PixelHaze delivers brief to University of South Wales students

It was a pleasure to visit the University of South Wales in Cardiff, to deliver our Bootcamp brief for the third-year graphic communication students.

3rd Year Design Students

The Brief

Coming in on week three of the Boot Camp module, we set a design challenge based on branding and web design. We purposely selected a brief, which was ‘real world’. One we'd had many times before. We instructed the students to create a three-page website for an accountancy agency (Greening & Co) who had recently been bought out by a younger account with plenty of fresh ideas. The accountancy needed a new look and feel which had to appeal to a younger audience, while still respecting their existing established client base.

A brief like this would usually be handled in a couple of days here in the studio. But given that these are third-year students, we gave them a week. Many students did question whether they'd be able to get this done in a week’s turnaround but Elwyn (wanting to show off his Squarespace skills) showed them it was possible to make a site in an hour.

The existing brand

Why accountancy?

The brief intended to challenge students project management skills, creating a brand in a quick turnaround, dealing with challenging time constraints. The brief was quite short, as we wanted them to speak to us, questioning the brief themselves. Usually the briefs we’re given at PixelHaze are often quite ‘brief’. We find ourselves having to fill in the gaps with clients. When a client comes into the studio, we want to make them feel welcome by giving them cups of tea, talking about the recent football games, making them come out of their shell and feel as relaxed as possible. We can then dissect their project without them really knowing. We want the client to be as open as possible when they’re here so we can deliver the best solution for them.

The best students would have used us to the best of their abilities. We made ourselves open for students, for the full week, even going so far as to travel down to Cardiff and base ourselves on-site, so if any of the students had any questions regarding their sites or about the brief, we could sit down with them a cup of coffee and problem solve.

Elwyn perhaps went a little too far with the brief, creating character backstories and motivations which we began to believe were real clients by the end of the week. It was a pleasure to see Stephen Leadbetter flourishing as a lecturer in the University, managing both his job at Rantmedia in Cardiff and lecturing on the side. At one point, we had the full PixelHaze team doing one solid lecture together.

PixelHaze’s Principles of Design

Satellite office in Cardiff

Whilst the other design agencies in Cardiff, usually situated down the Silicon Valley of Cardiff Bay would’ve been far too busy to stay there for the week, we intentionally booked the week off work to help the students get the best grade possible. Travelling down form Builth Wells we booked a hotel, and made the University of South Wales a satellite office for the week.

Our creative lead Ken Rees had been a student on the Graphic Communications course, two years prior, so had a firm understanding of what to expect from the brief, the processes, and knew the lecturers very well. It was quite an interesting experience having been on the course on this exact same project a few years ago, to now being on the other side of the project.

Ken said “I have fond memories of looking up to the design agencies that came in for the weeks, and wondering, wow, I want to be a part of that! I wanted our visit to have the same impression”.

The PixelHaze team enjoying Cardiff nightlife!

The talented team of lecturers at USW shared the same burning passion to help students thrive in the creative industries. Liam, Gareth, Ryan, and Steve were incredibly welcoming, upon arrival, even allowing us to join some of the second-year and first-year lectures.

We were able to help critique and work with all these students in their ideas and design. We're incredibly excited to see the final outcomes from the design challenge and we look forward to coming down to USW again.