OUGD602 / PPP / Evaluation

General

I've progressed in every aspect this year. Looking back on previous years, I was bumbling along with little direction or knowledge of my skill set. This final year has solidified my idea of what I bring to our profession and where my skills lie.

I've engaged in a lot of collaborative practice with great designers and photographers which has pushed my work. Jealousy i a powerful thing in our industry and I definitely have a habit of seeing great work on our course and pushing my own practice to match the lengths others have gone to.

Web Presence

I've capitalised on the power of the web this year, strengthening and evolving the work on my website and paying particular attention to being concise with my descriptions. I'm extremely aware of the speed of the internet and have found Instagram to be a great outlet for finished pieces and behind the scenes process shots alike. I've also gravitated toward moving image, making gifs for most of my projects. I find people engage with this moving content even more than flat imagery or photography.

Following on from that, I've learnt the importance of photographing work well, taking more time and getting the lighting just right. An example of this would be Laura Farrall's brand pack, where the photography really brings out the piece!

Personal Branding

I kept my branding the same as the previous year. My logo is a mix of serious, code typography but tilted and skewed so there's a bit of humour and personality in there. I'm happy with the logo and I don't put too much weight or responsibility onto it.

My business cards are a real highlight. I went very clean, with a gloss uv layer which picks out my logo in the light. This little detail represents the many layers to my work and the increased depth to the concept work I've produced this year. Again, I don't put too much thought into business cards, there just needs to be a slight laugh or bit of humour or even just a though that the cards are nicely printed and produced.

Outreach

I sent off my portfolio and website to a select group of studios in Yorkshire and the near area where I wanted to get placement experience. I spent a while getting my portfolio looking great and chose different projects to target different studios. I went to interviews at DUST, LOVE, UBD & MUSIC... The interviews were invaluable and receiving opinions (and often criticisms) from professionals helped my extended practice module no end.

Placements

After successful interviews, I spent two days a week for two months at DUST in Sheffield. It was a fantastic experience and a shock to see how quickly the studio turns work around. Gladly, I was thrown straight into design work, working alongside all of the team (there's very little hierarchy). It's vital to get experience at good studios and DUST suit my work to a tee.

I was also successful in my application to LOVE, Manchester, a much bigger studio producing large scale brand implementations. I'll be there throughout June. It'll be interesting to see how the two compare!

OUGD602 / PPP3 / DBA / Presentation

We assembled all finished pieces and collateral into a presentation we felt fitting of the project as a whole.

We began by placing the audience in 2025, imagining how the future will be. Our whole brand idea came from imagining this near future wherein not much had visibly changed, technology simply makes life more simple and intuitive.

We propositioned a couple of key 'less' and 'more' slides further pushing this idea of a future more like Spike Jonze's 'Her', and less like the super high tech imagination in 'Minority Report'.

Again here we wanted to make clear that Hyperloop is a sustainable and revolutionary mode of transport, not a gimmick / flash in the pan.

We went on to talk about strengths of our contemporaries, companies doing travel and customer experience in a way that puts humans first.

Our vision for Hyperloop ^

A page simply devoted to our tone of voice, nailing down the concept of a brand for everyone, bringing the world closer together.

We then decided to take the audience on a journey of A to B on the Hyperloop. How it will look, and most importantly, feel.

A birds eye view of our platform, which works on a loop and uses a simple numbering system in tandem with the app of ticket in your hand.

Limited and subtle takes on our icon are placed within the carriage, carrying the brand but not overwhelming.

Our icon comes from the most human of things, the red blood cell, which carries oxygen around the body with the quiet efficiency of the hyperloop.

The icon also signifies two places brought together and echoes the soft curves of our logo type, which is based around the sturdy Johnson underground typeface, bringing something grounded and know to something futuristic and unexplored!

Our iconography was built on a circular grid to echo the sort curves of the logotype.

We decided to divert our attention away from advertising, seeing the Hyperloop as a big enough cultural project that it would simply exist in the public conscience.

We worked up a variation of the logo for the freight side of Hyperloop, removing colour and filling the icon to further strengthen and promote a reliable brand.

A nice, simple and on brand send off.

OUGD602 / PPP3 / DBA / Hyperloop / Writing Copy

2025 - Where Are We Now?

Internet communication is faster than ever.

Smartphone ownership is ubiquitous.

Payments are generally made wirelessly through smartphones & fingerprint readers.

Travel languishes behind, with air travel still the 

quickest viable option and projects such as HS-1 only marginally speeding up train travel.

More Her than Minority Report

With technologies increasingly permeating our lives, our vision for hyperloop is one of ease, 

simplicity and pleasure.

The technology behind hyperloop will make the world smaller, bring families closer and make 

business more personal. Our brand simply most technology asks for your time, hyperloop saves you that time. 

OUGD602 / PPP3 / DBA / Hyperloop / Pushing and Refining the Brand

Had a really good meeting today, focusing on the small details of the brand. We decided the best way to get to the core of the brand was to run through the potential cycle of a customer of Hyperloop, from beginning to end.

We came up with something like this:

1. People who get the Hyperloop want to get from one place to another quicker than by car, train or plane.
2. Two types of people want to get the Hyperloop: People with smartphones and a very small percentage who don't own a smartphone.
3. Customers with smartphones log onto our app, purchase a day/week/month pass. Specific booking times aren't needed due to the extremely high number of Hyperloop 'trains' setting off every ten seconds. 
4. Customers without access to smartphones can simply go to the Hyperloop station, use one of many machines to book their journey. Customer Assistants will always be on hand to help with the process and make the experience human and inviting. A small, recyclable ticket will be printed.
5. Customers who booked by the smartphone app simply arrive at the station, tap their phone on the barrier and proceed into the main area wherein their personal platform will show on their phone screen. This is preferred in an effort to be as efficient and green as possible. 
6. 
   

OUGD602 / PPP3 / DBA / Hyperloop / Presentation Planning

A - B Experience Map

The Future / Paint a Picture 

• Most will have phones
• A small proportion will not

Page of Text explaining the Company ethics / Humanism

• No imagery needed
• TONE OF VOICE
• Colour and type 

OUGD602 / PPP3 / DBA / Hyperloop / Finding Illustrators

On the theme of humanising and putting a friendly spin on the user experience of hyperloop, Alec suggested finding an illustrator to do some illustrations of situations you may find on the hyperloop.

I went to the Level 5 Illustration exhibition at Colours May Vary the other day and spotted a few illustrators I thought would fit our required style.

Fennell McCormack

Joe Hawkins

Amy Choi

Janice Leung

OUGD602 / PPP3 / DBA / Hyperloop / Quotes And Sources

“We decided, let’s make this little environment for him. Even though it’s going to be grand beyond him, let’s make sure his world is special and insular and not about technology.” 

KK Barrett on Her

“We did something more akin to framing a piece of artwork than the window to your entertainment,” KK Barrett

Her, he realized, isn’t a movie about technology. It’s a movie about people.

Technology hasn’t disappeared, in other words. It’s dissolved into everyday life.

It’s not just that Her, the movie, is focused on people. It also shows us a future where technology is more people-centric.

The future is much simpler than you think. Spike Jonze

Theo’s home gives us one concise example. You could call it a “smart house,” but there’s little outward evidence of it. What makes it intelligent isn’t the whizbang technology but rather simple, understated utility. Lights, for example, turn off and on as Theo moves from room to room. There’s no app for controlling them from the couch; no control panel on the wall. It’s all automatic. Why? “It’s just a smart and efficient way to live in a house,” says Barrett.

He uses (his phone) far less frequently than we use our smartphones today; it’s functional, but it’s not ubiquitous. As an object, it’s more like a nice wallet or watch. In terms of industrial design, it’s an artifact from a future where gadgets don’t need to scream their sophistication–a future where technology has progressed to the point that it doesn’t need to look like technology.

Looking at it that way, you can see the audio-based interface in Her as a novel form of augmented reality computing. Instead of overlaying our vision with a feed, as we’ve typically seen it, Theo gets a one piped into his ear. At the same time, the other ear is left free to take in the world around him.

Consider how today’s mobile operating systems, like iOS and ChromeOS, hide the messy business of file systems out of sight. Theo, with his voice-based valet as intermediary, is burdened with even less under-the-hood stuff than we are today. As Barrett puts it: “We didn’t want him fiddling with things and fussing with things.” In other words, Theo lives in a future where everything, not just his iPad, “just works.”

In essence, it means that AI has to be programmed to dumb itself down. “I think it’s very important for OSes in the future to have a good bedside manner.” Barrett says. “As politicians have learned, you can’t talk at someone all the time. You have to act like you’re listening.”

In something as simple as a responsive web layout or iOS 7’s “Do Not Disturb” feature, we’re starting to see designs that are more perceptive about the real world context surrounding them–where or how or when they’re being used. Google Now and other types of predictive software are ushering in a new era of more personalized, more intelligent apps.

'Red, of course is the colour of the inside of our bodies. In a way it's inside out, red.' Anish Kapoor . Designer / Sculptor