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Colouring in

A lot of the work I do within the Web Team involves me hammering out code for large portions of the day, though there are times where I get to indulge my creative side. I’ve had the opportunity recently to take a breather from a project that’s nearing completion to help out with our preperations for the ‘Design Matters’ suppliers fair, where we will have a stand to demonstrate the work we do within the University.

We wanted to make up some ‘schwag’ to give away, and rather than the typical and tired pens, stress toys or coasters we thought we’d try and help our potential clients to indulge their own creative sides by giving away sets of coloured pencils. Our designer Claire had already produced the designs for our posters and banners, so we did a quick concept sketch (on a paper take-away bag) to translate the elements into this small form factor and I took Claires source graphics into Photoshop to create the layout and produce the inserts.

I only really had half a day and a minimal budget so was unable to outsource the printing and do anything fancy like die cutting, designing fully custom packaging or getting the pencils themselves branded. Maybe next time!

Because I work in an online medium, it’s satisfying to make a physical product for once, something that you can actually pick up and use rather than interact with via mouse and keyboard, plus the coloured pencils are a nice analogue analogy for our design process, which mainly revolves around the digital world.

Theres a full ‘Photoblog’ on my Flickr page where you can see more full size images of the project in progress.