For this project, I was contacted by a group of people from a Facebook group that I am a member of. They were looking for a designer to create some cover art for a podcast they were creating for a university project of their own. They plan to launch their podcast, Women Against Wastemen in January 2022. There will be eight episodes discussing different topics that effect modern day women and they will have guests on the podcast who have experienced or are experts in the field that is being covered. They also wanted a title page introducing each guest, with their name, the episode number they're in and the name of the episode. Early one I so provided with a lot of information about the project and quickly worked out the theme and message they were trying to get across. They wanted a simple, clean, bold design that had a feminine touch to it using the colour pink, everything else was going to be black and white.
One of the first things that I done for this project was redesign the logo that they had created. I discussed with the group that the logo did not match the theme that they were trying to achieve and offered to design a new one. I shared some of my previous work and Instagram pages with them and they wanted me to draw an outline of a group picture they had taken with the title wrapping around the group. This is where I created the shade of pink that I would use throughout the other pieces of work that I created. I copied the pink of the bathing suits that the women are wearing. The group wanted the logo similar to the old design, just more feminine and lighter. When I showed them the logo I had created and the shade of pink I used, they loved it and gave me the go ahead to start creating the rest of the media. I first started by coming up with icons that matched the episode titles and topics to give the audience an idea what the episode will be about. I sketched a few designs and then hand-drew them on my iPad, adding the final touches to them in Illustrator on my computer. I discussed with the group what font they wanted, which ended up being script to emphasise the feminine touch even more, with a bolder font for the title to stand out. I used pink as an accent colour running through the different cover arts so it wasn't overwhelming. I also used the pink for the episode number to make it clear what episode they were promoting, or what episode the audience was listening to. The group wanted the cover arts in two different sizes, 1080x1080px and 1080x1920px, so they had a variety to choose from, depending on where and how they were promoting the episodes.
During this project, we had weekly Zoom meetings with different members. This meant that I was able to keep up to date with any changes that I needed to know. And I was also able to show what I had created frequently and get instant feedback. I was also added to a WhatsApp group chat. This meant that I was able to get live updates to the work I was creating if I was unsure or had any questions. I found this extremely helpful as I was able to make alterations immediately and get instant feedback. Towards the end of the project, I was mainly communicating with the social media and branding manager of the project. Having these weekly meetings and group chat improved my communication and how I shared my work with clients, which I then implemented into my other projects that I was working on, and will be working on in the future. I used InDesign for this project to make the text placement perfect and easy to manage. This gave me more experience working with InDesign and I learnt new skills, such as writing on a path to make the title wrap around the image using a circle.
I throughly enjoyed working on this project as I was able to connect with like minded people and it gave me an insight of creating cover art which I hope to look more into in the future. The group liked my design and they were very eager and keen to be involved in the design process. This made it easier as a designer because it meant that I knew exactly what they wanted, or I could contact them and get a quick response. The designs that I created for the episodes and meet the guest were well received and the logo will be used for the social media pages when the podcast launches.