Tuesday 25 May 2010

french stitching my guide book



24th May 2010

 

Today I learned to French stitch!

So I am in the final leg of finishing my guide book! Thank god, and after a lot of deliberation I decided that French stitching it would be the way to go as it will look very professional and like a proper magazine.

I had to figure out how to layout out the pages to make it open up like a perfect bound and then I chose my stock and double sided printed on the A4 colour printing in the mac suite, I had a bit of drama with printing but after two hours it was ok.

Then I went to the book binding workshop room to speak to Hilary about how to do it and she set me off on the ins and outs. I was a bit overwhelmed at first but once you get started its fine. After I had stitched it, I pressed it and glued over the spine so it stays strong and doesn’t wobble about.

All I need to do now is put the cover on and guillotine it, but I am not inducted on the scary machine so I have to wait till Friday when Hilary is in and then glue my cover on.

The cover is double sided printing on to Cartridge paper 200gm, so it is thicker than the pages but still has a nice textured feel.

So when I have done all that I will take photographs of it in real life situations and with a plain background. And make it presentable for my portfolio and degreeshow  

Thursday 20 May 2010

My work is now on Rainy City Stories website





Remember my project for March/April.  It was a self-written project to produce five designs for five stories on the website Rainy City Stories. I used collage, photography, mapping and information graphics.

The aim of the brief was to show the designs with the stories. Well I have finally emailed Rainy city Stories and they have put my designs with the stories, which is bloody fantastic! I am so pleased and it has happened so fast. They look great and my website url is with them so its promoting me.

http://www.rainycitystories.com/2009/05/26/the-busiest-bus-route-in-europe

http://www.rainycitystories.com/2009/08/13/not-yet

http://www.rainycitystories.com/2009/02/23/the-victoria-baths

http://www.rainycitystories.com/2008/10/20/rusholme-ruffians

http://www.rainycitystories.com/2008/11/03/narcissus-the-double-daffodil

Sunday 16 May 2010

Cow Project - t-shirt designs



 

These are my designs for a brief from yonkers ago, for Cow Vintage. It was to create four t-shirt designs for their new shop in Manchester. And I have finally got around to screen-printing my designs, now I am not the best at screen-printing but they have come out preeeetty well.

The idea behind the designs is to combine, British behaviour and saying with vintage items. Very simple idea and very simple designs. 1. Vintage mirror frame and the word Glamour ( to hint at the page 3 lifestyle of today) 2. Vintage chandelier with the words Nice one Bruv (slang and G-talk) 3. Gramophone and the song lyrics “Play that funky…..white boy” and 4. Grand old chair with the most use term “Have a brew” “tea&2”.

Saturday 15 May 2010

My business cards


So here are my business cards, I designed them last week and sent the designs off to Moo.com to be printed and they have been delivered today! and ooof they look gorgeous.
the main focus is the front of the card and it is a photograph I took on my travels around manchester for one of my projects and I instantly fell in love with it and new I had to incorporate it somehow.
I had two sets printed with different colours on each design, I chose blue and yellow/green because they are unisex colours in my eyes and plus they are just striking and make the design.

Saturday 8 May 2010

awesome chair


This chair is amazing! I want one right now! It was created for an advertising campaign by Jules & Jeremy. More than 30 highly respected people from the Dutch press and advertisement world have been photographed in this chair for the campaign. The advertisements have been printed in marketing and ad magazines.

You can buy it I think but for god nos how much. I just love it, I can just picture myself in it for days, not having to move. Brilliant.

the neon museum



I really want to visit the Neon Museum aka the boneyard, it is a collection the old Las Vegas signs, from the most famous hotels in the world. It exhibits over 150 historic and non historic signs and is inspiration for artists, students, designers and historians.

It is a non profit organization in 1996. “The Neon Museum's mission is to collect, preserve, study and exhibit neon signs and associated artifacts to inspire educational and cultural enrichment for diverse members of our international community

The pieces range from the 1930s to the present day. I think this would be gorgeous to see in person and great to photograph.

Inventive business card


So Ive been looking into making a business card and the great researcher I am came across this naughty and hilarious design for a Divorce Lawyer. Apparently lawyers can’t really advertise so this ambient piece of design is brilliant. It’s a business card that opens up to reveal a condom and a Kama sutra card. And it was left at the front desks of hotels and motels in America, to promote the lawyers, this is because most affairs happen at such places. Its very tongue and cheek and put a smile on my face. 

Thursday 6 May 2010

Bryan Edmondson: SEA


 

4th May 2010

 

Bryan Edmondson came to our university to give a talk about his design company Sea. He probably was one of the quickest lecturers we have had to date. He briefly talked about his early career and his university life, he graduated in 1992 and has worked at numerous design company’s: Roundel and Imagination, before he co-founded Sea with John Simpson in 1997. 

His work touches on many disciplines from corporate identity and art direction to print, packaging and information design. He has combined a diverse and impressive client list and produced a wide range of acclaimed work for clients such as Matthew Williamson, GF Smith, EMI and the contemporary furniture brand, Beyon.
 


 

“He used those weird things called pens!”

 

His work has been widely published and has received recognition in numerous national and international design awards. During his career he has lectured at many UK Universities and at events such as D&AD, Typographic Circle and the Annual London event, Four Designers.

They base their work on simple ideas, you could tell he knew what he liked and he has reasons for everything.

He also spoke about there re-design of Grafik Magazine, they were asked to design ten of the covers and a 150year anniversary book, I was really impressed by this and the work was just gorgeous, they worked with a screen print company for this and made 15,000 individually screen printed editions of Grafik to celebrate there anniversary.

He has obviously had a lucrative career and is proud to be at Sea, keeping his company to a 10 people maximum even with bigger and bigger clients each year, which is brave and probably a lot more work.

 

www.seadesign.co.uk

 

 

Russell Hancock




Visiting lecturer - Russell Hancock 27th April 2010

Russell Hancock came to our uni to give a brilliant talk about his journey from college to present and he came to give us a similar lecture like his old class mate Craig Oldham gave us. He wanted to help us transition from a student to a designer, easier than he did. He was very charismatic and funny, he kept us all interested with the fast pace and fascinating stories.
Like I have said, he was in the same class with Craig Oldham, at the university college Falmouth and graduated in 2006. And he has worked himself up in the short space of 4 years.
He described his mistakes and his success when he first left uni and he got ‘shafted’ quite a lot, but also put himself out there. He made connections in his town and graphic designed for basically his whole town. He did what ever he could big or small and made connections in the industry while doing this.

He has had internships in studios as well as jobs but is a freelance designer now. And I have learned that ‘self-employed’ means you work for yourself and ‘Freelance’ means work for studios and companies.


He was going through some of his design work and he started to talk about a old derelict art deco cinema. And you could see he got excited, this was a cinema in his town that was owned by a awful guy. And Russell brought it on himself to design the boards that cover up the doors of the building, just to make it intriguing and to bring back some of its magic. 

He pitched this to the awful guy and he turned it down, but months later some else bought the building and he pitched it to them and they loved it, and now they have asked him to design all their promotions packaging and design for the inside as they are making it a cinema again. This is an amazing achievement and he should be very proud, from a small illustration design to a huge campaign is brilliant.


This shows that you don’t just have to work for big companies to get up the ladder. But he doesn’t knock London and its wide variety of design. He has worked fro ASHA http://www.ashawebsite.co.uk/, an amazing design company, and has produced some winning ideas with them, like the ‘gadgetshop’ campaign which was to produce posters, packaging and business cards that all represented a gadget.  He showed us some of the fantastic work he did at ASHA. 

He also told us how in the past he was over working, working very long days and weekends, which isn’t a life.He warned us of the danger of over working and how he had become ill form it. He was very strong on his opinion that life shouldn’t all be about work and it was such a relief to hear, as some designers are too focused in my eyes and live eat breathe design. 

“life and a work balance is so important”

After working at Asha he became self employed and told us some GREAT tips on how to go about self employment, hourly rates and terms and conditions.
No one else has Ever told us or spoke to us about these kinds of things, not even hinted so this was awesome.

Hourly rates- £25
Freelancing Day Rate - £100-£200
Web/flash designs - £300 or more per hour.

As well as these valuable tips he also was very voiced about keeping in contact with everyone and anyone, if you have done past work with a client, keep in touch, they might use you some day. And to Listen to clients, they don’t see the way we do and sometimes cannot see the potential in ideas. Even showing your mum would help; if she cant get it then you need to re work it.
When working for a client, get the money up front and a signature, assess your designs carefully before presenting, if you act like a pro, you will be treated like a pro, remember people and you will be remembered. Become organized get out and socialise and remember some clients are just plain bad.

During his career he has worked under Marksteen Adamson at ASHA, for clients such as JCB, Gadgetshop, Tearfund and The Duke of Edinburgh Award. Also for Jamaha and Digital Vision with Freeman Christie and The Royal Mint and London Olympics 2012 at Fixel.

He is now based in his studio in Clifton, Bristol, and works as a freelancer for clients such as The National Autistic Society, Stratford Armouries, Blue Mouse Disability, Research Media, M.U.S.E., Lumiere Kinesis Cinemas, Mentos Mints, TL&G and Made London.


After his marvellous lecture he came to our studio to speak to anyone who wanted. So in small groups he had a chat with us. He has given us basically gold dust to any student. He has produced a: proposal, cover letter, terms of business, fee proposal and invoice. These are invaluable pieces of paper work that we need when we leave and I had never even thought about it, because no one ever said anything about it. He talked us through the paperwork, what to do and not to do and things that should be written into your contracts.

He has reassured me as a designer and has helped me immensely with the paperwork that is essential, he was a brilliant speaker and was very approachable, I think I will keep in touch with him as he is just so straight forward and a brilliant designer.

Emily Forgot



20th April 2010 visiting lecturer

Emily Alston aka Emily Forgot  came to give a informal lecture for the 3 years of D&AD. She was a very charismatic woman and spoke to us instead of at us, unlike other designers in the past.

She is a illustrator mainly and a part time graphic designer, but wants to be more focused on graphic design as there is more freedom in designing unlike illustration where the client tells you the colours and style of the piece.

She graduated in 2004 from Liverpool School of Art and Design and had been designing ever since, she has now moved down to London because she thinks being in London makes being in the industry easier, not the creatively but it has opened doors for her.

She is influenced by A.M. Cassandra who was a illustrator, typographer, designer and set designer of the 1920’s.

And by the surreal artists Salvador Dali and Alan Aldridge.

She has done work for the likes of Selfridges and Adidas, and by the looks of her website she is well known in the community. She has designed a cover for the Creative Review and from this got work from Yamaha.

Her work is very 2D and illustrative, using A LOT of gradients which I don’t favour but hey it works.

“I like busy things like Where’s Wally”.

Although I think she is freelance now she has in the past worked for creative agency’s, she worked for Village green for 6 months. But from what she said she felt restricted.

“Be self indulgent”

she got very giddy and excitable about her work in the lecture and made everyone laugh, she like to get things in her designs that she likes, like legs and tea pots.

She has also screenprinted for the If You Could website which focuses on Working with established designers and illustrators as well as emerging talent they produce work for publishing, exhibitions and events. If You Could has been featured in international design and style press including Creative Review, Grafik, Design Week, Computer Arts, Wonderland Magazine.

Along side commercial endeavors Emily produces personal work in the form of limited edition prints and ceramics. Her work has been exhibited both in London and abroad most notably in 2007 at the “Fragiles” show as part of the prestigious Miami Art Basel.

She has clearly done well for herself with her career. In the space of six years she has definitely made a name for herself and still seemed grounded and young and fresh, she didn’t take herself seriously and doesn’t with her work either, her work is fun and visual it doesn’t have to have specific reason or meaning, she just makes it.

Scratch n sniff


Hi all, I no Ive not been blogging for a while but Im not a great mutlitasker when having to write my uni journal and my Manchester guide book….too many words.

 

But today I feel I must blog as I was walking down oxford road and was handed a free bottle of water, but it wasn’t just any kind of water……. It was Calvin Klein Water….. yeah I no I was impressed too. But no they are not opening up a new market it’s a promotional item for their new male fragrance: Eternity Aqua. It’s a small bottle and is designed like a typical bottle of water but with a great extra. It has a ‘Scratch & Sniff’ patch on it, which smells of the fragrance.  And it is a pretty nice smell too! I felt I must share this, as is a great use of marketing. I wouldn’t of thought Calvin Klein would do such an ambient advertisement.