Last week I was asked, along with my classmates, to take part in a live brief from Narc Magazine. The brief was to decipher a concept around the sheer randomness of music visualization with a focus on mixed media and apply this to a CD cover for their coming compilation CD, the disc and if the mood struck us a corresponding cover design. The only restrictions were to work to the Narc Magazine dimensions and to make sure no obvious music imagery was used such as instruments. This was my solution to the brief. My idea stems from the winged shoes of Hermes, the messenger of the Greek God Zeus. This line of thinking stems from the belief that Narc Magazine are messengers of the most up to date music on the British music scene, bringing culture to the masses. I focused on mixed media heavily when constructing my designs; the trainer is hand made using a variety of materials and techniques, tempered with the use of paper cut outs, in a variety of different colours and stocks and then scanned in to illustrator to add details such as the text and placement within the document parameters. I really enjoyed this brief, it was so liberating to create something purely for creativity's sake with just enough prerequisites to make this brief free and yet not too free at the same time therefore allowing me to avoid certain avenues of research and idea generation and focusing on others. Another aspect that I am really enjoying about this year long module that this brief is encapsulated within is the freedom from massive amounts of paper work and annotation, allowing me to focus on the brief and the solution. This module is really helping me with my idea generation skills and it is great to see an idea come to fruition on a more industry realistic time scale. It was also great to meet the narc team and have them, along with some tutors, critique my work. Overall I am really proud of the work I produced and thoroughly enjoyed the process. I wasn't lucky enough to win the top prize of full publication but was shortlisted and will feature in the magazine along with a few of my fellow Newcastle College grafters. Congratulations to Lauren who won the top prize and I am really looking forward to seeing all our work in the next issue :) Good Stuff!
Last week I was asked, along with my classmates, to take part in a live brief from Narc Magazine. The brief was to decipher a concept around the sheer randomness of music visualization with a focus on mixed media and apply this to a CD cover for their coming compilation CD, the disc and if the mood struck us a corresponding cover design. The only restrictions were to work to the Narc Magazine dimensions and to make sure no obvious music imagery was used such as instruments. This was my solution to the brief. My idea stems from the winged shoes of Hermes, the messenger of the Greek God Zeus. This line of thinking stems from the belief that Narc Magazine are messengers of the most up to date music on the British music scene, bringing culture to the masses. I focused on mixed media heavily when constructing my designs; the trainer is hand made using a variety of materials and techniques, tempered with the use of paper cut outs, in a variety of different colours and stocks and then scanned in to illustrator to add details such as the text and placement within the document parameters. I really enjoyed this brief, it was so liberating to create something purely for creativity's sake with just enough prerequisites to make this brief free and yet not too free at the same time therefore allowing me to avoid certain avenues of research and idea generation and focusing on others. Another aspect that I am really enjoying about this year long module that this brief is encapsulated within is the freedom from massive amounts of paper work and annotation, allowing me to focus on the brief and the solution. This module is really helping me with my idea generation skills and it is great to see an idea come to fruition on a more industry realistic time scale. It was also great to meet the narc team and have them, along with some tutors, critique my work. Overall I am really proud of the work I produced and thoroughly enjoyed the process. I wasn't lucky enough to win the top prize of full publication but was shortlisted and will feature in the magazine along with a few of my fellow Newcastle College grafters. Congratulations to Lauren who won the top prize and I am really looking forward to seeing all our work in the next issue :) Good Stuff! 
