Designing my final first of three hand-in booklets

I have not logged much recently, and foolishly as it would have helped to have my ongoing impressions to hand at the moment. So here is what I am working on presently - my final hand-in document. I am planning to make three booklets two dedicated to my major projects from Unit 10 (Talk Over Tea and the joke Dispenser) plus one more dedicated to the smaller briefs I am or was involved with this year (CSM degree show identity + another project I am doing with CSM research department).

The deadline is May 12th (nine days away) and I should be finished in time - I am trying to feel calm, which is a challange.

Indesign screen shot of the overview of the booklet dedicated to Talk Over Tea (WIP)

Working on Talk Over Tea Posters and Table Tents

I am redesigning the posters and table tri-folds to mirror the changed way the service will work as of tomorrow.

Posters 

tri folds

Designing the Joke dispenser + more badges

I have a list of things to get done by tomorrow:

For Talk Over Tea:

• Redesign posters for Talk Over Tea
• Redesign TOT table tents
• Make more Badges
• Print more logbooks

For the Joke dispenser:

• Design the exterior
• Make 10p vouchers
• Edit videos at 1028x768

And finally for the Science (Cat Joke) book:

• Figure out splitting printed lines
• have fun with my thermal printer!

So far today, I have made progress on two of these points. I have made more badges and began designing the Joke Dispenser.

The photos of the progress are below.

I need to make more! 

Provisional front of the dispenser

cog themed design (I need to reason it out though - not quite there yet...

The vinyl cuts are designed in Illustratur 

Today I need to write down many things

Insert from my diary:

–  where am I with regards to the cat joke box project
– where am I with regards to a penny for your joke project
– where am I with regards to talk over tea project

I will start with the left latter as it is the freshest in my mind.

# Talk over tea
I just finished working on a third or fourth variation for the talk over tea logo. I want to play with negative space and at the moment, I am trying to make a teacup superimposed with the word talk and have that the handle serves as the capital O for ‘Over tea’.
It isn’t going very well… Tomorrow is the first day when talk over tea will be running.  I got a second number for texts, so that customers do not have to use twitter. At the moment I’m thinking that I should promote people to use what’s app.
I have printed three logbooks for tomorrow they have places to enter date, time, name, location, order and further comments.
I am fairly apprehensive, as I am aware there is a lot that can go wrong. I have made plans to do other things during the day tomorrow in case talk over tea does not prove popular. Right now the’ worst’ thing that could happen is if #TOT proved extremely popular. I would not know how to deal with too much demand. But I will cross that bridge when I get to it. I really hope that it will prove easy to enlist help from other third years (or final year MA students).
it just occurred to me that I now have time to make quick designs for a talk over tea tray. The tray will be 50 cm over 35 cm it will have the words talk over tea carved into it somewhere and will have four dips for takeaway cups.

Log book mistake printed on see through paper

My three plain and proper log books

Inside layout - plain and to the point

I am struggling with the whole logo concept - I may just stick with a logotype or my older variation of the logo

Tray design

# Penny for your joke
I have a bag with four castor wheels, I bought from screw fix yesterday.  Tomorrow I will spend the day waiting for customers to request drinks from the cafe. In the meanwhile, I told one of the technicians downstairs that I will spend the day with him building the exterior of my joke machine. Made out of MDF, it will be a 1.7 m tall device, I haven’t got it written down but I am pretty sure it will be 60 cm wide and 60 cm deep. I have recommissioned my old Toshiba and they hope to install processing on it so it can run the joke program. If all goes well, I will have the parts ready and I will be able to assemble everything over Easter Break.



# Cat joke machine
 I have in my hand, envelope which contains a USB A to B cable, there are five thermal paper rolls and an AC power adapter inside it. I bought all of these with the intention of using them to power the thermal printer which I have a university. They should allow me to  to interact with my printer with much more ease than I currently have. I still haven’t used the RFID module which worries me a bit. I don’t know how simple it will be to use it, and I doubt that I will be able to connect it to the printer by myself.

Working on the joke machine and making badges

I spent today preparing videos for my joke machine. I also made badges for TOT.

Tomorrow I have an interview at the RCA and I am stressed!!!

Working on the videos for the 'Penny for your jokes' machine

making badges

failing at making badges

nice badges for the TOT program

making a signal map for Talk Over Tea

Yesterday I received CSM's floor plans and today I am turning them into a map to show where there is good mobile phone reception.

Working on Talk Over Tea logo

I'm just feeling like I need more documentation!!!! so here:

I want to order badges so I need a logo asap

This logo will be used for badges and for the new Twitter feed @TalkOTea

A day of stress and anxiety

My mid point review is on Tuesday at 11:00 - I have nothing prepared to show at the moment and I am #stressed beyond what I can explain.

But here is a description of what I would like to have by then:
- an A5 booklet* with notes and #WIP images of my three projects: ‘Science Book’, ‘Penny for your Jokes’ and ‘Talk over tea’
- the mechanism which will be inside the Joke dispenser for ‘#PFYJ’
- the mechanism that will be inside the Schrodinger cat book (Science book)
- any visual material like badges for the tea service.

The problem is that I must act fast and I am not certain I am up to the task

Here is a work in progress photo of a cat joke printed on thermal paper:

And here are some notes Yoriko took for me during a chat we had about the 'Talk over tea" idea