had helped me through this process, two of my tutors, Laura and Sarah, who I believe read my blogs because they have to (I’m sorry, but thank you for your input) and I would like to thank my fellow classmates Katie Marshall, otherwise known as NosticArt on both Instagram and WordPress, and Grant Oliphant who goes by his name on both Instagram and WordPress. I don’t believe either will probably read this post or get this far if they do, let’s be honest. And lastly my friend Kel, who again, probably won’t read this blog, but she is the most amazing and valued adviser, and she is amazing at what she does, so if anyone is still reading at this point, you should definitely have a look at her work on Instagram @Kxllixdesign.

 

business cards

Edit/Addition – 18/04/2019

Since creating a website for myself, I felt this would be a key link missing from my business card so I decided to redo the information side. In this second attempt, I had downloaded free vector social media icons from iconfinder.com, a group which was named ‘Social Media (Solid) Icons created by Bagus Kusnadar, click here to download them yourself. By downloading the icons from the same group, this made them more uniform than the previous ones I used, as they are all square, as opposed to a mixture of circles and squares. I still applied the same colours and textures to the icons, however since there are now more links, the layout has changed slightly so below is shown the new information.

 

List of Illustrations

Figure 1 and 2 – Zeferino, I. (17 Nov. 2018) Instagram. [Online] Available from:  https://www.instagram.com/p/BqSkrJllskE/ [Accessed on 23 Nov 2018]

Icons Downloaded – [Online] Available from: https://www.iconfinder.com/iconsets/social-media-solid-2 [Accessed on 18 Apr 2019]

All of the other imagery used is my own.

 

Idea proposals 💍 Semester 2

Carrying on from the previous post, for the projects during semester two, I want to…

Produce chapter illustrations for ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’.

In this project, like with the Wizard of Oz project I have planned, I want to create work for a younger based audience, which I have not had a lot of experience working within the past. With this project, however, I want to create work for teens as opposed to children, working in what I believe to be more of a mature style, taking inspiration from John Tenniel’s illustrations in the original ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll.

As well as giving me more experience of working with a younger audience, (in a different approach to the Wizard of Oz project) I believe this project will allow me to play around and develop my skills with some printing techniques, such as screen printing, Linocut printing, etching, etc, I believe it will allow me to take full advantage of the facilities available to me within the college, such as the laser cutter, to create a plate in which I can print with.

 

Take part in the Association of Illustrators – World Illustration Awards.

In comparison to the other competitions I want to take part in, this one has multiple categories in which you can apply to. As well as children’s illustration, you also have the option of creating work for an editorial category, advertising, design, etc.

Like with the other projects, I believe the outcomes I create for this brief will help in expanding my portfolio of work throughout the year. At this moment in time, I am swaying more to the editorial category, as I feel it will allow me to work in more areas of the industry. For this category, I would potentially create an illustration for an article, trying to entice the viewer to read the article, but not give too much information so that the reader already feels like they know the story.

 

Create work for the Cheltenham Illustration Awards.

This is a competition that I will be taking part in for my third year in a row. The brief that they announce will have a specific theme in which I will have to work with, creating a narrative based illustration which will relate to or have been inspired by the specific theme.

In previous years, the themes have been ‘tales through others eyes’ and ‘tangled tales’. I believe the competition is pretty open in the sense that you are not limited to what you can potentially create. For instance, last year I had created my illustration using photography and embroidery, whereas in the year before I had created a surrealistic digital painting and a looped animation.

Because of the flexibility of this competition, being able to explore the theme and work in any possible medium, I am excited to take part again next year, but hopefully next time my work might actually be chosen. If not though, I will still enjoy the experience, and the work I create will still contribute to my portfolio.

 

The two projects which I want to do over the course of the year are…

Concentrating on branding and start to form a business, preparing for my career once I have left the comforts of college.

This project would include creating new business cards, forming a new set of portfolios, including a handheld a3 one, a website and a new portfolio book, these will also include all of the work that I have created over the year as well.

As of my potential business, I will be creating an online store (potentially in collaboration with one of the graphics students) and for this, I will be creating content that would be sold their, ie prints, pins, clothing, mugs, zines, stickers etc.

In the final month, I also plan to set time aside so that I can get ready for a final show, with this, I will possibly create new content to be put up in the exhibition, and this will also be the time in which I can start to order everything, so that it will come in time for the final show, such as the portfolio book, business cards, and any merchandise that I may have created with outside businesses.

 

And finally, I want to work on the weekly comics that both me and my partner had created together over the holidays, we named this collaboration Melon and Lime Comics.

Me and my partner have always been interested in mini-comics, most commonly from artists such as Ketnipz, Sarah Andersen and Catana Comics, sending their comics to each other saying ‘this is you’ or ‘me’, and we had even started to come up with our own ideas for potential comics, that we knew we would make someday, but had always kept pushing it off to the side, at least until summer had came. We had not really planned for this collaboration to go further than between the two of us, but one day, we decided to make our own Instagram and try posting the comics on there, to see if anyone else could possibly relate or find humour within our designs.

We have currently got a small following of 40ish people, however, I believe as we post more, our audience will eventually start to grow more. The problem is, as we are back at college, it is going to be more challenging to create content, as we are both going to struggle with time. So, this is why I wanted to incorporate this project into my year, so that I could allow myself the time to work on the comics, without feeling guilty because I am not going ‘college work’.

I do have high hopes for this collaboration as I feel we do have the potential to someday be at the level of the artists we admire, such as Ketnipz, Sarah Anderson and Catana Comics, but I feel it will only do well if we are to put the work and effort into it.  I do love working on these comics because they are personal to my relationship, but I believe the themes are open enough that a lot of other people or couples can also relate to them. This collaboration has also allowed me to expand my work, exploring outside of my comfort zones, such as working with characters, minimalism, creating narratives and I have also been able to incorporate humour into the designs, which is something that I don’t believe I have ever done in my work before, or have even attempted to do before. Because of these developments within my own type of work, I am excited to continue working on these comics, seeing where else they could take me and what else we could potentially create in the future.

 

As these two last projects will be worked on over the space of the whole year, (I believe on Fridays for the branding project and Tuesdays for the comics) I will be solely keeping the progression, development and any potential research used, all updated within my blog, so you can keep your eyes peeled for those updates in the future.

 

Bibliography

The Association of Illustrators. (2018). World Illustration Awards. [Online] Available from https://theaoi.com/world-illustration-awards/ [Accessed on 20 Sep. 2018]

Cheltenham Illustration Awards. (2018). Cheltenham Illustration Awards. [Online] Available from: http://www.cheltenham-illustration-awards.com/ [ Accessed on 20 Sep. 2018]