Beauty Calendar yo.

Working on finalising the beauty calendar. Thought it would be a good idea to print it out, just to get an idea of the type and see whether there is anything that needs to be changed.

Noticed that some of type was really feint in some place, I think as it was great and using the Lato hairline typeface meant it really wasn't that visible.. Need to get it changed asap.

calenderlarge.pdf by Baljeet Kaur Samra

Printed it b+w and bound it together just to see how it looking, quite like it, it works much better than I thought it would and it makes sense to have made it like this instead of making a 210 x 210 book, as it just wouldn't have worked as well as this. Looking forward to getting it printed in colour!

An idea.

After looking into different brands for my cosmetics branding, I realised that I didn't really have a problem to solve.. having been in a crit it occurred to me that there wasn't really a search engine out there that allowed men to buy cosmetics and skincare for women without it seeming like a daunting task.. I'm looking into working on a design for a website / app that makes it easier for men to buy gifts.. that are relevant and actually knowing what they're buying.

The website will work in 2 ways;
- A search function that allows the user to search for particular products if they know what they're looking for
- A series of questions that need to be answered which refines results and allows you to view a series of products that will be relevant to who ever you're buying for.

Obviously I won't be designing the website so I need to focus on the design but a lot of it will also be dependent on the usability of the site. It needs to work in the way that I have intended..

For the sake of the brief and my brain I decided that the site will only stock certain brands - not everything single cosmetics and skin care brand out there. It will be selective about the brands which will focus from high street to more high end brands. It needs to be balanced to cater for a series of budgets.

I'm trying to stay clear of individual products and focus more on having gift sets, or collections which make better gifts anyway..

Cosmetics Brands so far;
Bare minerals
Benefit
Bourjois
Chanel
Clinqiue
Estee Lauder
Nails inc
Sleek
Stila
YSL
Soap and Glory
Smashbox
Revlon
Nars
Urban Decay
Illamasqua

Skincare brands;
Soap & Glory
Burt's Bees
Caudalie
Clarins
Decleor
Elemis
Elizabeth Arden
Emma Hardie
Liz Earle
L'occitane
This works

Charming lads.

Making Decisions.

After yesterdays crit I realised that within the next few days I would need to make decisions asap otherwise I would be designing just for the sake of it. I started of with finalising what I would be doing for the homeware/colour brief and believe or not have now made a firm decision which will make life a bit easier.. As I've already got the concept and the ideas behind the patterns I'm doing it was mainly about narrowing down the context.

Final brief : Design and brand a range of dinnerware for the Wedgwood Spring/Summer 2014 collection which will be exclusive to selfridges. (Haven't yet decided how the homeware side of things so soft furnishing and what not will be branded.. thinking it might be selfridges own brand? So I haven't technically finished making decisions..)

For the cosmetics / beauty brief from talking in the crit yesterday I thought it would be interesting to approach it from a male buying perspective so looking into something that would make it easier for males to buy something for the other half, sister, mum, nan or girlfriend.. or whoever it might be.

Haven't yet defined the context of this completely but I'm going to ask the guys in the group what kind of places they're likely to purchase beauty related gifts, whether it be somewhere like Boots or Superdrug or whether they go to department stores or somehere more high end like Space NK. So once I've got feedback on this I'll know which context to be working in.

BRIEFS.

current briefs yo. by baljeetkaursamra

Brief 1
Dowue Egberts Coffee - YCN Collaboration with Sarah Pritchard

Brief 2
Tigerprint Colour

Brief 3
Branding

Brief 4
The story of 1984

Brief 5
Makeup/cosmetics Packaging

Brief 6
Design Context

Brief 7
Interior Design yearbook

Brief 8
Geektable collective (Additional)

Brief 9
Process Beauty (Additional)