IXD103 Week 1: Lecture Reflection

Introduction To Exploring Identity Module

The first part of this lecture was an introduction to the course and what we’d be doing. We first looked at how many different job titles related to interaction design there are.

I know now that I should start thinking about what areas I’d like to work in. I learned that it’s not about the title so much as the work entailed that should determine what you want to do. We were given some links to look at different websites and practitioners to get a better idea of what these titles entails. Looking at these should hopefully help me figure out what direction I want to go in.

 

 

 

Right now, I can see myself working in lots of different areas but I think over time I’ll be able to pin point what I excel at and enjoy doing the most. What like about studying Ixd is that there is such a wide variety of titles and jobs so that I hopefully won’t feel tied down forever to one specific type of work, if that makes sense.

We then looked at the Module Aims and Learning outcomes for this module.

This helped give me an idea of what this module is all about and what I would be learning.

We also looked at time management and how Gantt charts are a helpful way of planning out and managing projects at different stages.

I will be honest in saying that I’m pretty bad a  time management (I’d say lots of creative people are) so it wouldn’t hurt to try this and see if it helps me keep on top of things.

We then looked at what a design process (in relation to branding) looks like which gave me a helpful idea of how to approach my deliverables. We also looked at the deliverables for this module. Looking at these got me exited as I think I’m really going to enjoy designing my own brand and developing my portfolio site.

 

Brand Ideals & Tone of Voice

The second part of the lecture was all about brand ideals and tone of voice. For we looking further we were given the task of describing and inanimate object in our home or on our desks infant of us without naming it to see if others can guess it. Here is a link to the blog post with what I did and my thoughts on the task: https://blogs.ulster.ac.uk/laurabfoy/2021/01/25/ixd103-week01-object-exercise/

After that we were given another task , this time to describe a book/album in something like 140 characters and also sketch something to represent it visually. Here is a link to the blog post with what I did and mu thoughts on this task: https://blogs.ulster.ac.uk/laurabfoy/2021/01/25/ixd103-week01-book-recommendation-task/

After those tasks, we took a look at brand ideals. I learnt that ideals are the elements that shape a brand, kinda like a skeleton in a way.

We did a menti exercise looking ate the different words we associate with various brands like Coca Cola and Apple. It was interesting to see some of the disparities between what they say their values are and how they come across to us consumers. In a way it’s much worse to claim to uphold certain values and ideals if you actually don’t because then your brand comes off as disingenuous and untrustworthy. I now know what to consider when deciding on my own brand values and ideals.

We then went on to look at tone of voice and linguistic register and their importance in developing a brand identity. I had learned a lot about the importance tone in English class in secondary school and when something I learned before is  relevant to what I’m doing now. We looked at the different linguistic registers being; frozen, formal, consultative, casual and intimate. I. think that a casual register would probably suit my brand best but I might change my mind when I develop it further.

We also looked at brand dictionaries and how they are a sort of palette of words that are utilised help define a brand.

We then looked at developing a personal brand. I learned that we as people all have our own brands without even necessarily being conscious of it. It’s our reputation, the impression we leave on other people and as Jeff Bezos puts it “it’s what people say about you when you’re not in the room”. I also learned that it’s important to present yourself in the way that suits the areas you actually want to be in.

We looked at a Personal Brand Strategy with a few different points to consider when trying to develop our own personal brands. This is a helpful guide and is getting me to think about what areas I ‘d be happy working in and what way to best present my brand to fit well in those areas, as well as thinking about my values, what I ‘m good at and how to reflect all this throughout my brand.

After that we were given an elevator pitch task to do in pairs where we’d each have 2mins to describe ourselves and each person describes who they spoke to both in brief sentences and in 5 words. This is a task that would have been really beneficial in potentially helping me figure out some of my values, strengths and vision. Sadly though there were technical difficulties within my group so we couldn’t get describing ourselves to each others.

We then looked at the 3-pronged strategy to approach presenting a brand online. These 3 prongs are social like instagram, gathering like blogs and Pinterest, and story through website/ web presence. We looked at what content audits which are a great form of research directing and analysing other brands to help figure out how to define our own.

Lastly I learned that if you are thinking of a domain name that may or may not be available but aren’t prepared to buy it, don’t search for it or else a bot will buy it. It’s good to have a range of backup domain names though incase your most desired one is actually unavailable.

I learned a lot it this lecture and was a bit surprised that the branding process begins with words as you normally see the word branding and jump straight the idea of logo marks and visual presentation. Now though I see how important it is to start out with language. It’s like I said before, words are like the skeleton of the brand. It is what shapes everything that comes after, so the logo mark and colours and everything are like skin. You would be pretty useless without any bones, and so would a brand without ideals, tone of voice, values, a vision etc. I’m aware that this is a pretty weird analogy but hopefully it makes sense

This Week’s Tasks

Here are links to my blog posts on the tasks assigned for this week.

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