Initial email contacts

I thought about what my main skills and interests are within my design practice and I came up with two main areas to research and possible paths to go down from this point forward:

Editorial design (typography & layout)
Photography (more specifically location photography)

Mark Porter works as an editorial designer and his website grabbed my attention as being one of effective simplicity. He uses his designs to speak for him with large thumbnails positioned centrally on his homepage acting as the impact statement to the site. His name and navigation bar sit behind the designs in a small yet unmissable font laid out down the left-hand side.















What makes Mark Porter so good:





















Magazine layouts designed by Porter that really stand out to me and make me want to create exciting pieces of editorial design:















Spread for ES; a Metropolitan magazine published free with the London Evening Standard
















The Guardian Weekend supplement

















Colours - Multilingual magazine for Benetton
















Wired Magazine

















Food Magazine - one of The Guardian supplements

















The Guardian Weekend

















Porter redesigned Publico, Portugal's newspaper.
I love this 5 column layout and impact full page image.


Cover designs like the travel supplement below are a possible way of linking my two paths together; using my photography skills to capture the image that would be used for the story and then layout the arrangement as a complete design combination.


































He also designs other materials, such as these cookery books designed for the River Cafe in London. The black and white photography and simple blocks of coloured titles working as a set, again combines my two favourite design elements, as well as working with a limited colour pallette, which is how I like to design.

Studio Belly Timber design


















They cover a wide range of graphic design services, but I initially liked their work when I came across their editorial designs for Leeds based 'etc magazine'.

My top design magazines

I subscribe to Creative Review and always browse through Graphik magazine in the library, but not always for the content itself. The editorial layout designs that go into these publications are outstanding. There are too many to put up here, but here are a select few for their creative layouts:

Here is my initial CV, using the same typeface for my name to link in with my business card and letterhead designs :

Business cards

In our latest typography session, we were practising designing business cards, so I thought it would be good to show my latest design on here. We had to start thinking seriously about designing our own business card, taking into consideration the layout, colours and typography to give out the right impression of ourselves and be remembered. For example, do we want to look cheap, expensive, arrogant, professional, friendly, formal, informal etc.












I really enjoyed experimenting with simple layout, colour and type and will continue to develop something that really nails who I am as a designer. I will also replace the blog address with my own website details when I get one up and running.

I found some interesting business card designs to give me ideas as to how far you can actually push the boundaries of what a business card actually is:
















Double sided



























































































































Textured/3D design





















































Comparing two to identify my style:













I really like this design above, as not only is it relevant as a graphic designer, it is also created in a simple, elegant style that is typography driven with reversed out text on a dark background - all of which I am drawn to when I have been trying to reflect myself onto a business card. Adding a simple pattern and flow of one other colour through it makes it appear dynamic, professional and full of quality.












However I do not like this design above at all. The use of two colours mirrorred and reversed out could ideally work, but here in my opinion it comes across as cheap and unprofessional. A business card wants to draw you in and be noticeable for the client or company to remember you, but this is much too in-your-face and garishly pink for my liking.


Difference in photographers business cards:















































Interesting that two out of the three have gone for the layout of typography to be their top priority, when in fact there profession is dealing with imagery.

OUGD202 End of Module Evaluation

This module has has been a great achievement for me personally as I had no knowledge whatsoever about After Effects and DVD Studio Pro and now I can confidently use the basics and am not afraid to try new things out. By designing work in preparation for After Effects, I have improved on my Illustrator and Photoshop skills and now show a certain degree of technical competence. In terms of the Movie Season idents, I wanted to keep them quite simple to be able to confidently use the basic techniques on the software, produce moving images and not over complicate myself by taking on an impossible challenge. I was pleased with the outcome, and was always fascinated when learning even the smallest of things within the software workshops as I have always wondered how it was done.

Developing storyboards and being able to jot down on timelines how you imagine your frames to work in terms of pacing was a skill that, again like the software, I had no background knowledge of and now have learned a lot about the importance of hand drawn designs and putting your thoughts down on paper before making the ideas digital.

My time management has definitely improved mainly due to asking for help and advice when needed, cutting down on time spent worrying, and coming across difficulties using the software.
The main reason for this were the software workshops which were always a major help to me and I am pleased that I noted down all that I learned from each session as it meant I was more independent than I thought I would be when moving from storyboarding to the screen. I also tried a lot harder than in the last module to keep my blog updated, allocating time slots through the week to do it and making sure any digital work that would be needed in the final DVD were always organised into one file, again cutting down the worrying process towards the deadline that I hadn't included all that I needed to. I live my life around 'to do lists' so it helped to always be writing daily or weekly plans to keep on top of eveything. It felt like a very long, hard module at times, but if I stuck to my plans, I was fairly happy week on week at seeing my efforts of organisation pay off.

My researching skills began successfully, as I generated a questionnaire and targeted it towards my audience, I bought and watched many films within my chosen genre and found inspiration for colours, typefaces, etc from their promotional posters, title sequences and dvd interfaces. However I am aware that I could have worked harder to creating my idents based on more of a 'style' of design as by just doing simple vector based graphics, it left me struggling for putting up other designers work on my blog that I could take inspiration from. This was also commented on in one of my crits, but balanced out by the fact that I 'had looked in detail at the chosen films and analysed my decision process well.'

I also think I could have worked more with the storyboards and perhaps come up with more initial ideas to have a wider range of them to choose from and it would have helped develop my skills even stronger and meant I had much more development work to work from. My reason behind this however, was that the five ideas for idents I did come up with immediately seemed to fit the theme and I was confident to re-create them on screen so I stuck with them and moved on, not wanting to fall behind on my weekly action plans. When going onto the next module however, I do want to spend more time working on generating ideas and building a stronger concept as I know that was something that lost me marks in the previous print module.

Five things that I will do differently next time:
- Work more with initial design decisions and concepts to have a stronger overall project to work with.
- Stop writing things down - visualise them and draw them!
- Allow more time for research and continue to do so until the very end of the brief.
- Use the library more and research broader. I love books more than the Internet so why aren't I doing so?!
- Don't be afraid to ask for advice outside of crit times.


Grading myself on the following areas:

(5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor)

Attendance 4
Punctuality 4
Motivation 4
Commitment 4
Quantity of work produced 3
Quality of work produced 3
Contribution to the group 3

Photo shoot for Hi-lights

Hi-lights are a company that supplies and sets up lighting, sound, staging and audio visual equipment for all kinds of events, from conferences to outdoor festivals.

Below:
My photograph being used on their website to showcase their work for part of the Shine 2010 event in Sunderland.













Below:
A selective few photographs I sent to Hi-lights to choose from. Though only one was shown on the website, they have kept all my other photographs to use in their portfolio that they show to potential clients. All in all, a successful day in Sunderland's Museum & Winter Gardens.