Final Effect

Critical reflection ( Process)

strategy

Brief of Final Project

Major project brief:

Topic name:

Redesign the visual identity and strategy of acupuncture clinic in UK

Introduction:

Nowadays, there is lots of acupuncture clinic in UK, but a host of acupuncture clinic do not have a professional advertising and business plan, which give a low-class impression to customers.

Thus, I hope to redesign the visual identity and business plan of a Traditional Chinese acupuncture clinic in UK. And I hope give a professional and high-class impression to clients of Chinese traditional clinic.

Target Market:

My target clients are 20-40 white collars.

Solutions:

Chinese traditional acupuncture has a great reputation in the world. And the first known book of Chinese Medicine, the Classic of Internal Medicine of the Huang DI, dates back to between the first century BC and the first century AD.

What is more, Traditional Chinese acupuncture is a tested healthcare system that has been practiced for thousands of years in China. And it is an excellent way to treat office disease, such as eyes and spinal column disease.

However, Even though there is lots of vary kinds of acupuncture clinic in the London, and almost half the practitioners follow the non-traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practices.

Thus, I hope take force on traditional Chinese acupuncture, and redesign the visual identity and business plan of a Traditional Chinese acupuncture clinic ‘Fangjin’ in China Town, London. And I hope give a professional and high-class impression to clients.

Deliverable:

Design elements:

Visual identity (Company name, logo,  typographic style, color palette etc.)

Application concept:

Printed communications:

1 business card

2 poster

3 flyer

4 letter

5 brochure

Online communications:

1 website

2 E-newsletter template

Tools:

1 brand guidelines

2 marketing plan 

Critical Debates in Design ( task eight )

What is your opinion on sustainable design?

Sustainable design is about looking far into the future, but it is also about seizing the opportunities of the moment. Our future is being designed today, and as a company we are more committed than ever to helping our customers realize the unlimited potential of sustainable design. (Reference: Carl Bass, President and CEO, Autodesk)

For me, sustainable design is:

1. Future design:

We need design something for future. Using a new resource to replace main raw materials, such as oil.

Solar Energy

2. Eco-friendly:

Designers should take more focus on materials instead of just consider of the final effect. And also designers need to design some projects to raise people awareness of environment problem, especially, in developing country.

           

3. Redesign

Sometime designers do not need to create a new thing. Redesign also is an excellent way to make the world more efficient and eco-friendly.

 Recycled materials

Ten things learned from critical debate design course

Critical Debates in Design ( task seven )

What are you consider to be the role of advertising?

1. It is a means to note buyers and communicate to them about the products they want to buy. What is more, the designers should to let audiences pay attention to products with a short time.

2. Tell the truth to audiences.

3. Normally, the advertise objective are promoting consumptions. Designers should never lay the customers, but they need make the products looking good.

4. The advertising should make the life better instead of overly make maximum profit. (Include, eco-friendly, change people’s bad behavior, etc.)

5. The advertising should promote the sale of productions.

Discuss the ethics of advertising:

1.Tell the truth to audiences.

2.The advertising should make the life better instead of overly make maximum profit. (Include, eco-friendly, change people’s bad behavior, do not design for cigarette, munitions and drugs etc.)

What do your consider to be good advertising and bad?

Good:

1.A good advertising should have a unique concept and good visual or sound effect, since advertising needs to give a big impact or good effect to audiences. Because, nowadays, lots of people live a stressful life and I think watch an interesting advertising is an excellent way to release.

Example:

1) Funny 

2) Sexy  

3) Emotion (Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yatSAEqNL7k)

2. If it makes you aware of goods and services or save your shopping time that you can use and will be helpful. For example, advertising is used to help you become aware that Zhangli is introducing the function and concept of new Nike shoes in China. And I find this advertising useful.

Bad:

1.if the advertising make you uncomfortable or unhappy. Example, idea is boring and sound and visual effect is bad.

2.It is bad if it irrelevant to your needs and is not helpful. For example, I will not buy a car, and the advertising is totally wasting my time. That is ineffecient for car producers and for me.

Research ‘first thing first’ a manifesto by Ken Garland 1964 and the renewal of the manifesto in 2000.

First Things First 1964
a manifesto
 We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, photographers and students who have been brought up in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable means of using our talents. We have been bombarded with publications devoted to this belief, applauding the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination to sell such things as: cat food, stomach powders, detergent, hair restorer, striped toothpaste, aftershave lotion, beforeshave lotion, slimming diets, fattening diets, deodorants, fizzy water, cigarettes, roll-ons, pull-ons and slip-ons.

By far the greatest effort of those working in the advertising industry are wasted on these trivial purposes, which contribute little or nothing to our national prosperity.

In common with an increasing numer of the general public, we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise. We think that there are other things more worth using our skill and experience on. There are signs for streets and buildings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instructional manuals, industrial photography, educational aids, films, television features, scientific and industrial publications and all the other media through which we promote our trade, our education, our culture and our greater awareness of the world.

We do not advocate the abolition of high pressure consumer advertising: this is not feasible. Nor do we want to take any of the fun out of life. But we are proposing a reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication. We hope that our society will tire of gimmick merchants, status salesmen and hidden persuaders, and that the prior call on our skills will be for worthwhile purposes. With this in mind we propose to share our experience and opinions, and to make them available to colleagues, students and others who may be interested. (Reference: http://www.xs4all.nl/~maxb/ftf1964.htm )

First Things First 1964 manifesto

The First Things First manifesto was written 29 November 1963 and published in 1964 by Ken Garland. It was backed by over 400 graphic designers and artists and also received the backing of Tony Benn, radical left-wing MP and activist, who published it in its entirety in the Guardian newspaper.

Reacting against a rich and affluent Britain of the sixties, it tried to re-radicalise design which had become lazy and uncritical. Drawing on ideas shared by Critical Theory, the Frankfurt School and the counter-culture of the time it explicitly re-affirmed the belief that Design is not a neutral, value-free process.

It rallied against the consumerist culture that was purely concerned with buying and selling things and tried to highlight a Humanist dimension to graphic design theory. It was later updated and republished with a new group of signatories as the First Things First 2000 manifesto. (Reference: Wikipedia)

First Things First 2000 manifesto

The First Things First 2000 manifesto, launched by Adbusters magazine in 1999, was an updated version of the earlier First Things First manifesto written and published in 1964 by Ken Garland, a British designer.

The 2000 manifesto was signed by a group of 33 figures from the international graphic design community, many of them well known, and simultaneously published in Adbusters (Canada), Emigre (Issue 51) and AIGA Journal of Graphic Design (United States), Eye magazine no. 33 vol. 8, Autumn 1999, Blueprint (Britain) and Items (Netherlands). The manifesto was subsequently published in many other magazines and books around the world, sometimes in translation. Its aim was to generate discussion about the graphic design profession's priorities in the design press and at design schools. Some designers welcomed this attempt to reopen the debate, while others rejected the manifesto.

The question of value-free design has been continually contested in the graphic design community between those who are concerned about the need for values in design and those who believe it should be value-free. Those who believe that design can be free from values reject the idea that graphic designers should concern themselves with underlying political questions. Those who are concerned about values believe that designers should be critical and take a stand in their choice of work, for instance by not promoting industries and products perceived to be harmful. Examples of projects that might be classified as unacceptable include many forms of advertising and designs for cigarette manufacturers, arms companies and so on. Adbusters has been a significant outlet for these ideas, especially in its commitment to detournement and culture jamming. (Reference: Wikipedia)

So, I think designers can’t just pursuit maximum profit, they should make people’s life better (Take more attention on political and social problem). And we need to believe design can save your country and change the world.

Critical Debates in Design ( task six )

What is the role of packaging?

1. Obviously, easy to delivery, ecofriendly and play an important role in packaging design.

2. A package on a shelf has about 3 seconds to grab the customer’s attention.

3. The grocery store shelf is the first, last, and potentially only time to facilitate a buying decision for lots of new products,

4. Packaging have a good effect of purchases – POPAI shows that consumers enter a store planning to buy about 10 items, buy usually, they take nearly 20 items to the cashier's.

It’s amazing, and perhaps extremely unfortunate that despite the importance of packaging, it can veer so far off course from the core brand experience. As marketers and strategists, we have an opportunity to encourage our clients to bring packaging closer in to the brand communications. In addition, we need to avoid the temptation of overloading the package with marketing messages, making it ineffective (a great illustration is the ‘Microsoft designs the iPod Package’ video)

link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0&feature=player_embedded

Who do you consider to be a good packaging designer?

My favorite designer is Kenyahara. And also he is an outstanding packaging designer. Some key words of his project: minimalism, easy to read and ecofriendly.

What is carbon footprint?

A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation etc.

The carbon footprint is a measurement of all greenhouse gases we individually produce and has units of tonnes (or kg) of carbon dioxide equivalent.

A carbon footprint is made up of the sum of two parts, the primary footprint (shown by the green slices of the pie chart) and the secondary footprint (shown as the yellow slices).

1. The primary footprint is a measure of our direct emissions of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels including domestic energy consumption and transportation (e.g. car and plane). We have direct control of these.

2. The secondary footprint is a measure of the indirect CO2 emissions from the whole lifecycle of products we use - those associated with their manufacture and eventual breakdown. To put it very simply – the more we buy the more emissions will be caused on our behalf.

What is green packaging?

Keywords: Recycling, no plastic, light and the low rate of carbon footprint.

What is traffic light labeling?

A Traffic light rating system is a system for simply indicating the status of a variable using the familiar red, amber (yellow) or green of traffic light.

Do you know what manufacturers can and can’t say on a product label?

Field of use restrictions, e.g. agriculture, wood preservative;

User restrictions;

1 The crop or situation that may be treated

2 Maximum individual dose/application rate

3 Maximum number of treatments or maximum total dose

4 Maximum areas or quantity that may be treated

5 Latest time of application, harvest or re-entry interval

6 Operator protection or training requirements

7 Environmental protection requirements

8 The trade name and marketing company of the product

9 The MAPP (registration) number

10 The product's active ingredients (and their concentrations)

11 Any necessary hazard symbols

12 Precautions to be taken during use

13 Medical advice

14 Safe disposal of the product

15 Advice on what pests (including diseases and weeds) the product controls

Critical Debates in Design ( task five )

Ai Weiwei:

Ai Weiwei (born 1957) is a Chinese artist, who is also active in architecture, curating, photography, film, and social and cultural criticism. Ai collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron as the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics.

Besides showing his art he has been investigating in the corruption and cover-ups under the power of the government. He was particularly focused at exposing an alleged corruption scandal in the construction of Sichuan schools that collapsed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. He intensively uses the Internet to communicate with people all over China, especially the young generation.

Sichuan earthquake student casualties investigation
On 15 December 2008, Ai Weiwei supported an investigation into student casualties in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake started by another Chinese artist. The investigation aimed to compile a list of students killed in the earthquake by 12 May 2009, the earthquake's first anniversary. As of 14 April 2009, the list had accumulated 5,385 names. Ai published the collected names as well as numerous articles documenting the investigation on his blog, which has been shut down in May 2009.

Last year, he releases his music project about Sichuan earthquake. He unmasks the local authorities corruption scandal in the construction of Sichuan schools from this music. But Unfortunately, Chinese government controls the media, so I can't find this music on the Internet.

Ps: He holds his exhibition at Tate Modern. (12 October 2010  – 2 May 2011)

Ma ke:

She is one of China’s most successful designers: Ma Ke. Following her intuition of creating simple organic designs using sustainable fabrics and hand made artisan production, Ma Ke has fashioned two unique collections. Launched in 1996, Exception de Mixmind is a line of sophisticated minimalist daywear distributed in 58 namesake stores and corners throughout China.

In 2008 she was invited to show her work at London’s prestigious Victoria&Albert Museum and at Paris Haute Couture Week.

Clothing Brand:
Ma Ke’s latest endeavour Wu Yong (Useless) was invited to launch at Paris Fashion Week in 2007 and has since been accumulating accolades from the design and art communities. Ma Ke was awarded the title of ‘Best Asian Fashion Designer’ at the 2007 Elle Style Awards.

Socially responsible of the 'Useless':
Ecological responsibility, the designer has the responsibility to consider the negative effect of environment. Designers should take more focus on the process of productions making,rather than just to pursuit of maximal commercial interests. What is more, Designers should to consider the product's long-term use and recycling, rather than do short-lived and disposable products.