Summer Update 10/08

I've just about come to the end of the live brief projects I've been working on and plan to concentrate on my dissertation, blogging and learning more about web design so I can do a decent website for myself before I get back to uni.

I've had a read through the four books I got out for my dissertation research and today I went to the National Arts Education Archive at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to do some primary research about Harry Thubron and the Basic Design Course at Leeds College Of Art (for more see here).

The Roman Festival and Linton Pet Shop logo jobs are done now. I said at the Roman Festival debriefing that I would be happy to help with the branding and promotional material for next year's festival. The plan is to start promoting the Festival sooner and more effectively next year so I could be starting work on this again fairly soon and will incorporate it into my third year work. I've had great feedback from the organising committee about my work for the festival which has given me a confidence boost.

The church wedding leaflet is finished and ready to be discussed with a local printer, it will be printed once it has been approved by the PCC.

The You Cried Wolf logo is also complete and ready to be used when the band require.

I am going to try and get a visit or two to a publishers or design agency before the third year begins.

I'm going down to Essex in a couple of weeks so I'd really like to get a visit to somewhere down there. It would be good to see studios in different parts of the country. I contacted one agency called Space and Time Design in Chelmsford but they said I wouldn't be able to visit. There are a couple of other studios which I plan to contact.

There is a publishers in Huddersfield called Jeremy Mills Publishing which I'd like to visit so I will contact them this week. This will be beneficial to my interest in publication design.

My Own Summer 2011 (So Far)

This summer hasn't gone exactly as I was expecting it to at the end of term but it's turned into a a really good time.

I was expecting to be doing work experience at Bark and Bite or The Beautiful Meme by now but neither has  happened. Bark and Bite haven't got back to me even after my followup up emails and phone calls saying I'd be interested in the placement they discussed with me when I visited. As for the Beautiful Meme they said that they might not be able to fit a placement in for me this summer and it might have to wait until September. I expect this is what will happen now which I'm not upset about, as long as I get a placement eventually. I will continue to send reminder emails.

I thought I was going to miss out this summer because of these things but I ended up doing a range of freelance work and experiencing being a graphic designer for alone and working things out for myself. I had about a month of various briefs so far which is what I would have expected from a placement actually. I've worked on a local Roman Festival and been involved in organizing committee and weekly meetings and helped out with the set up and running of the festival itself.

Out of my work on the Roman Festival I have got my first paid design job for a local pet shop. I will write more about this on my DP blog once the job is completed this week and I've discussed what I can put up on my blog with the client. This was probably th biggest step I've made so far with it being a paid job and having to negotiate and liaise with a client in a professional way.

I have done a leaflet design for my local church, this was self initiated in a way, I showed the designs to the necessary people and they liked it enough to give it the green light. This is on going and will involve contacting a printer which will be another new experience.

I have done a logo design for my brother's band You Cried Wolf (I designed their demo ep cover a while ago as well) and will make up a "proper" version soon. The band and my brother like it and it is on my DP blog.

I have also submitted the idea for a logo for an upcoming local festival and I'm waiting to hear back about it.

On a night out the other day I saw one of my ex-work colleagues and mentioned I was doing graphic design now. He offered me a little job which will also require me to contact printers about run amounts and costs etc. I'm going to start contacting the client and printers this week.

All in all this summer is going very well and I've got a few of live briefs under my belt which can go on my CV and in a portfolio and gained some great experience doing things for myself as freelancer. It's not all been connected to my own particular specialities and interests in graphic design but I wouldn't have wanted to say no to any of the briefs I've worked on.

Change in Direction?

I got the feedback from the Design For Digital module back yesterday and though I've improved (by 1%) since the print module and I'm back on a 2:1 I'm not that pleased with the result. I'm starting to wonder if I've lost the experimental edge I think I had during the first year when I was getting mid 2:1's for everything. I noticed this the other day when I was photographing a load of work for my PDF portfolio. I was surprised how much of the first year work I liked and was proud of having not looked at it for a while.
Im worried that I've become too much of a designer this year. I have produced some good work this year but it is very 'graphic design' and I've been sat in front of computers possibly too much. I feel I should be more expressive and get away from computers. I am having a lot of fun with the type module, it's new, I'm learning and I can see myself improving through my contributions to the lesson and feedback from other people in the class about my work, it is often pointed out now as being good, this wasn;t the case at all at the start of the module.
Type and layout are 'my things' and I'm having fun learning and being expressive with them and I think I need to get this back for my main graphics work. I am thinking of taking a more conceptual and arty approach again, I've always said I'm influenced by fine art and I think my work would benefit by letting this show through again. The presentation Fred gave the other week talked about the importance of doing what you want in your design practice and I need to do this. I have been so focussed on being a graphic designer I think I've lost sight of what I enjoy and like, being expressive, experimental and a bit arty. If nothing else then I'll have work which stands out, the last thing I want is to create generic graphic design, enough of that exists and I don't want to be part of it. As Craig from Music said in his talk 'Never become a professional', experiments and take a chance to do something different.

Position Statement: Now and The Future

I've been having a think about who I am as a designer and person over this week with all the Enterprise, PPD and YCN stuff I've been having to get sorted. Below is my revised position statement from Task 5 of the Enterprise tasks.

1. I like magazine, newspaper and book design; most of the companies I want to contact in the next few weeks are publishing companies and magazines. 
2. This has indicated to me that the areas of design which interest me the most I am starting to specialise in are editorial, layout, typography and using photography and illustration effectively with these areas of design.
3. I love music, art, films, computer games, snowboarding; entertainment in general I suppose and I would love to work on a publication relating to these things.
4. I really like drawing, if I have an image in front of me or even reference images like I did for the Greek monsters I can do a good job. I can't see myself working as an illustrator primarily but it is good that I can draw well if I need to.
5. I would love to do more work with motion graphics, I think this is becuase of my interest in computer games but OUGD202 really sparked my interest in this area of design. I have been looking at games studios like Eidos and Crystal Dynamics because I particularly like games they have produced. Motion graphics could be my way into working for a company like that.
6. I love what I do and I work hard; I am happiest working in the studio rather than at home, I like working longer hours at college and then being able to go home and not worrry about work. I am quite a different person at working at college than I am relaxing at home and I like it this way to be honest. 
7. I make time for non-college stuff and if I have something planned like going out, snowboarding etc then I won't let college work get in the way. I manage my time and work so that I have a life outside of graphic design.
8. I have no interest (at this point) in starting up my own design studio, I'd like to work for a publication or motion graphics studio. I'm not brave enough to start up by myself or feel I have anything amazing (yet anyway) to set me apart from the hundreds of studios which already exist out there. 
9. I'm not really interested in branding, packaging, logos, infographics and all that kind of corporate design stuff. I like the stories and images in articles in publications and working with them to create interesting design. This sense of narrative and having a story to illustrate and work with is probably why I've become interested in motion graphics as well.
10. I would still like to be a tutor at A-Level/ND or above (foundation, degree, HND) in the future once I have worked in the design industry long enough to feel that I have knowledge and experience to pass on to students. I could work part time and still do some freelance work like my tutors at foundation did, they really inspired me and I could see myself being like them in the future.

Position Statement: Who I Am and What I'm After

Things What I've Learned In My Graphic Design Life So Far

1. Never kern body copy
2. Don't design according to a grid, design to what communicates right
3. Link files in InDesign - keep all files used in .indd document in the same folder as the .indd document
4. A good rule of thumb for paragraph indents is 3 characters
5. Everything in a layout/page should have a geometric relationship with everything else
6. Save before you print anything in Quark Express 7 Passport, it will crash
7. Aiff. files are a pain in the arse to use in After Effects, other factors may have contributed to them messing up but when I used .wav files it all worked fine
8. So is the puppet pin tool as much as I thought it was my saviour when I first learned about it
9. Red, black, white - works
10. The order you look at something is different to the order you read something
11. Never, ever....hyphenate the alphabet
12. By left aligning text you can get away with changing gutters and margins more than if text is justified
13. Trying out layout designs with squares and rectangles of different tones to represent text is a good way of working
14. Analyse, pick apart and define exactly what the problem is that a brief is wanting you to solve, it makes designing so much easier and focussed.
15. If it's not good enough it will be torn down off the wall
16. Never ever use Berol felt pens again in my designs

OK?

A history of the word OK, there's an interesting typographic analysis of the word at the start of the article

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12503686