WYS - EVALUATION

Out of all the brief that I have completed this year, WYS has been my main priority, the reason that I focused so much on this brief was that Rob and I have finally figured out what we want to do after graduating from the course. By making it our main focus this year we have been able to use this time to really think about the ins and outs of the idea. We spent a lot of time throughout the year developing and defining the overall idea so that we could be more confident in ourselves to continue WYS after university. This is why it took us such a long time to complete as there were many things that made getting to the point a challenge. Although it was a challenge I feel that taking our time to think about the idea properly should benefit us in the future as we are fairly confident that will we be able to stick our plans. 

We were able to take full advantage of university resources. We attended business workshops that have been able to help us think more about the business side of our business idea. Without this, I don’t think that we would have pushed ourselves to get to where we are now, because of the business workshops we have also shown our interest in the Duke Studio graduate scheme which we know will bring WYS to life if we are able to get that. As we have thought so much into all the aspects of WYS this has encouraged us to speak both industry professionals and business people about the possibilities of our idea and how we could develop it further to make it work better. 

Doing this brief has also helped me to learn new skills, before starting this brief I had no experience using a Risograph printer and if it wasn’t for this brief I wouldn’t have learnt how to use it. I will now be looking to use a RISO wherever possible which will help to continue developing my practice after leaving LAU. I also was able to learn how to fabric screen-print which is something that I a wish I had learnt a long time ago as now I know how to print t-shirts, again this is something that I also want to continue doing once leaving. 

WYS has taught me a lot about collaboration, it is at the core of what we do and I think that it one of the most important things I have learnt this year it really helped to push my practice as working with other people helps to set the bar higher than you may normally want to put it. Working alongside Rob has also been a challenge but I feel like we have now got a better understanding of how to work together and we are able to produce work that I don’t think I would have been able to do without him. This is the start of a partnership between Rob and myself, we help to motivate each other and can we can equally share workload and have a range of strengths between us which helps to make us a good match. 

The identity that we have created for WYS will not just be a university project we have designed all of our outcomes so that they are ready for the real world after uni, throughout the brief, we have had in mind that we will hopefully oneway be using the identity to its full potential. We have also considered the ease of production for all of the elements so that we can easily reproduce them on a tight budget as we may not have the recourses we have currently at university. Other elements of the identity such as the Promotional pack have been designed to help us meet new people as this is one of the most important things for WYS to achieve. 

As well as completing the overall identity for WYS we have been able to link it to other briefs that we have done this year (research project and photography yearbook). 

The whole project was influenced by research, from the end of Level 05 we have both been interested in zines and indie publishing and we have used the year to help develop further research into the ins and outs of the industry to help figure out where we belong. This approach has made our final outcomes well considered and appropriate for real-world use. As well as being influenced by our research we have also been able to really figure out who is target audience is and whether the idea is profitable and from the feedback that we have received so far, I am confident that we have will succeed. 

I don’t feel that we used our social media as well as we could, if we had used the social media properly throughout the year we could have worked on building an audience before leaving. The reason we didn’t do this was that we spend a lot of time making sure that we got the basics right first which is important, we are now that we have more time we will start to build our audience on social media. 

This year we also set out to make as many books as we could, sadly we didn’t end up making as many as we had hoped but we have used this time to help us think about lots of ideas for upcoming projects and also learn new skills. We could have also used this year to test run our first exhibition for WYS but as we did not want to rush into things we had to put it on hold so that we could then considerate on more important aspects of the brief. As of yet we still have not added any stock to our Big Cartel shop because we have been very busy with other things but once we have more time we will be figuring out how we can sell the product we want to sell properly, using professional printers etc. Overall I am very pleased with what we have managed to achieve throughout this project and I am now excited to use what we have learned and spoken about for the last year into action. 

WYS - IDENTITY - STICKERS

USE FOR STICKERS

• Merchandise which can always be produced - stickers can be made very easily at uni in the print room. As well as this they can be bought online for a good price as if you buy in bulk it makes it cheaper and can never have too many stickers. 
• They are another means of advertising. Around Leeds and mainly all big cities peoples use stickers as a means of advertising to people by just putting them up in the local area it can be beneficial.
• As they are cheap to make it is very easy to give them away to people - for example with orders from our website or by us just giving them to people that we speak to etc. 

DESIGN

• Keeping it simple - a selection of 5 stickers which are different variations of the WYS logo. this helps to get people more familiar with the brand and not over complicating it by introducing more designs that are related to WYS.
• The designs are consistent with the rest of the brand
• 70mm x 70mm - the perfect size to be seen everywhere to too big and not too small which means the stickers can be put on laptops or stuck up around the city where ever they are it will stand out well. 

SELLING/PROMOTION 

• Designed a series of simple GIFS which show the stickers of - the GIFS will be used mainly for advertising the stickers online so that the design can become more recognisable when people see out and about 
• To make money from the stickers they will be sold on our website in various combinations (stickers packs, postcard pack and with other items and also for free when we are feeling generous) 

WYS - IDENTITY - SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT (INSTAGRAM)

PURPOSE / HOW IT WILL BE USED

• Promotional content
• Stylised mockups - in our style yet it also lends itself to becoming noticed within the design scene of Instagram this helps for getting more people involved with WYS.
• Platform for communication - posting content that will encourage people to talk to get in contact with us about working with us or similar
• Post artists work that we like/are involved with - like a blog that features others work this also helps to gain following. 
• Will help to sell products - can easily send people to the website and shop using interesting content on the Instagram. 

CONTENT

POSTCARDS

• 6x square posts - increases posts so people are likely to see the content that we are producing. 
• Layout - all the content laid out to advertise postcard pack. Showing the postcards laid out like this loosey links back to the concept of WYS which is that we take your content and we make it fall into place. 
• Sets a style for how we are going to post our work on social media, this style of mock-up can be applied to other work of ours and as well as when we want to post others content it can be done in a more unique way so that we get a name for ourselves by doing things a little differently. 

STICKERS

• GIFS make for a more interesting post
• Want to show that they are stickers through movement - these can be used as an advertisement as well
• Shows variations of the sticker designs 

T-SHIRTS 

• Images of t-shirts taken on 35mm 
• Friends wearing the shirts to model them - nicely photographed pictures of tees will help to sell as people won't want to miss out. 
• These images will be our way of "launching" the t-shirts in the webshop

POSTERS 

• Post three at once - to keep consistent
• Helps to advertise what WYS is - this should encourage people to reach out to us 
• Animated posters as well by Sam Hughes - can also be used as content for stories
• Posters are good content as there are many people on Instagram that are looking for interesting posters designs. 

ARTIST WORK 

• As we are a mainly focusing on photography to start with we can use the account as sort of blog where we can post artist best work. 
• In the style of artist take over - 3x posts of their best works with short descriptions of the images and the project.  

All of the content that we have prepared for Instagram is a good starting point for us and this sort of content can easily be updated so that we have new content to post. Now that we have a good a range of things that we can post it is key that we keep posting as it is a vital way to gain acknowledgement among the design community. 

Having a range of interesting content is also important as we do not want to bore people with the same sort of posts over and over. So by allowing the Instagram to be used for both promotional purposes as well as a blog for other artists work will be useful as it gives us a range of content to post and will appeal to a wider audience. This should all in all get us more interest in WYS. 

WYS - IDENTITY - WEBSITE/WEBSHOP

WEBSITE - www.w-y-s.co.uk

The WYS is at the centre of the identity that myself and Rob have created. The site is going to be the hub of WYS as it will show everything people need to know about us and what is going on at any given time. It is a means of contact, it showcases both our work and the work that we are supporting (collaborators/artists) and it is not the basis of our online presence, which is very important in this day and age, now that we have got a site we are able to use this as a platform that we can build on to attract new people for work etc.  

HOME/LANDING PAGE

• Animated GIF - this will be something that we regularly update to keep the site looking new and fresh with the current WYS "vibe"
• Ease of access to the rest of the site 
• Works as a simple introduction to WYS 

ARTIST PAGE 

• The artist page showcases each of the artists that we are collaborating with, shows the user who they are with a small bio, gives a small selection of their best work, social media handles/website link. In the future, these sections will also include any work that we have done with them.  
• Simple layout, letting the imagery do the talking. Layout out similarly to a blog, this means new content can be added very easily and will look in place. This also makes the website easy to navigate, with BACK buttons in appropriate places so the user can browse freely. 
• Roll-over feature that tells the user who the artist is. 
• The site has consistent layout throughout - WYS logotype rather than the primary logo as we felt this fits the overall aesthetic of the site better and the primary logo belongs more only when we are publishing/making books,.   
  
  
  

• Once you're on an artist page you can select what project you wish to look at. Each project we have selected the best work to go to the site to give people an insight of what is to come in terms of making books. For example, with Alec Aarons page he has a number of projects which will be turned into some sort of printed matter so this is just an introduction to what is to come. 
• From the artist's page, if they have different projects we have split them up into different image galleries which explain each project in more depth. 
• The idea of showing each project for the likes of photographers is so that once we have designed books for the said projects they can become part of this page. 
• Social media and website links for the artist (essential) 

EVENTS PAGE

• WIP - as we don't have any events coming up this is black but we still wanted people to know that we this is one of the services/things that we are offering.
• When events are planned all the information for that will be on this page. All past exhibitions will be added to an archive which showcases the awesome events that we have been putting on.  
• Using an animated gif to make the page feel less static as it would be very dull without. 

INFORMATION

• Explains what WYS is - keeping it simple by breaking down the idea of the services that we are looking to provide. Which helps to give people a understanding of what we are doing and what we could do for them. 
• Social link - trying to plug the Instagram where ever possible as a lot of the content and audience interaction will be happening on there. 

CONTACT

• Direct mail to link - info@w-y-s.co.uk - lets people get in contact with us quickly and easily this is a very standard thing to do on a site as it lets people come to you if they are interested in what we are doing. 
• It was important to us to have a professional email address so people could easily get in touch with us. Rather than using a Gmail or similar email address. 

BIG CARTEL

• The webshop directly links from the site to a BigCartel store - it is very standard webshop but it has all of the behind the scenes bits which we need to keep track of what we are selling on the site. 
• The overall design is very simple we were able to make it fit with a similar theme to our site and then we have created our own content to showcase the products themselves which follow our aesthetic. 
• All the products are "coming soon" but they will be available to buy once we have the time to prepare the stock. We just wanted to get the site online so that people could see what we have to come. 

OVERVIEW

Overall I am happy with the site that Rob and I have created to represent WYS. It is a great first stepping stone for us and now that we have an online presence we are able to build on going into the future. For now though the site is a great starting point for our audience to understand what it is we are trying to achieve as before we found it difficult to explain what everything, we now have a legit site that allows us to be more professional which means people will hopefully take us more seriously when we want to get involved with artists and similar people. I also feel that the site and the identity work cohesively together and we now have the foundations that we need to start a small publishing/graphic design business. 

WYS - IDENTITY - T-SHIRTS

Merchandise is a key part of any brand, it is used as a means of promotion, it can also be used to as a way to pull in extra cash...there are many benefits to creating t-shirts as part of the WYS brand. Not only does it give us a better chance at getting more people know who we are it also gives us the chance to do experiment with a different process that we are so what unfamiliar with, for me creating t-shirts is a great way to attract a whole new audience, so we have designed two very simple designs that will be the first edition of WYS clothing/merch. 

DESIGNS 

• Two simple designs - first the standard logo which speaks for itself the second more comical take on the logo which introduces a meme that was very popular at the start of 2018 and we are using this as more "fun" style of logo that is going to be mainly used on clothing. 
• The t-shirts will be hand screen printed, this makes for a high-quality print and this also means that you can charge a little more because they have been produced by hand (great USP).
• Below - two mockups of the t-shirts. To start with we will only be printing on white Gildan Heavy Cotton shirts which we can get cheaply on Amazon. Once we have a higher demand for the shirts this is when we would think about out scouring the printing, but for now, as we have the screen printing facilities we use them - as the only outgoing costs are for the shirts.  

PRINTING PROCESS 

• Test printed t-shirts on to old Gildan shirts which have helped me to learn the process of fabric screen printing, it is very similar to printing on paper but there are some minor differences - after printing the first batch I would be very confident in printing a much larger amount of shirts once the site has been launched. 
• Need to be careful of how much ink you pull through the screen - as you can see below on the white shirts the ink has bled slightly this is because I pulled it through twice and it maybe didn't need this. 
• Sadly when printing the WYS I covered up the HAND design with tape, when the tape was removed so that I could print on the design it removed some of the screen with it which allowed ink to seep through. This is one of the drawbacks of screen printing but once I have perfected this it will be fine. 

EXPERIMENTING 

• On the light blue shirt, I decided to experiment with the screen while printing on the shirt. To get the design that is left I used tape to create a rectangle which I used as a border, I then printed all around the inside of the shape which left me with the rather interesting looking final print. 
• Doing experiments like this has given me the idea for printing more things like this as I think it would be interesting to see if people would buy them. 
• As all these t-shirts were test prints on old shirts this has also given me the idea of creating a small range of t-shirts that are "vintage" with the WYS logo on as repurposed clothing is very popular now. 
• The grey shirt was the best one that I printed on this day - by the end, I figured out how to best print the tees. I will be ordering new shirts and be printing more for the launch of our site which I hope people will be interested in buying. 

BUYING AND SELLING

• To start out it would be fairly easy to sell small batches of t-shirts. 
• Make batches of around 10-15 shirts 
• Each shirt is £3.00 each to buy 
• Free to make (university facilities) 
• Sell for £20 plus postage and packing using BigCartel - if this becomes too much for us to handle there are other options for selling shirts e.g Everpress but for now I am happy with printing ourselves.  
• Around £17 profit on each shirt
• Great way to make extra money for WYS and to help increase the popularity of WYS

WYS - IDENTITY - POSTERS

Posters are an essential deliverable for WYS they can be used in many ways to engage with our audience. Posters have many uses for us and it is something that we will constantly be updating and creating new work for as project roll out and when we have different things to promote. But for now, they will just be used to create an initial buzz about WYS hopefully this will help to get more of an audience engaged in what we are doing.  

• Promotional - The best way to communicate WYS concept to our audience. Posters can be created again and again with many styles and approach this not only helps us to get a good collection of artwork for WYS but it also helps to so the audience what we are doing at that current time and attract new collaborators/audience. 
• Promo pack - Each promo pack will come with a poster or two 
• Sell - Most popular posters will be sold on our website in series or editions of 25 so that we can make some money off as much as possible. 

• There is always something to promote - Whether it is posters to promote WYS as a brand or to promote an event or something that we are doing. Posters are a very valuable part of our identity and can be constantly updated to keep a fresh look going even if we aren't producing much editorial work. 

• As part of our social media presence, I was able to create basic moving image content that we will be used for Instagram stories. I felt that content like this was necessary so that we can interact with our audience in a more visually engaging way. 
• They are very simple and play with the graphics that I have used in other parts of the branding. 

                                                      

• Animated - A selection of the posters we have given to Sam Hughes who has bought the posters to life. We wanted to do this to be a little different and try and bring something a little new to our social media content. Showing collaboration through the social networks is also good for us as it should help to encourage others to get in contact with us. 
• Below are the current animations that Sam has done for us - we worked closely with him to get the look that we wanted from both poster. When designing the posters for Sam I already had in mind how I want the poster to move so it was easy to give Sam the instructions he needed to bring the posters to life. We were able to go back and forth easily to make small amendments. 
• Now that we have started using Sam to create animations for us this is something that we are going to continue to do as he has the After Effects skills that we need to bring the posters the next level. Which means we will be asking him to produce more animations like this in the future. 
• We hope that this collaboration is a gateway to us getting more people on board with to help us do things that we don't have the skill for but we have the vision.  

WYS - IDENTITY - POSTCARDS

PURPOSE 

With the main idea behind WYS is books/short run zines we decided that postcards were a good introduction for our audience. The postcards showcase the artists work that we are representing which will help to get that initial interest of WYS out there. Many publishers out there are selling photobooks of similar work so we wanted to produce something that would be easy to sell as we understand that the book/zine market is heavily saturated and it can be hard to sell these types of products. Postcards are the next best thing to a book as they can be used in a number of different ways, for example when you have a zine with beautiful photographs inside this tends to stay on the shelf once it has been looked at once or twice, with postcards it gives the user the opportunity to do what they like with them (stick them on bedroom walls or send them to friends or as gifts). Postcards are also a lot cheaper to produce which means we don't have to charge a premium for them. They are also very easy to change/update which means they can always be relevant and exciting to new/old customers. 

PROMO PACK

FIRST IDEAS 

• The design is simple yet bold and informative everything that is on the back of the postcard is informing the user about the artist and photograph on the flipside.
• They will be full bleed
• Copyright stamp in the corner - this is free to do and we don't want our artists work being used where it shouldn't
• These initial designs explore the possible ways in which the information can be laid out, again I am making sure that design is also relevant to the rest of the WYS identity with the use of capital letters and well thought out typesetting to achieve a clean aesthetic.   
• A6 in size, this means we can fit 4 cards on one sheet of A4 and then 8 on A3 this will help to save money on paper but A6 is also the standard postcard size. 

INITIAL CONCEPT (FIRST DRAFT) 

After experimenting with a few different layouts for the back of the cards, I decided on a format for each card, it was important for the cards to be consistent and for them to have informative information so that the users can then interact further once purchased. 

Each card will include the following:

• Artist bio
• Photo location 
• Artist copyright
• Photo project name
• Instagram handle 
• WYS logo 
• Full bleed image

TEST PRINTS 

Along with the business cards stock that we ordered from G.F SMITH we also choose a few different stocks for the postcards themselves. We thought it was important for the postcards to be of a high standard print as they need to just as good as the images or it will make the image look poor quality. We chose a selection of uncoated stock all at around 300gsm as we knew this would be a good weight for a postcard. 

Stock -

Mohawk Options 100% PC White (tested at 270gsm)

This was our favourite stock out of all of the samples that we ordered, by testing each one we could see and feel which was the best for the purpose of a postcard. After testing the postcards at 270gsm we felt that this was too light and something a bit heavier would be better suited for the postcards. The next weight up from 270gsm on the Mohawk stock was 352gsm which works a lot better and is more durable/sturdy for a stand-alone print. 

CARD - BACK FINAL 

• Perfected the layout, each card is different yet follows the same overall layout that allows the information to be read effectively. The design keeps consistent with the rest of the WYS identity.
• Copyright changed from individual to WYS as this gives better continuity throughout all the cards rather than it saying different name each time.
• Rob and I are using our images on the postcards we decided to make these "WYS" cards rather than individual ones as this gives the audience a better insight to what WYS is and we can also remain anonymous.

ARTISTS - PHOTOCARDS

• This series of photos will be the first edition of photocards that we will be selling
• Photocards are a good introduction to WYS 
• Each artist that we collab with will get X4 photos (of there selected works) 
• Sold in packs of 16 - could change to 10 as 16 maybe too many for one pack.
• GIFs and other mockups in this style will be used to advertise the photocards 

PHOTOCARDS FINAL (DIGITAL MOCKUPS - PRINTING - PACKAGING) 

• Below is a selection of the digital mockups that I have made which help to advertise the photocards in an interesting way which will appeal to out design-conscious audience. 
• These will be used to social media and our webstore

PRINTING FINAL 

• Ordered a good amount of stock from G.F SMITH using The Paper Smith rather than getting samples. 
• Photocards are being printed on Mohawk Options 100% PC White at 352gsm 
• Printed at A4 (4 cards on a page double sided) 
• Double-sided printing did not go best to plan as the printer in the print room has some trouble when it comes to alignment - I have found a way to solve, next time I will be printing on SRA3 using bleed and using crop marks this will mean that we can get 8 cards on a sheet and will be must more cost effective and less chance of them not being aligned.
• In the future, we will be moving the printing to more suited printers which mean that quailty will be 100% 

PACKAGING

• C6/A6 Polypropylene self-seal bags
• Simple packing like this helps to keep all the cards together if they are not being used
• Cheap - 250 on Amazon at £4.75
• For shipping purposes, the cards will be then be shipped in postal sleeves with cardbaord backs so that they do not damage while in transit.