MAA revisited

Back to the MAA identity and we're still going strong. We have now developed the logo to maybe something other circles, and the obvious way to go was squares! To be honest they didn't start off that strong:

This had lost the slickness of the other logos but it was worth a try. After this we tried to make it a little bit more abstract by condensing the squares. This meant losing the exact shape of Dorset but we definitely knew we had stumbled upon something really good.
This would eventually be our finished logo. The dead line was approaching quite fast (Wednesday 18th February) and we were now getting emails from Matt Desmier telling us where we had to be for the presentation and what we needed so we had to get this done quick. After a talk with Matt in person, me and Luke decided to reduce the amount of colours that are being used. This would make it cheaper and also makes sure the colours don't all contrast too much and drown out the overall effect of the logo. Along with that, we just had to sort out the font.

CVC Unit

We had our first session on the CVC unit with Anna the other day. We had to come prepared with a brief idea of what we wanted to write about and to be honest, i was lost! I was swamped with other work, and still am, and was really confused about what i could write about. We got the brief to start off with and a talk from Anna about what we would have to do and what the deadlines are.

Unit Aims
A1 To identify links between your specialist topic and the relevant theoretical and conceptual frameworks.
A2 To establish an understanding of the various processes and methods of research and critical appraisal.
A3 To develop the organisational skills which will enable independent learning and self-management.

Learning Outcomes
LO1 Demonstrate your ability to make links between your specialist topic and relevant theoretical/conceptual frameworks.
LO2 Demonstrate your understanding of the various processes and methods of research and critical appraisal.
LO3 Demonstrate the application of organisational skills and evidence of independent learning and self-management.

After reading the Aims and Learning outcomes on the brief i understand it a bit more. The title for my essay i have decided is "The Impact of Digital Technologies on Visual Identities". This will encorporate my two strengths of identity/branding and digital technologies. I have started a reading list but it is only a starting point. I plan to add more to it but so far it consists of:

*Learning through digital technologies
*New Media, Old Media: A history and theory reader
*Digital Desires: languages, identity and new technologies
*Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet
*Remediation: Understanding new media
*Media Semiotics: An introduction - Bignell, Jonathan
*Online Branding - Drew, Keith

I plan to get ideas and theories from these to start my essay and hopefully get the bulk of the writing out of the way before i get too bogged down into my proffesional project.

London Trip

London Trip! after the disappointment of having the last trip canceled due to little snowfall we encountered over the last month it was a nice surprise when Neil handed out some sheets with the new dates for the London trip. It was scheduled for Monday the 16th of February so all i needed to do was somehow get the time off of work. I went in the hope of gathering lots of research and inspiration from various galleries and museums. We started off at the Tate Britain and stayed there for roughly an hour or so before heading off on our big adventure. We walked from there towards the Tate Modern and with camera in hand i got some nice shots of parliament and the London eye. We stopped at the Tate modern for a short while in the area where you don't need to pay. there seemed to be a lot of bunkbeds all over the place as part of the exhibition and i wish i had found out what they were about as i still don't know! From there, we carried on for the design museum and when we got there it turned out there was a fashion exhibition on. We decided not to go in to see that but we still went into the shop were i found a very interesting book:

It hadn't been a waste of a day after all! I got 500 fonts with the book which meant i'm able to experiment a lot more when designing logos and posters and everything for that matter! After that, we headed for a tube station to go to the Science Museum. I was hoping there would be something on alternative car fuels that i could use as part of one of my projects, there was one. and it wasn't even a good one, it was a solar car that admittedly was very interesting but not really that much help. Not much else happened after that but i couldn't wait to get back and try out some new fonts!

Screen Based Communication 2 Results

We got the marks back for our website the other day. I had been looking forward to this since we handed it in as i had tricked myself into thinking that i had done really well and i was really pleased with my finished site. I knew my sketchbook would let me down but i completely forgot that it was mainly marked on the work in my sketchbook, which i really don't like about design. I much prefer doing a sketchbook almost in a way that only i can understand, one for my own use and that is not marked as part of a project. Getting the marks back then and it finally hit me when i was reading the feedback that i had forgotten that it was marked on my other work more than my site. Having said that, i did get high enough to boost my average up but 56 is still not what i would have wanted.

I'm not going to let this put me down as after reading the feedback on the sheet i think i know where i went wrong and it is not the end of the world. I just have to put it behind me and use it as a learning curve. As well as that, i remembered what we had been told at the beginning of the year about coming into the 2nd and final year of our studies and that was that each grade we got in this year would be roughly 10 marks less than what we would have got in the 1st year. This helped a lot and to be able to still get over 50 when the grading is obviously getting a lot harder takes the sting out of it a bit.

Multi Area Agreement

Matt Desmier came over to set the group a new live brief. It was to design an identity for a new government initiative called the Multi Area Agreement. It has been set up to bring together the towns of Dorset and allow them to work closer. I liked the sound of the brief and it sounded like a good opportunity to design another identity for a company. I decided to work in a pair with fellow student Luke Carré and we straight away when i got some time we got some ideas down on illustrator. This was probably a mistake as we didn't take much time to think of a concept or what we were doing, we just went ahead and did it. It wasn't long until we realised the designs weren't good enough. After that, we had a good think about a concept that would work for them. We looked hard at what they were looking for which we believed was something that represented Dorset and showed how it was all together. After that we got a map of Dorset and started to get some ideas and concepts from that. I started looking at each town on the map and thought about how each town could be shown in the logo. The simple answer was to put each town on the logo which we did by making each one into a dot. This was working,well as a concept but on its own wasn't really enough. It led me to thinking about the size of each town and whether i could show the difference in sizes between them all. I found out each population of the towns on the map:

I then worked out a ration between each population and created different sized circles for each town. After that i put each into its place on the logo:


Next came the colours. In black and white it was boring, but where to get the colours from was the next issue. We decided to look at each towns/councils website/logos to find out what was the predominant colour in each one. Luckily, Dorset itself can easily be shown in 3 colours as it is often spoken of as the sunniest county. The main colours we found were the same as the Dorset ones: Green, Blue and Yellow. Putting the opacity of each circle made them link together really well in areas where there were towns with big populations such as Poole and Bournemouth which added to the concept of the logo.


The next issue was the type. We played around with numerous fonts and layouts, some a lot more "radical" than others but eventually we decided that Garamond Premier Pro did not suit the logo. The layouts were the other issue and as i said, we played around with some alternative designs but we settled for the layout that we thought would be best for the company.

We were really liking where this was going but wanted to take it further still.

Catell Ronca

We've been very lucky having so many people from out in the industry coming to visit us. One of which was Illustrator Catell Ronca who in her talk gave us advice on how to work freelance and also to talk about her own work. She gave a presentation showing her 12 points to look at whilst working freelance, i took brief notes of them so here they are:

1) How to start your business:
2) Define your market:
-know where you fit in (editorial etc)
3) Research your clients:
-Go to bookshops/libraries
-find out art directors and see what is currently being produced
4) Address the right person:
-Correct spelling of names
-know who they are
use directories
5) Self Promotion:
-create a piece of work that is completely original
-make it memorable
-demonstrate your thinking
-what is special about your work
-be opinionated
-when you send mail make sure names are spelt correctly
-respect that art directors are busy and will get back to you
-send a feedback form
6) Show your portfolio:
-portfolios must be impecable
-only include work you are proud of
-A4/A3
-no more than 20 pieces
-no sketchbooks
-bring business card
-ask who they can recommend (other art directors)
-Create a Website (even if it's just a blog)
7) Network:
-with other illustrators/designers
-people who you studied with
-regular contact with clients (past and present)
-exhibitions
8) Get Commissioned:
-confirm in writing stating agreed price and copyright
9) Copyright:
-do NOT give it away
-offer a license for a year perhaps
-read ALL the small print
-only sell it when it makes sense to
10) Pricing:
-what it is used for
-how big the client is/how big the budget is
-circulation? 100 or 100,000 copies
-area and duration of license
11) Invoice:
-get it done straight away or it wont get paid!
12) Agents:
-will do everything for you
-will take commission for every piece of work you do (normally 25-30%)
-you pay for promotion costs

I've never really planned to go straight into freelance work after finishing the course but she has some quite good points that i will keep in mind if i do ever do any freelance work. She also gave us a few useful links that might help us getting started and networking:

own-it.org
theaoi.com
moonfruit.com
spraygraphic.com
illu-stration.com
illustrationmundo.com
coroflot.com

Wall Painting

Found this really cool animation a while ago on youtube

D&AD

As part of the PPRD unit this year, we have to enter one of the D&AD competition briefs. I decided to do the Faber&Faber brief which is to design 3 book covers for their film books.

The brief
Use typography to create a series cover design for Faber Film’s range of books that reflects Faber and Faber’s long history of typographic excellence.
Considerations
- The Faber Film range of books covers a variety of genres and includes screenplays, technique guides and film history books. - Faber and Faber will be offering this range for sale through the ‘Print on Demand’ service (PoD), which is exactly as it suggests, copies are made available on the basis of a single customer order. - The cover designs should reflect the already high profile of Faber’s film list attracting both film enthusiasts and professionals alike.
Target Audience
Film professionals Film and media students People looking for a special gift for a film enthusiast
Mandatory requirements
- ‘Faber Film’ and the faber Logo as a discreet but integral part of the design - A series identity that works well in print and online - A minimum of 3 covers chosen from the titles in the supporting documents differentiated by colour or layout - The design should be adaptable across two sizes. B format which is 126mm width x 129mm height (like a standard paperback) and the larger demy format 135mm width x 216mm height.

This was the most relevant brief to what i want to do when i finish the course. It isn't perfect but it was better than all the others. I started off very slowly and still to this date i am still moving at a slow rate. It hasn't been at the top of my priorities and to be honest, it still isn't. I did however, get a few ideas started but i was mainly focusing on how each book would be linked in a series. I looked at a lot of other series of books that are available from other publishers such as penguin, virgin books and wallflower press. Each of them all have their own style and all have a way of linking each book in a series.


From this i made started to develop my own ligatures. I think they were alright but i wasn't putting much thought into them which meant they weren't being developed very well or quick.


A few weeks into starting the brief, I decided to join together with Luke and Dave who i had done the DBA logo with previously. We had all chosen to do this brief and were all going along slightly different routes and we thought that working together would give us all a better chance to get some solid ideas done before the hand in. We all had slightly different ideas and we tried to combine them to create a series. After a talk with a guest tutor, Catell Ronca, we decided to scrap all the seperate ideas and came up with a concept of making them a lot more simple. Watch this space!

Logos!

New Books! I decided to spoil myself on amazon recently and bought 2 books on logo design. I thought it would be good to have some at home to give me some inspiration for new logos of my own. Also, both books have case studies which is really good to see how many very famous and recognisable logos have been designed.

Keming

I found these and thought they were quite cool. this was on ffffound:

I can't remember where i found this:

Screen Based Inspiration

I found quite a few really good Flash based websites while doing my research for the screen based unit:

www.andyfoulds.co.uk/flash_design.html
www.sectionseven.com/
www.creaktif.com/
www.sportchalet.com/the-mountain/
www.speakvisual.com/#/spotlight

Screen Based Communication 2

I had been looking forward to the next brief. It was to design an online portfolio for ourselves. I started off really well, researching into other websites and gathering inspiration and from quite early on i had an idea of what i wanted to do. My initial thought was to use an old Viewmaster® as the main image on my site and have it interactive.


I really liked this idea and started thinking about how it would work on the site but this is when it started to get a bit tricky as i had quite a few things to consider, mainly making sure it is easy to navigate and gets the right information across. I had a few problems thinking how i could get it to work and over the Christmas holidays i thought long and hard until i came up with a different idea. This wasn't the 1st time i had changed my idea half way through the project but this time it was definitely for the best as my next idea was just right for me. the style was right and it would be easy to navigate. Unfortunately, it didn't really reflect any of the research or evidence work in my sketchbook which was a shame. This new idea was to have a victor image of my laptop which i thought was good as i pretty much live on my laptop. most of my work is prodominantly screen based and i tend not to do much hand drawn work anymore. I do find this is a bit of a problem when it comes to idea generation as i know i should do more of it on paper but i don't. Having said that, i did leave it a bit late to actually start my website. I chose to make it on Flash as i found it easier than Dreamweaver. It was not the most complex website ever, i think overall, i had to use 5 different ActionScript commands at most, all i had to do was change the frame number for each and put in the animation in between each frame. It also took me a while to remember how to use flash so i started off practicing on other smaller projects, some helped, others didn't so much for example, i found a tutorial on how to make a small version of the game Asteroids game.



It wasn't at all what i wanted for my website but it was good practice for using various ActionScript commands. It was just a shame it wasn't a whole tutorial so i only made part of the game. moving through the project though, and i was well on my way to having a finished website on time. I had a few crits that were very helpful. They were only small groups which is what i prefer as i am more confident in smaller groups. i got a few good tips on how to improve my site including small things like having an extra link on a page to go back and maybe to try a different font. This was one of my first projects that i managed to finish all of the work before the hand in time. I think there is a lot more i could have added to it though an i have had that confirmed from getting the mark back for it. I needed to show how my research has influenced my site and more of a development process, instead, i have a sketchbook that shows trials and websites that just interest me and not that relates to my actual site. If and when i get some spare time, i am going to re-design my site but i need the time to decide whether to start from scratch or whether to try and improve my current one. If i was to improve my current one, i think i would put more graphics on it and maybe use the keys on the keyboard as well as just having to click on the folders to open them. I want to learn Javascript as well as from researching in my progress work and hearing from others in the industry and other students, it is more interchangeable and can pretty much do the same sort of stuff as Flash. These are 2 shot of my site:

http://www.visualcommunication.org/chris_matthews

DBA

Whilst in the first year, there was a live competition brief set by Dorset Business and the Bournemouth Echo to design a new logo for the Dorset Business Awards which, along with fellow students Luke Carré and David Higgs, I won. After winning, we got to have talks and meetings with various people involved in the awards which was good to see how dealing with clients out in the industry works. There were a few things they wanted us to change but after a while it turned into a logo we were all happy with.


This year, they have got back in touch with us to make them something else for the wards. They have asked us to design some kitemarks so that they can send them to each winner and finalist of the awards to put on their letterheads and other stationary. With a bit of advice and correspondence through Neil, we came up with 2 designs: one for the finalist and one for the winners.

Animal Packaging

The 3rd and final part of the 1st project was to design packaging for a new animal® watch. This was a live brief set by animal themselves and we started off by getting into groups and creating a presentation of research in the form of a slide show. This was the 1st part of the brief and was to help us start the research and to give us an idea of who our target audience was before we just went on and designed something that wasn't appealing to the right people. eventually, we decided that our target audience would be the people who don't normally buy animal® products or don't live the lifestyle of the person who buys animal® but likes the ideology of it and would live it if given the time. This group work did help me as it meant that by the end of the day i was set with an idea of who i was aiming it at and that i was able to concentrate on research of product and packaging design. I started off looking at animals current packaging by going to the animal shop in Poole and also finding images on the web, and then started my idea generation of how my packaging would look. It took me a while to get a solid theme going for my packaging s i was struggling big time by this point with trying to catch up with other projects alongside this one. However, i did start getting some ideas together but none were really that strong which was a shame as my target audience was in a sense myself. a few of my initial ideas were all sort of discarded after critiques with tutors and talking with other students as they were not really looking like packaging, instead they were looking more like displays. My first lot of ideas were to incorporate pieces of the sports equipment into the design. for example, one of the ideas was to have the watch wrapped around part of a bike handle. I then started to simplify it so there was just one element of the packaging that was linked to the sports equipment, for example, the button of the box was a pedal. This then, i thought would be a good idea, all i had to do now was design the graphics for the box itself. My first thought was to make it similar to each sport and have it muddy if it was mountain biking, but making the packing look good with mud was too tricky and was not effective enough, instead, i centered my graphics around animal® and took inspiration from the website which i look back now on and regret.

This was not original enough at all, i wish i had taken longer on the design of the graphics rather than worrying about the design of the packaging itself. i feel this was my biggest downfall for this part of the project, the second being my sketchbook/evidence work which was no where near enough and did not show fully how i had come to my conclusions and was not reflective enough. After the last crit before the hand in, i decided to change it. admittedly, i left it really late to do all this, and that is why i believe i got the low mark that i think i deserved. I think with more time, or given the chance to do it all again, i would really be able to produce some good designs and after looking back at it all, i am really quite annoyed at myself for letting myself do the whole first project the way i did.

My final idea/design was a lot different to the last lot of ideas. I went to hobbycraft and got myself some polystyrene balls and started carving them to see what i could make. It didn't take me long to come up with a shape i was happy with, and all i needed was the graphics for the outside, which is what i needed the extra time for as i still didn't have that finally designed.


Overall

Overall, the 1st project after coming back to uni was a bit of a failure for me. it put me in a bad mindset for the year and meant i was stressed pretty much from the start. I knew that i would probably just do it all again in the next project, but i like to think i came out of that project with a new sense of how to combat uni work: JUST GET ON AND DO IT!!

I waste too much time doing useless things that wont help with my project and it's how i've always been unfortunately, but i like to think that this project has helped to change that a bit. I think that with this new way of thinking i would have done this project a lot better and would have got a better mark, but there is the whole year left yet and still chance to prove myself as a good graphic designer.

Second Brief

The second brief we got was slightly longer than the last one but not by much. This was to produce a series of 6 greetings cards for an occasion of our choice. I immediately started gathering research from websites and decided that i was going to go for a collage style design. I wanted to make it very textured but still very graphic rather than too much illustration, quite similar to the misprinted type website: http://www.misprintedtype.com/v4/
I was quite happy with my idea and set about getting materials and gathering more research, all be it quite slowly i must admit. Again, this was my downfall. I was very happy with this idea and had it in my mind what i wanted to do, although i wasn't sure what the occasions of the cards would be, but after a while of not getting much done, it seemed like a lot of work to produce 6 cards in this style. This was when i started to panic as i knew i still had my poster to re design before the end of the overall unit and didn't want to add to that list with some greeting cards as well. Because of this, i moved on to my second idea that was a lot more simple but would still look good as set of 6 designs. The idea behind this new set of cards was a simple design made up of lots of small dots. For this i just needed to make small icons out of the dots as well as make the type. I liked my idea for this and was a lot more confident with the outcomes. i think they look very good and decided whilst developing the idea to keep the textured element from my previous idea. to do this i chose to emboss them by hand. With this, they could even be developed into a series of cards for people with sight problems. Overall, i was pleased with the final cards and felt that i had created some good designs, having said that though, i wasn't happy with having to change my idea half way through and i think that my finished products were not as strong because of this. It meant that my idea was not fully developed for a start, and secondly, there wasnt enough evidence in my sketchbooks and research to show why i had done these designs and the concept behind them. These are my final designs:

Back to Uni

Coming back to uni after summer was difficult, but it was mainly my own fault. I wasn't prepared at all for the amount of work that we were about to be given. Our first project was set in the first week of coming back and was just a small one that in hindsight was one to get us back into the swing of things. Unfortunately, i didn't take this opportunity to get back into the swing of things and left it all late to start the research and the work and very quickly became quite stressed about things. the brief was to think of a current issue that we believe is overlooked and create a poster that would create awareness of the issue. I chose to look at online gambling and this was probably the only part of the project that didn't take very long. I wasn't happy with this project at all, my designs were not thought through and ended up looking rushed.. add that to the fact that my concept behind the poster was not that great and i ended up with a final poster that was not my best piece of work. Then again, poster design and advertising is not my strong point. Luckily, this project was split into 4 sections (this being the 1st). This meant that i had a chance to go back over my final design in my own time and strengthen the design. I promised myself that after this mess of a week that i would keep on top of my work and make sure that i wouldn't allow myself to get stressed.. this did not work!