So, looks like Matt Sloe has won the highly coveted prize of being the first person to put something on here. He urges (rather threateningly) that you enjoy it)

Print Me Make Me

Behold…..the latest brief, completed. huzza. And what a project, we were given two weeks to complete a collaboration project with the second year Graphic Design students. We had to make working paper models that could be printed out by anyone of the internet and made at home. Each group was given a word, we got ‘Architect’ so we sat down and brainstormed for a few hours in our group, we managed to come up with a rough idea of what we wanted and went of and did some more individual research and sketches for ideas. We wanted to create a game for a child, one that involved the child being an architect, now i know at first thought this sounds very dull for a child, that was our challenge, make it exciting and fun for a youngster to play and build. And thats exactly what we did, as a group we came up with the idea that you could colour in these characters and houses, each character had his or her own house which related to them, for instance we had a lumber jack, which lived in a log cabin and a diver that lived in a submarine. Each character and house has a certain area on the board that they can also be related to, so the lumber jack and log cabin belong in the forest area, and the bear and the bears cave live on the mountains, and so on. We collaborated as a team well, i would finish the character design on the paper net ( this is an example of a net, this is what you cut out and build) then i would pass them on to our Graphic designer, Jules Beck, who would then add all of the instructions and fold and cut lines, basically everything you needed to know on how to build it, including a finished model, which was photographed and on the instructions with the net, so that you know what it should end up looking like. Along with these we also had a set of main detailed instructions on how to make the models. As you can see, some very easy and user friendly instructions. if you cant understand these then you should be asking your self how you managed to dress yourself everyday, so wah lah , easy as 1 2 3. colour it , build it , play with it, then you are officially a young architect, destined for great things.Here is an example of one we made earlier, some fine colouring in and our wonderful board, this beautiful piece of illustration is down to our other illustrator, Hannah Porter, she worked on this along with some creative input from Jules. We worked well as a group because we were in contact with each other on a daily basis, we made sure each of us knew exactly what we had to do and what the rest of the group were doing, and what stage each of us were at and that we were happy with the project and how it was going as we went along.I think the key to a successful collaboration is communication. It’s all fair and well having a great idea, but unless you have good contact and communication with your group, then that great idea will not be produced to its best. This is why i feel that our final piece works so well, we each used our specialised areas to the best of our abilities, Graphic design and illustration, working together in perfect harmony, UAHHHHHHHHHHH ( god like noise)This was a great lesson in collaborating, and working with new people, it was also another eye opener for me, that the amount of work i can do when i have deadlines looming over me is incredible, i had a trip away to Oban before the official deadline for this project so had less than two weeks for this, and was here finishing it off the night before i went to Oban, but succeeded, i must also stress that the rest of our team were also here until the early hour of the morning finishing it all off, we wouldn’t have such a finished product if it weren’t for all of our input and team work, so shout outs to them both, we know have a fantastic piece of group work for our folios.