Evaluation

When we were assigned this task I was really excited about doing it, I have always been enthusiastic about marketing and business and had really enjoyed doing a marketing proposal during my a-levels. We were very lucky with the product we were given as although we did not actually know what it was for we were able to find out (by visiting modip) that it was from the 50s and intented for use in the Kitchen which was a very useful starting point. We were all very keen to get going with the project after the briefing but the novelty of doing something new wore off and our ideas were a bit stunted. No one really contributed to the first few meetings but we were able to decide what route to take and had a rough idea of how to progress. Due to having other work to do I feel that myself and other members of the group put the modip project to one side in our minds and forgot about it. We went some time with out having any meetings or putting any ideas together. As the deadline loomed nearer we knew that we had to pull our socks up and crack on with it though so we met up and blitzed through everything deciding on the name, target market, marketing strategy etc. This is when the work really kicked off and things started coming together. Despite my concerns (I am a bit of a worrier) we managed to get all our work done and put together in time for the presentation. 
The presentation was the part of the project I was most worried about as I have social phobia which makes me very uncomfortable doing public speaking, after speaking to Sarah about this she very kindly asked half of the class to leave so that it was less daunting for me and other members of the group who are also nervous when doing public speaking. This made the presentation a lot easier for us and I think enabled us to do it at a higher standard than we would have if it had been in front of the whole class. I actually think that the presentation went really well and was very proud of my group. The feedback we received was fair and was mostly positive and I was very pleased about the fact that people were impressed with my marketing strategy. 
Throughout the project I think we have generally worked really well as a team, we had a few hiccups along the way but we all came together in the end to make it a success. I feel that I may have taken over a bit with the group decisions so I appologise to the rest of the group if you feel I have been too bossy. I did try and get everyone else to contribute so I hope you all feel you had a fair amout of input. 
Overall I am really pleased with how our project turned out and have really enjoyed doing it.

Conclusion.

Today was the hand in of our Modip project and I think it went surprisingly well. We started off this project full of motivation, even going along to Modip straight away to find out more about our object but slowly our motivation, I felt, started to dwindle. We really procrastinated but towards the end we bit the bullet and started to have more and more group meetings which meant in a short space of time decisions got made and we could finally start to crack on with this project.

I think we worked really well together as a group towards the end, we drew on each others strengths which meant that we all could get on with our own piece of the project and complete it to the best of our ability. Even though we did our own boards we still worked as a group because we got together to make sure all our boards looked cohesive and we all had an input in the different sections of the project.

My evaluation

Team Project Evaluation




Throughout doing this project I have realised how hard it can be to work in a team but also the benefits of working in one.

When I first was given this project I thought it was going to be much more complicated than it seemed, but working in a team has helped smooth out those worries and show that I can just have fun with this project, whilst learning the values and ups and downs of working as a team.

I felt overall we got along very well as a team, maybe our communication could have been better, such as when and where we have our team meetings, but I guess sometimes you have to make yourself available for the success of the project. And after learning that other teams had only just started a week before deadline, I felt that we actually have been communicating without realising it.

I felt it was hard to do this project alongside other projects but I think that just shows what it’ll be like in an actual business where you can have multiple amounts of work, and doing this is just training us up to deal with that pressure.

I think that coming up with our designs and brand was much easier to do as you can have many opinions and can make sure that we pick the right thing that we can get into, and will work on our concept.

We split ourselves into different sub-groups of who was doing which board, whilst also helping each other with boards or posting ideas on our blog. I think having the blog was a life saver without it we would have been confused, some people might not have had the same information as others and it could have got very complicated. The blog allowed us the freedom to post what we felt was relevant and also be able to ask for suggestions on work we have done. It enabled us to be critical and decide what will right and also consistent for our boards.

Although I absolutely love designing clothes it nice to have a different aspect on designing by it being completely different to clothing. We found out by going to MoDiP that our object was in fact from the 1950s. The 1950s theme also gave me additional information on that era of time and I found it so interesting doing something sort of history/trend based. It was also good doing the 1950s theme as everyone had the same idea in their head and what sort of colours we would head towards, as 1950s is usually associated with pastel colours. And was also the time of the stereotypical stay at home housewife. Through this we decided instead of going down the more obvious choice of baking to go down the cleaning utensils route. I think this gave us a bit more of a challenge and actually helped us get into the project.

I particularly enjoyed the put together of the boards and felt that my computer skill were given a chance and used to their full advantage. And also being able to present my ideas to other people and all of us to be able to conduct them in a professional way.

My evaluation.

I want to start off by saying that I thought we ended up working really well together on this project. By looking at the outcome of the blog and boards, I'm really pleased with it all.
At the beginning, it felt as though we were going to all work really well. We weren't entirely sure what we were doing and we didn't know how to go about it, but we all decided to come up with some ideas and come back on it. When we came back to discuss our thoughts, everything seemed to go downhill. There still seemed to be a bit of work going on, but we weren't really working as a team.
After a while, we realised things couldn't be left any longer. Somehow we managed to suddenly pull everything together and create the company.
The presentation of our boards, I feel is quite neat. The illustration that Hannah was doing needed to be in a landscape format, so we decided to continue this layout with the other boards. We tried to make sure the same space was around each page for the border, the fonts were all the same size and angle etc. I thought this made the boards flow well with each other.
I found it best that we each had a specific section of the project to work on, because it meant we weren't all researching the same bit. While we were working on our individual parts we all found things that would benefit other members and posted them on the blog so that we were helping each other.
Towards the deadline everyone was feeling really tense, what with the other projects we had to do and how difficult it was to meet up etc, but I think once we worked out how to commuicate around this we connected well and created a good presentation. We all had a go at working with our strengths, but we also each tried to work on our weaknesses so that we managed to complete a combination of tasks.
Personally, I thought this was going to be a horrible project to work on, because at first it didn't really seem fashion-related what-so-ever and I'm not paricularly fond of business related work... I felt that I didn't work particularly well at the beginning of the project, it took me a while to get into what I had to do, but once I had started things managed to flow and work out in the end.

Self Evaluation

We decided that we all want to write a self evaluation for the project.
When we started this project I didn't think it would work as we were all concentrating on our design manuals or trend books. There were ups and downs and moments were I feel we were all getting a little annoyed with each other. However I am really pleased and hope the rest of the group is at the final outcome of the project. I think within the last week we all really communicated and managed to create a high quality brand and prepared presentation.
It all started with our research on the blogs which I feel we managed to collect a lot of and then starting to create our designs.
For the designs I created the mop and the rubber gloves and love all of our products and feel they are fun and practical. After I created my designs Tiffany helped me by drawing them on illustrator as my skills on the computer are not quite as good as some of the others, however I felt my drawing were easy to follow from.
The last thing we had to do was put all of our boards together and so we were assigned a board to work on and I was to work with Celia on creating the Target Market; which I have got to talk about in the presentation, and the Marketing and Promotion.
I have found the project stressful at times but also really exciting as it is something I have never had to do before and I actually really love our brand and at times we found ourselves getting too excited and actually wanting our products to exsist.

Finished!!!

I have finished the illustration board at last! I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out all that needs to change in my opinion tomorrow is the layout of the font and logo so it matches the other boards! but here it is: Hope you guys like it!!


This is what the board now looks like now the font has been changed:


This is now the final final board, I have put the slogan "Don't forget to use protection!" on top of a white box background as when you look at 1950's images the cheeky slogans tend to be layed out like this.

Mine and Hazels Market Board

Illustration board...so far!

This is the illustration board so far...it's killing me!
Its got one of each of our designs on but its taking me ages.

Desperate Housewives

When looking at images to inspire me to do the Illustration I looked at some images from Desperate Housewives, it is an American programme on Channel 4 and it is just awesome! Here are some promo shots that I thought worked really well with our 50s theme:

I think that these images are such provoactive images but are still classy which reminds me of the 50's because illurstations and posters were quite cheeky.

Brand board speech!

Tiff and I got the brand board to work on, we were both happy with this and Tiffany more so as she could get creative on the computer! I am very pleased with the outcome of this board!

Writing what we are going to say in the presentation was actually quite easy and we both knew what we needed to say!

Bing on the presentation!!!!!!!!!!! :)

Team Meetings!!!!

well finally after many ups and downs i feel that all our work is coming together! wooooooo just looking at the work we have all uploaded so far it looks great! veryyyy pleased ladies :) x

speech

We have now all be assigned a board to talk about, which is the one that we worked on and then thats all thats left to prepare for our presentation.

Updated Brand board

I've updated the brand board a bit adding the swing tag in.

Tags

I've been playing around with the tags just wondering if it is preferred in colour or just plain white.

Brand Board

This is the brand board what we've done at the moment, I 'm still tweaking things and working on the tag just wondering what you guys think? Anything you like or hate?
Are the images ok? Too big too small? O and i'm going to put that its the brand board somewhere still moving things around.

idea for the swing tag

In todays meeting Celia was saying that for the swing tag it might be quite good to leave it black and white as hannah's drawing looked really good, but I was thinking maybe we could colour in maybe just her lips or something, to add a bit of colour as thats what all our products are about. What are your ideas?

Finished colour board!

Brand name

Hey me and sam were playing round with fonts on illustrator were wondering if you like this?

AMAZING!!!

I would love to use this image but I don't think we'd be able to get away with it

Brand board guideline

Stuff to go on the brand board:

• Hannah's image of the lady's head with Tidy ups written on
• Swing tag thingamy for Don't forget to use protection (pair of gloves with that in font written on it)
• Close up of black handle its used on every item so people will use it to describe our range. ie when talking they would say 'tidy ups' 'oh is that the ones with the black handle?'
• Need to have a Tidy Ups at wilkinsons or Tidy Ups exclusively at wilkinsons (must have wilkos logo)
• basically we need to get across the mood of the brand, ie galaxy adverts are always glamourous and luxurious to promote the fact that galaxy chocolate is smooth and not your bog standard chocolate.
• think in your head, who are we and what feeling are we trying to put across, ie fun and funky not dull

The benefits of not sleeping

Last night as thoughts whizzed around my head I actually came up with a few good ideas:

• I think that on the mop the handle should be black to tie in with the other items of the range and that the mop head should be coloured according to our colour ways. The head should be replaceable as with most mops, this way people only need to buy the head and not the whole mop in order to change the colour of it. People are more likely to buy the mop head because of the colour than a whole mop as it is easier to carry, it costs less and it means you don't get stuck with two mops.
• Me and Hannah came up with the slogan 'Use protection' for the rubber gloves, I was thinking that on each of the products there should be a swing tag or label with our brand image, price, details of the product, contact info (in case of any problems) and an image of a pair of gloves or our 50s lady wearing gloves and winking with 'Don't forget to use protection' written across it to remind and encourage people to buy our gloves. Normally gloves are in a separate section to the mops etc so I was thinking we could have a row of gloves in the middle of the mop etc section with an A6 size mini poster hanging from the hook with the same image on it. (its really hard to explain what i mean but you know how in wilkos they have the products on hooks then have a price label at the end of the hook in the plastic holder thingamy, we could have a bigger version of that with our mini poster in)
• For our presentation it might be a good idea to assign ourselves job titles within the Tidy Ups company, ie Sarah would be the trend forecaster as she is the one that has been working with colours and styles, this seasons trend is the 50s housewife look. We could have a role for each of the things we need to talk about, such as a marketing director to explain our marketing strategies, market analyst to explain our target market, designer to explain our products etc etc
• During all of this I thought it would be soooo much easier if we could have a powerpoint to help us get across what we are explaining. We could still have the main 5 boards that we discussed in the last meeting but have additional stuff such as the swing tag idea, special edition range colours, target market analysis etc etc on a powerpoint. Obviously we won't do this if we don't have enough time but if we do I think it would make our presentation a lot better and more professional.

Let me know what you think of these ideas

My updated designs

I have updated the designs so that they now are ready to be used on our design board.

The feather duster is now extendable and has a rubber grip and the mop bucket now has a lid.
I have tried to make the dome lid as similar to our original product's shape as possible. The lid slides onto the mop bucket and clips onto the handle. I have done it this way so that the lid can be bought as an optional item and can be easily stored inside the bucket. It also means that you can put it on to carry the bucket then remove it so that it doesn't obstruct you when using the bucket.

My original designs

When we picked the items from the bag in our meeting I picked mop bucket and feather duster. I found some existing designs and put the Tidy Ups twist on them to make them suitable for our brand.
These are the three designs I came up with....

After discussing these designs in our meeting the next day we decided that we should use design 3 of the mop buckets, I just need to draw it out properly so it makes a bit more sense and that we should combine designs 2 and 3 of the feather dusters so that it is extendable and has a rubber grip. We liked the rubber grip so much that we have decided to add it to other items in the range such as the mop and the brush.

Illustrations

I am in charge of doing the illustration board for this project and I was imagining an 1950's style woman in the kitchen using or wearing some of our products. In order to show what I was talking about and imaging I did a quick sketch:
And at our group meeting the next day (Friday the 19th) people thought that the head could work as our tag as well so before I was allowed to draw more I was told to scan the image in and using the fonts we liked that Tiffany looked at maybe put something together. Below shows what I have done;
This is using the Bradley Hands font.












This is using the Brush Script Italic. This is my personal favourite but not sure what everyone else thinks.











This is using the Curlz font.

Designing!

After pulling out the objects from the bag I had to design dusters, sponges and the brush for our dustpan and brush set. Below are the sketches I have made:

Final apron design.

Apron and caddy designs!

final designs

We were given two products to design and mine were the mop and the rubber gloves. We designed three of each and chose the one everyone prefered and then made any changes needed.

The rubber gloves will be coloured with black pocka dots fading out and the mop will be retractable so that it will fit inside the mop bucket for storage purposes.

Spider Diagram on our talked about Customers

I also did a little bit of a customer spider diagram

Font Types

I started to play around with a few different fonts on the computer few are a selection that I found are quite nice and bold. I've chossen a variety between fun and professional. Sorry about the quality I couldn't get my file to upload on here so had to print screen and put onto a paint document.

Designs!!!!!!

Meeting...

- After discussing all the names put forward to the blog, we have decided upon using one which Hazel put forward: Tidy Ups.
- Target market: What age range+ would we have purchased products? 18, as students. (Consider a special promotion, putting the products at the front of the store in the seasonal section to boost sales towards students.) Students particularly like the idea of funky colours. Main market to aim for is women.
- Decided the idea of charity input such as Cancer Research would be a good idea, with something that stands out in particular, such as another colour handle or glitter included.
- What are we doing with the illustration boards? Are we having all illustrations on the same board as the main product? Are we having separate boards? We have decided to combine the illustration board with the brand board which will involve an image of a housewive using out products (which we will then re-use for our product tag) with the name, logo etc. This board needs to be portrait (to keep the boards neat, we need to make sure all boards are portrait).
- How many products are we creating? How are we going to put these onto boards? We've chosen to use 9 items, which on the board will each be in 9 different colours.
- The colours will alternate throughout the year, with only two main colours at a time, so the store is not holding so many of our products. The limited edition colour for seasons will be an extra over that particular time. On the tag, we will have all 9 available colours, which can all be purchased online at the Wilkinsons store, which will have our own section of products.
- Keep the domed effect from the original product througout the range.
- Our nine items: Dust-pan and brush, mop, bucket, feather duster, apron, gloves, carrier box, dusting cloths, sponges. Who is desiging these products?
- A3 boards, we're thinking black to continue the black-handle theme. Maybe have a black border around the outside.

So, what's what then?

Colour board:
- Image
- Product
- Colour

Illustration board:
- Brand image, i.e. window advertisement

Design board:
- 9 different products in 9 different colours

Marketing board:
- Promoting, 3 for 2, limited editions etc.
- How it's communicated to the customers
- Target market

Brand board:
- Company name
- Tag (with logo)
- Advertisement
- Motto
- Wilkinsons: 'Tidy Ups exclusively at Wilkinsons'

Example mottos:
'Use protection'
'Ooh that's dirty'

Lightbulb!!!!

We should do limited edition all pink products and all red products for Cancer research and for World AIDS day!!! We give 10% of the products cost to the respective charities. Gives people more of an incentive to buy our products.

My name ideas

1. The sensible cleaning company
2. The black handle cleaning company
3. Neat as a button
4. Make clean and mend (could include tools into our product range)
5. Clean me! (if we used this name we could sell stickers [like the ones in 60minute make over, if you've ever seen it they have keep me stickers] that have clean me! written on which people can stick to things to remind them to clean something, i think this could work because i am always saying i will clean something then put it off and forget about it)

Seasonal ranges.

A quick question for you all. We've mentioned about how we'd do limited edition colour ranges for certain times such as Christmas. Lets say we do the colours in the traditional red/green... we're also looking at having handles and such in black to continue the theme from our original item. Therefore our product is going to be the same as the rest of our products, only with two colours involved rather than one. So, my question is:

- Are we going to consider patterns for these occasions?

I think that to create a bit more interest, we should. I know that originally we decided to keep everything quite simple and steer away from patterns, but to make these limited edition ranges extra-special I think we need something to really make them limited edition, rather than just a different colour-way.

Leading brand...

In regards to Celia's comment about teaming up with a leading brand, I think this could be a really good idea.
I think particularly around Christmas or the end of the summer holidays when students are preparing for moving away from home, it'd be good to play with the idea of selling products from other brands to attract a potential new buyer. I like the idea of providing the customer with different product options because it gives choice. People like to have the chance to try a new product without having to purchase an entire bottle/tube/can etc.

Products I think we could use:

- Pledge (Celia's original product)
- Oust
- Febreeze
- Cif
- Mr Muscle

We could also bear Wilkinson in mind as an option for products, as this may be a method to boost their product range which would therefore help us to connect well with the company (and stay in their good-books) so that in future, they remember that we helped them, rather than just thinking about ourselves.

Just had an idea

For the cleaning packs we could team up with leading cleaning brands and include their product within the pack, i.e. if we were to have a pack of dusters, gloves and carrier we could include a mini bottle of pledge.

Photos from Wilkinsons

Me and Sarah went to Wilkinsons to see what products they already have on sale and to see what colour schemes they have. These are the main ckeaning products, mops, buckets, squeegees, dustpan and brushes etc. 

I quite like this mop bucket and other items in this range, the floral pattern makes them more exciting and it makes me think that people are more likely to buy items like this for the colours than the function as a mop bucket is a mop bucket no matter how many gadgets it has on it. I think that its important that we focus on the colours and patterns as that is what will make it more appealing to customers. We would have to keep the prices low though as I think the thing that will tempt people to buy the boring products over ours will be the price as they tend to be quite cheap.

We also looked at cleaning items such as gloves, sponges, scourers and cloths...



There are a few nicely coloured items here so we could have sponges etc in our range made with our colour palette. The multipacks of sponges could either have one of each of our colours or could be made up of one colour. We could do the cleaning packs as we talked about before in colour themes so we could have for example, pink gloves, pink sponges, pink cloth, pink holder, pink dustpan and brush etc.  

More of the 50's housewife photos.

Just incase you guys wanted the other photos by Timothy Durkin, here are a few more:

Some more items we could sell.

I went into Wilkinson the other day to check out what products they sell... I took note of a few of the products that were on sale, bearing in mind what we could be desiging for our current collection, but also bearing in mind items that we could use for a collection to be creating as the 'next thing' once our original collection has been released and we need new objects to move on with. (That's not to say we need to design them now, this is purely in reference to the fact we need to think about the future too.)

- Peg basket
- Washing basket
- Mop & mop bucket
- Dish drainer
- Cutlery organiser
- Dish bowl
- Utensils containers
- Bin
- Chopping boards
- Toilet brush (& pot)
- Broom
(I know some of these objects have already been mentioned, but I wrote all of these down as the time because it was all the items I found in the same little area of a smaller Wilkinsons store.)

Illustration Boards

As I said yesterday I was going to email Sarah in regards to the illustrations board, this is what I said;

"Hey Sarah
Just wondering in regards to the illustration board we need to submit as part of Modip do we just highlight one product and show the rest on the design board? or put them all on one board?
Thanks,
Hannah Berry."

and this is what Sarah said in her reply;

"It's really up to you, but I would probably suggest one product with the rest on the board , but they must sit naturally together and link.
Sarah"

I'm not sure what you guys are thinking but depending on what designs we choose I think two boards would be better?

Illustrations!

I've been looking up different 1950's illustrations of household cleaning products and here is what I have found:



I personally really like the idea of doing a tongue in cheek advertising illustration, picking one of our designs and highlighting it (I will email Sarah to check this is okay), thinking of a cheeky caption, including our brand name etc but this does seem to alienate the males but as we are inspired by the 50's in does fit in because it was a woman's role?!