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OUGD602 — Placement — Analogue — Week 1

As I arrived, I was greeted by Barry, the creative director of Analogue who I hadn't met yet. He straight away began showing an interest in my work, complementing the quality of what I produce which was an amazing confidence boost and told me that they had not yet taken on an intern and they wanted their first to have an obvious range of skills so they could easily depend on them with producing quality work representing the studio.

After that, I was told how a Monday is constructed in the studio. First, we all gather in the briefing room and watch a Ted talk to motivate and challenge our thinking, this is followed by a briefing on the day's objectives, and priorities along with a week plan.


The Ted talk we watched was by Rory Sutherland and focused on the idea of value and perception. This was a really interesting start to the morning that got my head thinking about what I buy and why. For anyone reading this, I really do recommend it.


https://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man#t-281466





I was briefed for my two focuses over Monday-Wednesday to design the flooring to go around the bar at a new restaurant opening in Trinity called Pintura, owned by the same people that run Cielo Blanco, Jake's Bar & Neon Cactus. My second focus was the children's menu for a restaurant opening in Darbyshire called The Elephant & The Market. I was told that even if from the first glance they sound like boring jobs that they were really going to twist my arm and be a challenge to complete successfully.


I was asked to create three variations of the Spanish tile inspired vinyl designs, to take it further I produced six unique outcomes of the brief. This was something that Barry told me he really appreciated the extra effort in.


I then began to plan out the children's menu for the next day so I was ready to go as soon as I got in.


My first day went really well. I networked with everyone on the team apart from Richard, who was ill that day. Everyone were really friendly, helpful, interesting to talk to and a good laugh too.

I am glad that the hard work I put in was noticed by Barry and he told me. It has certainly given me more drive to push things harder than I would normally to give a great impression and show them what I'm made of.

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The second day I began working on the children's menu straight away. Barry was away in London for the next two days so I wanted to get it all done to an impressive standard before he got back. 

Without being told about the restaurant's theme, I automatically assumed with a name like Elephant and the Market that it was an indian restaurant, and for that reason I began drawing an asian market for the background of the menu. When I showed Jake, he told me that it should be an english market and a lot more simple. This is when he told me that it was more of a pub/hotel even though the name suggested otherwise. This taught me to ask more questions about the brief as I had come into the studio mid phase of the project.

I spent the rest of the day redrawing the market as an english one and then working on characterisations for the elephant.

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The third day was my last chance to get the menu finished in time for Barry's return so I had a lot to do. I spent the whole day developing the idea that everyone gave the go ahead and pushing it further. Throughout the day, I also kept going around the studio to see what others were doing and if they needed any help or feedback. Jake told me on our way home that it was something that stood out to him as when they have had people in the past, they haven't really seemed interested in what is happening in the studio.

I managed to finish the children's menu that evening which I was very happy about. The content still hadn't been sent so I just left a gap for it.



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The next day, Barry told us about his trip to London to a big toy convention where he networked with industry professionals like hasbro, etc in an attempt to find design work for Analogue.


I showed Barry what I had done with the children's menu and he was really happy with it. He sent it to the client and the client loved it so we were both really pleased. The next job on my list was to design the flooring for a restaurant called Pintura opening in Leeds Trinity this year.

I was given large amount of reference of Spanish tiles which they wanted me to be inspired by when designing. After copious amounts of experimenting with a grid structure influenced from those tiles, I came to a strong outcome which I pitched to everyone at Analogue for feedback and comments and they were all really impressed and put me in the right direction to develop it.

This was the final outcome for each part I needed: The bottom of the stairs, the middle of the room, the front of the bar and each side of the bar.



Another piece of work I needed to do for Pintura was the vinyl for a disabled glass elevator. Barry had the idea to make it look like an elevator from the 20th century with big metal shutters, but at the same time, reminiscent of Spanish architecture

I used the same grid structure as the tiles and created a circular pattern with the logo's P this was then placed within a shutter like background. This would be copper foiled onto the glass.



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On Friday, I had two jobs left to finish the week with. My first was to design a pretend event poster for the inside of Pintura with an illustration by Victoria Topping. A series had already been designed for fishing contests, music festivals, etc and my poster was a surf competition. I was given the details and a screen shot of the illustration and set to work. I realised over the week that Barry liked to see a variety of different outcomes so he could figure out what he wanted to see so that is exactly what I did.

The final outcome became this one with a very subtle type finish in the corners to frame the illustration.



The last job of the week was to design a digital newsletter for Universal music. This was a brief that was given that day and was needed very quickly, for this reason, Barry set each of us on it to do one each so they could go back with a variety of different results. The client then chose a combination of mine and jake's for their final. I do not have a copy of the final one but this was my response. It needed to be very swiss modern, stripped back but still visually interesting. I was pretty happy that elements of my newsletter went into the used one as i wasn't expecting mine to be used at all.



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Overall my first week at Analogue went incredibly quickly and I had an amazing time. It was really fun getting straight into the work and being used as an asset rather than getting in the way. I have learned a lot about the industry in just one week as well as lessons in patience, receiving feedback, professionalism and software skills at the same time as brain power to work from 9 till 6 five days in a week (not something I am accustomed to).

I have been told that I will be working on a branding project over the course of my second week which I am dead excited about.

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