In this Signal collaborative project, I have taken a role at the PR team. I really enjoy being part of this team and I have gained a lot knowledge working with other students.
My main role in this whole project was quite diverse, I get to touch base on every bits and little which let me experience and learn a lot of new things. My major role was to do anything related to communication design including, designing poster, flyers, logos, banners for social media, booklet and layout of the website. I also taken part in editing biography photos for the website, pretty much branding and shaping a certain theme for the entire Obsession project. I am very happy to be able to utilize my previous experience and studies of graphic design into this project, although it is quite a lot of work, it is something I am passionate about and enjoy doing which makes thing easier.
As I am not a good writer, Elaine took a huge part in writing up short paragraphs and descriptions for the site and social media platforms. While Marissa did a fantastic job with the press kit and release it on time. Also thank you for Gianna for linking all the blogs to the student names on the site, which probably will take me a while to do it. Also Siobhan from the production team was nicely helped me with setting up the biography page as there’s only a few of us that can edit the site and I couldn’t reach to Gianna for a while, Siobhan had gave PR a big hand. I think overall our team have done a great job, we communicate a lot throughout the entire project via Facebook chat. However, it would have been better to have actual meetings, as some members sometimes will miss out conversations easily. Also time management for the booklet was quite last minute work, although Linda have set up a draft booklet, members from other team reckon if the booklet is more uniform with other design will be the best, as it will be more presentable to the public and other students. As I couldn’t make it to the first printing of the booklet, there was a little mistake with the printing and have to reprint the day of the exhibition, luckily the booklets were made before the actual opening. From the poster design, I have also learnt that many things has it’s requirements, such as the guide line for City of Melbourne logos and Signal logos. All these have its standard measurements and placement on any posters. Although it has caused a lot of trouble sending back and forth to Amanda for approval, it is something important I should bear in mind in the future as these are the rules. Also the copyright matter of the signal photo I used in the poster needs a bit of editing as it shows other artist’s work which sits on copyright problem.
I also realized the importance of communicating with members from other team. Such as on going communication with the entire class, when it comes to submitting work like thumbnails and blurb, not everyone did what they were suppose to do resulting in a lot of missing things and delays with the booklet and website. At the end, the whole PR and production needs to directly message to people who haven’t done it and chase them down. Unfortunately, there were still last submissions which made the booklet and website look “unfinished”. I think in order to fix this “delay” problem, we should plan the due date a bit earlier and also chase people down a week before so we will have enough time for the late submissions. Apart from communicating with the class, communicating with other teams is also quite important. I have on going conversations with the production team updating where we are heading to, while Marissa keep track with the documentation team as they are the team who provide us material for the website- the biography photos. I am glad that we have communicated with other team because there were moments where our team has work overload, we were glad that Nicolette and Claudia were offering helps as well as calling others to help especially for printing and organizing posters.
As for the RMIT exhibition, I didn’t really take a part of it as Installation team was mainly in charge with it, all I did was to send over the poster design which Robbie helped with re0formatting as I was having too much assignments and doctor appointments going on during that week. I am grateful to see the whole class was so considerate and even Robbie was putting a lot of effort in communicating and following up thing with us.
Reflecting of this semester, it has been a great half year, considering this six months is my year 2, I am very happy that I have taken Specific to Site, not only the course suited me so well, Robbie and the classmates were a wonderful team. I love working with all these people and it have been a great and successful exhibition at the end.