Business For Design

Company names

This is a list of potential names for my design company.
Some describe what I will do, some seem to be far away from anything related to design, but you can associate something positive, new and/or fresh with it.
Maybe, with some little changes, I will be able to make use of a taken one, too.

real fantasy
think free
brainstorm*
connectdesign
good advice
birth/birthday**
unique design
difference design*
message design
ask me
thesis*
about your design
i ‘ve got it**
no fear of ideas
fine design
good flow
fine design
awake*
good idea
aesthetic approach*
active design

taken
not taken
* I likmost
*favourite

 

 
My design company

When starting your design company, there are a lot of decisions to make regarding your own design, how you present yourself optically to the public. The whole corporate design and visual language including colours, typography, logo, everything combined in the website and even the furniture in your bureau should mirror you and your work and, if appropriate, the name of your company.

In the course of these considerations it is necessary to decide:
Should the appearance of my firm with all it mediums of communication be rather playful and fancy or straight-line and serious?
Do I want it to be cute or cool, arty-individual or clear and neutral?
Would I put my core area in typography, photography or illustration when creating my website etc?

The accomplishment can be a balancing act, when trying to make a professional impression and not to appear kitschy while letting your design tell something about yourself. How to look unique while pleasing the taste of a broad clientele? How important is it to address a broad spectrum of clients for me at all?

I personally tend to the following directions:

     Playful........................x....................................serious
   
        cute...................................x.........................cool

    unusual.............x...............................................mainsteam, straight-line

     artistic....................x........................................clear and technical

    typo as
    artistic
    element.................................x...........................illustrations as artistic element
                                                                                                                   
     

Of course it isn´t easy to imagine what that means practically.

Therefore, with the help of a few internet presences, I would like to show the way my own potential prospective design company could go. I chose websites to illustrate that matter, because they contain the most CI/CD-elements and they are normally the first that you see of a firm.
The chosen examples are for the most part, but not exclusively design agencies themselves.

http://www.der-schrittmacher.de/
The site is dynamic, without disorienting. It´s moving, but still looks tidy. Nevertheless it
still looks too severe for my taste.

http://www.bouroullec.com/
There is only a small area within that the information is happening what helps easy orientation. The information given is supported by some, not too many pictures.

http://www.theaterhaus-hildesheim.de/
The site could even be arranged a little simpler, but I like the playful typo-logo and the way they reuse it at the bottom of the page. Also they make use of a strong colour.

http://www.enjoythis.co.uk/
The „home“-part could be died out a little, apart from that it´s nice, a creative name, the typography and the handwriting logo help to loosen and the team gives a very personal, inviting insight in their working environment.

http://www.pixelot.de/ 
has an interesting image composition and a strong colour and shape-language.

http://www.thesum.ca/index.html
It´s clear, illustrative, funny. And it moves, but not too many items, only the logo.

http://blublu.org/
it is very different from most of the websites, which I consider as desirable, but it´s very extremely artistic, (which is fine here because it´s an artist and no designer) but I think it would alienate potential clients of a designer.To make a similar website for a designer, work should be arranged a little more clearly.

http://www.infinvision.com/index.php
I like the way typography and illustration are combined and the way the image composition changes with each topic. The first half of the pages is always very clearly structured and „empty“ in a good way, but the lower part of the pages is too unclear and confusing because there is too much going on.

To conclude, clear arrangement is of great importance for me, because if people are confused, they lose their interest. You have to understand at once what the designer wants to tell you. That´s why it is necessary not to have too many items on each page of a website or any communication medium because the reader becomes overstrained.
Some of the pages shown consider this well, what also gives them certain clear aesthetics, but often they come without great recognition value and don´t stay in mind.
Others do quite well in being creative and fancy, curious. Being able to combine both qualities would be my aim.












Company logos (in progress)

An object representing my future design company

The object I chose to represent me as a designer as well as my future design company is a natural sponge.

1. Normally, with a sponge comes the association of cleaning.

a) I like “clean”, tidy, not overloaded design.
b) The sponge for cleaning is an object of utility. Also a natural sponge is in my opinion a very beautiful item. Being decorative and useful at the same time for me is an important demand that design should fulfil.

2. 2.If you are a curious person, what designers generally tend to be, and if you are sensitive towards influences from outside, you absorb your environment exactly like a sponge absorbs liquids and other substances surrounding it.
If this constant gathering and collecting is part of your personality, you can draw on very broad resources to generate your design.

3. 3. A sponge is flexible, that is what designers should be, to be able to adapt to the individual wishes of clients and to permanently changing work conditions.

4  4. Every natural sponge has its very unique shape. What I want to achieve in my design company are unique design solutions that suite the particular needs of the client, product/brand and situation.

5. It´s remarkable how massive a natural sponge looks compared to its actual weight. It can be a big object without needing much material.
My aim as a designer is to obtain strong design outcomes with the smallest means possible.

A mood board for my future design company

                

This is a mood board illustrating the visual impression of my future design company.

Since I am planning to go into branding and packaging mostly, I mention some examples of logos here:
There are very simple ones,  like that of  the “deutsche bank” or “Nike” that are memorable anyhow, which impresses me very much. Other logos that are shown are more illustrative, but clever,  like that of “green one” or “Electracicle” that play with the shapes of numbers, objects and letters and combine them  adroitly. The logo of “nude” makes a strong impression on me, because it is capable of representing four letters with only one simple shape and looking good at the same time. The one that sets itself apart from the assortment is the “this water”-logo. I personally like it, it´s really lovely and cute without being kitschy, and it´s very unusual.

In terms of the colour mood of my company, I chose a light blue to be very present, because it´s my favourite and moreover it´s a positive but neutral colour that many people like. Shades of grey blend well with blue and appear classy and cool. I would add some brown or brownish grey to set a contrast to these colours: the dark, heavy, earthy, warm brown with the cold, light, far bright blue I think look very good together. To apply highlights to the not very attention seeking colour-mix, I would sporadically add some red into important elements as eye-catchers, maybe even in the logo.

As I mentioned before I like to concentrate on branding and packaging, that´s why my mood board shows examples of packaging in addition to logos. These are samples with graphics that are of an illustrative stile without picture flood, they look very nice but are well structured, too.

Furthermore, my mood board shows two examples of three dimensional typography (up right and down left). As I want to create three-dimensional items (packaging), it may be interesting to play with three dimensional illustration or typography in my communication media. “Build typography” appeals me very much, but I´m aware of the fact that it´s a temporary fashion. In case of realisation of my agency I would have to rethink this point and check if it´s out already.

For better clarity of the elements shown, they are held in grey or grey-brown, which serves my colour conception, too.
The mood board itself is not as clearly arranged and “empty” as I imagine it to be for my future communication material. I intended to show all visual impressions that are of importance to me for my company and to unite them into one picture. For better clearness I would have had to relinquish some of the content.

Design Research Methods

Two designers or design groups that inspire me

Claude Kuhn

is a graphic designer from Switzerland. He was born in Bern 1848 and received his artistic education at institutions in Switzerland and Germany. Kuhn´s dominant subject areas are boxing and natural history, for which he created a number of posters. He works regularly for the natural history museum in Bern.
I´m personally intrigued by the way he combines a suspenseful composition of image elements in which he artistically applies the typography, with the wit of both language and picture.
Kuhn´s posters are limited to the main important issues, they are very clearly structured and the plays with shape and colour in a very graphic, eye-catching way. By this method, the attention is drawn immediately but the observer still has to think about the meaning of the poster a little to get its sense.

http://www.posterpage.ch/exhib/ex58_kun/ex58_kun.htm

http://www.g26.ch/texte_plakate_02.html#kuhn
http://boingboing.net/2010/04/27/claude-kuhn-museum-p.html

Pearlfisher 
 
is a design company with studios in London and New York with smaller representations in South Afrika and the Middle East.
The work the designers at Pearlfisher create is mainly branding, logo and packaging, but it ranges from a very cool, minimal style like the “nude”-series to frisky illustrated issues like the “Cadbury dairy milk buttons”.
Some products show both qualities at the same time, like “this water” for example. The illustration seems quite playful, nearly childish, but with a very simple background and the rest not flamboyant but sober it is a fresh modern design with a character.
I am  personally into the “innocent” logo which achieves a great recognition value by that simple drawing.
I also like the “Jamie Oliver”- series with the cut-cow image-package. It has an old-fashioned tough but is modern tough just due to the way the picture is cut in the extraordinary way.
All in all Pearlfisher makes design that is innovative but not too experimental to be in a normal supermarket.

http://www.pearlfisher.com/profile.php
http://www.pearlfisher.com/

A design process

Group work: "sharing"

RSA-Project: Mid-life moment: analysing the target group
and brainstorming ideas
In my design project A on the basis oft he RSA-brief(„mid-life-moment“)
I intend to create a freetime offer for people between 45 and 55.
Regarding the details, wheather it´s a concrete center with its own building, a campagne or a service or club, I tried to find out in the following steps.
Part oft he brief given by the RSA was to find out the traditional notion of this age and opportunities that it brings. Furthermore, it is important to define the needs of the people and to research the target group before bringing a project to life. To find out about traditional notion, opportunities, and needs,
I did some brainstorming.

Traditional notion of that age (often stereotypes)
Negative:                                                                                                               

. less attractive
. less ambitious                                                         
. have less time
. are often divorced
. feel superfluous because
  children just moved out:
  task of life is fulfilled
. got rust in
. are less flexible
. are conservative
. begin to act like the own
  parents and adapt things they
  always refused when
  they were young     
. are not interested in adventures anymore
. are afraid of „real“ old age
. get their mid-life-crisis and act appropriate:
- living in the past
- acquire unnecessary things by those
   they feel allegedly younger           
. routine life

Positive:
. are more patient     
. are more experienced: made experiences that help to ponder what to really worry about and
  what to take easy
. are not so easily embarrassed, less shameful
. are more relaxed,
. are not so sensitive and vulnerable anymore, because they went through a lot that made  them harder
. do not suffer so much under the pressure of things they have still got to achieve
 (get a job and partner, found a family, prove their parents how grown-up they are)
. they don´t align their lives so much to sexuality anymore and aren´t so fixed with their appearance
  like in their youth

Needs
in general: .financial safety for themselves and their partner and family
.the best for their children
.the body changes: staying young and healthy

As a product, service etc:
.sth. matched to the fitness of that target group
.sth. that is capable of being integrated in their everyday life, or, in case they wish a complete upheaval of life, .sth. that fulfils this wish
.sth. that they “understand”, that addresses their generation, nothing which is made by youths what only they .feel connected to (e.g. a youth movement, youth language, certain music and music stars that won´t last long)
.the feeling of not being old and to be assured that it´s good to be not too young anymore at the same time
.maybe they haven´t experienced something new for long time, so they might have some
  inhibitions/restraints: need something that doesn´t make them feel overcharged at the beginning

Opportunities
.chance for a new beginning in many areas of life
.being a model for young people
.chare their knowledge and experiences with others
.smaller financial barriers: more possibilities
.less shameful
.change of job (after being in the same job for years, need a new challenge)
.start into a new friendships/new love (with more experience: don´t do the same mistakes again)
.set new goal without the oppressiveness of having to feed oneself with what you learn (new hobbies, learning without pressure)
.starting a new, exciting project with patience and full of concentration
.routine life: can´t wait to brake free and be creative, create something new again

Idea-mindmaping RSA

After that, I brainstormed in form of a mindmap to find out about possible solutions and checked each solution afterwards in terms of necessaty and applicability.

A poster with slogan and picture for the RSA

I´m not yet sure which of the solutions that I analysed and regarded as possible I am going to implement. I just tried out the poster for the "over-40-disco"-solution, but I´m still interested in both the youth friendship-issue and the community club, too that I didn´t present to the group.

Model for a questionnaire about free time of
mid-aged + specific
Disco/Club community club Mid-age-friendship questions

About you
How old are you?
Male/female (select)
Where do you live? (city, suburb, small town…)

Free time in general
.How satisfied are you with your leisure activities:
  very much........................................................... not at all?
.Do you like your free time rather cosy or active?
.What are your hobbies? What exactly do you do in your free time?
.What is of importance for you about your leisure activities? What should they  provide? What do you expect of them? ( for ex.. meeting new people, learning something new,  relax....)
.How satisfied are you with the amount of free time you have
  very much........................................................... not at all? (select)
.Do you prefer to do activities with your family, friends or alone?
.Do you think you neglect one of the groups named above because of not enough free time?
.How satisfied are you with the leisure possibilities in your area? Do you make use of them?
.Would you like to meet new people within your free time activities or is it more important to you to spend this time with existing friends and family?
. Which of the following activities appeals you? (select)
-sports
-games
°board game
°pc-
°card-
-theatre/opera/ballet
°play
°watch 
-restaurant
-going to pub
-museum
°art
°science
°nature
°history
-zoo
-discotheque/club
-concerts
-site-seeing
-travelling
°short trip
°longer trips to more distant areas
°alone
°with family
°with friends
°with strangers(meeting new people there)
 -handwork
-arts and crafts
-foreign languages
-garden
-social projects

Age
.Are you satisfied with your age?
.What are the advantages and disadvantages of this stage of life?
.Does your age keep you from doing things you would like to do? If yes, in what extent?
.Would you like a change in your life?  If yes, what would that be about and in what area of life would that be?
.Would you prefer experiencing free time activities in your age group or would you like more contact to other age groups?
.If you do, of what do you envy the youth?
.In what extend do your current hobbies differ from those in your youth?
.Is there anything you did in former times in terms of free time activities which you don´t do anymore? Would it make you glad to do it again? What would have to change that you would do it again?

Disco/Club

.Do you go clubbing? If not, would you like to?
.Did you go clubbing often in your youth?

Community club
.Would you like to do more within your age group? If yes, what would that be?

Mid-age-friendship
.Do you have teenage children?
.How is your current relationship to them/him/her?
.Is part of their behaviour a mistery to you sometimes? ….or can you    understand most of it when you think back to your own youth?
.What do you think about friendships with a huge age gap?

A personal reflection on a moment of the „postmodernism“ exhibition in the V&A Museum

To be honest, I am not very much familiar with the idea of postmodernism and I just knew a few keywords about it, when I entered the exhibition.
All the more difficult it was for me to understand the exhibition and to bring in line the very different exhibits with the common definitions of postmodernism and postmodern art (rejection of modernism with it clarity and simplicity, steering towards historic means, stylistic mix, tolerance in arts, irony, collage and quoting way of working, dystopian visions of the future and aversion of the urge to innovate and to apply functional aspects in design and architecture etc.).
Still, even after further research I wouldn´t be able to make out every object of the exhibition
as postmodernism, if I didn´t know it was part of it. This confusion hampered me a little in appreciating the exhibit pieces to the fullest. But just this broadness makes postmodernism, the plurality and diversity.

Nevertheless I can tell one object that especially attracted me:
The photographs 'Vegas', 1966, by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates.
 

 

 

By looking on these photographs by the architect couple I felt the apocalyptic atmosphere of postmodern views, the dystopia, surreal character of the lost, desolate landscape that attracts me so much and that emanates loneliness in a way that it reminded me much of de chiricos pictures.
But I was wrong.
These pictures weren´t supposed to give the impression of a lost wasteland, the earth after the human, the “bad future”. When I started researching the story behind the photographs and the artists explanation, I found out that it was actually meant to be the opposite: Instead of presenting a meagre apocalyptic mood, it is virtually demonstrating an advertisement for how architecture should be: not designed uniformly by architects who believe they know what is the best for the people: the clear, simple, structured modern buildings, but like in the example of Las Vegas, a city that “grows” bit by bit. Every building has an own character, it may be ugly and not fitting together, but it developed according to the needs of the users, and that is what is to be considered. This is the postmodern spirit, the collage, the tolerance. No model is considered as “the best”.

So all my attraction was based on a misunderstanding. But I keep being impressed by these pictures.

New old brief: back to "Shared Assets"
contacting organisations




Dear Sir or Madam,

I am a MA student working on a live project that is about creating a social idea and the appropriate design on a certain brief.

My brief is “shared assets”, in short: creating a service, campaign or object that offers you more by sharing it.

The idea I developed is a service that initiates cooking and dining evenings in groups of people from the same town or broader neighbourhood .
People of different age groups and cultural backgrounds are brought together to dine and share cooking skills.
One aim of this service is to bring an area closer together, to reduce loneliness at the dinner table and to strengthen the sense of community. Another aim is to broaden one´s culinary horizon , to emphasise thinking more about what you eat in general and having a wider variety of food because everybody contributes a (different) dish or expertise.
What do you think about the idea?
Could you give me any advice on how to manage such a service?
Could you imagine to contribute to my project in terms of offering assistance and know-how?
(only in the ”London Health Improvement Board”-letter)
Would you be able to provide me with material?
In case of implementation of my project, you could maybe act as a sponsor and would be mentioned in the media developed. (only in the ”John Lewis”-letter)

I would also be grateful if you direct me to any organisation that could help me with this issue.
Please contact me if you have any questions.
I´m looking forward to hearing from you
Yours faithfully,

Sarah Mueller

Blog review

I never had a blog before, but now after making use o fit for a while, I see the advantages of a blog as a medium to communicate with your class easily.
My blog shows the development in my university tasks as well as personal thoughts and inspiration.
It is divided in the two theory subjects of my study course.
The partially practical project to the brief of the “RSA” is conflated with the subject „design research methods“, because part of the content overlaps since in „drm“ there had often been tasks for the “RSA”.

The blog itself has a simple structure and a neutral blue background so that it is not exhausting and distracting to go through it. The headlines are violet for the subject „business for design“ and blue for „design research methods“ to always know in which area you are at the moment.
I always tried to keep the texts short and precise in the context of a description of graphics, whereas essays are more extensive.

It may seem confusing that some texts of different length, alternate with keywords and mapping.
This is due to the different kinds of tasks.
When I started the blog, I had no idea how I would be approaching the tasks that come up to me.
No, with the experience I gained, I can estimate such things much better and consider this point in future posts.

The order of the blog is chronological. This helps tracing a development of a project, for example of the RSA.




20/20 presentation

This is a presentation of 20 pieces from collections that emerged during my life. They all have something in common, no matter how different the items and several sub-collections are from each other, they are all minitures.

This presentation shows a timeline of my life and illustrates how my way of collecting and the motivation behind it has changed over the years; from just gathering items to have more to play with, to a habit that involves scanning my invironment permanently and unconciously for something that fits in well.
I think that evolving this ability was very valuable for me as a designer as it is one of their most important character trades to absorb and filter influences from outside and convert them for their own benefit.

Critical relfection on my RSA-project