Design for Wagamamas

I spent a good bit of my reading week at home, getting lots of free home cooked meals and a nice warm house to stay in!

Whilst at home I went out for lunch in Glasgow- big mistake trying to take my car into town on a busy Wednesday afternoon, this is what I get for being too stingy to pay for a train ticket but ended up having to pay just as much to park my car in the end!

Anyway went to Wagamamas for lunch- was awesome! This is by far my favourite place to eat out in Glasgow, the food is fantastic and the added novelty of attempting to eat your dinner with chopsticks always makes it an enjoyable experience.

The layout of the place is so simple yet very well thought out with all the tables and benches running parallel with one another makes it seem very clean cut and modern. Everything about Wagamamas is so clean cut, there designs are simply, easy to read understand and exactly what I believe to be good design!

As I was sitting attempting to eat my chilli chicken men noodles with my chopsticks I was dropping and spilling it everywhere and before I new it I had completely missed my mouth and my last bit of chicken had fallen landed on my place mat then straight on to my lap!

It wasn't until this moment I then looked at my mat..... of all the times I have been to Wagamamas I know that the placemats are made from paper and have the dessert menu on it but I never realised it was used as a means of advertising!

This reminded me of something my tutor told me in our first day of 2nd year 'that you would be surprised how many people walk straight through a door and not notice the big white piece of paper on it full of big bold lettering!!' and this is exactly what I had done, I was too busy practicing my chop stick skills and catching up with my friends to notice what was happening right under my nose!

Turns out it was something I am actually very interesting in taking part in...... Wagamamas has a 'Positive eating + positive living + positive design' program and they are looking for the next generation of creative talent to design a new t-shirt for the staff to be used in Wagamama restaurants all over the country.

http://www.wagamama.com/positivedesign

I have never thought of tshirt design before now, but after leaving Wagamamas and returning home to read more into it I have become very interested and have been thinking of ideas ever since. This experience has cleared alot of the doubt I have been having about choosing to study Graphic Design, I got excited at the thought of going home and starting to read the brief and sketch out a few ideas. What made me so excited about this particular 'project' is that it is designing for something I love, something that is important to me, something that I share with my friends and a place that has so many memories for me..... countless numbers of birthday dinners, lunches out with my friends after a busy afternoon spending all my money, my first double date, mother and daughter bonding day out and many more.

The thing I love most about Wagamamas is the people, not the people who work the people there to eat. I have never seen so many different types of people in one restaurant, there are students like myself in to eat with friends, families with children, business men and woman having discussions over lunch, couples in on dates and then the people who sit up against the window on their own reading there books and watching the world go by.....

These are everyday people, who I can guarantee are like myself sitting enjoying the experience of Wagamamas to its full and these are the kinds of people I want to design for. Everyone.

So all that is left for me to do now is get my final idea together and submit it and see what happens.

CAD

I have a CAD class every thursday morning and we have been given a project to create a 4 page spread for a new shoe to promote and advertise. I completed mine this afternoon and it has been the most enjoyable thing i have done since entering 2nd year. The purpose of the project was to get us familiar with using photoshop and inDesign as tools for our designs.

I really enjoyed being left to your own devices and being able to pick and choose whichever type of shoe you wished to advertise and have time to create your own style of presentation.

Powder rabbit?

I was sitting in the studio today waiting on my new brief hoping it wouldn't be what I thought it would be..... the combination of powder and rabbit, and it was!

I have to design a product that combines both of my previous projects together and design and create the packaging for it.

Powdered Rabbit?!?!

I am looking forward to designing the packaging because I know this is something I will enjoy doing, but I have got no idea where I am going to go with it....

My first idea was animal testing but I felt this maybe too obvious an connection, so taking a slightly different twist on it I thought of designing a make up brush from rabbit fur, as the bristle and my powder element could be my powder make up. All seemed to be falling into place so fast and was starting to get excited about the project, going off in my own little world thinking up ideas the all of a sudden my tutor turns and says it has to be a combination of two things from your previous sketchbook! I never thought to look at rabbit fur, I concentrated more on the edible aspects of rabbit.

So I am now back to square one.

For now all I have is the idea of buring your cooked rabbit so much it becomes cremated and therefore gives you powder, but I feel this may struggle to be a successful selling product.

Tipping Point Mind Map Part 1

The Tipping Point Mind Map

Is graphic design for me?

I have often wondered if graphic design is really for me? Do I have my heart and soul in it? Or would I be better suited in a more ‘academic’ subject?!

I am a bit of a geek, I love maths I love computing I have looked several times at changing to studying maths and computing – still in Dundee, I think I’ve settled here and I like it but I don’t feel settled in my course yet.

Maybe that’s just what it is, I haven’t settled into the way of working or having so much work to do at once, the general course was easy, laid back and if you couldn’t do a certain part it didn’t seem very important – for me as long as I done my graphic design blocks well I was happy.

I have always been so sure I wanted to do graphic design, all the way through school and general course until now and all of a sudden I’m not so sure. I want to do something with maths, something with numbers and computers but I want to stay in design because I know that I love it and I want to enjoy my job, when I get one, I want to go to work and get something from it rather than sitting in a dead end job pushing pencils all day.

Had a good discussion about this earlier today in my first seminar of 2^nd year and have been thinking all afternoon about how I am going to over come this problem. How am I going to combine my maths with my design? My computing with my design?

Maybe when I get to do some more self directed work and get the chance to create my own unique style and way of working it will just come to me. Perhaps all I need is time to figure it out, whilst doing what seems to be the most unrelated project to graphic design – researching all about cooking and eating rabbit?! I have no idea how this is going to help me become a graphic designer but I trust the staff that something beneficial is going to come from it!!

But for now I think I need to decide what I want to do, move to maths and computing or stay in graphic design and figure out how I am going to unite the 3 together and hopefully come up with some designs and ideas that will change how other people view the world of design and show the ‘geeks’ that you can still be academic and enjoy it at the same time!

The latter is starting to sound more appealing by the minute, maybe graphics is for me? I think I will just stick it out for now and see! Who knows what i may come up with....