How the time goes by...

4 house moves, a month in London, 2 months in Manchester, 6 months in my first design job, a Post Grad in Creative Business Management, various freelance clients, and a new job later, I find myself at the degree show for the graduates of 2011!  Wow, it has gone so fast, but looking back I have achieved a lot and couldn't have wished for a better graduating year.  I have learned so much, but it was only when standing 1 year later on the fourth floor looking at the wonderful work, did I realised how much has changed.

Now I have just started a new role at Cotton Traders (those of you who know about Rugby will know the England legend that is Fran Cotton and the iconic rugby shirts they produce, see below).  As I am sure we all know, finding a job in the design industry faces tough competition, and I decided to leave my previous role as Junior Graphic Designer to move back to Manchester to gain some experience in the marketing side of things.  My new role (Marketing Production Assistant) means I work closely with the creative team to brief them, implement marketing messages and strategy, as well as competitor analysis and maintaining the marketing plan/schedule.  Compared to the tiny marketing budget I worked with at Panaz, this marketing team spends over 14 million a year on marketing, so they really do play with the big fish.

You may have seen their recent TV ad which aired a few months ago, a first for Cotton Traders and a huge success in terms of driving traffic to their website and sales.



However, this by no means marks the end of my design career, in fact its just the beginning.  I am working on a number of projects on the side and hope to be able to share these with you in the very near future!

Watch this space!

Andreas Uebel

So I have spent the last week doing research for about 7 projects. I thought it would help me narrow down which ones I wanted to work on and which ones I might drop, but it hasn't, it's just made me want to work on them all. Dammit! Still it's been a nice week and I've found lot's of inspiration, some directly related to my projects which has mainly gone in the old sketchbook, but i'm blogging some of the stuff I've found which I know I'll want to look at soon for my other project and some other stuff which I just Love. =) enjoy...

Andreas Uebele:

''art writes its own laws. familiar everyday things are removed from reality. in the wordmark for the gallery for contemporary art the letters are removed as well. abandoning themselves to the rhythm of a siren song, they have sailed away from their standard spacing. through the apparently random blacking of the counters – the white spaces in the letters – the wordmark with its irregular spacing seems somehow syncopated. plain information is transformed into contemporary art''

This guy's website is full of quite diverse work, although it all has a very typographical and distinct style to it.

(www.uebele.com)

''the agency is active in all areas of visual communications. projects are handled by small interdisciplinary teams comprising communications designers, media engineers and architects.''

I have become really interested in the way that design/advertising agencies work internally this year. Since we are getting so close to the big wide world, I kind of worried that the kind of place I wanted to work didn't really work and was just a ideal in my head. I'm feeling a little more confident now that my perfect job is out there somewhere, I just have to find it.

Sheila de Bretteville

A Feminist/writer/designer/teacher? I want that job. Mack posted this name on the blog and when I looked her up the interview was really inspiring. I don't deliberately try to find women designers, but for me it is even more inspiring when it's a strong woman! This woman really has accomplished it all - professor of design at Yale! That's pretty impressive. Reading what she says makes a lot of sense - sometimes it feels difficult to find your own style and briefs when your at uni because we do get set with the same stuff everyone other graduate does. It's a great time to be influenced by people around you and learn as much as you can from what already exists, but when I leave and have to produce my own work I really do want to create stuff that says something and has a purpose and message. I'm not sure the perfect job for me is just to be a straight forward designer - I enjoy the people/client/presentation/concept/ideas/research side of everything far more than the execution and deliverance, but what I do know is that I want to work on stuff that matters.

'I work to help our students acquire a solid basis from which they can each shape their own professional body of work, perspectives and life, rather than replicating mine, or those of their faculty and critics. I agree with Rob Storr that ‘it’s time for the post post-modern generations to make up vocabularies and metaphors of their own.’

''All environments and experiences affect us, so our work is to make the patterns of power clear and keep communication open. If we do the hard work of asking and listening, not hiding what we think but rather being as clear, transparent and conversational about what we are doing and why, we have opportunities to change a pattern that is hierarchical;''

Self promotion

Self promotion has been on my mind for a while but I haven't really done anything about it yet... I didn't really know where to begin or what I wanted to promote. Myself obviously, but I wasn't really sure what I wanted to say about myself.

I found this book at the Whitworth gallery book sale called Marketing your creativity - new approaches for a changing industry by Matt Perry and Ant Melder for £3. Admittedly its a little outdated, it was written when digital was still relatively new and not the norm, but it's an easy read with lots of advice from people in Industry (Mother, Cake etc.) and what it does is kind of simplify the importance, avenues and approaches to self promotion and 'The brand of you'.

Then we had a talk from Graham on Tuesday which was very helpful. I liked how he explained the ideas behind the self promotion and how he uses it. The Via stuff that took inspiration from the buildings, colours and textures around them was really lovely example of how to make self promotion. Attention to detail is also very important - to go the extra mile. Self promotion be a consistent brand the same as any other which represents your personality and style.

I put off doing anything before because I didn't think it was necessary yet and didn't know where to begin - now I'm starting to piece together ideas about what I can use and what I want to say. This summer I have become much more sure about what it is I want to do, and researching the kind of places I might want to work, so feel that i'm ready to start designing 'the brand of me'. I am now brimming with ideas!

Droga 5

Droga5 is an agency which I came across in Campaign over summer. The company was set up by Dave Droga, an Australian, and they currently have an office in Sydney and New York. They work a lot with charities and on political and government campaigns. And they don't specialise in any particular media or visual style.

This is a link to work they did for the Obama Campaign in America which is everything that you wouldn't expect it to be. It's quite controversial and I have to admitt when I first watched it I was surprized something like this had been created for politics. I guess I always thought of America as being behind the UK when it comes to forward thinking, especially in Politics, but I actually think they are way ahead of us in terms of innovation in their voting campaigns. This campaign is based on great problem solving and it feels so much more honest (even if it's still a political ploy deep down) than anything I have ever seen in Britain. I have been getting really interested in political work lately, and am thinking or changing the slant of my essay to research further into this area.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgHHX9R4Qtk

Droga5 is an agency which I came across in Campaign over summer. The company was set up by Dave Droga, an Australian, and they currently have an office in Sydney and New York. They work a lot with charities and on political and government campaigns. And they don't specialise in any particular media or visual style.

Below are some posters done for Unicef 'Tap' water campaign that went across print, viral, web and much more.

''My objective isn’t to build the biggest agency in the world or the most creative agency in the world—I want to build the most influential agency in the world.When I first launched the agency three years ago, I made a statement that I think people thought was just a throwaway thing, but I really meant it. I want us to get involved with things that matter.''

Dave Droga

http://magazine.wsj.com/hunter/rebel-yell/pitch-perfect/

To end up working at an agency with similar values to this one would be an amazing accomplishment for me!

studio 8

Why Haven't seen this work before?? Ooh it's so lovely.

''Studio8 Design is an award-winning independent graphic design studio with a reputation for delivering intelligent and engaging creative solutions. Based in central London, Studio8 was established in 2005 by Matt Willey and Zoë Bather. Working with clients both large and small, in the UK and overseas, Studio8 produces a diverse range of work across multiple disciplines. The studio's team bring a wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm to every new project and offer a scope of capabilities that includes editorial, exhibition, signage, corporate literature, websites, and brand identities.''

The name rang a bell when I looked this up but for some reason I hadn't looked into this agency before. Looking at their work I find that it's all great stuff and I enjoy it, but they have a very specific style which doesn't really deviate. Its nice type, nice imagery and beautifully put together. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing or not- the work certainly hits the spot, it seems quite conceptual and I like it that they work for charities and meaningful subjects as well as more commercial stuff, but I guess i'd like a little bit more variety!

Marian Bantjes

I came across this woman's work in the Dataflow book, it was an inspiration map which caught my eye and I decided to look further into her work.

Bantjes is a Canadian artist who has worked with typography, graphic design, book design, worked for her own design company. She has worked with Stephan Seigmeister, Pentagram, Print Magazine, wired, The New York Times, Wallpaper, The Guardian and Young and Rubicam.

The more I explored her website the more this woman was amazing me. She not only designs, but writes articles and essays, teaches, gives talks and speeches. This sounds exactly like the kind of job I want!! I want it all.

In the 'about me' section, there's an extract of her CV and it is just incredible. It's hard to imagine that one person can have accomplished so much and such a wide range of things.

Rather than the typical 'about me' section, it is made up of lots of different bits and pieces - including a piece she writes about herself. I could relate to what she was writing so much, it was so refreshing and genuine. I think I may have found a new design heroine!

Below is a link to an article that she wrote for the AIGA essay series. Its about her life and regrets and coming to terms with what she's done and how she's chosen to spend her time. I think this pretty much sums up how I feel all the time, wondering if I should have done things differently, and whether or not i'm making the right decisions. She talks about how she wishes she went to university to get a solid foundation knowledge of art and design but that she probably wouldn't be where she is today if she hadn't gone travelling instead.
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/singing-the-blues

This is definitely one woman who's job I want, so to take the advice from Clinton I'm going to see if I can find out how she got to where she is today. I think that concentrating on people and agencies that I aspire and relate to and finding out more about how they have got where they are and who works for them will really help me to direct my work and decide where I am going.

http://www.bantjes.com/index.php?s=OldNews