..more to come.
Back to business
As I've got the holiday blues I wanted to get into some designing and come back to proposing more briefs later. I didn't like my business card design, it didn't say 'me' - I like simple colours, lots of white space and elegant type - so I set to work from scratch again playing around with logo ideas:
..more to come.
..more to come.
The big list
Before I go away on holiday I set myself the task of writing out ideas for the proposed 10 briefs that I want to use come September when I choose 5 of them to begin working from and the others as potential final major projects.
I started out by doing a similar task to the one I did when planning to create my first brief; make a few lists. I considered the options of what I want to get out of the brief, core subject matters that I want to include and skills I want to develop on:
I started out by doing a similar task to the one I did when planning to create my first brief; make a few lists. I considered the options of what I want to get out of the brief, core subject matters that I want to include and skills I want to develop on:
Plan of Action for the Summer
- Follow up on emails sent and contact to hopefully arrange time to visit local graphic design companies.
- Re-design my business cards as I wasn't happy with original designs and colours.
- Design a better layout for my website than the one planned out in Dreamweaver sessions.
- Design a more creative CV
- Propose 10 briefs ready for September.
- Statement of Intent.
- Research for dissertation.
- Create a presentation based on what I have achieved from this plan.
Creative Review
I recently received a reply to my original set of emails sent out in March from Creative Review's Art Director, Paul Pensom. After sending the email, I realised I probably hadn't sent it to the appropriate person in the company and that it would probably just be sat unread amongst his spam emails. However, he replied with some great advice and I am really pleased that he thinks redesigning existing magazines is a good idea, as I was wanting to write my own brief and produce some editorial designs over the summer period. Here was the email:
Hello Nichola and thanks for your kind words. If editorial design is the direction you wish to take I recommend that you read all you can on grids and magazine typography (grid systems by Muller Brockman is an excellent place to start) and start to redesign some of your favourite magazines as self-initiated briefs. If you send this work to the relevant magazines that interest you it will be an excellent way to let them know that you are really interested in them, and may help you to gain an internship.
Hope this helps.
Best,
Paul
Hello Nichola and thanks for your kind words. If editorial design is the direction you wish to take I recommend that you read all you can on grids and magazine typography (grid systems by Muller Brockman is an excellent place to start) and start to redesign some of your favourite magazines as self-initiated briefs. If you send this work to the relevant magazines that interest you it will be an excellent way to let them know that you are really interested in them, and may help you to gain an internship.
Hope this helps.
Best,
Paul
Idealismo
I came across this amazing website that holds so much design relating to my current brief and the combination of layout, type and photography that I love in general. They are a graphic design company based in Switzerland and have a design style that I envy running through all of their work. How they play around with scale and use of space creatively is something I will take on board.
A2
Bikini Test
Compagnie Anonyme
Design Against Fur
Epitalam - poetry festival
Static Records
OUGD203 End of Module Evaluation
In my original Statement of Intent for the Product-Range-Distribution brief, I wanted to create design solutions through the use of typography and layout design to show more depth and direction towards my individual interests. Through producing a set of newspaper supplements with promotional designs for them, I thought it was a great opportunity to explore these interests and work on both my strengths and weaknesses. After having moved on from a collaborative project to a very self directed brief was obviously a complete contrast, but I took a lot from the first half of the module in terms of structure, organisation and always aiming to stay on target with the module outcomes. After writing the brief originally, I haven't had to alter it as I felt the deliverables and restrictions were realistic and achievable and I have put in a lot of effort in terms of project management to write weekly action plans and stick to them. The crits have all been useful, with relevant feedback that often allowed me to open my mind more about possibilities I hadn't always considered.
As well as my organisational skills, I feel that my contextual design research has improved greatly by constantly looking for inspiration and relevant designs that exist in today's industry and frequently blogging my findings. In previous briefs, I have always let myself down in this area by concentrating so much on researching the topic or content of my design that I looked over the opportunity to see what exciting stuff is already being designed in ways similar to my interests. This had definitely helped my design direction over the last 5 weeks and I am pleased that this realisation has come at a time where I can now continue to improve on it and turn a weakness into a strength in preparation for my third year.
In terms of wanting to exhaust all possibilities and design ideas, I feel this is definitely an area of my practice that I still am not meeting my targets in. I know I can do it, yet I continue to produce 10, 20, 30 design variations and go with my strongest idea, instead of hitting 50, 60, even 100 ideas to have a wider variety to work from. I think within the future self directed briefs I am going to be stricter with myself and set numbered targets to aim for so that I am pushing my practice to a place that would allow me to produce much higher quality design.
This brief has also made me realise just how much I want to get out of this degree and how there are so many things that I want to produce. In terms of the brief title, I was really pleased with my overall set of products and the format and layout it took on. I put a lot of effort into the fold-out element of it and tested many ways it could work. I proposed how the design would be delivered digitally and worked on the printed distribution aspect with posters and promotional designs for the newspapers. However, I think spending so much time exploring how the reader would unfold it and what layout would be a fresh and unique take on the idea of a supplement, meant that I didn't explore as deeply into the variation of typography and colour that could have been used. In my mind I covered many more typefaces and colour combinations and ruled them out without testing them which doesn't show my thought process thoroughly enough on paper, letting my development down overall.
In terms of print production and my final resolutions, I am really happy with how the content information and layout designs work together to produce a product that is relevant and realistic to its purpose. I could imagine them in the Sunday edition newspaper even though they look different to all the usual supplements found in there. Referring back to my Rationale, this was an issue that I wanted to address to 'produce designs with worthwhile content within realistic and suitable contexts'; something which I think I have achieved well.
I am now looking forward to taking what I have learnt from this module as a whole and moving forward into the third year of my practice.
[My evaluation for the Collaborative Practice can be found here]
As well as my organisational skills, I feel that my contextual design research has improved greatly by constantly looking for inspiration and relevant designs that exist in today's industry and frequently blogging my findings. In previous briefs, I have always let myself down in this area by concentrating so much on researching the topic or content of my design that I looked over the opportunity to see what exciting stuff is already being designed in ways similar to my interests. This had definitely helped my design direction over the last 5 weeks and I am pleased that this realisation has come at a time where I can now continue to improve on it and turn a weakness into a strength in preparation for my third year.
In terms of wanting to exhaust all possibilities and design ideas, I feel this is definitely an area of my practice that I still am not meeting my targets in. I know I can do it, yet I continue to produce 10, 20, 30 design variations and go with my strongest idea, instead of hitting 50, 60, even 100 ideas to have a wider variety to work from. I think within the future self directed briefs I am going to be stricter with myself and set numbered targets to aim for so that I am pushing my practice to a place that would allow me to produce much higher quality design.
This brief has also made me realise just how much I want to get out of this degree and how there are so many things that I want to produce. In terms of the brief title, I was really pleased with my overall set of products and the format and layout it took on. I put a lot of effort into the fold-out element of it and tested many ways it could work. I proposed how the design would be delivered digitally and worked on the printed distribution aspect with posters and promotional designs for the newspapers. However, I think spending so much time exploring how the reader would unfold it and what layout would be a fresh and unique take on the idea of a supplement, meant that I didn't explore as deeply into the variation of typography and colour that could have been used. In my mind I covered many more typefaces and colour combinations and ruled them out without testing them which doesn't show my thought process thoroughly enough on paper, letting my development down overall.
In terms of print production and my final resolutions, I am really happy with how the content information and layout designs work together to produce a product that is relevant and realistic to its purpose. I could imagine them in the Sunday edition newspaper even though they look different to all the usual supplements found in there. Referring back to my Rationale, this was an issue that I wanted to address to 'produce designs with worthwhile content within realistic and suitable contexts'; something which I think I have achieved well.
I am now looking forward to taking what I have learnt from this module as a whole and moving forward into the third year of my practice.
[My evaluation for the Collaborative Practice can be found here]
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