bmcnairprofdev

[bmcnairprofdev]

Reflection

Completing my final year online because of Covid was a bit of a rollercoaster for me personally. My workplace stayed open the whole time and due to the changes in business operation hours were scarce, so I worked a overnight shifts (11pm-7am) most weekends to then have University through days during the week. Balancing those two responsibilities to pay rent and complete University made these probably the hardest few months of my life. I am happy with the work I have produced and the progress I have made given the circumstances, I think I have a really good idea now of what my brand is, where to take it over the next 2-3 years and how to do so. However, in the second semester especially I felt myself becoming very distant from things, academically and socially. I think lockdown and work really started to take a toll on me during this time and I really struggled to motivate myself to do anything some days. I struggled with this side of my mental health for some weeks over this Semester and I do think that limited my engagement across Digital Media at times, I tried to get myself out of it but this was an uphill struggle at times. So now I am arriving at and reflecting on my time in Professional Development, I still remain really proud of what I have managed to complete under the circumstances. I love being around other people and I thrive on that shared energy so, I think working remotely was hard for me in this respect.

If I am being honest I know 100% that I would have completed a better project if Covid hadn’t happened, but when I think about the position I was in a few weeks ago I am happy just to complete the year and have some sort of plan and brand in place. One area I could have probably looked at in more depth was the Industry Engagement. But when I reviewed my interests for a career, I knew I wasn’t in a good enough position to apply to these roles before specialising in video. So really, my job role research became research into different masters courses. But this is the next comfortable step for me and one I am really excited to take. 

The area I am most proud of is my branding. I think the amendments I made over the second Semester brought a real consistency across all of my different mediums.  The branding is also now informative of the brand, rather than just being a symbol to represent it. I think I managed to implement these connotations of Video in a minimalist way, consistent with the rest of my work and overall I am really happy with it. My website now it has been updated in line with the branding looks a lot more professional and integrated with the brand. I plan to keep refining the content on there over the next year, adding and removing work to keep the gallery selective and competitive.

I have really enjoyed my time on Professional Development with Vince. I feel bad that I became somewhat distant from him and the class at times. But I have learnt a lot from Vince and without the comfortability he gave me and other members of the class some weeks, I honestly don’t think I could have completed the year, as this was the one brief where I felt like I controlled my own destiny. So thank you Vince for allowing me to believe in myself and my brand and I really am sorry once again for my distance some weeks, I enjoyed this topic the most if it is any cancellation. The next step for me is to complete the class showreel, apply to my masters and seek out any working opportunities over the next year. Thank you for taking the time to engage with my work and myself and I want to wish all the best to Vince and any other Salford Lecturers or Moderators who may be reading. 

[bmcnairprofdev]

Live Client Work

San Pedro Collective:

I was commissioned to produce a music video for a group called the San Pedro Collective. The video now has 1.6k views on YouTube which is my most viewed video to date. It was a really great experience filming and editing this video for a more established client, as three members of the band are aged over 40 and have prior industry experience. So hopefully this video will turn about to be a good networking tool and we have already discussed the possibility of a future collaboration. They had a video produced for this song before mine but the opportunity came to me when they decided they wanted something different. I filmed with the lead singer over 2 days for the video, only having a week to make the video to meet their deadline this was really good experience as I had to make the time I had shooting count. Fortunately the video turned out pretty well given the quick turnaround, the client were really happy and I had my best payday and viewer count yet so, this was a really great project for me. The Time music video can be found below:

- Time Music Video

One of my friends on the course Will Pickford was producing a website for a  company called UK Tipster. They asked him to help with their release plan and one element of that was a video they could promote/sponsor on Instagram. Will knew my background in After Effects so he got me on board to produce the video. I had him on Teams to ensure it was consistent with the rest of the brand he was building also. It was good to work with Will on a live brief, we are friends but we know how to take ourselves and each other seriously when we need to, we can both see ourselves working together in the future so hopefully this was just the start of us completing projects and making money together. A recording of the advert I produced with Will can be found below:

- UK Tipster Advert

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making the website consistent

I changed the font on my website to ‘Berlin’ a font I had purchased recently to use across my brand. I had the idea to use a red full stop after the heading to represent a recording light, similar to that in my logo. I think this brings a little bit more consistency across the website and the brand. I am really happy with the redesign of the website and I think it looks a lot more professional now. You can see a walkthrough of the redesign below:

- Website Walkthrough

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my elastic instagram post

In my post for the Elastic Social Media I included work from my Exploration and a still from my final major project music video both from this Semester, as well as a still from an infographic in my first Semester. I chose these three because it shows off a good spread of the different work I have produced. 

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F3F2

F3F2 is a brand I have been building with a music group I have worked with for over a year now. We have a shared interest in multimedia content and it is a working relationship that benefits us both ways. As well as helping each other make content, we feel like the shared experience cross media off the group could work really well as an agency working with artists, helping them to produce both musical and visual content. We expect this to be something we build towards over the next 5 years, picking up more artists where possible along the way. The first step in this for us, is to make our F3F2 social media accounts a shared space for artist content. We currently have 2 other bands lined up to post on F3F2, both of which I will be making videos for over the summer. By making F3F2 a hub for a range of content, hopefully it will increase the audience interactions and possible working opportunities. As we work with more artists over time it will increase our skills and hopefully in a few years time the brand will grow into a business. The first step in that is exposure. Which will hopefully come as we start releasing content for three different artists under the F3F2 account.

[bmcnairprofdev]

Rebranding Social Media

- Current Instagram Page

- Current YouTube Page

I have had social media accounts for my videos and design for some time now. Starting a Photography account whilst in my first year of college and my YouTube account posting videos back in the latter days of High School. I think now is definitely the time for me to think about a rebrand and bringing a better visual consistency across my different platforms. I had always been pretty relaxed with my posting on them, just engaging when it felt right. But now I think I need to take these from accounts I used as hobbies to platforms to really promote my business. I thought about starting my accounts from scratch as I might find better engagement from algorithms from a fresh account, not one that has been inactive on and off for years. But I do have a little bit of loyalty to the accounts so, I want to see how just picking up where I left off with a rebrand goes before I think about restarting them.

- New Logo on Instagram

- New Logo on YouTube

I updated the social media platforms with my new logo ready to start posting on them again. I have accumulated a lot of work during my time at University so I have a large repository of posts ready to go whenever. Rather than throwing it all on in one go however like I have seen some other students doing, I am going to schedule my posts so I am doing 2-3 a week. This way, I can use the posts to manipulate the algorithms in my favour by uploading content and engaging with the social channel consistently, something I saw advised time and time again while researching my Dissertation. I plan to start uploading all of my work once I finish University next week. I have a few upcoming videos so I think working on some teasers both motion and still, to show what I will be doing over the summer could be a great place to start. 

[bmcnairprofdev]

Miro

Over the course of this Semester we have built a very impressive Miro board as a class. I think we did a really good job in sectioning up our work and staying organised where possible. Planning a showcase in person is one thing, as you have that shared energy for everybody to bounce off and the presence of other peoples makes us want to engage. Planning showcase online is another thing totally, trying to share ideas and build upon them through a screen is so much harder and I think many of us struggled to motivate ourselves for the showcase, for me anyway there was definitely a lack of attachment to the idea of a showcase because I haven't even left my house in so long. But I think we did really well to develop it to the stage we have. I had influence in the visual aesthetic of the showcase, designing the colour palette, animated gradient and I will be producing the class showreel once everyone is finished but, looking at the timeframes of everyone else this may have to be done after the deadline for professional development. I think I could have had more input in the showcase but, I have really struggled to motivate myself and immerse myself in my work this year working remotely. I have had ups and downs with my mental health and at times just felt really detached from my friends and colleagues. I still think what I have contributed has been good but, I do wish I had been more involved somehow and I cant help but feel like if we got to plan this in the same room it would have been a different story. Thankfully there are others in the class who have worked really hard on this project and I am sure it will turn out really well.

[bmcnairprofdev]

updating website

Now that I have had a bit of time to sit on the design of my website it is becoming more clear to me which parts I need to change. I think the site lacks visual consistency, especially alongside my other social channels. So my first job is to try and create some synergy across my different medias. I thought it would make sense to start by adding my new branding onto the website in the way of a splash screen. I use a lot of video on my website so a splash/loading screen using my logo could be a useful way of retaining the viewers attention. 

- Splash Screens, Wix Blog

- Mobile Splash, Wix Supported

- Mobile Splash, Wix Editor Window

This was really easy on the Mobile Site Editor as Wix had a built in Welcome Page Editor, but on the desktop version I had to develop the splash screen myself using JavaScript.

- JavaScript for Splash Screen

I looked online for a tutorial on creating a splash screen for desktop Wix, the video I followed can be found at this link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4ewOH-ItDI&t=634s 

- Wix Developer Mode

- JavaScript Embedded, Homepage

Once I had turned on the Wix Developer Beta, I was able to edit the code for each of my pages. To create the splash screen, I went to my homepage and added a white box, with my logo on top. I then simply used the JavaScript as a transition to remove the box and logo from view with a fade. The only editing I had to do with this code was renaming my focus, in the Script this currently states #lightbox1, I renamed this to #box1 (the name of my white box(, as my logo was parented to that, it followed the same actions. To add a finishing touch, I also animated my logo to reveal with an expand as this extra movement connotes to the viewer that something is loading and the website has not froze. This turned out far easier than I expected it to be to be honest, a few simple lines of code to be renamed and it was done. I think in the near future I want to make an animated Gif out of my logo to be used as a loading indicator, but this is merely a case of swapping my png for my Gif when I have produced it.

- Desktop Splash, JavaScript

Now that I had my logo in place, I started to get a better picture of how I could edit the site, following the same stylistic features. I wanted to increase the spacing across my website, as well as incorporating bolder text and a little splash of colour (red) in the same way as my logo.

Now that I had my branding on site, it started to become clear to me how to arrange the rest of my content and signposting. I think this awareness of how to reorganise my content was a mixture of both the gestation period of my website, I had grown accustomed to the site and it’s necessary improvements became more clear over time, but also adding the branding allowed me to make more informed decisions on the presentation of the brand, as the iconography itself is a lot more refined than before. So I think adding this was a really big and helpful step in deciding on the design of my website, informed by the visual aesthetic of the brand itself.

[bmcnairprofdev]

Masters I am Applying to

I have talked a couple of times about applying to masters courses after I finish my third year. of University. After looking at a number of courses for some time, I think I have made my final decision. It has been my front-runner the whole way but now I think I have made my decision final. 

Compared to the other courses I think the Video Production with Marketing masters offers the biggest range of employability. The division of work between practical, essays and presentations/group work will fit me perfectly. It almost seems like these percentages are a reflection of my interests in each area, not the engagement with each on the course. The course also offers opportunities to work with Industry Partners which could be a great opportunity to work on some Live briefs as well as network.  Overall, I just think this course will suit me really well and facilitates growth in all of the areas my interest is growing in at the moment. As I will be coming from Digital Media, I think it will be best if I talk to a lecturer on the course to discuss what of my skillset from Digital Media will be transferrable, and find out if there are any areas I should be looking at before hopefully joining the course next at the start of the next academic year.

[bmcnairprofdev]

career roadmap digital

This career roadmap outlines my plan for the next 1-2 years. The curve of the points doesn't necessarily indicate the positivity of events but I also do like the fact that it isn't a straight line for this point too. I wanted to visualise my points on a graph clearly, saving the specifics of each point for the description below.  My plan for the next 12 months is to apply to a masters at Salford University. I am still looking at a small selection of masters but the front-runner is Video Production with Marketing. I want to progress my skills in video so the practical element of this course will suit me well. The Marketing element is something which I have had a growing interest in across my work in the last year and in the long run, it is something that could give me a different angle in interviews that a standard video production might not.  Whilst I am (hopefully) studying a masters, as well as the content on the course I want to try and secure freelance work too. Some of my plans for securing that work include using commission apps like Fiverr, handing out my contact to local business and also looking to work with local charities as this is a good opportunity for meaningful work. With the growth of social media everybody can benefit from a video. 

Step four is making a project I have been working on with some artists in University into a business. F3F2 is a brand I have been growing with musicians which we plan to develop into a multimedia production agency in the long-term. In the process creating a hub for a small number of artists content, picking more up as the brand grows. This will be an ongoing project and will hopefully provide a lot of opportunities for me to make a range of content. In around June/July I Will finish my masters and hopefully by this point I will have solidified some brand credibility in the local area. Through working with clients on the masters course as well as my work with local artists and business if possible. The specifics of my career plans may change whilst I am studying my masters. But right now I plan on looking for a role in some sort of multimedia business. I enjoy producing a range of content and working with people, in what context this will be is something I will likely define further over the next year.

[bmcnairprofdev]

Elastic

We met on Miro to vote on which of the suggested theme we wanted to base the showcase on. Elastic was my suggestion so I was pretty chuffed when it was the one that got chosen. I do think it is a really nice metaphor for our class though, whenever we’ve been put under pressure we have bounced back. 

- Class vote on Theme

Now that we had decided on the name Elastic I started to think about visualising elastic motion. I was discussing the space with Glenn and we both thought that there might be a possibility of projecting some sort of texture onto the floor. I thought I'd start by defining a colour palette as we hadn't really decided on one yet. I had been thinking about the balls of elastic bands people would make in school (below) and picked out some colours from there which I felt had connotations of school subjects, for example for me personally blue would remind me of Maths. To make the gradient I imagined what bouncing the elastic ball would look like in macro. When I was animating the gradient I just followed the same principles of elastic, tension and release. 

- Animated Gradient 

- Suggested colour palettes

I put both the gradient and the colour palettes in the group chat to get feedback on them. Personally I liked the bottom gradient and from the feedback everybody seemed to agree.

- Elastic band ball

I made the basic gradient in Illustrator and animated it using turbulent displace and wave warp to create the rippling, as well as motion tile to repeat and mirror the edges.

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Updating Design CV

- Old Design CV

- New Design CV

I was pretty happy with my Design CV I produced last Semester. Using an iteration of my own logo as the design makes it synonymous with the brand. The only changes I made was resizing the bodies of text, scaling them down a little. As well as re-aligning the bodies of text in accordance with a grid set in thirds. I just wanted to tweak the text to bring a little more balance to the CV. I also fixed some typos and spacing within the text. This was mostly a case of finishing touches, I thought about a redesign but I think this CV still works well with my brand, I will likely change it when I look more seriously at applying to jobs post-masters and my brand becomes even more focused around video.

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career roadmap start

Initially I wasn't sure how far in the future to look with my career roadmap. But when I think realistically the exact job role I want post-masters is something I’m still unsure of. But for the next year one thing I am sure of is I want to exercise my interest in video production more. This was where my interest in design all started so I feel like it is something I should specialise in before I leave University. There are a small number of courses I'm looking at but the front-runner at the moment is Video Production with Marketing. I think the marketing element could give me another good perspective and it is something I have had a growing interest in over the last year too. Whilst I am studying my masters I want to try and find some freelance work to grow my brand in the meantime. 

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Jobe Role Refinement and Research

Working in a Design Studio was always a bit of a dream of mine. But the more time goes by and the more I engage with the industry, the more I come to realise that I might even like to work in-house at a business. 

This example of a Photographer/Graphic Designer role is something I think could suit me quite well. Being able to work with one brand consistently, then working with them to conceptualise and produce ideas I think suits me a lot more than new projects constantly, the longer I work on something the more intelligent my response becomes, I envy designers who can turn out projects in mere days. The role being multimedia and requiring skills in a number of design areas I think would keep my interest a lot better than a more one-tracked role. So I think this is something I will pay more attention to when I look for jobs I the future, ensuring that I am able to exercise a number of my interests, especially using a camera. My plan for now though is to study a masters and freelance for the next year, so my job role research is relating to 2022/2023, I just want to get a better picture of what roles best facilitate my interests and skillset.

One Design business I have been thinking about applying to in a years time is Stein IAS. My friend and colleague on the course Will Pickford has recently secured a role in the business so that alone could be a greta starting point in an application. They are an international business so there is plenty of opportunity to work. In addition, Will communicated that they put on classes for each designer to keep learning, so it sounds like a really positive, supportive and realistic working environment. As well as print and web based work they also produce video. They sound like a really great company to work for so over the next year I will definitely keep an eye on the business and see if it is something I still want to apply to after my masters.

I also hope that over the next year I can maybe even gain some industry contacts while freelancing or through my masters which later down the line could turn into a job. Either way over the next year or so I am just going to engage with every possibility that comes my way.

[bmcnairprofdev]

Branding Re-Design for Video

- Video Logo Rebrand

The Typographic logo I created for myself last Semester I think works well I a minimalist way but it doesn't offer much in the way of brand perception. Although I like the look, what does it really say about my brand?  As I have been looking more into masters courses and thinking about where I want to take my brand I have also been thinking about how I can reflect this visually in my branding. It is becoming more and more clear to me that moving forward the forefront of my brand is going to be based around Video Production.  So how could I communicate the video focus of my brand, whilst still retaining the minimalist aesthetic I strive for across all of my personal work. I tried to think of stylistic features of camera ad video, then reducing down until I had one piece of iconography communicating this theme. I was looking at some of the Japanese art in my room when the solution hit me, the red recording light on cameras in Film. Often they are taped over so it is not something we see all that often, but the red recording light of a camera is something that sub-consciously I think we are all aware of. 

- Experimentation with stroke weighting and positioning

I played around with the scale and position of the red cube until I felt it help the same weight as it would if the logo were a camera body. Although this was a really simple change it took me quite a few weeks to actually come up with the idea. I experimented with just having the logo and red cube but I think the bounding box is what ties it all together. The box itself I experimented with a lot of different weighted strokes, before deciding on a very bold 30pt stroke. It didn't really work in the same way with a thin box, I think the high weight helps to fill some of the space between the typography and the red cube. This space bugged me for a while, but after increasing the stroke of my bounding box and finding the right scale for my cube, I think it has a really nice balance. I like the free space within the logo, it is a little different, stops the logo being too in your face and I like the connotation that there is room in my brand, whether you perceive that to be room for improvement, room for collaboration, I just think its nice to avoid being overbearing. 

I think the logo has an interesting style too, it has a retro feel which almost takes me back to the earlier days of gaming during the growth of personal devices, playing games like early Pokemon. I also think the colour scheme and the general spacing reminds me of Design work originating from Asia. I have been watching a lot of documentaries about Japans culture and design so maybe the Sakura Sun has served as some inspiration sub-consciously. The red cubes on the art in my room (below) I think definitely had an influence.

- Japanese Art in my Room

- Japanese Art in my Room

Overall though, I am really happy with this logo rework, It is really simple, but now it actually says something about my brand and my love for camera. I posted the old and new logo’s on some social media stories to get some feedback from close friends/artists. The responses were really positive, I would say minutely over 50% made the link to video, with the other half just commenting that they really liked it, both of which are perfectly fine with me. I will include a couple of screenshots of this below.

- Feedback from Jack Harper, studying Graphic Design

- Feedback from Will Pickford, studying Digital Media

[bmcnairprofdev]

Ways of Freelancing

One way of securing commissioned work which is becoming increasingly popular is using middleman apps like Fiverr and creative Commission, two such sites I am signed up to. They advertise commissions for designers to apply to with their portfolio, projects range in size and payment from pounds to thousands of pounds, so these can be really great platforms to find work. I will be scouring these over the next year applying to anything that is feasible.

In addition to this, now that more businesses are re-opening post-covid especially, I want to try and work with more local business. In my Dissertation I looked in detail at producing and distributing content through digital/social media channels. In this time I think I  picked up a lot of knowledge which could help me produce promotional content for local businesses. To secure this work I plan to make business cards of some sort to hand out to local businesses, I can walk around the local area handing them out and chatting to the owners to. I might even have some sort of competition where the first 3 or 5 owners to reply get a free or heavily discounted video, hopefully the fear of missing out on a cheap video will mean they give me a change to produce their content, either way I am happy as long as I am getting some experience and brand exposure. This would also be a good way to build some brand credibility in the local area, which in itself can open up a whole world of work. 

A third way I have thought about securing work is by contacting local charities. One example that really sticks out to me is DogsTrust, although these may not be a company I would work with in particular they are representative of the market I am observing. Charities are always looking for help and like businesses, content and engagement on social media can be crucial to their success. So by offering my services for free, hopefully I can secure some meaningful work. This idea did start thinking about my younger days volunteering at animal sanctuaries when I wanted to be a vet. These institutions do a lot of great work and I think there is a huge market for documenting this, especially with animals; people on social media love to watch animal content, so why not encourage this coming directly from charities, creating that direct link with them and their audience. This could be a really great way for me to secure meaningful work as well as developing my skills in Photography and Cinematography. 

Hopefully over the next year I can find work in one or a couple of these areas, but by engaging with each hopefully opportunities will present themselves down the line. I will also have University studies and contacts to think about during this time also. 

[bmcnairprofdev]

Masters Research

The front runner for my choice in masters is digital video production and marketing. I really like that the course is balanced 50% practically and 50% theoretically. Video production is what sparked my interest in design so I think this course could be a really good day to further than interest and specialise in that subject. I think marketing is something that could give me an edge in an interview and it is something I would like to further my knowledge of regardless. Most likely this is the course I will be applying to. From speaking to other students with experience of the course I’ve heard a lot of positive things. 

Film production is another course I toyed with because it could be a better route into developing my production and production management. In the long term I would love to manage a team of people so film production could be a good route into gaining some experience in that. But I don't feel like it offers the same employability as video production with marketing, which also has my more of my interest regardless of the fact. 

Something that has played in the back of my mind is trying to get on the wildlife documentary course. Earlier in life I had wanted to become a vet and volunteered in an animal sanctuary so, I definitely have a dream of being a cinematographer on planet earth one day if the opportunity presents itself. But realistically I think I should base my decision and employability and there video production and marketing I think offers the most.