Web workshop four.

Internet explorer doesn't understand website coding as well as other browsers so you need to make sure a website is tested on various browsers before making it live. 
If you don't make any changes to a website after six months it will disappear from google. 

This is a website you can use so that clients can edit their own website really simply. 

You need to add a small code to the areas you want to be editable based on cushy. 

Cheap website hosting!

Coca-Cola; floor sticker.

This floor sticker would be placed within supermarkets and possibly even multiples in order to guide the consumer to the location of the Coca-Cola. I didn't really experiment with this much because there are only so many ways you can have the imagery within a shape and I didn't want the characters to look as though they were floating. I've gone for the circle shape because Coca-Cola are known for having their logo like this at one point. I feel if I applied the repeat pattern to this consumers would spend too much time stopping and looking at the floor and this isn't what anyone wants in the supermarket. Going for simplicity in this design also means that consumers may be more inclined to go look as this doesn't entirely give away the whole design. 

Coca-Cola; online advertising.

Due to the fact online banners take up a small amount of the space, there wasn't much that can be done with this layout so I went for a really simple idea of using the repeat pattern backgrounds I had created for the bottle design and applying this to the banners. I feel that by simply having the logo on there and the imagery it's enough because consumers know that if they click on something like this then it will take them out to a website and in this case, the Coca-Cola site, featuring these limited edition bottles. These could be applied to sites such a youtube and apps such as spotify but realistically any site that realies heavily on advertising can take these on. The banners would be static because I feel that the imagery has a big enough impact in terms of colour so will capture the audiences attention. 

Coca-Cola; billboard.

The billboard design is also simple because it follows the same layout as the magazine ad and the busstop poster so that they all link together. It's great to see that the design also works landscape as well as portrait. It shows that it has been well considered and that simplicity is sometimes most effective. As with the magazine ad, all bottle designs would be utilized in the advertising in order to make the most of them. 

Coca-Cola; magazine ad.

The magazine ad was really simple because I wanted to use the same concept as with the busstop poster but I only needed to add a line about the copyright to the company. The design on the left definitely works better because on the right the line of copyright gets too lost in the website address. If this were to be printed in magazines all four designs for the bottle posters would be utilized but I just used the collective shot here as an example. 

Coca-Cola; bus stop posters.

I didn't really know where to start with the busstop poster design. In previous projects i've always began with a white background and laid everything out and then kept the background white. I didn't want that the happen with this project as I wanted to experiment more and do something i've not done before. 

This time I began with the background experimentation and because i've enjoyed using textures is on of my other briefs I explored that. Initially I used an icey texture because I know existing coke adverts tend to use ice cubes within them. The blue however, wasn't really working with the colours used in the bottle design so then I went for something completely different and tried a snow texture. The snow texture links in quite well because the theme is christmas but I don't want the background to stand out too much because the bottle need to be the main focus so i've applied opacity to this in order to knock it back a bit. I still wasn't completely satisfied and didn't like anything i'd experimented with so I decided to move on to the layout and come back to this. 

I started with the three bottles because I thought once I had a general layout for these, the rest should be pretty simple as they all need to link together. I found an existing advert in a magazine so had this whilst desining these posters for inspiration. My natural instinct would have been to centralise everything without this ad for inspiration. I want the logo to be big enough to be seen and recognised but not so much that it overpowers the bottle design. This general style of layout i've gone for works quite well because theres balance with having the logo at one side and the bottles at the other. 

As well as experimenting with further layouts I then thought could I bring the tag design into the equation because you can't actually see the back of the bottles but this is part of it. This would really emphasise the whole christmas concept too. No matter where I placed this tag it just didn't look right, I even tried to make it different sizes in order for it to fit in but this wasn't working so I just decided to scrap the idea. 

However, I could bring emphasis on the christmas idea via the Coca Cola logo in creating my own christmas version of it very simply. Christmas is very highly linked to this brand now so simply by having 'Coca Cola christmas' it speaks for itself. I've used a font called Zapfino for the 'christmas' and amazingly it fits really well with the original logo so can be seen as entirely new logo. I definitely think having the christmas in red works better too because it makes it seem like one rather than two seperate things. 

Once I came up with an idea for the layout I went back into researching background ideas. I found this background on google images and thought it was perfect because it link in nicely with the background of the actual bottle designs. 

When I applied it to the background I took down the opacity in order to knock it back a little bit but just enough so you could still slightly see the snowflakes. The fact the background was already red was also great because this compliments the bottle design brilliantly. I then needed to consider adding in the website that people could visit and how this would work with the rest of the design. It doesn't need to be particular large because people will look at it as an option as long as they see the main product. 

Having it here doesn't really work because it seems to be quite hidden. 

I finally came up with this design on the right that i'm pretty pleased with because its simplistic but it communicates and delivers. I'm still not completely satisfied with it though because there looks to be something missing. 

I took one of the single bottles and played around with the layout of this. Due to the fact it's a single bottle the design differs slightly from the design of three bottles. Although I came up with a few possibilities, I feel having the front and the back on the ad is really important because the back is just as well designed and considered as the front. It also utilizes the space within the advert. Larger bottles also work in this sense but I feel if I keep them the same size as on the first advert, everything will link together better. I also came up with the idea of placing the repeat pattern as a strip down the side of the ad. This looks great and just adds that little thing I thought was missing before. It makes the background look less washed out with a hint of boldness in it. 

I then applied the same layout and style to each of the posters and feel the result is really strong! They work great together as a set and will also work really well when they are not together because each speaks for itself. Although I initially felt quite stuck, i'm really pleased with the result because the designs look unique and different to others i've seen from the company and they are all about keeping things fresh. 

Crit three.

I didn't feel entirely prepared for this crit because I was so into trying to get everything done, I felt I had plenty of work but just hadn't really organised fully what I was going to take with me. This has been clear from some of the feedback when people have written about logo design for off the reel for example as I had the logo designs, I just completely forgot to put them out. A lot of the feedback given in this crit was really useful and some of it was things I was already aware of but because I hadn't blogged certain things people couldn't see them. This was a lesson learnt in organisation really, always need to be prepared the day before at least for a crit! Despite the negatives, the feedback is useful and I will try and apply some of it to the rest of the work I have left to do within the module. 

Print workshop four.

Creating PDF's in indesign; 
Press quality is the option that is used to create a PDF file when you are sending work to a commercial printer. 
Smallest file size may be used when uploading a PDF digitally. 

Postscript file option;
You use the print option to make a postscript file which creates a file that is similar to a PDF. 
To create a PDF from this you drag the postscript file into acrobat distiller. 

With making a booklet into a PDF there's no direct option to save as PDF so you have to create a postscript file first and then convert it using the option above. 

Placing PDF's on a particular paper size to utilise space.

To get them in the centre choose this option and then press the icon to the left that shows centre alignment. 

When placing the actual indesign file within indesign you need to view the options for placing. You need to select the slug bounding box as there is no option for crop marks. 

Once you create your own crop marks and select the slug bounding box it now shows them properly so it will all be placed. 

Due to the fact there is a mistake on the postcard you can then go back to the original file because you've placed the indesign file and correct the mistake. 

Then when you go back to your other page a yellow triangle will appear in the links pallet to state a change has been made, if you double click on this triangle it will update all of the files to the correct spelling. 

 Booklet layout on larger stock. 

For the booklet to be printed correctly, 2 and 7 and 4 and 5 needed to be turned around 180 degrees. The options above show how to do this and you need to make sure the object is selected. The small icon with the sqaures on allows you to select around which point the object will rotate. 

Keyboard shortcuts. 

You can access glyphs via the type option in indesign and this is where you'll find any obscure symbols such as the one for 'degree' as in rotation. 

Another way of accessing the shortcuts is through the mac system preferences. 

Once you've ticked the top box option you'll end up with this little square icon with an asterix in it.  

When you click on this you can open up a keyboard like this and when you press certain shortcuts for example ALT it will show all the shortcuts of numbers etc you need to press along with this to get a different symbol. This works across any font.