Whitby

This weekend me and the girls went to Whitby for a mini camping trip.  Saturday was lovely, Sunday was miserable, and Monday was ok but we still had a great time.  The scenery was beautiful!  

One of the highlights of the trip was an amazing tea rooms we found - It was elaborately decorated Victorian style with loads of trinkets, home-made cakes milkshakes, lemonade and sandwiches!Each room was different the food was beautiful!  I wish I lived there!

How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul...

After my brilliant portfolio crit with Adrian Shaugnessy and finishing uni, I thought it was about time I got round to reading his book How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul.  My signed copy has been sat on the shelf for quite a while!

It turned out to be one of the best graphic design books I've ever read - It was so helpful and covered the kind of topics that usually get ignored, especially when your deciding what to study.  It was an eye opener, and I know I will be referring back to it for years and years to come, not just about my first years as a designer, but probably right through my career.

Fold magazine

Helen Butterworth, Maaya Lad, Alison Buckley and myself have been working on an ongoing project this term to redesign the student magazine for the new Art school and the recent rebrand.  We felt there could be a much better format and purpose to a magazine for the art school, and chose to focus on showcasing student work and providing tailor made reviews and listings about the art cultural scene in Manchester.  In this day and age, there has to be a reason for print so each magazine would showcase a students work, giving out a free limited edition poster of the work each month.  We also designed a website where more content would be uploaded and the chance for people to upload there own inspirations and reviews, as well as creating an online gallery for students to showcase their work, see other peoples work and get together for collaborations.  We called the magazine 'Fold' - a simple action that every art student takes, which we developed into a logo and concept for the design.  Each cover cleverly folds back, creating the logo and revealing a sneak preview of the poster underneath. 

As well as designing the concept, branding and website for the magazine, we also designed promotional material including flyers, posters and and ambient campaign of triangles.

We hope to do a run of the pilot issue to give away during the degree show so watch this space!

Final Posters: Voter engagement

Here are my final Voter engagement posters!

        

Browser and Choice website

So, one task in paticular I have been putting off for literally weeks is designing a website to go with my Browser and choice campaign promoting browsers.  The initial part of the project was the creation of a fake 'estate agents' window to capture people's attention, and then lead them to a website where they can learn all about browsers, find the one that's right for them and download it!

Here's a few great websites I've been looking at for inspiration, not only great concepts, but innovative ideas about what websites can offer and how they can take you on an experience.

http://www.hotel626.com/

http://www.talktotheplant.com/

http://demo.fb.se/e/ikea/comeintothecloset/site/default.htm


Below are images from 'read a book at work' website (which is no longer available) a campaign by a New Zealand agency for the council to encourage people to read more.  Basically, they released loads of e-books for free but designed them as windows desk tops and power point presentations so you don't get caught out by your boss! genius!

My website is all ready for my portfolio now =)

Teen pregnancy

Last but not least... Issue # 3 Teen pregnancy!

The quality is somewhat distorted by the jpeg-ness, but I think it's almost there!  Again, any comments would be greatly appreciated!

Final project: Voter engagement

Uni is so close to being over I can taste the freedom and it's not doing me any favours for trying to finish my last project (coincidentally the one I hope to put in the degree show so I suppose I better get a move on!)

After much development these are the final mock ups of two out of my three posters based around encouraging people to vote.  I wanted to come at this subject from a slightly different angle, so I took what I found in my research, which was that many young people do have strong and valid opinions about issues that effect us, it's just that they never make the link between that and who you vote for in the general elections.  My concept is based around taking some of these issues including teen pregnancy, the war in Iraq and benefits and reminding people that it is stuff like this we are voting for - not personality, or class but policies that will and do effect our everyday lives.  I hope that this would help spark a connection to politics in people's minds and remind them they probably already do have an opinion and can use this to vote.

My posters are designed to work both ways up to achieve this.  The same image, looked at from a different perspective, through different eyes, can mean something different to different people.  It's the right to this difference that makes this country a democracy, and should be something worth voting for!

I've tried to keep the style as simple as possible to make the image work both ways and not over complicate it.  I'm not sure if the cream on the money background is strong enough to stand out next to the blue on the gun or if the shading is quite right on the piggy bank yet....

I feel something is still missing but I can't put my finger on it!  I know everyone says please let me know what you think on here, and no one ever does... but I would really appreciate some feedback and comments on whether or not this is working or any changes you can spot??

Please help =)

Final project research: voter engagement

My final project is based around voter engagement in young people.  Inspired by the recent elections, I kind of wish I'd got round to this before the general vote, as I have been researching and planning this project since before Christmas, but never the less, this will be the final cherry on the cake to complete my portfolio.  I have a couple of strong ideas already, which I will spend the last two weeks executing, but both are quite visually difficult to bring off so I have been looking to get as much inspiration as possible!  Here's some new research, some old research and some lovely ideas!

  

           

                  

   

 

           

  

        

 

Website

As we only have two weeks to go today (Eeek!) I am starting to think about rounding up all the little things that need to be done.  I still have two projects to round up (slash do) but fingers crossed should have plenty of time to finish.

One big task was my website, which has needed finishing for a while now.  It's taken quite a while, and been through 3 different design over haul's, but now it's finally ready!  See it here.  It took me ages to sort out all the images and decide what to put on there.  I've still got a couple of projects to add and there's a few design tweaks I'm having trouble with (main image needs to be centred, more of a margin between the menu lists and borders etc) but I will have to wait for some trusty advice from Chris for that.  In the mean time I finally have a respectable website as a result of the web workshops with Chris which I am very happy with!  These workshops were one of the best things about this term, and I'm so glad I was given and took this opportunity in the end.

Fairwell journal!

This year I decided to approach my journal differently.  It's the first year that I really felt like I understood exactly what it is they were looking for.  After seeing Libby's journal and that she got 85% for it, I felt this was a great opportunity to pick up marks and as I really enjoyed doing it, that's a bonus.  I decided to tackle the journal as more of a brief, a design problem.  Although they said that they don't mark design itself, this is what we do for a living so I think it's important to make it look nice, and as it's the last year I wanted something I was proud of and could keep.  

So, most of my design decisions were based around making it accessible and as easy as possible to navigate, highlighting the links between different things.  I did separate bitesize books for each section, with titles down the edge of the pages so it could be 'flicked through'.  Then I used fold out pages so that I could show the key points clearly, meaning the tutors don't have to read the full write up to see the significance of that topic, with the in depth writing underneath.    

As my cover, I decided to use an image I took from the studio, which is where I've spent most of my time this year and also to represent getting out into the big wide world.  I designed a rating calender overview type thing of the whole year also on the poster for a quick summery that could be folded out and viewed alongside the books to help contextualise the year.

I have put a lot of work into this journal, going all out for the final year, but was careful not to neglect my other work or spend too much time on it.  However, the journal is worth half of our practical work this term so I think it's worth the extra effort!  I think I might even miss doing the journal when we leave, dare I say it!