Whilst thinking of a variety of ideas I have come to the conclusion that I would like to undertake a branding project, it's the area of design that I feel most interested in. After going out and looking for inspiration for the Extended Major Project I came across an idea that I feel works well. I have always been interested in branding because I feel that it is a clever area of design, I have always been fascinated to how brands target their consumer and how consumers relate to the brands. I myself like to purchase specific brands, just like we all do, and I find my shopping for products each day, it is part of life. We buy specific products for a reason, that reason is simply because we like them. My first initial idea for the Extended Major Project is to base my entire project around shopping, and relate this to branding, which is the area of design that I want to develop my knowledge as a designer to enter the industry when I have successfully completed BA Graphics.

Benjamin Bours

As I am still undecided whether to choose either branding or interactive design as the area that I opt to study to gain further knowledge throughout the Extended Major Project, I have decided to look at some pieces of work that relate to the areas that I am interested in. This particular piece of work was created by designer Benjamin Bours, it features an interactive system that has been applied to the Official NYC Information Centre. The system allows users to gather information about the city easily by choosing different areas that they want to know about through a touch screen system. I think that this is an innovative idea and i don't see why this could not be applied to all city around the world.

The time has come, it's the start of the big one 'The Extended Major Project'. The idea for this brief has to be focused, as this is a 13 week long project I intend to study an area of design that I am interested in. So I have began to think of the areas of graphic design that I am interested, and I can mention two key areas, branding and interactive design. In this final year as a student I have recently developed a passion for interactive design, this is from the recent D&AD project that I undertook. I know that these are the two areas of design that I am interested in, so I intend to create my project around one or if not both of these key areas.

I believe that their is a niche in the market for web designers, which is one of the key areas of design that I would like to enter. I feel that I have developed my knowledge of this area throughout the Specialist Practice unit, and also last year as I created an online portfolio. I would like to either enter this domain or enter the branding industry.

Term 1 review

Specialist practice has challenged me with new ways of thinking that I have never done before. Take the first brief that I recieved for example, (true). This was such an open brief where by I could choose any statement I wanted and create a piece of design out of it, before I entered this course I had never been faced with such a brief. These work shops also made think about what brief to chose for the specialist practice unit.

I feel that I chose the correct brief as I this is the area of design that I would like to develop further as a practitioner. I have always been interested in web design and feel that by developing a portfolio based around this area of design will hopefully allow me to seek a job within this area of design. I was pleased with all of the work that I produced throughout this unit and will be pleased to put these projects into my portfolio.

BBC final outcome (iPhone)

Aswell as applying the product to a website I also chose to apply this to an iPhone, this way users can watch their favourite BBC content together where ever they are.

BBC final outcome

After developing the designs for the idea that I had for this project I have reached the final outcome of the website designs. These are some of the final outcomes to show what style I used and also the hierarchy of the website.

I feel that this idea that I have thought of is realistic and I could actually see this being made into a product for the BBC to use. The problem that I have stated is that if two people are too far apart from each other that they can't watch their favourite BBC programme together.

Work shop 3

I have been set a new brief which is the last one of the specialist practice unit, where by I am required to take one of Dieter Ram's rules and use a piece of design within bournemouth to express one of these rules graphically. Below features the 10 rules that I have to choose from

Good design is innovative
Good design makes a product useful
Good design makes a product aesthetic
Good design makes a product understandable
Good design is unobtrusive
Good design is honest
Good design is long-lasting
Good design is thorough, down to the last detail
Good design is environmentally friendly
Good design is as little design as possible