Chocolate business card...

I'm aware that I need to create my own business card soon so with that in mind I was looking at unusual and inventive cards on the internet and I came across this...

It's made entirely from chocolate in an attempt to make people remember the company. As inventive as this is I'm a bit sceptical about wether you would remember the name of the company once you'd eaten it!

Blank manual...

Ok, I'll try to stop posting about direct mailers but they're more inventive and interesting than I thought! This one for Vodafone was a instruction manual for their new wireless service. The manual however was completely empty, showing how simple and easy it is to use their new service. Such a simple way of conveying how easy it would be to use this service...

Paper burglar...

I wish I had seen this when we were doing the police brief...

What a great way to convey a very important and serious message in a humorous and inventive way. As you can see inside the envelope a piece of paper unfolds to create a life size burglar along with the text, "it's that easy to get in your home." Its quite frightening and yet amusing at the same time!

RIP Rats...

Who knew that pest control companies were so inventive! In contrast to my last post this pest control company went away from the humorous approach to produce this direct mailer...

They sent out tiny little coffins in the post which undoubtably would grab people's attention instantly and it is directly related to the service on sale.

'Rats Health' magazine...

I was researching direct mail campaigns for the new alcohol awareness project and I came accross this...

It has to be one of the most bizarre direct mailers I've ever seen and I couldn't work out what it was. It simply featured a number of miniature magazines which would certainly confuse and intrigue the recipient. After carefully looking at it and reading up on it I discovered that this was to advertise an extermination company. It just makes you think that someone must have really considered this mailer and come up with an original idea rather than sending some frightening information on rats!

28 days to go...

It's 28 days to go until Christmas and with that in mind I was looking at unusual Christmas cards and I found this one designed by VW. I really wish I'd thought of this! I think its a really clever way to send out something corporate that you'd actually want to keep. I can't believe how simple it is!

Intellident...

Last week I was fortunate enough to spend a week's work experience at Intellident, a company which specialises in RFID electronic tagging. This technology has led to them being involved in all different areas of retail. To be honest, I did not really know what to expect from this placement, with it being a company that is not specifically design based. However when I began working there I realised how vital it is to their industry.I was set a number of different briefs throughout the week, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed. They involved a wide range of different formats and forced me to adapt to many different ways of working.

To begin with I was asked to design a logo for their new product, the

smartBlade. I was given a range of brochures in order to give me some information on the product and then i got designing....

The company already had a very specific visual identity and so I wanted to stick to this style, but at the same time show elements of the product in the logo. The key element of the product that stood out to me was its flashing light and I really wanted to convey this in the design. After a lot of consideration, myself and a few members of staff chose this logo...

I was pleased with the final logo and I have since heard that it is now being used to promote the product.

My second project was using flash, a program which although I enjoy using, I have only had a small amount of experience using it in the past. The company wanted a Christmas E-Card that they could send out to their clients via email so it had to be a short animation that would not be a huge file size. I came up with 4 animations in total but sadly blogspot is upsetting me and not letting me upload them so I'm afraid you'll just have to take my word for it!

Thirdly I was asked to look at some rough designs for a new machine that they will soon be putting into production. I was told that in the future, libraries will dispense E-Books and iPods with the reading material already loaded onto them rather than lending you the book itself. Therefore Intellident have designed a machine that will do this for them. These new consoles will then attach onto their already existing machines. I was asked to look at the designs for it so far and mock up the image on Photoshop to look realistic.

I haven't really done anything like this before so I wasn't entirely sure what it would end up looking like but I have to say I was quite pleased with what I came up with! I did this on the first day quite quickly and I was told the next day that it was already being used in presentations which I was very happy about.

After having designed the smartBlade logo, I was asked if I would design a simple website consisting of only one page which would have a small amount of text and a video about the product. After experimenting with many different layouts I finally came up with this design...

I found this to be a difficult brief with it only being one page and with it containing very little content. However I have since been informed t

hat the web design team are creating it and it should be linked from their website very soon.

And finally! When Intellident send out information on their products they use data sheets consisting of an image of the product and all the technical information on it. As they are currently trying to expand their client base to schools I was asked to design a data sheet that would look much less intimidating to read and would be appealing to a school. I came up with this...

I decided to go for the 'school notice board' look as I thought it would be a layout that teachers could relate to and would catch their eye. I was told that they will soon be using this design to send out to primary schools in an attempt to increase their client base.

As you can probably tell I really enjoyed my time spent here. I was only there a week and yet I feel I got so much done and gained some really valuable experience about the working environment. Before hand I thought I was pretty good at using the Adobe creative suite software but due to all the experimenting I did with my work I learnt so many new techniques and features I didn't even know about before!

When I left they asked me if I would be interested in doing some work for them in the future if they emailed me when they needed things doing so hopefully this will lead on to many more opportunities in the future. I was so glad that they asked me to keep in touch as I found my week spent there really valuable and I hope that they were happy with what I produced.