Not so long ago, I did a design job for a toy marketing company. The manager whom I was liasing with was a nice and funny guy, and I enjoyed working with him. All clients should strive to be like him! Haha.

They needed 2 banners, which were going to be used on a pillar in Forum's Toys 'R Us, and they weren't exactly sure what they needed. The manager showed me the product collection that was for the banners, along with some of their older advertisements. He then went away for about half an hour to find and burn some high-resolution images for my usage, and I sat in their meeting room, getting a feel for the look they were going for, and sketching some design ideas. I pretty much had one full banner design sketch before the manager returned.

When he returned, he saw the sketch I did, and exclaimed, "Hey, that's nice!" It was a really rough sketch (and my drawing ability's not all the great), and I replied, "Ah, it's just a rough idea." He responded, "Yah, but it's really nice! That's exactly what we were thinking of!"

So, I basically had the design done and (pretty much) approved within 30 minutes. Heh. Always nice when that happens. :D Anyway, he drove me to Forum to take a look at (and get the dimensions of) the pillar the banners were going to be for. We met with the liason of Toys 'R Us's official design & print company, and we got the neccessary information.

Being there gave me a better idea what the display limitations were, and how to work around some of the problems. For example, one of the banners were going to be half-hidden behind their products if the shelves were fully stocked, so I had to measure exactly where the toys were going to be and figure out which parts were going to be permanently hidden by the shelves. A visit there recently told me that my measurements were spot on. That was nice. :D

The first design was approved immediately with my first draft. The second design proved slightly trickier (as I had predicted to myself). I had drew inspiration from one of their older Point of Sales design, but in the end, I had the message that they were moving away from that. Anyway, a few changes later, the second design was approved. Sent for print, and some time later, they were installed by the aforementioned Toys 'R Us's official print & design company.

Met up with the toy marketing company's manager some time after to complete some transactions and was told that the second design, with my usage of a stock photograph of a young boy, had attracted a lot of attention. That was good to hear. :)

Had planned to visit the store and finally gotten around to it last week. Ah... I must say that I wasn't 100% pleased with the print job done. The colours were off! I'm not sure what went wrong, but their blue tones were more purplish and I wasn't really happy with the outcome. :( But if the clients were satisfied with the final product, then, so be it. If I had seen the print before installation, I'd have told them to go reprint. Unacceptable. -.-"

And of course I took some photographs of the banners. The colours looked alright in the photographs, for some reason... Maybe the printed blues were out of JPG gamut? I'm not sure why, but the tones of the blues in the images below are not accurate representation of what finally was printed out.

I would've taken some better shots of the first banner if I was able to... The pillar was close to a wall, and my Lumix's wide angle isn't wide angle enough. Haha. I would've done a better stich-job for the image above, if I could too. Ah well.

Hmm... Maybe I shouldn't include that image in my portfolio.