Toni Pilling 13035652Northumbria University

3rd year - Design for IndustryRethinkthings LTD design placement

23rd March - 23rd June

About the companyREthinkthings LTD was founded in 2009 by Ilsa Parry and born of a long held belief that there are too many products on the market that lack emotion and personality and that an opportunity existed to develop and offer for sale alternative tools for living. Whether it be furniture, lighting, gifts, or purely functional items, REthinkthings’ mission is to explore the boundaries of what can be materially possible to achieve a particular purpose and actively seek out opportunities to develop and bring to market the most imaginative products that demonstrate ambition and meaningful creativity in design.

The studio has a warehouse, a workshop and desk space for designers to think and develop ideas. They are always on the hunt for interesting and innovative product solutions and work hard to ensure what they are offerring is varied and useful whether they are producing or simply selling the design led products of others.

The company has a passion for design and encourages and supports the design and manufacturing industry. They aim to offer a broad range of exciting, unique and quirky homewears and giftwears to their valued customers and trade partners. They encourage and advise designers who approach them to always create work that pushes the boundaries of what exists. Making useful objects which capture the imagination and feel great to use.

Tagline - “We ask questions, we solve problems, we feel and we think. We do “things” very differently....”

Rethinkthings LTD main clients are retailers who sell gifts as they are a wholesale website however as I have been working there this has moved onto Etsy as well to sell for retail use for customers looking for quirky gifts. Ilsa also owns another business called MYNE boutique which sells hers and other peoples gift designs for retail use as a shop based in Liverpool and online.

rethinkthings LTD

My placementJob title: Web and print/e-commerce/marketing intern.Job role: To work across three brands within the company to produce creative graphics and promotional imagery / copy for both web and print in order to enhance brand functionality for design consultancy services and design led products for wholesale and retail.

My placement was structured around me working from home Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and then every Wednesday coming into the studio for a full day to go through the work I had been doing and be set new tasks. This diary shows a record of everything I produced and contributed too. Most of the tasks have overlapped over 1-3 weeks as I have been given new tasks whilst still doing other jobs.

Week 1-2During my first week on placement I was set the task of photo editing the products on photoshop to get them ready to upload onto the website. After this I had to upload the products and write creative descriptions for them. I have shown on this page a few images that I uploaded and some of the lines from the descriptions I wrote. As there ended up being 60+ of these that I did I haven’t shown every image and description here but they can be seen on the rethinkthings website.

“The squidgeme range of cards are cute and full of love to bring a smile to that special someones face! There are six to choose from in the collection, either the cute old couple on the seesaw, swings and in the sack race reliving childhood memories together or the adorable squidgeme bear in three scenarios with love all around.”

Examples of blank backdrops I was given to drop the cards and prints onto

“Our playful pig card range feature 9 different cards to suit your customers needs, sell these in your shop and you will soon be bringing home the bacon! This one features the playful pig with love in his eyes, a fantastic way to show someone you how you feel.”

“The sticky subject cards are sure to help your customers out when they are stuck on what to buy. These fun jokey cards are flexible to fit different situations with a blank inside for the customer to stick in their own message. Choose from “aww snap”, “slimmer of the year”, “stick with it” or “sticks and stones may break your bones”.”

“Your customers will simply go ‘coo-coo’ over these pigeon pop prints available in 3 styles and in A4 or A3 size. Choose from “hello” a tweet for any home, “here come the girls” a group of glammed up birds ready to hit the town or “coos” to here the gossip.”

“These moody cow prints were designed to ‘amoose’ your customers, with 3 to choose from, available in A4 or A3. Choose from “over the moon” to bring back memories from the classic nursery rhyme hey diddle diddle, “cowboy” to project a fun relationship between mother and son or “slumped cow” all fantastic for any room in the home.”

“Your customers will go quackers over the plucky duck range of prints, available in A4 or A3. Choose from “ay up duck” to add a northern touch, “my little egg”, a cracking addition or “splish splash” all suited for any room in the home.”

“Your customers will go quackers over the plucky duck range of prints, available in A4 or A3. Choose from “ay up duck” to add a northern touch, “my little egg”, a cracking addition or “splish splash” all suited for any room in the home.”

Week 2-3Within the second week I carried on uploaded and writing descriptions for the website. I also had to transfer all 300+ products over to etsy changing the descriptions to match a retail audience instead of a whole-sale audience.

Etsy shop

My other task this week was photography and photo editing of new products. I had to take pictures of different mugs and coasters in context and also on there own and then edit these throught photoshop. I have shown some before and after editing of these images. In total I did 71 images. All the images in context were created with things I found around my house that were relevant to each product. These photos were then uploaded to the website and I wrote descriptions and details for each of these products.

Before After

Before After

Before After

Before AfterThere were 8 mugs altogether so I have just shown a couple of examples above.

There were 16 coasters altogether so I have just shown a couple of examples above.

Before After

Before After

Before After

Before After

Products in context

There were 44 images in context altogether but I have just shown a few examples above of these.

Week 3,4,5During weeks3 I uploaded all the new products to the website and Etsy shop adding descriptions and listing info to each one. I also had been given several jobs for designing the website over the period of week 3, 4 and 5, these were

- edit photos of clothing so all baby grows and t-shirts are shown in context- add options for kids sizes to “apathetic” range of t-shirts- add options of unpackaged and packaged clothing with different pricing options- go through website categories and make sure that each category has correct products (this was done by going through the website and making lists in a spreadsheet of all the products in each category and making sure they were consistent with each other)- add “miss you”, “baby shower” and “hen party” occasion pages and add appropriate products- add a banner to the home page of Rethinkthings to link to the Etsy shop for customers who want to buy for retail purposes- add social media pages, code in widgets and add banners to getpeople involved in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest- add profile pages for the designers of the products with images and add approriate products for each designer- create a home page with seasonal imagery, get inspiration from other gift shop websites and include a banner about delivery- add a “typographically” page into the ‘thinking’ category and add appropriate products- under each tab add imagery instead of it just being a list of categories to make the website more interactive- add banners to top of ranges pages with slogan from the range

Over the next few pages I have screenshot the pages of the website that I have added, designed and edited. All this work has for the website was done by myself and then me and Ilsa discussed what could be done better or changed, the feedback I have had for this work has been really good and she is very happy with the final result.

In total I edited around 60 images to show the “Apathetic”, “Scouser” and “PRIDE” ranges in context. I also had to add sizing and unpackaged/packaging options to each listing.

Screenshots of social media pages added to website, I added these in by coding in widgets and then adding in banners made onphotoshop to match the brand

Screenshots of pages added for the designer profiles, I had to edit the photos to make them all black and white and then upload them as links on the website, then adding relevant information for each designer and the products they have contributed towardsrethinkthings.

To create the home page for the rethinkthings website I looked around at other gift shop web pages for inspiration such as “Not on the high street” “Prezzy box” and “dot come gift shop.” From these I created a home page with imagery relevant to the season such as the summer wedding banner and also generic images such as gifts for him/her/the little ones. I also added an instagram feed, delivery banner and etsy link banner as requested by Ilsa. There is also a moving banner on the website which changes into 12 different images to promote popular/new products, when clicked on dependent on the image the user can go straight to the relevant product page.

Inspiration/research

Imagery created for home page

Content slider imagery (moving banner)

Imagery created for home page cont.

Banner with rethinkthings LTD slogan

Delivery info (links to delivery info page)

Content slider, each image links to relevant product page

3 boxes which link to relevant consumer pages (Women, men, babies)

Links to wedding occasion page

Links to Scouser range page

Links to @rethinkthings instagram page

Live instagram feed of @rethinkthings page which scrolls across automatically with instagram images

Link to etsy shop

Links to Scouser range page

Link to etsy shop

In each section of the website there are sub pages for example under occasions there are things like anniversaries, father’s day, birthdays etc. Before I changed these pages the website would just show the links to the sub pages like these screenshots below. I had a task to create imagery that would link to the sub pages which was more relevant to the rethinkthings brand and more engaging for the consumer.

New imagery for pages - “Consumer”, “Occasions”, “Products”, “Ranges”, “Sentiment”, “Thinking”

Imagery cont.

For each of the different ‘Ranges’ pages I had to add a banner on the top with the slogan for each range to give users an idea of what the range is what about before looking at the products in more detail.

Imagery cont.

Banners cont. Examples of these on the website

Week 5-6After all the website stuff was done it was then time to focus on creating a print catalogue for consumers to order from. In the first week I looked into lots of existing catalogues and with Ilsa pin pointed the pages she liked and that I could take inspiration from when designing the layout. I then had to start organising all the products into lists to decide how the products would be presented, either by range, by product type or in categories such as ‘kitchen’ and ‘outdoors. I started to layout boxes in my notepad and on larger sheets of paper to come up with a way of pre-senting the products in an organised and structured way.

Week 6-7Within the next week I started to create basic layouts on indesign working out how many products were to go to each page and how the contents would work with the different ways of having the products presented. In the end I decided that the best route to do the catalogue was through ranges as it fits the best with the rethinkthings brand and also gives more scope for being creative on the pages as each range can have different backgrounds, borders, fonts dependent on its theme. Splitting up the ranges over categories or product types meant I could not show easily that there were several products in a range together.

I also had the job this week to work on Ilsa’s pinterest account and make it more engaging so I made boards for each of the ranges adding in descirptions for products and links to the website. The other boards I added were inspiration boards of mugs, cards and other gifts to make the profile more engaging. This is also to help advertise.

Indesign layouts by RANGE.Above are a couple of examples of spread I created in indesign to work out the layout of how many products would go per page and where context images and descriptions were to be place, I did this for all 33 ranges. I have not showed all this as there are over 200 pages of the catalogue.

Indesign layouts by PRODUCT TYPE. Above are a couple of examples of spread I created in indesign to work out the layout of how many products would go per page and where context images and descriptions were to be place, I did this for all 17 product types. I have not showed all this as there are over 200 pages of the catalogue.

Indesign layouts by CATEGORIES. Above are a couple of examples of spread I created in indesign to work out the layout of how many products would go per page and where context images and descriptions were to be place, I did this for 6 categories which I placed the products into, ‘accesories,’ ‘clothing,’ ‘home,’ ‘kitchen’ and ‘outdoors. I have not showed all this as there are over 200 pages of the catalogue.

Screenshots of some pinterest boards created

Week 7-8In this last week up till now I have been adding the products into the pages to fill out the layout more and get an idea of what the catalogue is going to start looking like. I have also been printing out pages and sketching on them to start thinking of design ideas that could go on the pages to make it more fun and engaging. This is going to be continued over the next 3 weeks until the 23rd June when I finish my placement.

Indesign layouts continued, here I have started filling in the pages with the imagery and started thinking about what else could go into the page and what context imagery I will need to take for the catalogue, I have shown this through sketches to the right and on the next page.

FeedbackEvery Wednesday me and Ilsa would sit down and go through my work. It was all received positively we would work together to improve things. She tought me things on photoshop that I never knew how to do which was really helpful and also helped me learn about how to build a website.

ReflectionThis is the second placement where I have mainly had graphic design tasks and has just confirmed for me again that I really enjoy using photoshop and illustrator. I feel like my skills on these softwares and indesign have improved even more and from my feedback I have learnt how to do certain things in quicker and easier ways. My confidence has definitely improved as I had to present my work to Ilsa every week and the positive comments I recieved made me feel proud of the work I had produced. As for working from home I did enjoy this as it meant I could work in a comfortable environment however I do prefer being in an office or studio as I like to be able to bounce ideas off colleagues right there and then.

As for the future I think this placement is going to have a good effect on my career as I have been told that I can come back over summer and do some paid freelance work.