Write a list of your skills:
Thinking outside the box, Challenging myself, Passionate ,Holding myself to a high standard, Quick Learner, Experimental, Good with people, Easy to talk to, Well travelled, Tech savvy, Inquisitive, Ambitious, Helpful, Software Knowledge, Optimistic, Yes man, Open to new experiences, Working with text, Anticipating people’s needs, Experienced, Keen eye for detail, Positive, Willing to learn, Creative idea generation.
Write a list of what you wish to develop: Skills/ways of working/thinking/area of knowledge.
Designing what I need to instead of what I want to, Working with my hands, A more diverse skillset e.g Coding, Animation, UI/UX, Illustration etc, Work ethic, Being precious, Stop procrastinating, Being Lazy, Attention span, Waking up in the morning, Read more, Waiting till last minute, Going straight onto adobe, Writing skills, Take more photos, Sketch more, Use the blog more, Experiment more, Document everything, Social media usage, Being a pushover, Time management, Staying in touch, Useless Spending.
Design process
As my skills and gaps are all a part of me, I decided to go for a ‘Pokemon’ team style aesthetic. A brief/client is considered an enemy and my skills are my ‘Pokemon’ that I use to combat the brief. I first messed around with standard Pokemon screens and edited the text to fit my outcome.
I decided to continue with the theme as I could make it as personal to me as I wanted. This game was released in 1993. The same year I was born. I wanted to keep the black and white pallet as it is a symbol for growth. The new Pokemon games (they’re still milking that cash cow…) all use impressive 3d graphics with bright and vibrant colours. I feel that I have so many skill gaps to improve upon that I’m not worthy of using colour yet.
Using my list of skills and gaps to create my team
I narrowed down my thought process to the desired 6 team members.
Researchy, Sketchy, Testy, Designy, Reviewy and Rushy. (The ‘y’ was ditched pretty quickly for simplicity, and because they sound stupid). I gave each of these little fellas a set of 4 moves that they can utilise in battle against the evil briefs. I wasn’t 100% happy with the initial look of these ‘STEPS’ so I came up with more, perhaps too many… It was super fun. Took me back to my childhood of actually playing these games.
Now that I had a wide gamut of ‘STEPS’ designs to choose from I finalised my team. Each of these are equipped with their moves as well as a ‘SKILL’ and a ‘GAP’. Skills are what each of them are good at and Gaps are what they could improve.
Research
Skill: Web Browse, good at finding relevant information.
Gap: Unthorough, very surface level a lot of the time.
Moves:
Image Search: When I start my research I always like to do a quick image search to see what’s already around.
Pinterest: I love asking clients to send me Pinterest boards to see what they like.
Competition: Research the clients competition, good and bad.
Audience: Research the target audience and context for what the client wants.
Skill
Sketch
Skill: Simple, very quick and easy to do.
Gap: Overlooked, often not even a consideration and gets skipped.
Moves:
Thumbnail: Thumbnail drawings to help me visualise layouts.
Write: All of the notes that come with client requests.
Wireframe: Really quick website layouts.
Scribble: The ultimate sketch technique, just get it out of my head and onto the page.
Mock-Up (renamed from ‘Testy’)
Skill: Joyful, It’s fun to get physical and see if an idea is going to work.
Gap: Reveal Fault, often reveals holes in the concept.
Moves:
Scan-In: Getting all of my sketches onto the computer.
Print out: Printing all of my tests and ideas to annotate.
Question Idea: Figuring out if I actually like what I’ve done.
Step Skip: This step usually gets skipped/ not even considered.
Design
Skill: Confidence, confident in my ability to design.
Gap: Overused, often start with this step without thinking.
Moves:
Experience: Been designing for years for a variety of clients.
Detail: Got a keen eye for detail.
Stylish: Simply making things that look good.
Optimism: Hopeful that this step will get the job done.
Review
Skill: Detailed Eye, can look over work for mistakes.
Gap: Reset, Has to be re-done over and over again.
Moves:
Love it: The work produced is great and ready to be sent.
Hate it: I hate what I’ve done.
Start Over: Start over from the beginning and review again.
Forget Project: If my level of hate is too high I’ll start the whole project again or even forget about it.
Rush
Skill: Speedy, works on tight deadlines often so is very quick.
Gap: Too Often, work is last minute very often.
Moves:
Doubt: Can I do what I need to do by the deadline?
Stress: Oh no, what if I can’t make the deadline?
Last Minute: Let’s do this, smashing out the work with minimal time to spare.
Final Design: The joy of the design being signed off and you never have to see it again.
So I have my six ‘STEPS’ what’s next? Now I needed to create a scenario in which they would be commonly used. Enter, the storyboard.
After I was happy with the story it was time for the hard graft of illustrating them all in the pixel art black and white style that I was using. Next I decided that I wanted to print out each of the screens and make a simple stop motion to go through them as If it was a real game. I wasn’t happy to just have squares of paper, I needed to give them a context or reason for them to be printed. I needed something to play the game on. To match the printed paper style, a papercraft gameboy was created.
Next came the stop motion, I created a camera rig using a lamp and cardboard so that my phone wouldn’t move very much between photos.
Next all that was left was to take around 80 photographs and stitch them together using Photoshop. After reviewing the outcome on a critical review session I decided to take the advice of Sarah and my peers to add sound to give the final result an extra dimension. So, make sure your sound is on and enjoy.
Final Design
Development
After talking to Sarah and peers about this project It was clear that I needed to add some sound to the GIF. As I explained the concept and narrated the GIF it added another element of humour and personality which was great. I decided to do a commentary as If I was playing the game, complete with background music and sound effects.
Reflection
I really loved how this project came out. I had big ambitions for this week and I loved every second of it. I just wanted to add more and more. I would love to try out more ways to showcase my chaotic thought process. I found this piece by NB Studio in the book ‘Tactile, High Touch Visuals’ that was suggested to me by Sarah. I love the chaotic yet somehow organised style of it. It shows the kind of ‘it looks like a mess to you but I understand everything’ vibe that I’m all about. My design work is usually clean and calculated but when you look behind the curtain you might see chaos.
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