Thursday, February 24, 2011
Creating a website layout
Craig knows a bit about web design and he's going to help build my website. here is the progression of my mock-up so he knows what he's creating
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Business Card
After my portfolio surgery, I decided that it was important to rebrand myself and start developing that side of things. I wanted my logo to be more to do with my name than it has been in the past. It took a lot of shit to get to the kind of thing I thought was appropriate and the final thing and it's layout on a business card suits me down to the ground. I'm really happy with it and I'm looking to take it into my website etc.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Portfolio Surgery- Plus Minus
Ok so recently I had a portfolio surgery with Tom Eales of studio plus/minus. I couldn't help bt feel a little ambiguous as to how much he could help me with what I was doing. I was utterly wrong. I haven't got my portolio on here because I threw it together really quickly and it didn't represent me very well. The work, a lot of it good, wasn't photographed well and thats something I need to work on, and although he was very positive about my work, he said the same thing. The angles and lighting need working on. I know a few photography students so I might exchange some shots of my work for some graphic design work.
This design is something I threw together and isn't considered, however the little details like the spacing in this hyphen need to be carefully considered. Every design agency/designer can spot these problems instantly and in that instant you lose some class as a professional.
He also said to make sure that things that went live are made clear that they went live because this makes you stand out a lot more.
Again he pointed out spacing issues and the problems with my photography, too dark and too yellow etc.
He said to limit the amount of words you use, they're not going to be willing to read it all so get straight to the point. He also gave me ome advice on the kinds of lenses and apparatus I should be using to photograph my work, so that's something to consider when I work with a photographer.
On the page for DSW brief he pointed out that the business card close up needs to be more readable so thats something to re-photograph. Also the angle is really dodgy, too slanted.
Some advice on what to do about the wording here.
Again he thinks I should emphasise that this product has gone to shelves, which I didn't do. This will again let me stand out.
All in all, the surgery was incredibly useful, the attention to detail and the amount of words I used being particularly helpful advice. He also gave me some help on rephotographing my work which will be highly useful.
This design is something I threw together and isn't considered, however the little details like the spacing in this hyphen need to be carefully considered. Every design agency/designer can spot these problems instantly and in that instant you lose some class as a professional.
He also said to make sure that things that went live are made clear that they went live because this makes you stand out a lot more.
Again he pointed out spacing issues and the problems with my photography, too dark and too yellow etc.
He said to limit the amount of words you use, they're not going to be willing to read it all so get straight to the point. He also gave me ome advice on the kinds of lenses and apparatus I should be using to photograph my work, so that's something to consider when I work with a photographer.
On the page for DSW brief he pointed out that the business card close up needs to be more readable so thats something to re-photograph. Also the angle is really dodgy, too slanted.
Some advice on what to do about the wording here.
Again he thinks I should emphasise that this product has gone to shelves, which I didn't do. This will again let me stand out.
All in all, the surgery was incredibly useful, the attention to detail and the amount of words I used being particularly helpful advice. He also gave me some help on rephotographing my work which will be highly useful.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Printing with Daisy
I wish I could be bothered to think of clever references to Driving Miss Daisy for post titles, but I can't. Anyway, Friday I spent the entire day screen printing t-shirts and bits of fabric to turn into jumpers. Here's a photo. They look amazing I'm sure you'll agree:
Right, now here we have some label designs, I had to include the washing instructions. Initially she wanted me to use this hand done thing she'd written, which I liked in theory, but neither of us liked in practice. So there's some development of what I did instead beneath that, with the final label that Daisy liked at the bottom. I think I preferred the ones that use the diagonal lines instead, but I guess final decision rests with the client, and I'm happy enough with it. It just needs some tweaks to make sure everything lines up right. But monday morning is when we get to screen print these into the necks.
We didn't get time to discuss the other project of mine that's going to be an OUGD301 brief (the stationary and look book), but I've scheduled that for Tuesday after 4.
Right, now here we have some label designs, I had to include the washing instructions. Initially she wanted me to use this hand done thing she'd written, which I liked in theory, but neither of us liked in practice. So there's some development of what I did instead beneath that, with the final label that Daisy liked at the bottom. I think I preferred the ones that use the diagonal lines instead, but I guess final decision rests with the client, and I'm happy enough with it. It just needs some tweaks to make sure everything lines up right. But monday morning is when we get to screen print these into the necks.
We didn't get time to discuss the other project of mine that's going to be an OUGD301 brief (the stationary and look book), but I've scheduled that for Tuesday after 4.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Printers and Paper stocks
So, I've been busy trying to make headway with printers and paper stocks to get more knowledge on the subject as an area of specialism. I've ordered several swatch-books and some arrived today (pictured below).
I've also contacted two printers based at home in the North East (PPD-ltd and alpha graphics) and I'm hoping to get some positive responses about visiting them and having a chat. I'll post more on this as I get more information.
I've also contacted two printers based at home in the North East (PPD-ltd and alpha graphics) and I'm hoping to get some positive responses about visiting them and having a chat. I'll post more on this as I get more information.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Design strategy presentation
I thought I'd post this here because it sort of summises where I'm up to at his point. The work over summer starts with a self initiated publication that I'm very proud of and once I've looked at some paper stocks (I ordered numerous swatchbooks that should arrive imminently) I'm going to print and photograph for my portfolio. I've also done some Gang of New York posters, which I did whilst watching the film, inspired by the unique identities of each of the gangs. I like them and they could be a nice edition to my portfolio (again I need to chose a nice paper stock).
Then we move on to a collaboration I've done with a fashion student, which we're screen printing on Friday, ready to sell to some nice shoppy-shops. From this I've managed to wrangle a branding and stationary brief for her label which should be a great live brief for OUGD302.
Then there's some work on a website template, which is good in that I've had the experience with the WYSIWYG software but as you can see form the slides, I've updated my identity since then. I know a guy who has offered to build me a website as part of his course which is useful rendering what I've done so far quite redundant.
Finally there is my work for a promotions manager who does various club nights in the North East. Essentially, I sold my soul for not very much money and no creative direction so it was a good exercise in seing where I don't want to end up in the design world. Especially with a dubious experience of slowly transforming a not so bad (not good still) design into a re-hash of a sex and the city poster which was so bleakly depressing you wouldn't believe.
After this, the last slide is just a few statements about what I want to do this year and then some pro-active solutions to how I'm going to get what I want. Hopefully I can reign it in to 7-10 minutes, but I can probably talk for a while about various subject matters.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
OUGD203 part 2 Evaluation
This project has been quite a revelation for me. By the end of the collaboratve brief and image, I felt I'd exhausted myself as a very hand crafted illustrator. Not only that, but I'd realised my need to rigidly stick to that formula was actually hindering my progress as a designer. I would become too precious about my illustrations and not be willing to mess around with what I was doing.
With this bit of context in mind, I decided that I wanted to look at type and layout a little bit. The choice of book covers as my subject was perfect, it allowed me to consolidate my need for typography with my understanding of image and colour that I'd already built up. In terms of design development, I feel that I've tried a lot more out in terms the actual image that could go on the cover, as well as a whole host of different layouts. I found it all very liberating and freeing. What's brilliant, to me, I could have still explored many different things, and though I limited myself stylistically, I know now where I truly have room to grow.I think I realised after the show and tell crit, that my knowledge of typography is limited, but I got advice from several peers who did the type module and managed to vastly improve the quality of the type. I don't know why I enjoyed being so isolated before, but I feel like I've engaged with the peers around me, more so than ever before, and I truly tried to embrace the criticisms my work got, and worked positively from them. Sometimes it didn't work, like the feedback about more experimental layout (which came to not much) but the feedback on my type was really helpful. I guess I didn't really consider my audience, 12 pt would be insulting to a reader of classic literature, where 10 pt is still highly legible and seems a lot less kiddish.
As is usual, in terms of the research and context, I think I explored what I needed to reasonably well, looking at how Penguin functioned past and present in terms of their cover design, but also looking at what makes cover design great in general. I did some early primary research looking at people who don't read a lot of books, but I don't think this was useful on reflection, I got my audience wrong... they're more likely to be seasoned readers and collectors in general. Once I realised this, I went about trying to package them in a desirable fashion and found strength in my work drawing from that. And in terms of what could be done to improve: it really is the smaller, finer details that I have issue with, sometimes things aren't aligned quite right, colour modes aren't double checked etc. and this reduces what could be great to merely good, and it's something I must start getting properly right if I ever want to be at a professional standard.
The usual 'could of managed my time better' probably doesn't apply as much as it used to, I really tried to focus my efforts, but I think I did take a while to start actually generating visuals, which was a little bit of a hinderence if I'm honest. Also, I have a tendency to zone out and not do much of anything for a few hours every so often, and it seems quite obvious, but I've got to find coping strategies to deal with it, because it's time I could have devoted to the areas such as digital and physical advertising, that were a little neglected.
In conclusion, I'm really glad I threw out my own little rulebook and just tried to blitz out so many variations, it really helped, but theres still room to put out an even greater qauntity of them so I have that to improve on as well as a little bit of tweaking in terms of time management strategy. Also, I have to cut out the silly little mistakes.
With this bit of context in mind, I decided that I wanted to look at type and layout a little bit. The choice of book covers as my subject was perfect, it allowed me to consolidate my need for typography with my understanding of image and colour that I'd already built up. In terms of design development, I feel that I've tried a lot more out in terms the actual image that could go on the cover, as well as a whole host of different layouts. I found it all very liberating and freeing. What's brilliant, to me, I could have still explored many different things, and though I limited myself stylistically, I know now where I truly have room to grow.I think I realised after the show and tell crit, that my knowledge of typography is limited, but I got advice from several peers who did the type module and managed to vastly improve the quality of the type. I don't know why I enjoyed being so isolated before, but I feel like I've engaged with the peers around me, more so than ever before, and I truly tried to embrace the criticisms my work got, and worked positively from them. Sometimes it didn't work, like the feedback about more experimental layout (which came to not much) but the feedback on my type was really helpful. I guess I didn't really consider my audience, 12 pt would be insulting to a reader of classic literature, where 10 pt is still highly legible and seems a lot less kiddish.
As is usual, in terms of the research and context, I think I explored what I needed to reasonably well, looking at how Penguin functioned past and present in terms of their cover design, but also looking at what makes cover design great in general. I did some early primary research looking at people who don't read a lot of books, but I don't think this was useful on reflection, I got my audience wrong... they're more likely to be seasoned readers and collectors in general. Once I realised this, I went about trying to package them in a desirable fashion and found strength in my work drawing from that. And in terms of what could be done to improve: it really is the smaller, finer details that I have issue with, sometimes things aren't aligned quite right, colour modes aren't double checked etc. and this reduces what could be great to merely good, and it's something I must start getting properly right if I ever want to be at a professional standard.
The usual 'could of managed my time better' probably doesn't apply as much as it used to, I really tried to focus my efforts, but I think I did take a while to start actually generating visuals, which was a little bit of a hinderence if I'm honest. Also, I have a tendency to zone out and not do much of anything for a few hours every so often, and it seems quite obvious, but I've got to find coping strategies to deal with it, because it's time I could have devoted to the areas such as digital and physical advertising, that were a little neglected.
In conclusion, I'm really glad I threw out my own little rulebook and just tried to blitz out so many variations, it really helped, but theres still room to put out an even greater qauntity of them so I have that to improve on as well as a little bit of tweaking in terms of time management strategy. Also, I have to cut out the silly little mistakes.
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