Sakshi Gupta

January- April, 2019: Part of Class- Designing Systems and Identities
Self

Project Brief

Designed visual, textual, and physical attributes constitute a company or institution's graphic identity. These attributes are the company or institution's visible personality and are often the consumer or user's first impression of the entity's products and services. Identity design aims to communicate specific "messages" to consumers, users, suppliers, competitors, and employees through various applications and media.

Process

To explore the topic through making, writing, collaborating, discussing; essentially modeling practices for evolving a project. I began with a general area of interest (because there are no clients in the classroom).

As I delved more into the topic, I researched thoroughly, evolved concepts, and formed in a range of media. I wrote/revised/finalized a creative brief, and explored design options that satisfied the details of the brief.

Then I narrowed the topic focus by creating a fictitious company called Alleviate and wrote a well-researched creative brief. The written brief made sure that even though the project isn't client-led, it still satisfied the qualities of being a client-led with a focus on the user. Critiques were usually from my cohorts which mimicked client feedback. Critiques during the process were very valuable and crucial as they presented me with challenges. Each crit was different than the other. Critiques used were- Armando workshop, Improvisation, Yes and, I wish, Impersonation and silent workshop, Adhoc workshop, and Ok Go workshop

Working in phases that resembles professional practices, maintaining a plan and track sheet the 4-month long project ended with an extensive collection of physical/digital prototypes as well as a graphic identity "Style Guide," also known as a style manual.

RESEARCH- 6.5 Week Progress

All of the 6.5 weeks were devoted to rapid prototyping, researching, iterations. This helped in concept formation and it mocked the real world situation where before the design, designers research to understand the topic and user better. I had created this entity called U2 which dealt with medical and health conditions. I had an App, Card Game, Personalized boxes, brochures, and Smart pill boxes as my touchpoints.

Rest 9 Weeks

I created the creative brief then worked on Entity Map, User Journey Map, Logo Creation, and Personas. Further I created Space Design for sub entity of Alleviate called as Spaces. I did the whole branding using the angles and shapes from the logo.

My final touchpoints of this entity were: Apps, Website, Popup posters, Space Design, Styleguide, Envelopes, Letterheads, User Journey Map, Entity Map, Business Cards, and Navigation Card

Logo Construction

This was a long process of iteration and reconstruction lasting 8 weeks. It started with creating a lot of sketches and then moving forward with some, then revisiting the sketches again. It went back and forth for sometime and then finally came up with something different. That final logo went through many iterations as well to get to a point of looking like this as shown below.

User Journey Map

Entity Map

Space Design

Illustrations

StyleGuide

An extensive Style Guide for Alleviate

Final Presentation

Learnings

• Researching- I spent 6.5 weeks researching and in this process through methods of improv learnt in depth about my topic.
• Rapid Prototyping- This improved the quality of my work. Initially in the class we focused on quantity over quality and then eventually focused on producing crafted identities(quality over quantity)
• Learning Software skills faster- We had only a few weeks to make things and this meant learning newer softwares faster. I learnt SketchUp, KeyNote by myself for this project and this added new skills to my Resume.
• Problem Solving- For 12 weeks I was solving problems and I really enjoyed this part because it requires analytical and logical skills to tackle a problem. For a system design the problems arise in the way the company uses the technology. To explain it with example- the health tracker and space design. I questioned myself how can the space be personalised to a user's need? Then I thought of linking health tracker to the space design. Eventually I thought of how space can be of aid to user in reaching their goals; solution to that came as installing feedback through the walls of the space.