Virtual Transmedia Exhibition

The annual Transmedia Exhibition is organised by 2nd year students studying Digital Media Design courses at the University of Winchester. The purpose of the exhibition is to allow the first years to present their interactive project work, and year 3 students will be pitching their study/business plans to the course leaders, lecturers and local business owners or visitors. However, due to the Transmedia Exhibition being cancelled last year due to COVID-19, we had to ensure that for the exhibition to run this year, we needed to host it virtually...luckily for us, we are all digital designers!

To start, we had numerous team meetings with the whole of 2nd years to understand more about the Transmedia Exhibition and how it was branded previous years. We unanimously decided to rebrand the event since we felt we could ace this with stronger branding, strict planning, and several teams working on each aspect of the event.

We divided the event into several categories that needed a team of individuals to work together to complete. These categories were as follows:
Branding
Website
Email Marketing
Advertising/Social Media
Merchandising
Seekers

A majority of CAD designers were selected to be in charge of the merchandising section whereby we were tasked with creating gifts or digital artwork which can help promote the event to attract local businesses and industry professionals. We began brainstorming a few ideas and concluded with each individual designing a keyring and fridge magnet ready to present the following week and start developing a prototype. Below is a few sketches I completed; however, these designs were not taken forward since we all agreed on the ‘TM’ globe keyring and ‘TM’ branded fridge magnet best represents what our course is about whilst looking incredibly modern, simplistic and affordable to produce.

Alex Pritchett and Lucy Hopkins worked incredibly hard on developing the design into 3D models using Fusion360 as you can see from the images below, the keyring model looks fantastic! It was important that whilst we focus on designing and producing our merchandise, we take our budget into consideration.

As a team we aimed to make 10 keyrings and 10 fridge magnets since due to the event being hosted online, postage would play a big part in deterring people to buy a small item, therefore we accommodated for this by limiting the quantity we produce. Since the items are relatively quick to produce, if demand did spike, we would be able to increase our production rate to meet demand relatively easily.

Next, with the models near completion, I looked further into the types of spray paint we could use to finish our 3D printed keyrings. After looking online, many people recommended the brand ‘Plastikote’ spray paint as an effective and quick way of spray-painting 3D printed items. Our team decided on spray painting the keyring black and leaving a white debossed ‘TM’ logo on the front for contrast. I then took this information forward, looking for matt black plastikote spray paint which was available in multiple shops online but required hefty delivery charges to deliver the product and there was no physical stock in-stores. Fortunately, I was able to secure gloss black spray paint as well as quick dry, matt black spray paint made by plastikote from separate retailers.

Next, we needed to print our merchandise ready for the transmedia event hosted on the 6th May 2021. Alex and Lucy worked with the 3D printing technician on setting up the printer and began printing our keyrings and laser cutting out the fridge magnets. I joined halfway through the process to take over since each keyring took approximately 40 minutes to print; however, the laser cutter was able to produce 20 fridge magnets in a short space of time. Although, Alex intended on using balsawood as the material for the fridge magnets but unfortunately the printer kept burning the edges even after several laser cutting depth changes. Instead, he fridge magnets were laser cut from a thin sheet of MDF which was less appealing and needed staining to increase its appeal. The remaining keyrings took approximately 4 hours to print by which point we had 10 keyrings all together ready for spray painting and attaching the keychains.

Every student was required to design their own banner image for their page on the transmedia website as well as add any relevant project work which could potential gain an employer’s interest. The banner needed to be 1960 x 1080px (or a 2:1 aspect ratio). I brainstormed a few ideas down of what I would like to show on my banner and what sort of colours I aim to use and began playing around in photoshop. Below is my final outcome for the banner, which as you can see on screen looks clean and easy to follow or read; however, the screenshot on the right shows it in the virtual space where the lighting over exposed sections of my banner but still looked amazing to see in our exhibition.

Next, I worked on creating my page where people visiting the transmedia website would be able to view my profile and recent projects as well as connect with myself on Instagram, email or have a look at my portfolio website. Below are some screenshots of what I included in my profile.