Start of the 2nd Year

Well its the start of the second year and I've got my first brief. This 8 week long project is about packaging. The first week consists of research task 1, this task is all about working in groups to try and re-brand a product of your choice.
















As you can see we has a lot of potential candidates but in the end we chose the loreal studio spray because we thought it looked a little dated.

During my research I looked at a lot of packaging and found some really good examples of re-design.

Vintage Frosties...

A few days ago while casually strolling through the isles at Asda I happened upon the most wondrous thing and completely in cardboard form.

This is the new/old Frosties box that Kellogg's are pushing because its coming up to the Diamond Jubilee. They will only be sold until the 25th June.

I've got to say compared to the normal Frosties box it makes me realise that simple and classic can go a long way (it also had a strange effect in that I immediately wanted to grab some hair rollers and don a pinny, but I think that's just me).

But thank you Kellogg's for now making me the laughing stock to the security in my local Asda, I'm now known as that weird girl who takes pictures of cereal boxes.

'Poster for tomorrow' Final Outcomes

In my 'Plan of the week #11' I stated that the next brief that I was to do is the 'poster for tomorrow' and I thought I better get my final posters uploaded already.

So without further ado.

More random inspiration...

George Bond

So this brief is to create a logo for George Bond Interior Design. In the written brief it was stated that the logo should be simple, elegant, sophisticated, clear, contemporary and some colors that would be appreciated are Red, Grey, Black. Here are my logo designs.

Plan of the week

Last weeks plan was to pick a brief that I wanted to do for my WBL. I managed to complete all the goals that I set out to do in last weeks plan. I picked a brief and started researching it.

The brief I picked is being held by a company called 'Poster for tomorrow' the brief basically is to design a poster. Every year they hold this brief they pick a different humanitarian topic to draw attention to. The best 100 posters will be displayed in multiple locations worldwide on December 10th which is the International Human Rights Day.

This year 'Poster for tomorrow have chosen the topic gender equality. On there website they state why they have chosen this topic.

"But why gender equality?
What makes gender equality, well, different from all the other possible topics?
The condition of women has undergone undeniable improvements during the last century. But these improvements haven't happened everywhere and even where they have been the strongest, well, they are far from being strong enough."

The brief doesn't have that many limitations just that the poster needs to be portrait in layout and it must be illustrated so that means no photographs. So as far as briefs go its pretty flexible, I'm looking forward to trying my hand at illustration again as I've only done one brief this year that specialized in it and that was the Penguin book brief which I loved, so lets hope this brief goes just as well.

So this weeks plan, researching deeper into 'Poster for tomorrow' there history, previous years briefs, researching gender equality and what its like around the world for women. Just lots of researching truth be told.

Lets hope it stirs up some ideas.

D&AD Pic's

D&AD

So how to explain the awesomeness that was the D&AD trip.
Well for the people who don't know what D&AD stands for it's Design and Art Direction, it is a British educational charity which exists to promote excellence in design and advertising. The D&AD Awards are highly respected and regarded as a major event in the world design and advertising, and it was the judging for these awards that I went and observed.

They were judging for four awards...
-Black Pencil (very special only one or two given every year)
-Yellow Pencil (are recognized the world over as a symbol of true creative achievement)
-Nomination (this is being nominated for a yellow pencil)
-In Book (this award is when you get your work published in the D&AD annual)

Upon arriving at the Earl's Court Olympia each student was given a discipline for them to shadow for the day, I was given Typography which I was quite happy to get.

The judges for this category were...

Erik Spiekermann, founder of Fontshop and type designer

Alan Kitching typographer, established The Typography Workshop in London in 1989.

 Kutlu Çanlıoglu, Senior Creative Director - BBC World Service

Philippe Apeloig, Graphic Designer - Apeloig Design

 Rian Hughes, graphic designer, illustrator, comic artist, author, and typographer.

Sonya Dyakove, Art Director - Frieze magazine.

Zoë Bather, Creative Director & Founding Partner - Studio8 Design.

The juries considered the following three criteria,

- the work must be a highly original and inspiring idea.
- it must be exceptionally well executed.
- it must be relevant to its context.

There are three rounds of judging. All voting is private, never by a show of hands. After each round, juries discuss the preliminary results before the final selection is made.

In the first round, In Book awards are given to pieces of work that receive votes from at least 50% of the jury. In the following rounds, Nominations, Yellow Pencils, and Black Pencils are given to pieces of work that receive over 50% of the votes.

Before I went to the D&AD judging I thought it would be really busy and that there would be loads of people, but when your there you realize just how few people outside of the judges get to see the work and the judging process. Luckily I got to wonder around the entire building and see all the work (about 20,000 pieces) from all the categories not just Typography.

It was a real privilege to go and witness something so private and i can say to any students who might get the chance to see the judging process next year that it will definitely change your perspective about the field of design.

p.s I took hundreds of photographs of the event which I will put in another post for everyone to see.

Plan of the week

So this plan of the week explains what I'll be doing for the next week.

Well its the start of a new brief, the course is almost over and there is just one more brief to go. Its called Work Based Learning or WBL for short. Work based learning is basically all about either doing a brief that the tutors have given you (so this could be Cupple or Badboys) or choosing a brief to do yourself.

I've decided that I want to try something new, I don't want to make up a brief so this week will consist of me going on line and researching what briefs are out there that I think are interesting and that I would like to have a go at.

Placement time!

So I wanted to publish this post when I had completely finished me placement so here it is.
My placement was at The Point Design www.thepointdesign.co.uk a design agency in Newcastle quite near the Baltic actually. They have just moved at an amazing building The Toffee Factory.

The Toffee Factory

Right about the placement, it started at the beginning of the Easter holidays and was for 3 weeks, luckily the College was closed so I didn't miss any digital skills lessons. So my day started at 7o'clock when I had to leave to get to Newcastle. The working hours were from 8:45 to 5:30. Throughout my time at the Point I kept a detailed diary everyday based on what I did which I won't post on my blog as it talks about the company and there clients and thats private to them, I will however have to hand it in at College as I will get marked on it. But her are some pictures of some of the stuff that I did at the Point.

Icons for a baby event

Right so what did I learn?

Technically I had used all of the software they they have on the Mac's (Photoshop,Illustrator) so I didn't really learn anything new there apart from on Photoshop I learned about creating paths on pictures and clipping masks which was handy as I will probably use them again instead of the wand tool which is a lot less accurate.

I learned quite a lot about what it actually takes to run a successful design agency, its not just great design all the time. Jane Sadler the creative director said that good design is only 50% of a good agency the rest is keeping all work done for previous briefs, managing time wisely and getting to know your clients, and its kind of true, what good is it to start your own graphic design company if you don't have any clients.

Plan of the week

So the plan last week was to finish my NHS logo so I could move onto other briefs and I am happy to report that I have indeed finished the logo. Actually I did more than one logo but still its done and I can move on.

Here are some of my logos I did the bottom one first, its a bit obvious and you can clearly tell what my inspiration was the top logo is a bit more subtle and based on the shutter mechanism of a camera, I like the colors the blue and yellow especially, the green could be tweaked a little but when I always look back on work I've done I always see what I could change to make it better which is not a bad thing I suppose, just a fact of life you can always see your mistakes when looking back.

So this weeks plan, well there really isn't one because its the Easter holidays and I'm starting my placement so the next post I do will be all about my time at a real design company. Wish me luck.

Plan of the week

So my plan for last week was all about getting into the new briefs I've been given, updating my blog and trying to do a few posts, which I achieved. I had a contextual graphic design lesson today so that means that this week I'm ready to pick an essay question and start writing a rough draft. 

As I have a lot of different things going on at the same time for the course I have decided that this week will be dedicated to the NHS brief and designing a logo, I hope to have this brief done by the weekend so I can move onto the next brief. Next week I then plan on moving on to another brief this way it is not much of a juggle between a lot of projects. 

A work placement update, I talked to the course leader today as the dates and company that I am going to have changed. My placement will be on the 2nd of April, so next month which gives me more time to devote to the course briefs.

Kerntype - a kerning game?

So as I was aimlessly stumbling from one website to the next, my procrastination rearing its ugly head. I happened to come across a link to a nerdy kerning game no less. (I though this couldn't possibly be true, but alas a wonderful man called Mark MacKay had made it so)

Your mission should you choose to accept it is simple: achieve pleasant and readable text by distributing the space between letters.

http://type.method.ac/?again

I got 89/100 on my first go, why don't you give it a go?

Brand yourself...

So last week the tutors gave the whole class a task to research some examples of personal branding and then to try it for yourself and come up with a logo. During the research I found that the people who use personal branding most are usually fashion designers. The reasons for this is that nowadays fashion designers use branding a lot to help market and sell their designs, so having a brand identity similar to what large clothing company's have makes sense. Also I've seen a trend that some very big name fashion designers take Vera Wang for example use their brand to help them move into other retail areas such as home furnishings, footwear and luggage (weirdly enough).

I've found that personal branding it is very important when it comes to succeed in any field. The only problem with the task of branding myself is that I don't have a clear graphic identity yet, I'm in my first year on this course so compared to other graphic designers who have had years to perfect their craft I'm just a novice barely starting out. It might take years for me to finally be able to fully understand my own graphic style and maybe then I can truly look into my own personal branding, but until then I still had a go at the task just to see what my mind could come up with.

And I have no doubt that 5 years from now when I'm doing my real personal branding I'll look back and cringe at what I came up with...so here it goes it started with rough sketches.

Maybe just initials?
Am I a little retro?
Perhaps more casual with an asterisk?
Or slightly resembling the M&S logo?
Maybe I'm bold and eye catching, how about cursive?

So I did the task and branded myself and I can honesty say bring on the next 5 years because I don't have a clue. Maybe just initials?

Very random but cool pictures...

  

  Mario, the Man, the Legend!

I would so love this costume, screw Halloween I'd wear it everyday

  Lego humor, gets me every time. ^^

Old camera lovin'...

Who doesn't like pictures of cameras, its a bit like typing google into google.

As promised...

I said that part of my plan of the week was to do some posts on some cool stuff I've come across on the web, most images are from Tumbler.

Briefs aplenty! + Plan of the week

Sooo in this post I’ll be telling you all about the new briefs I got assigned today and also what my plan of this week is.

Firstly today was very busy, it started out with a contextual graphic design lecture on the subject of ‘interactive graphic design and multi-media’ it was really interesting actually. The lecture covered a wide range of things from the invention of printing and how it changed graphics to the amazing people who made the very first programmable computer. I took lots of notes during and typed them up straight after so that job isn’t on the ‘to do’ list.

Later on Paul one of the tutors talked to the whole class about what we’ll be doing for the next 8 weeks, there will be 3 briefs that are available.

The first is to design a logo for the Medical Photography Department in the NHS. This is a department I’ve never heard of before but basically it produces photographs and video that is used to diagnose and/or monitor diseases, medical conditions and for teaching purposes. This brief seems quite straight forward they want an edgy and fresh logo, there aren’t any colours that they would prefer so it’s pretty open to interpretation.

The second brief is for a company called Darling Dash. They are the company behind a new an exciting app called Cupple, which is a private sharing mobile app designed specifically for two people in a relationship. Think a confidential Facebook only you and your partner can access, all the sharing without none of the privacy issues.

I haven’t yet got the official brief from this company yet but it will be based around their app, I think they would welcome any ideas that could help further advance the app and they also expressed that they would like ideas for there sticker packs that they sell through the app. I know they are also interested in promotional materials and especially t-shirt and poster designs that would help promote the brand.

The third brief is for a brand that I had never heard of before today Bad Boy. Bad Boy is an alternative sport and lifestyle brand revolving around mixed martial arts.

They are notable for their presence in both fashion and performance equipment for this sport. This brief although not usually my thing does sound quite good, I’m not into sporty clothing and have never owned a pair of joggers myself but never the less I think I could come up with some good designs and ideas for a line of products for the Bad Boy brand.

So now that I have got my third brief, this week will consist of getting into some early research for all of them but I have to juggle this with starting my contextual studies essay which I want to start writing soon. I also want to make sure that this week I update my blog a bit and publish a few more posts on some cool stuff I’ve seen. Next Monday I will be starting a work placement for a few weeks so I have to start to learn how to juggle multiple projects as I will be going to a company during the day and in my own time I have to start making head way on the 3 briefs so learning to manage my time will be crucial. ­

From a children's book to famous last words...

Right so this post all started when I picked up one of my siblings books and started reading. The book is called 'The Terrible Tudors' it is a book done by the Horrible History franchise. The book although for children I found was quite a fun read it has a lot of information on England's history during the Tudor period. It included why Henry VII thought he's married a horse, which terrible torture methods the twisted Tudors used and how an awful Tudor axeman kept botching the job.

After reading the book I kept remembering a particular paragraph on Elizabeth I's death and her last words. For some reason it just kept popping into my head so I googled it (naturally) and found the sentence I kept remembering was...

"All my possessions for a moment of time."

When I googled Elizabeth's last words I found a really lovely illustration done by Oskar Alvardo.

Alvardo did a series of illustrations about people's last words including Joan of Arc. Since I'm sharing these lovely illustrations I thought it only right I also list some of the other famous last words that I have come across. Voltaire

"Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies."

Said when asked by a priest to renounce Satan.

Joan Crawford

"Dammit...Don't you dare ask God to help me."

Said to her housekeeper who began to pray aloud.

Pablo Picasso

"Drink to me!"

Charles Chaplin

"Why not? After all, it belongs to him."

When the priest attending his deathbed said "May the Lord have mercy on your soul," 

Chaplin quickly replied "Why not? After all, it belongs to him."

Ludwig Van Beethoven

"Friends applaud, the comedy is over."