OUGD603 - Brief 04 - Pump n Grind - Evaluation

Strengths and What I liked

For my external collaboration, I worked with Marnie Cox,  a third-year illustration student on a live brief to redesign the visual identity for an independent coffee shop in Hyde Park called Pump 'n' Grind. This has probably been one of my favourite projects to date as not only did I get to see my work being used in the real world but it allowed me to step away from the computer screen and do fun jobs like painting a mural, sign painting and creating vinyl stickers for the walls, door and windows of the cafe. Working with Marnie was great because our individual skills and expertise perfectly complimented one another's styles, meaning the jobs were distributed fairly and outcomes looked really professional. Originally the windows and door artwork was going to be drawn on with a Posca pen, however through communication and collaboration we both agreed vinyl was the best route to go down and it worked out even better than we expected. Overall everything ran smoothly and we're both really happy with how the cafe turned out. Through sharing the project on Instagram Marnie has already received emails from other independent businesses in the area asking if she could illustrate something similar for their windows and interior walls which is amazing evidence that we did a good job. The feedback from the owners at Pump 'n' Grind has also been really positive and they love the new look of their cafe.

Weaknesses and what I didn't like

For a stronger submission, it would have been good to also rebrand Pump n Grind's website to ensure it was in keeping with the cafe's new look, which is something that I could possibly look into doing in the future but due to lack of time and the fact that the work we had done was unpaid I decided against it. We had also initially planned to paint the exterior shutter on the cafe, however, after receiving advice from a painter decorator we decided it was too much of a big job for the two of us to complete in the allotted time frame as it would have been at least 3 full days work to do properly. We are planning on doing this after the hand in as it would be a good way to round off the project for our portfolios as currently the look of the shutter ruins the overall look of the outside.

Time Management

Overall for both the packaging and interior design of the cafe this project took just under 2 weeks to complete (spread out over the course of a few months). Marnie and I worked really efficiently as we both had our separate deadlines to meet therefore we were respectful of each others times and stuck to the individual deadlines we had set one another. We worked really efficiently in the cafe to help each other paint the mural and stick up the vinyl. Originally we thought the work in the cafe would only take a day to complete but when it took 3 days we both worked together to arrange when we would meet and how we could work around it. Organising print slots ahead of time gave us deadlines to work towards and we stuck to the time plan perfectly.