PPD

Diverse Placement

Today was my first day working with Diverse Design & Communications and I was set the task of working on a proposal design layout of a yearbook/prospectus for Silcoates school in Wakefield. My designs will be taken to the school for them to decide if that's the look they want to go for so it was very much a client driven brief with a set of guidelines I had to follow. I really enjoyed working in this way as I have only worked on one live brief before this where the client had a big input on the overall design, so this was great experience.

Sue, the designer at Diverse, gave me the main outline of the brief and there were certain restrictions from Silcoates, such as ensuring I use the school colour throughout, use Lucida Sans font with no uppercase, etc. I set to work on the cover design and one section within the publication that will be presented as an example to Silcoates. Throughout the day I created several versions that followed their rules, but I did try to be a bit more visually creative with how I could show these and stretch the boundaries.

Here is the chosen cover design (for now) and a couple of my ideas for the section spread that we decided to go with and plan to work on further on Monday when I go back:

Portfolio for Diverse

In preparation for my visit to Diverse on the 12th they had asked to see some of my work so I put together a simple portfolio to show some of the range of work I have done so far. This will hopefully soon have a lot more 3rd year work in it so I can lose some of the 1st year designs that are not all high quality finished projects and I can work on putting together a professional looking portfolio and layout.

Open publication - Free publishing - More portfolio

Print Visit

Today Gill from Ghost Communications took me to visit the printers that they use for their work and I was given a personal tour around the place showing what each printer does and everybody's role in the production process. They were very helpful and friendly and there was a real buzz to the place that made it really interesting seeing so much going on. One step closer to being the printer's best friend!

2nd Placement opportunity

I've arranged dates to go and visit Diverse Design and work on a corporate news magazine with them in November to help me work on my type and layout skills. This is a brilliant opportunity and so far have 2 fixed days with them and then if I want to go back, they are open to further dates. As I have mentioned earlier they work in a studio so I am looking forward to seeing their regular working day and how it differs from my other placement who worked from home.

Diverse Design and Communications

Received an email today from another placement opportunity. They have been busy during the summer moving into a new studio, but contacted me to let me know that I can still pop down sometime soon, which I am very pleased about!

"Hi Nichola, We haven’t forgotten you! We’ve been inundated with work since we moved into the new studio and our feet don’t seem to have touched the ground. Do you know what your timetable is looking like? If you can give us some idea of when you’d be free we’ll compare it to our work scheduled and then give you a call to fix up something."

Overall website look

**temporary site**