OUGD603 - Communications Officer Role - Fresher's Designs

I was successfully elected a member of the executive officer team at the students union last year as Communications Officer. One of the main parts of my role is to create designs for the fresher's guide and fresher's events.

The first thing that I wanted to do was create a concept to work around that would apply to all of the designs. I also had to present these to the student's union team as they were technically my clients for this brief.

I composed my inspiration and ideas into a short presentation. In the presentation I put a mind map together for the SU to go through my initial thoughts of themes that I could follow for the brief.

I thought of 4 different themes, each with their merits. For exploring Leeds I thought that I could encourage the new students to explore all of what Leeds has to offer being a very creative city. I also thought that this could include a sort of passport to LCA with things adventure or travel themed. However, when I got feedback from the student’s union I found out that one of the previous designs was very similar to this using a briefcase as the centre of the design.

For the Stereotypical artists idea I thought of creating a mascot of sorts for each of the courses and having them interact within the collateral. However I still wanted to emphasise that students didn’t have to fit the stereotypes given to them and I feel like this might make them think that they do. The SU shared my concern with this.

For Time I thought that I could use this theme to encourage new students to do as much as possible while at college. Because one thing I have learnt is that time can really get away from you while studying so you need to grasp every opportunity that you can. The SU liked this idea but I’m not quite sure what the design would revolve around a part from clocks and watches.

Finally I thought about using unique shapes to show different events and courses. I thought of how tetris blocks all fit together, and thought that maybe this could represent the college. With all the different blocks of each course fitting together to form the community that is college. This was my favourite idea by far and I think the SU agreed. I will develop this further into some logo ideas and look at some designs with a similar concept.