Competition briefs

Since the competition briefs came out, I had chosen 4 to complete, 2 as collaborations and 2 by myself. I wanted to push myself and see if I was able to complete all 4 straight after my dissertation submission.

From going from intense academic writing to planning, developing, creating, researching and getting feedback - it was extreme. Even though the competition briefs were released late 2017/early 2018, I had only really begun the competition briefs after the dissertation submission which gave me around 2 months to complete 4 briefs which I was working daily at. I had done some initial ideas but it felt like I was just starting out on all the briefs.

The first brief I completed was the RSA Fair Play brief where I made a physical board game. This brief was bigger than I expected and more challenging as I hadn't considered how much time and elements it needed to make something work properly. As it is a new board game, I had to think of the rules, the concept, the design, the sustainability and I also created an app. I didn't expect that I would have to do product design as part of this brief but in considering the sustainability of the game, I decided to create the board game from wood which meant I had to go to the wood workshop to get completed.

The second competition brief was in collaboration with Stephen where we created tea tins for the Starpack awards. We both decided that Stephen should do ideas for tea tins and I would do some ideas for coffee and decide which direction we wanted to go from there. We decided to create tea tins as we both rarely are coffee drinkers ourselves so we form that perspective, we felt we had a better understanding of teas as we are more aware of tea. As Stephen had already researched into teas, we discussed the idea and he would create the tin shape and I would create the pattern. This brief was quite straight forward as easy enough to do so I did not feel too stressed whilst doing the Starpack brief.

The third completion was the Ohh Deer Papergang brief. This is the brief that I was able to complete the quickest. The brief was to create a design for their subscription box for the month of October. They did not specify what they wanted so it was a broad brief and allowed me to create whatever I wanted so I looked into trends, into the month of October and created a simple pattern design.

The final brief was another collaboration with Karolina, a 3rd year Graphic Designer at Northumbria University. We had chosen to do the YCN The Grown Up Chocolate Company brief. This brief was more difficult to do as Karolina had her own deadlines and work going on and it was difficult to communicate with her and find free time. We went back and fourth with ideas as we felt we couldn't really fully understand each other's ideas as we only used text as a way to communicate as we did not have the same sleeping habits. In the end, we did finally understand where we wanted to go with the brief and we both did some illustrations and she created the digital mock ups and website design whilst I created the layout and design of the chocolate bar itself.

Doing the 4 briefs in a few months was definitely the most stressful thing I have done in my entire few years on the course. It was very intense and at (many) time, I felt I was going to burn out and give up because it was making my anxiety worse. When everything was submitted and completed, I relaxed a little more but was also very conscious of the other briefs I had to do. Overall, I'm glad that I experienced the turn-over time of each brief and how I pushed myself to submit all the work on time.