This was one of my favourite projects I worked on during my time at Creative & Print, due to the increased freedom I had compared to some of my other jobs, as well as being able to work on this job from start to finish across a range of deliverables. I was tasked to create a flyer, a poster and a bus stop for two music events happening at the University of Reading in the Autumn term: Lumos and the Together Festival. For Lumos, I also was briefed to create 300 consecutively numbered tickets. At the end of the project, I was also asked to edit the poster in order to fit on large electronic screens around campus, as well as a banner for an events website to promote the event.
At first, this project seemed quite daunting, as there seemed to be a lot of overlap between the two events in terms of copy, yet they seemed to be different and therefore wanting different deliverables. However, after reading through the requirements several times, it became clear that the two were clearly linked, and that the Lumos event was part of the Together Festival, featuring music from Harry Potter – which was clearly the main selling point of the Festival as a whole.
This project in particular challenged me to deal with changes to the brief fast, and part way through the design process, which, despite finding hard at first, was beneficial, as I think the final project looks better than what was initially briefed, and links more to the event itself. Lumos, had in fact happened before, meaning that the client wanted to use the same image, and keep to the same purple colour scheme initially. For the Together Festival, a new image needed sourcing, tying in with Lumos to show a clear link between the two.
First proof sent to client
After feeling happy with the look of the first proof, and receiving praise from my colleagues, the brief was then altered. To emphasise the Harry Potter theme, the client then requested for the colour schemes of the two events to be changed – for Lumos to be in Gryffindor house colours of red and gold, and for the Together Festival to be in the Slytherin colours of green and silver.
At first I was a little disheartened, as I was concerned that the new colours may not work as well as the purple, but could understand why these colours were to be used instead. I actually was surprised how nice they looked. As well as this, to make Lumos seem more 'magical', the client requested for a wand to be added, which I feel really added movement to the poster.
From the initial image to the final edit
After receiving praise from my client over the new edits, they requested a price for making all the deliverables in all 4 house colours. Sadly, they did not have the money in their budget to take this idea on, despite loving the look of the leaflets I presented to them.
This was a challenging yet very rewarding job, and the hurdles faced on the way actually helped the final design in my opinion. I feel that these sorts of changes to the brief are likely to be typical in a design job, so it was a good experience to learn how to deal with these.
'It’s been great working with Laura on the Together Festival and Lumos! materials. Laura was really easy to work with, I love the ideas that she came up with. She took our crazy ideas and feedback on board and created some brilliant flyers and posters. The promotional materials have turned out better than I dreamed they could have!' - Katie Whaley, Music Coordinator, University of Reading
Final deliverables
