OUGD603: Module Evaluation

Over the last year three years, the extended practice has been the biggest impact on my academic learning at LAU. The module has allowed me to develop a body of work that simulates a professional practice working to develop a range of practical responses at any given time, working with clients, collaboratively, and developing self-directed projects. The seven briefs that I have done have allowed me to gain a diverse amount of design work that has enhanced my portfolio to a standard that I feel that the outcomes that I’ve created are industry level.

As the module is independent lead it has allowed me to incorporate my hobbies and interest in my self-directed studies. This is ensured me that the extended practice module has been very engaging throughout but also shows me as a designer in my briefs. The independent nature of the module meant staying to time schedule that ensured me that my briefs were achieved within a time scale, however at times things became a challenge when in one of my briefs I was waiting for the client to respond to my email to gain further feedback meaning that a brief that should have taken a week has taken a lot longer because of these setbacks. The majority of briefs were achieved within a set timescale. and I personally feel that staying to a strict time plan has allowed me to push my learning to its full potential and leaves me in a good stead for working in the industry.

Working collaboratively within the module has been the main focus for me as the number of projects including Hasbro Brief (Deceit) and Research Brief (Digital Business Card) , has shown me that I have the ability to work successfully with other designers and creatives. The opportunity to work collaboratively has shown me that my projects become a lot stronger within the design process and that I can also work within a time plan in a design team.

Engaging with Reddit allowed me to gain huge amounts of feedback on my work but also helped me gain contacts with people who are in the industry. Gaining feedback from the former global brand manager of adidas helped me gain fundamental information about adidas core values and the outcome had to be substantial been improved due to the feedback that I received.

Overall reflecting back on extended practice, I have been able to progress my skills within my design practice allowing me to focus on branding and 3D software as this area of design that I’m most interested in and hopefully go into once finishing at LAU. The module has shown me my ability to develop a range of deliverables that have been supported with primary and secondary research. 

Evaluation / Brief 7 / Day Brief / Twitch graphics

Doing a day brief has shown me that I complete a project in a short amount of time allowing to push my design skills to the limit.

I also wanted to challenge myself in the brief, As I know when I go into the industry it will be very much the same environment.

Creating graphics for a streamer business has been very crucial to understand what the client is looking for and how I can adapt my work to his style of the genre but also the target audience. 

The streamer was very happy with the outcomes I made that I sent with a watermark on through twitter just in case the client tried to steal my work without paying. Once the client was happy with the end result I was commissioned $80 through PayPal and the files were sent to him by wetransfer. This gave me a taste of what freelance work could possibly be for me in the future if I decide to go down that route.

Doing freelance brief with a streamer who is from America also mean’t that i had to stay up quite late because of the time zone difference but this wasn’t an issue .

Brief 7 / Day Brief / Wireframes

I designed a wireframe that allowed to create a flexible overlay that could be built upon without necessitating a complete redesign.

Brief 7 / Day Brief / Who's The Streamer

Twitch Streamer

SypherPk is the Twitch streamer I’ll be doing graphics for he started streaming for fun back in late 2012 streaming Runescape casually. Sypher didn’t seriously start streaming until April of 2014. he has acquired partnership in the Summer of 2014 and has been streaming full time since then! Meaning that he streams for a living and that the overlays that I will create for him will have a huge impact on his business.

More Information:

Sypher has been streaming a game called elder scrolls online which he started with only a couple dozen viewers a night, over the course of a year he has been able to build a strong and thriving community on around the game. He later became a Twitch partner soon after and decided to pursue his career full time.

His current brand identity:

Because he's playing games that are mostly medieval genre his logo is very suitable for his brand and also his target audience, so creating graphics that’s work with his logo is as it's the most suitable option for this brief.

Brief 7 / Day Brief / Twitch Overlay Research

What is an overlay?

A twitch overlay can be a border around your webcam, or it can be a full 1080p graphic that takes up the whole frame. Normally the overlay is a transparent PNG file. that sits above your game capture window, and your webcam. It’s almost like your stream is wearing a mask, and you position things underneath it so everything lines up nicely.

Thoughts?

I believe that streaming should be made to look attractive by providing graphics to the streamer brand name and logo as it helps utilise the full extent of their business model.

Twitch Streamer Research:

I Looked at several other twitch streamers to see 

see what types of information and language they used in their overlays. Some of the most common categories included:

Webcam Feed

Chat

Game Capture

Recent Donor

Top Donation

Latest Tips

Now Playing (Music)

Follower Goal

Sub Goal

Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

Offline Screen

Starting Soon Screen

Brief 7 / Day Brief / Twitch Overlays

Twitch  streamer Brief

Twitch is a popular online service for watching and streaming digital video broadcasts. Twitch originally focused almost entirely on video games but has since expanded to include streams dedicated to artwork creation, music, talk shows, and the occasional TV series.

The Task:

I have been asked by a twitch streamer who wants to make his gaming streams more visually pleasing to look at by having clean and professional graphics that represent his core brand identity whilst he live streams to his viewers.

Target Audience: Gamers

81.5% of twitch users are male with 55% in the age between 18-34

According to a survey, gamers are more social, family-oriented, educated, optimistic, successful, and socially conscious than non-gamers. They watch more live streaming content compared to previous year and are actively using the latest tech to consume content and connect with their peers.

Outcome:

Produce a set of overlays that the client wants produced.

Evaluation / Brief 6 / Digital Business Card

The final outcome is user-friendly, easy to navigate and looks visually pleasing. It works as a digital alternative to printed business cards an saves on paper costs and environmental damages. Which, can be backed up by our research.

This Brief took a little longer than expected which wasn’t an issue as Josh adjusted the time plan allowing us to stay on track of the project and keeping to the deadline whilst I was at my work placement. The brief also took a little longer because of the extensive amount of research and feedback we had accumulated throughout out. 

Doing the research brief as a collaboration definitely helped push the whole design process further.

As i’m more of a digital designer I was very surprised by the amount of business cards that were disregard per week, I personally don’t really agree with printed business cards myself as i know from my own experience that they just get thrown away or put in a wallet and never seen again and I felt that the product/service we’ve made helps tackle the issue and also help the environment as well.