12/10/2010

Careers in Focus : the creative industries




For my dissertation this year I am doing study into The role of education in design versus the needs of the creative industry. This event is going to form the basis of a lot of my primary research, hopefully but it will also be an amazing opportunity to meet and speak to some very successful people in the creative industry. Give the event a look, and if you are lucky enough to have a day spare in cold November book a spot, it will be a good day to be a design student I can tell.

Research, Ideas, my first open screen and why I need a lot of space to graft.


















These are a selection of photographs of my research, ideas and development for a brief I'm working on at the moment for the Big Brownie Bake Off, an event that was held on the 9th October at the Look Mum No Hands Cafe in London's Old Street. Although this event has passed my work is for a screenprinting project I'm doing and this event is a perfect opportunity to do some really iconic imagery in a contemporary way. At this stage all of my development has been put together from a combination of hand done elements and for the purpose of developing my designs fully on-screen elements such as layout and type placement. When I have fully developed my concept and settled upon a final design I will be constructing it by hand ready for the screenprinting process, so all illustration and typography will be hand rendered and the layout measured by hand. I can't wait to get in the print room!
These photographs show the creative process I went through to create my initial ideas for 'The Big Brownie Bake Off'. The two photographs above show how I work, I like it messy with plenty of wall space to pin things up which is why I sometimes struggle to find enough space to work in the studio at Uni (without elbowing someone in the face or accidentally pinning their scarf to the wall). I always prefer to go out and about for inspiration and the photograph of my research show I got a bit snap happy whilst out looking for awesome posters to analyse (thats only two pages out of about 6, I found a lot of awesome posters). I am of the belief that there is no set way to work as a designer, its all about finding your groove, I have tried in the past to work the way a lot of other designers do, a layout pad and a fine liner in tow, but I never really feel I can express my creative brainwaves properly, drawing little boxes and putting a design into it, I infinitely prefer using a whole page as my box and filling it with a concept, annotating as I go really helps me to analyse and evaluate a concept even at this stage. I know I will evolve as a designer but working this way really helps facilitate the creative process for me and hopefully will continue to do so. I have used screen printing before but I have never experimented with open screen printing, I was fascinated with the possibilities in colour and texture that can be achieved using this technique, I included it in my developmental work to show the processes I had experimented with but it wasn't practical to use it for my final development, this is not to say I won't be using in a future project as I loved the outcome of just a few experiments.

Hello there! I have been neglectful of late with regards to my lovely blog but as the poster above shows I'M BACK! So get ready for another year of work, clever stuff (probably that I have collected but you never know, it might have even come out of my own brain!) and some random but usually funny stuff as well. In a bit my lovelies :)

20/03/2010

YCN Student Award Winner 2009 - Prudential Brief




This is a winner from the 2009 student awards from YCN, this is a collection of ambient media designed to make people think more practically about their savings and pensions with Prudential. I really like the concept created and very effectively executed by the designers involved (Peter Loulianou & Ollie Agius), I love the hand drawn style of illustration carried throughout the concept and how they have tried to catch the attention of a younger generation of people by using this style, re-enforcing the idea that it is never too early to start thinking about it. i really enjoyed reviewing the YCN winners archive, but this piece really caught my eye.

D&ad Student Award Winner 2009



A creative circle is a square. So this awards annual for the Creative Circle is square (which is also a good shape to show both portrait and landscape format work). And the target on the cover is a square. The bullet holes drilled into this target relate to gold, silver, bronze and inbook winners. Next to the winning work inside, we see special gold, silver and bronze ink swatches in the shape of the holes in the cover. The number and type of swatches relates to the number and type of awards won. Every piece of work featured has its own page. And all the winning work is shown in situ.

This is the description of the winning piece by Paul Belford in the 2009 awards. I don't think the description does this piece justice although the award does speak for itself. I love the use of layout, white space and the intriguing and eloquent way this annual for Creative Circle uses a subtle yet fantastically effective concept to showcase the winners in their categories. This piece is a fantastic source of inspiration on many levels and is a well deserved winner.

Just Us - this cheers me up no end.


This is a post from the Just Us collective blog, I have began incorporating Just Us into my weekly online adventure for inspiration as they catch beautiful pieces that are unusual and always with character and personality. This piece is from Adorn a Brooklyn based design studio started by Eric Elms. Adorn aim to make people think and smile by creating visually interesting and conceptual solutions. Their work has a nice sense of joy to it, and along with all the illustrative and installation work, Adorn has done some really nice layout and publication work to fit alongside. Worth a look to get your taste buds tingling.

Kerry Venus - Northern design competition Graphic Design winner 2009



This is a review of the 2009 Northern Design Competition winner Kerry Venus. Kerry Venus is a graduate from the Lincoln School of Art and Design who's entry won her the top prize, and contributed, along with her other work, a job as an in house designer for Morrisons Supermarkets. I love Kerry's entry, her style and her reasoning behind it is something I am also passionately interested in promoting and her piece very eloquently and more so interestingly showcases not only her talent as a designer but also her dedication and love of design. Kerry's manifesto is very aesthetically interesting, with a fantastic application of her idea. I also took the time after reviewing her manifesto to check mild peril media which is the brain child of Kerry and illustrator Colin Mayhew. There is some great work up on the site and the site itself is a fantastic representation of the work to be found there. Below is Kerry comments on her entry.
"The Handmade Manifesto is a policy I wrote about how all designers should turn off their computers and get back to doing their work by hand." I couldn't agree more.
links - http://www.mildperilmedia.co.uk/Mild_Peril_Media_Home.html
http://www.northerndesigncompetition.co.uk/archive/index.php#graphic_design