Laser Cut

After me and Luke had been inducted onto the Laser cutter we were able to use the cutter when we needed. We decided to experiment with the H.Samuel logo to see what we could come up with.

By Cutting the letters out we were able to play with the kerning and the initial layout of the logo, and with clear perspex adding a coloured back drop was really easy.

This was 3mm perspex and was really nice in creating this depth. 

We also used materials acetate so that it could be easily manipulated around other medians that we were thinking about. But when it was cutting it produced this rusty coloured dust which was harder to remove from the smaller letters, still not sure why acetate dose this, but sure it could be a great effect for something else.

Just showing how the laser cutter actually works.

Again just looking at the layout of the letters and how to play with the depth and the backdrop colours/patters. Its a great way to be able to produce loads of different layouts of something really quickly.

As well as 'cut through' you could also use three other effects, 'kiss cut', 'engrave' and 'rasterize', here we used a 'cut out' effect for the 'jewellery and gifts' and then a 'rasterize' effect for the 'H.Samuel' with a 'kiss cut' outline. although this is a great effect for subtlety  and for a tactile quality I think for the logo its a bit to subtle.

As we kept to the same measurements for all the designs we were able to mix up the different medians for a different effect. We played with placing the clear perspex into the white perspex cut outs and vice versa, I really like this effect and think with the branding colours this could be an effective technique.

Again playing the depth of the letters we looked at placing these 3D letters into a 2D background, also engraved with the logo, but it makes the brand name stand out a bit more than the rest of the logo.

Leaflet testers

H.Samuel logo experimentation

Over this weekend both me and Luke have been experimenting with the H.Samuel logo and how to 'revive' it. We want to give it a fresh new look but it is importand that the current customers still recognise and trust this brand.

This is the origional logo


These are some of the experiments that i have been doing, these are some of the onces that i think work well.
I have kept to a sans serif typeface, Gill Sans, and tryed manipulating the layout slightly on each one, also looking at the point size, weight, leading and kering of the logos aswell.

New Brief

The Brief
H.Samuel needs to be refreshed to see more products all year round

Concept/Proposition
H.Samuel are as individual as its customers

Background
H.Samuel have been established for over 140 years and are still seen as a traditional jeweller that they are

Target Audience
Split audience, 18-29 and 30+, each with a different approach within the H.Samuel Brand

Tone of voice
Friendly, Approachable, Magical

Considerations
Applying their tag line 'Helps you say it better'.
Consider alternative jewellery competitors e.g. Accessorize, Pandora, Boutiques.
Dose all the stock need to be on display?
How will the existing customers react to the changes to the familiar brand.

Mandatory Requirements
Concept to be applied to at least 3 different medias

Deliverables
3-5 Proposal boards

Time for a re-think

After the crits yesterday me and Luke have gone back to the beginning and re-written out brief and decided to go for the re brand of H.Samuel.

We believe that the problems for H.Samuel are :

1. They need more customers of a wider audience
2. Their stores are cluttered and over whelming with the choice of stock available
3. The stores don't seem personal or relaxed
4. Promotional material doesn't match the stores colour scheme
5. Displays are very dated, generic and manufacture

We intend to inform to a split target audience of years 18-29, and 30+, and promote that H.Samuel is as individual as its customers.

In order to achieve this we will re brand H.Samuel beginning with the logo and the identity, from this it would determine colour feel and possible design influences, from P.O.S and advertising. Then moving onto stationary, possible layout and display solutions.

This will be produced using :

• Print finishes e.g. foil blocking, embossing
• Hand rendered resolutions and development
• Cutting techniques e.g. laser cutting, hand cut
• Paper engineering
• Typography
  

First Cirt Feedback

These were the boards that we presented to the class in our crits today, we pitched our problem, concept and brief and was given feedback from tutors and other class members. They brought up some really interesting points that maybe were not working for us or that we haven't considered so it was really useful.

• What gifts do H.Samuel have that are aimed at a younger audience of 18-35 year old?
• How do other company's/retailers sell to their particular audience?
• 18-35 is a big age gap and can vary a lot in between, maybe narrow down this audience or somehow divide it.
• How is the packaging going to be appropriate to the target audience?
• What is it that we are trying to say to potential customers? ' Shop at H.Samuel because . . . ', affordable? quality? well established jeweller?
• What are the target audience already wearing?
• Who buys jewellery for the target audience? themselves? friends? family is this going to be a more appropriate audience
• Re brand? staying safe and designing superficial approaches wont be enough to get people noticing H.Samuel
• What language is appropriate for your audience? What language are competitors using?
  

Initial Ideas and Concepts

These are some of the initial concepts and ideas that we had, looking at how we can get H.Samuel noticed from the outside. Window displays, P.O.S, in-store imagery and advertisments. At the moment we are focusing on the window display and what we can put in there to make it a bit different to every other jeweller.

busisness cards

Windows you notice

Me and Luke spend the morning in town to have a look at some retail graphics, mostly window displays, just to see what other company's were currently doing to draw in customers.

Diesel - Very simple typography graphics applied to the windows in a bold colour, it dominantly made us notice, but i just don't know what its trying to say.


M&S - We really like the use of the 3D type in the windows, we were thinking something like this for H.Samuel's tag line 'helps say it better', here M&S have used really fresh colours that match to their stock.

Harvey Nicks - They are know for their over the top elaborate window displays and they haven't disappointed this season either, its very fun very colourful but all a bit random as well which i guess is the point of it being a visually lead display rather than concept driven.

French Connection - Luke first spotted these in magazines and they work even better on the shops, we like the idea of having one display window and one advert, so not showing everything and gives the overall display more dimension.

This was in a very up market jewellery store and i was quite surprised by this, i always feel that upper class jewellery shops have a very generic classic look for their displays but this was something really different that caught out eyes. It adds something to the whole store, a little bit of character and just a bit more thought to the displays. We are hoping to use some cut shapes like these within out visuals.

Crabtree & Evelyn

Reiss -

Carat

The Picture House

Shared Earth

What is the problem and how can it be solved?

Brief Title - H.Samuel

What is the problem?

• They want more customers
• They are useful but no-one uses our service
• We are seen as old fashioned
• We are loosing customers

We intend to promote H.Samuel to a group of young fashionable 18-30 year old and persuade them to shop there all year round.

In order to this i will produce in store visuals and point of sales, including potential window displays and in store imagery, also printed promotional materials, such as packaging materials and advertisements.

This will be produced using hand rendered resolutions and print finish techniques, also cutting techniques and paper engineering.

Working in two's

Here is THE contract, we have wrote down all our roles as individuals and as a team and what our responsibilities will be throughout this project. Lets hope that it all goes to plan.

The YCN competition briefs

These are 4 of the brands that had briefes in the competion, we were asked to look at a brief that was a good collabrative brief, one as an individual brief and one breif that we were not interested in doing at all.

I chose the H.Samuel brief as a good colabrative brief for these 5 reason;

• It can initialy involve retail graphics which is something that me or Luke have never done before and would be interested in exploring it.
• There is a local shop in Leeds and surrounding areas so can easily visit the shop and gather any research/infomation that we needed
• This didn't jump out as being a popular brief as some of the others did, and so there would be less competition.
• There current design/identiy hasnt been updated for a while and so we want to bring them up to date.
• The brief itself has been left quite open so we have been able to come up with lots of different concepts and ideas.
  

Perfect creative partner search starts here

We are just about to start out collabrative work for a competition brief, so each of us made personal adds selling out 10 best qualities and skills and advertising for someone who has the skills that we need in a creative partner.

This were my two adds, the top image is advertising for a partner and the bottom is advertising myself. I chose to do them both very hand rendered and collage them to show my love of hand rendering and paper. Two of my weakest points are digital softwear skill and idea generating so my partner had to have these two skills.

This is Lukes personal adds, one on the left is for himself and the right is for a creative partner, he had highlighted the two skills that i wanted and he was looking for the skills that i had.


These are all the adds from the whole class, a great range of different styles and approaches.