Critical Reflection
The creative collaboration project has been massive in terms of getting a big amount of skills and contacts for our future careers. Within this project I was in the Web and PR team, our role was to built a website and a strong social media presence, My main responsibility was social media content and strategy. Throughout the project I was gaining skills in Photoshop and 3D Graphic which I am very proud of, I have learned how to create a 3D animation which was used on our brand’s website, Instagram, video and other content that we did. I have also got a chance to have a professional look at the social media business and gained knowledge in building a successful Instagram strategy. One of the amazing skills that I have gained is time management, I have always been struggling with managing my time wisely and with the help of this project I can now say that I am good at it. As I was working in a team and had to create content and posting schedule for the Instagram I had to quickly learn how to manage my time so that I would be organised in posting good content on time.
Me and my team were very successful in finding our niche, be creative and creating a content that stands out of the crowd which is very important in our “Instagram era” age. As well as enhancing my creative skills I have learned a lot from working in a team and cooperating in a collaboration. I found out that I am good at working with people and finding compromises when needed. As any team my team have been struggling at the beginning with decision making as everyone has their own view on things, which is natural, however surprisingly after finding a great solution that everyone liked we started working very collaboratively and had no arguments or problems within our team which in my opinion is an achievement for a teamwork.
Within our project we had a “collaboration” with the brand called “Ellesse” sadly they were not very collaborative, they have not responded to any of our ideas. This situation taught me a good lesson of not giving up and work even harder to show your result and be proud of hard work that we were doing without anyone else helping us. In my opinion “Creative collaboration” project was a huge success. We have pulled an amazing final event and had a very positive feedback from people visiting the event. As for me this project seems perfectly done there are always things that could be improved. First of all I think that as a group we could have done even more photoshoots as the ones we have done illustrate our ability of working hard and creating professional work. Second of all in my opinion we could of attract more people to the event by finding influencers to promote it and by letting the followers on our social media know about the eve earlier so that would be aware some time before about the event. Personally I could improve my designs for social media content and make them stronger and more. I could also make a photoshoot for PIXEL as I am good with photography but unfortunately we had a time limit and I was more focusing on my responsibilities within the team.
Approach to Creative Development
One of our main tasks was to create a strong website for our creative agency. As I was in Web and PR team I took a big approach to develop the content for the website and our social media. I have been helping designing the whole website. I was contributing in decision of colour palette and sections that we have on the website, I have also created the PXL logo 3D animation which is on the website. I was organising peoples work that they wanted to see under their profiles on the website and putting it in order they wanted it to be. I have been very helpful helping with website design and organisation with my team as we were the ones who built all the website from pieces and we were very prudent in listening to all the wishes and suggestions that or colleagues/classmates had. I have also volunteered to be a model for the promotional video of Pixel with was also a new experience for me.
Strategies that I have adopted are:
1) To create an engaging content with your website visitors like we have created a news section which is a way of engagement through the website, it makes people be interested and stay on the website for a longer time.
2) Have a good contact page. The contact page is one of the most important on the website as after browsing it people who are interested would like to contact and it is very important to have an address there and easy to use contact page.
3) Having an “on brand” design. The photoshoot that we did of us is an amazing example of having an organised, pleasant to look at design and most importantly on brand.
Before creating a website we have done a big research of our competitors and had a look at their websites, also I had a look at what is trending at the moment in terms of promotional graphics. From the research I had a strong understanding of what is attracting people today and it is moving image, interactive content and bright colours. This is how we wound our look and feel of the website.
Social media, Instagram in our case, plays a big role as well. This year we have proven that Instagram can be improved and attract a good amount of followers in just 8 weeks. Me and my team members have built a strong Instagram page for our brand.
Instagram strategies that I have learned:
1) To be aware of who your audience is. Our audience are creatives so we have been posting a creative content
2) Engage with your followers by making interactive stories. We have been doing some questionnaire and a lot of bts videos to grow engagement
3) Track and learn from best performing content. We have been making notes about what posts are doing better than others and started posting similar content based on that.
From the experience that I gained from website creation I have confidence in enhancing my own profile by making it attractive. I would use my research and make my profile interactive, I would have a strong colour palette of the profile based on what I want my profile to focus on and what my audience is. The knowledge and experience that I have gained made me feel very inspired to do a freelance job. Through this project I have became more creative confident and I am planning on building my portfolio and doing more creative content this summer so I can start freelancing.
Physical Evidence
As I mentioned before the even was successful and we had many visitors and most of them are working in creative industry. During the event I gave a speech with my team members about Successful PR strategies which was also a good lesson of public speaking and the ability to present the work we have done in front of the audience that we were not familiar with. People that visited our even were very interested and collaborative, they have asked many questions and were really impressed by our work. I have collaborated with some of the visitors and increased my network of contacts. I have met a women who is a photographer, she liked my work and we exchanged contacts with her. It started with me approaching her and telling her about what our event was about then I started showing her the website, on the website I have shown her my work and showed her the Instagram, she really liked the work that I did and asked me about my contact details first. This kind of situations make me very happy as I know that it could help me in my future career. On the event there also a creative director who really liked 3D animation that I did for Pixel and he also asked me for my contacts. I was being very sociable during the event and was trying to talk to as many people as I could to take everything out from the event. I feel like I did a god job and am satisfied with the outcome that I have received.
In conclusion I would like to say that I very thankful of having such a project as it made me a feeling of working in the industry. The amount of work that I have done personally and we as a group is huge and is a hard work that put me realise that I'm moving in the right direction and helped me to find and develop my strongest skills. Team working gave me an opportunity to get to know my classmates and understand that in future we could actually run a real business together.
