3rd Year JournalBen Kither05399895

Tutor: Sue Platt

Project Reviews

Kino4 posters.Silence, parts 1+2.Competition Brief- Fedrigoni Paper.Personal Brief - The Access Project CharityDon’t Panic Poster2 Dist/Superdead logo designPanic Exhibition - British WoodlandsMagazine Design - TQ MagazineBook Design - A Guide To book

Lectures

Alex OstrowskiCraig OldhamHelen MurgatroydJohnny HardstaffHamish MuirMorag MyerscoughEmily Forgot (Emily Alston)HemisphereRussell Hancock

Seminars & Workshops

Ian Anderson Universal Yellow WorkshopBookbindingWebsite BuildingJohnny Hardstaff TalkPush Print Talk

Critiques

1st Term Crit2nd Term CritIan Anderson Portfolio CritLove Mock Interview/Portfolio Crit

Exhibitions

Berardo Gallery PortugalLiverpool Tate GalleryLiverpool walker Gallery DR.ME One Day Exhibitions2nd Year ShowAlan Fletcher RetrospectivePanic Exhibition

Misc & Self Initiated Work

IllustrationsT-shirt PrintingPhotoshop TutorialsFundrasing IdeasWork Experience

Project Reviews

This section contains my reviews of my own work. For the most part these reviews/critiques have been based upon blog posts done at the time or shortly after the work was completed.

Kino4 posters.

After a less than brilliant review of my earlier Kino4 work I decided to redo my posters. The new posters use the same theme from my originals with an instantly recognisable text layout and striking colours that reflect themes from the film but now they are also taking on board some of the criticisms made by Mack and Sue at my review.

The big changes are the text has changed from the projector style layout to a smaller, sticker esque motif and some stills either from the films or reflecting themes have been added to make the posters less similar to each other whilst still having a uniform appearance.

Silence, parts 1+2.

We were asked to explore silence in any form and then come up with some sort of folding document to show our experiments.

After a pretty disastrous start I managed to pick myself back up and decided to create a book. The book is intended to show various types of silence encountered day to day.

Once I started on the new (book) idea I really started enjoying the brief. Mixing photography, photo manipulation, different layouts and book binding, some of these for the first time made it an exciting and novel project to work on.

To finish the book off I made a foldout dust cover that documented the trials and tribulations of creating the piece as well as featuring an embossed title. Again the embossing was a new skill I learned.

Probably one of the projects I’m most proud of since I’ve been at uni, really nice to have gotten good feedback for it.

Competition Brief- Fedrigoni Paper.

I really enjoyed working on the Fedrigoni Paper brief. The overall aim was to create a presence for the brand, attracting people to their website and exhibition space.

Original ideas of large scale installations, and the tag line ‘doing something with paper’ lead to a series of adverts to be displayed on design websites. The series of 3 adverts are all moving image, and are my first and only real works in this area. The stop motion animation using paper triangles set to a Deadmou5 track really worked well and was the stand out piece for me. I also like the embossing clip, I think all 3 adverts worked well with my tag line. I think that the typography used could definitely improve though.

Personal Brief - The Access Project Charity

Finding a personal project for a real client was very exciting, especially since it was for a good cause. I think that the work I produced was off a much better standard than their original promotional work and fits the charities ideology very well.

The main plus point for me to take from this brief is how to deal with a client, and how important constant communication is.

I’m still waiting for the finished versions to arrive, very excited to see a few thousand of my booklet printed.

Don’t Panic Poster

Don’t Panic, the monthly give away magazine do a free poster with each issue. Past MMU student Nicola Rowlands managed to win the competition to do the poster one month, putting her alongside luminaries like Banksy.

The month I entered for had the title ‘Resistance’ and my piece revolved around the quote ‘One mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist’ using the term resistance to translate to freedom fighter. The theme of resistance was further explored by using obscuring the image.

I had some good feedback but also found that the image handling wasn’t too much fun to look at for too long, therefore failing as a poster a bit.

2 Dist/Superdead logo design

Chosen specifically as a brief to do with a quick turn around time (similarly to the Don’t Panic brief) the 2 Dist skateboard distribution company wanted a logo for their new Superdead brand.

They supplied imagery and asked for a logo that had elements of tribal heads, the spitfire skateboard logo and the Arizona Cardinals logo in particular, a simple logo with thick outline that can work with a variety of colours specifically.

They seemed to like my work but decided against using it, most annoyingly they haven’t given any feedback. Unfortunate but I suppose another lesson learned: Don’t take it for granted that just because someone shows interest in your work doesn’t mean it will be used.

Panic Exhibition - British Woodlands

I had a few ideas for the Panic exhibition but in the end decided to use some work I thought would be a bit different to most peoples.

My final piece revolves around the idea that over development and urban encroachment are endangering the woodlands and creatures that are synonmous with Britain.

Despite my initial scepticism of the work after a few changes and tweaks it has become one of my favourite pieces and it got some really good press at the exhibition.

Magazine Design - TQ Magazine

After deciding that I would like to specialise more in the publishing/ design for print industry I started working on this project.

The idea was to take magazines with good content but poor designa nd redesign them, yet when it came down to it I struggled to even find magazines with good content so created a new magazine alltogether. Titled TQ it is intended to be a teaching magazine for the younger/ newer teacher, with each issue based around a theme and colour scheme.

I really enjoyed working on the brief and the challenge of trying to represent the same copy in a variety of ways was fun to deal with. However I found that by trying to create several variations of the same spread I was becoming more interested in making 30 spreads than trying to make a lesser number of better designed spreads.

I do like the final solutions though and think that I would stil like to work in design for print in some form or another.

Book Design - A Guide To book

Having not completed this project it’s a bit difficult to write a statement as to how well it has worked. However I can say that I am really enjoying the process so far. I have a proper grid, really clear idea of how I want it to look and some interesting ideas as to how I will include my pages. Maybe it will be seen as too self focussed, but I think that the range of posters, photographs, illustrations and so on will make it a worthwhile project.

Lecture Notes

This section shall detail the series of lectures given during the year from out of University lecturers and guest speakers. Again this section uses writings taken from my blog as well as notes taken at the time.

Alex Ostrowski

I had high hopes for the lecture with Alex Ostrowski, all I can say is gutted. Alex creates beautiful, intelligent work, I wish my work looked like Alex’s books and posters. They’re jaw droppingly good, good enough that he was recruited by YCN to help work in their new offices. Unfortunately Alex’s talk made him sound boring, unconfident and uninspired. Perhaps I’m being too harsh but Alex’s work is so good and he ended up presenting us a talk about what YCN does, not the most inspiring of talks.

Craig Oldham

Craig Oldham was a complete opposite to Alex Ostrowski. I found that he was a far better speaker, engaging with his audience rather than just speaking to us like Alex had done.

Craig delivers his talk as a series of 12 lessons to learn for young graduates in their first year as a young professional. Dubbed 12 in 12 and assisted by a newsprint publication of the same name it proved to be very helpful and insightful to the design industry. The points that 12 in 12 put across are:

Understand what Graphic Design means to you.

Be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses.A portfolio is for life, not just for an interview.Placements matter. Do them.The Design industry is small, everyone knows everybugger else.Participate with other people and share your ideas.Graphic Design is just a job, but being a designer is different.Fall off your bike. If you don’t fail then you are not trying.Life and work exist outside of London.Designing is only, about, 20% of your job.Have a life outside of Design.Work hard and be nice to people.

It would be stupid not to take all these pointers on board, but for me the most important ones are that you need to be honest with yourself about what your skills are and you need to experiment and get it wrong sometimes to really get it right. This has proved very helpful advice as of recent when my silence brief started with me creating illustration based solutions that didn’t work. As much as I love illustration it wasn’t appropriate and i needed to admit that to myself and start with a different approach.

A great lecture

Helen Murgatroyd

Helen really impressed as she obvously had a lot of tenacity, working as a post lady to fund her year between uni and her MA in printmaking at RCA. Her work used lots of illustration and was very interesting, you can tell that she put a lot of effort into the processes behind creating the work, with these processes eventually becoming the main part of her work. Helen has created many ways to create prints, I really liked this inventive side to her work.Ultimately myself and Helen have different goals but I still learned a lot from her lecture, a need to be driven, creative and keep going when things don’t seem to go your way.

Johnny Hardstaff.

When the Johnny Hardstaff lecture was announced I wasn’t entirely sure who he was, a quick google search and I had discovered that Johnny had been behind the incredible ‘History of Gaming’ moving image piece for Sony. The ‘History of Gaming’ piece was very influential, and its styling has been much copied. It was really the first piece of its kind, the ideas of a moving backdrop and characters, ideas developed by Johnny are now seen everywhere.

Johnny described himself as a designer rather than an ad creator, adding that he is somewhat ashamed of making adverts, yet he still loves it. A love hate relationship with corporations, seeing his idents as meaningless throw away things, but still fun and loveable. By doing more commercial work for Sony and the like he gets the opportunity to do things he really loves like Music videos for Radiohead.

The like spinning plates video he directed for Radiohead is in complete contrast to his spinning basketball ads for Sony, yet they are both still meticulously art directed, beautiful in their attention to detail. Johnny says that the aim is to create real art and design to counter balance the ads yet when the ads are so well conceived I don’t think he has a need to feel as though they don’t count as pieces of design.

I really enjoyed the lecture and particularly liked the way Johnny described his need to balance commercial and personal work, something that a lot of designers seem to struggle with.

Hamish Muir

Accomplished typographer Hamish Muir had a really interesting talk. His background in science and 3D design setting him up well for his work with Mark Holt and Simon Johnston as the group 8vo.

Creating brilliant posters for the Hacienda and album covers for bands like The Durutti Column way before computer software was available shows just how good 8vo were. Seeing how painstaking the work process was for them really brought it home how much we rely on computers these days.

Unfortunately 8vo’s work with a computer doesn’t actually compare well to their earlier work in my opinion. In Hamish’s own words ‘we let the computer use us, we didn’t use the computer’.

One of the main reasons people remember 8vo is their type based magazine released every 6 months (or intended to) the 8 issue, 16 page magazine had a seperate feeling each time, with the final issue released on floppy disk after a 2 year hiatus.

The thing to take from Hamish’s lecture is always be in control of what you are doing, don’t get stuck by the limitations of the computer, don’t give up on an idea if it seems difficult at first attempt.

Morag Myerscough

Morag’s lecture was an eye opener, most of the talks are given by middle aged men who often seem a bit jaded with the design scene.

Morag is still very much involved and has worked for a wealth of clients, curating gallery shows, making installations as well as more typical graphic design work.

I wasn’t overly keen on all the work shown but could tell that all Morag’s work is well calculated and everything had a reason to it, something that all graphic designers should work towards.

I would love to have a career as successful and diverse as Morag’s she really is an inspiration when you think of how much work she has manged to create for so many clients.

Emily Forgot (Emily Alston)

Emily is the brains of Emily Forgot. Trained in graphic design but spending most of her time working in the field of illustration. Emily was a really interesting speaker and her nerviness added a nice quality to the way she spoke about her work. I hadn’t consciously seen her work before but after having a quick browse on her website could see that she has had several high profile clients including Creative Review, Adidas and Selfridges.

A point I hadn’t considered before that Emily raised is when an illustrator is hired the client wants to see work very similar to their previous work, where as a graphic designer gets hired for their ability to work to a high standard but with an ability to generate several different concepts and end results.

Emily said that this can sometimes be annoying for her considering her graphic design background and ability to create some really good work with a variety of aesthetics.

Hemisphere

Based in the Northen Quarter with a small team of 11 Hemisphere are a well established firm with over 22 years experience. They now specialise in what they call Strategic Brand Creation.

Hemisphere didn’t have the most enthralling of talks but probably reflected best what it is like to work at a graphic design agency. With Manchester investing more and more into it’s tram system they wanted a new look and Hemisphere were chosen to re brand the Metrolink.

Using colours and image synonymous with speed, visibility and then arranging and manipulating to create a memorable and obvious new look for the Metro link Hemisphere have succedded in their re brand, yet I’m not sure it is the best solution, I think it will look quite dated soon.

Russell Hancock

Russell knew Craig Oldham and delivered a very similar talk to his, no complaints from me as Craig was responsible for one of the best talks of the year.

Russell has had a very up and down start to his career, working from home, free lance, for free, for agencies etc. Basically if it’s an option Russell has done it, so it’s nice to see and hear from someone who literally has done it all.

With a wealth of work for some really good clients, and also a lot of drive making him do work that seems to have little benefit to it at the beginning but has turned out into really great projects.

Russells advice on how much to charge clients for your time was also invaluable, having recently done some paid work it’s nice to see the mistakes I made have been made by others and how to avoide them next time.

Seminars & Workshops

Using sections from my blog, notes taken at the time and a few bits from memory this section documents the workshops & seminars I have undertaken this academic year.

Ian Anderson Universal Colour Workshop

I was asked to get involved with the Ian Anderson workshop by Alex Hoggarth. Ian’s workshop was an attempt to get people working in groups with people they may not usually work with and have these groups work on their presentation skills.

The brief Ian set us hinged around an idea that in the future a world council has been put in place and colours are seperately owned, the world council has asked 5 colour companies to pitch to them why they should be the official colour of world signage. Myself, Caitlin, Emma, Jackie and Hannah were selected as group 2 and we would be team yellow.

After making a good presentation and taking some artistic license with our facts and figures (completely makingthem up in fact) we watched the other presentations and marked ourselves.

Our group didn’t have the best designed presentation but I think we worked together really well, and I learned more about how to work in a group, bouncing ideas of of eachother and how to make several varying ideas produce one well rounded preperation. For some reason I have a ridiculous sense of pride in creating an A1 page of working formulas that prove yellow is the root of recognisability.....All those years as a physics student finally proved their worth. I think the team worked well together, we presented well, we had a nice and fun yet informative presentation and i had a proper laugh doing it all.

Really enjoyed this workshop and I was voted most helpful member of my group along side Jackie.

Book Binding

Up until 3rd year I had only ever folded a couple of beak books and concertina pamphlets with Sue Platt in second years ‘Suep Kitchen’. Since my work for the Silence brief had turned into a book I thought it would be helpful if I learned how to make one.

Here is a break down of the tips, hints and general facts I learned during my first book binding workshop.

head, foot and spine - the top, bottom and edge of your book/pamphletknocking up - tapping your pages together along the foot and the spine so that they’re all in lineperfect binding - pages knocked up and glued across the spine, leaving no trace of the bind.pamphlet/ saddle stitch - using needle and thread to literally sew a book together. By doing as directed and showing a bit of care you can sew together a small book in minutes. You can use staples, but that’s a bit like a concrete flower bed (ugly and shit).japanese stab stitch with french folds - paper is folded and arranged so that the folded edge is the turned edge and the edge usually used for turning is at the spine edge. The spine is created by circle punching 5 holes, the holes at head and foot roughly 1.5x the distance from hole to edge and the next 3 holes equidistant between them. By sewing around the spine, then connecting each hole to its neighbour and also looping the head and foot of the book a very secure, very elegant looking book can be created. I liked the cross continental theme to this book and am researching more binding techniques with names of countries in them to come up with a truly multi cultural book binding process.

My second workshop built upon the skills in the first and has helped me to work on a variety of projects.

As workshops go it was easily one of the most fun and useful that I have been to whilst at uni in MMU.

Chris Jackson Web site building

I’m pretty computer/internet illiterate so this didn’t exactly go smoothly. My attempt at buying domain names on a budget didn’t go smoothly either but after a slow start I’m well on my way to getting a properly functioning website.

Chris has been helpful throughout the workshops, really easy to follow and approach. Just a shame I had so many hiccups getting my domain and webspace together.

Johnny Hardstaff Talk

Having a quick chat with Johnny was really useful for me, I didn’t take part in his set brief due to being behind with Silence yet I found what he had to say very helpful.

I asked a few questions of my own about the need to move to london, effects of credit crunch and the merits of working for large or small agencies or going freelance. The resounding answer was, don’t worry. There is no need to panic about where you are working, there will always be work for designers and financial depressions aren’t new, they have happened before, will happen again and if anything can provide extra work for designers. So chin up, keep working to your best and do what you feel is appropriate, there isn’t a need to move, although it doesn’t hurt to try London for a while.

Push Print Talk.

Marisa Ciccarello came to us to give us a bit of a talk about how her printers (Push Print) operates and how to spec things for a printer.

Seeing so much incredibly deisgned and printed matter in one room was the design equivalent of kid in a candy store. The lithography prints were crisp and paper stocks nice and weighty. So much nicer than digital prints. My favourites were probably the Levis’s catalogue and It’s Nice That book.

I learned a bit more about design for print and binding methods, which is always useful considering design for print is an area I want to move into. The talk also gave me some ideas for my own projects, in particular duplex printing for business cards and trying to alter the way that pages are viewed by using acetate print layers and playing with how pages flick open to reveal images or type. Very clever print solutions, very glad I went to the talk.

Independant Northern Creatives (INC) Talk

Bryan Edmondson started the evening talking about his personal experiences working in the industry, with a particular focus on the growth of SEA design and some of his favourite clients. It was a really interesting talk, and I learned a few new names and places to check out.

I wasn’t overly keen on the poster Bryan had designed for the talk untill I had it explained and I realised the shape was the numbers ‘199’ from a kebab shop style halogen light display Bryan had designed for the 1999 presidents lecture for D&AD. They are the only part left from the shoot, everything else having been broken either in the process or the years that followed. There is something quite poignant in that.

The next half of the meeting was less successful, we went from Bryan Edmondson’s interesting, informative and funny talk about working with Rankin, Grafik and K2 screen printers to a rather annoying forum hosted by Bryan, Ralph Ardill, Nick Johnson and Liz.....Im not sure what Liz’s last name was unfortunately.

Ralph, Bryan and Liz were quite good with their answers, but I think Nick was far too self absorbed. All his answers seemed to be based on how the question affects him directly rather than the design community. Plus his comment that he didn’t want dyson air blade hand dryers was ridiculous. Stating that you don’t like progression and development at a design conference? This detracted from what was, or could have been a very interesting end to the evening.

Im sure Nick is very good at what he does, and I would love to see him talk again and hopefully prove me wrong. After all 1st impressions shouldnt count for everything.

Critiques

A short section to show my feelings at the time and reflections upon the various reviews and critiques I have been through so far this year.

1st Term Crit

My first term crit with Sue and Mack went pretty terribly, no denying that. However being harshly reviewed made me pull my finger out and start working properly. At the start of the year I had been coasting along and wasn’t doing anywhere near as well as I should have been.

It was good for me to have the crit though as I ended up making the Silence book, one of my favourite projects to date. I also re-evaluated the direction I was taking my work in and bucked my ideas up in general of what I needed to do for the rest of the year.

2nd Term Crit

The second term crit was with Clinton and Sue seemed to go better than my first terms group crit. Clinton and Sue seemed to be quite dissapointed by the overall standard of work so it was hard to see what they felt of mine in particular at the time.

Upon getting my feedback of a C I wasn’t overly happy, but was confident in the fact that a lot of my work wasn’t quite finished and I had bigger and better projects to come. Would like to think that my work is still of 2:1 standard and that I can finish with this grade as a minimum.

Ian Anderson Portfolio Crit

This crit was more to do with how we present ourselves and our portfolios rather than what our actual work is like.

After a short chat with Ian about how best to present yourself I went first at having a go at our mock interview.

Trying to mix my usual presentation style with Ians words of wisdom went OK, I need to focus more on what it is about each project that I particularly like or enjoy. Some projects were rushed through and others got a bit too much attention so timing could do with some work as well, but overall I did well and the only real criticism was that I didn’t put enough personality into the presentation.

This seminar/ talk was really beneficial, especially so for when I would be giving my talk at Love and any interviews I may have in the future.

Love Creative mock interview

After turning up at the wrong place and slightly late I didn’t think the dau could go much worse. Fortunately we were all being interviewed seperately so I hadn’t missed anything other than sitting in the very nice waiting area at Love with Jackie, Emma and Caitlin.

After Ian Andersons presentation seminar I felt very confident showing my work and think it went very well alltogether.

For the most part I showed my portfolio then there were a few questions, some observations and before I knew it it was all over.

Was quite nervous beforehand but the experience has helped me to learn that preperation, confidence on yourself and your work along with a few rehearsed questions to ask afterwards (their favourite projects, where they started out and clients they’d like to work for are favourites of mine) goes along way.

Exhibitions

Including galleries in Manchester, Lisbon and Liverpool this section is an attempt to review my favourite exhibition experiences this past year. I have made other gallery visits but have chosen to omit them unless I felt they have been a positive and insightful experience.

Berardo Gallery (Portugal)

I had a quick break in Portugal before term started, my Dad was at work there so I tagged along with him and took the time to explore the area around Lisbon and Alcochete.

The Berardo Modern Art Gallery is ridiculous, one room had work from Koons, Lichtenstein, Goldin, Gormley and Warhol. that was one room out of about 6. I was so excited about being there all my photos came out blurry. I would love to go back as it was astounding how well rounded the gallery was with modern art from Pollock and Dan Flavin then a few minutes later you had surrealism, then another short walk and a massive exhibition on Art Deco furniture and art.

Would happily have spent a few hours there each day taking photos, looking at everything properly and getting a better look but unfortunately this didn’t happen so a re-visit is in order I feel, even their branding (on the left here) was gorgeous.

Liverpool Tate Gallery

At the time of visiting there were some pretty useful items on show. Having looked at Mark Rothko and Dan Flavin in my artist research for the silence brief it was a pleasant surprise to see a whole room of Rothkos Seagram Murals. Deemed by some as boring or lacking in imagination/creativity I can spend hours staring at Rothkos work. In the same way that Pollock is often seen as ‘the guy who throws paint’ Rothko has a tendancy to be seen as ‘the blocks of colour guy’ but there is so much more to his work than that.

It was also beneficial to see another work from Dan Flavin, having seen some of his work in the Berardo Gallery in Portugal I was keen to see more from him. Flavin uses simple scupltures created from fluorescent tubes casting huge, multicoloured spectrum like shadows and making already large spaces seem cavernous isn’t an easy feat. His work at the Liverpool Tate was smaller than I had seen prviously but still intelligent and attractive.

Other than Rothko and Flavin the Tate also had work from such luminaries as Ron Mueck, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Mona Hatoum and Anthony Gormley on display.

I particularly enjoyed looking at Warhols screen print of the campbells soup can, it was the first time I had seen one so close and been able to really see the details and slight misalignments. Really nice work that makes a soup can fascinating to look at...not easy to do. I think that’s one of the areas that modern art has to fill, it has to be interesting to look at, it doesn’t necessarily need to be perfectly made as long as it holds the viewers attention.

Liverpool Walker Gallery

The Walker Gallery was mostly your traditional gallery, large intricate paintings by incredibly gifted artists, but once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. Maybe that makes me seem like an uneducated cretin but there is a reason why photographers like Ryan McGinley can sell their photos for gazillions of dollars and portrait photographers make peanuts in comparison. There is so little emotion on show, nothing to hold your gaze. Art needs to be compelling in some way, and in my opinion the pre-raphaelite and baroque styles on show don’t really do that. There were some very nice design based items on show though. Liverpool John Moores University had some of their brochure designs on show and they saved the day where the Walker Gallery is concerned. Simple clean design for the most part, a bit stagnant in the mid 90’s from the looks of things but on the whole very enjoyable. Another saving grace for The Walker Gallery was the Bridget Riley ‘Flashback’ show.

A selection of her sketch and prep work can be seen behind an inquisitive Chris Scanlon in the photo to the left. Great work with beautiful lines, nice simple concepts and really nice results. The finished works use bold bright colours on a much larger scale and really created an interesting viewing. Similar to Rothko and Flavin again in some ways, but more playful and less emotive.

DR ME Exhibitions

Mark Edwards and Ryan Doyle have been embaressing the rest of us by putting on their one day exhibitions at Nexus Art Cafe featuring illustrators, animators and graphic designers from all over the shop.

I really enjoyed these exhibitions, some live screen printing and music, free to get in plus free posters and some really good work shown. Melvin Galapon and Mr. Bowlegs really impressed. I also liked the work from former MMU students Teacake, who created some pieces specifically for the DR.ME show.Although not the largest shows, and with a focus more towards illustration and design than pure graphic design I still really liked what was on show and enjoyed the relaxed feel of being able to come in, have a cup of tea or just chat to some of my fellow course mates and see some nice work.

2nd year show

The show was of quite a high standard, some pieces a lot more stand out than others, one thing that was obvious was that there was little attention being payed to the smaller details like line weights, spacing, kerning and the like. Also some of the books made needed a bit more attention during the binding stage. I am by no means a master of these things but some of the work was really let down by poor attention to detail.

Some of the animations and short films were pretty special and all in all I was very impressed by what work had been produced so far by the second years. I really liked Mike Clegg’s piece, it was quite an interesting look at using info graphics that worked well I reckon.

Alan Fletcher

For me the highlight of the year exhibition wise was definitely Alan Fletchers exhibition.

The main theme running through Fletcher’s work seems to be simple ideas executed well. This is what we, as design students, have been trying to learn over the past few years and seeing so many examples in one place was certainly inspiring.

My personal favourites from the work on show were some letterheads using neat, simple typography. Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of these but you’ll have to believe me, they personify the idea of neat, memorable, clever design.

I really like the postcards of New York burned and distressed to remove the World Trade Centre Towers. Fletcher was in New York at the time of the attacks and quickly set about accruing 30 different postcards depicting the towers before altering them to fit in with the new New York skyline. A poignant, interesting memento of one of the biggest moments in recent world history.

It was a brilliant exhibition, must have been a nightmare for the curators to give so much work the space it deserved but I think that it was handled excellently and I would definitely go again if I was to see an exhibition of Fletcher’s work elsewhere.

Panic Exhibition.

I was really happy with how this day went. My parents finally got to see some of my work properly (living in Swansea means I tend not to take proper sized printouts and portfolios for the 4 hour train journey due to fear of losing/damaging them) and as a year group we got to show what we are capable of both in terms of work and organisation.

After helping out painting and banging nails into things I also had a go at helping put work onto walls and was very happy to see my piece had a great position. Think my favourite pieces belonged to Arran Murphy, Jo Ormiston and Arran Tierney, but don’t think anyone let the team down, a great show from all.

I can only hope that the degree show is as good.

Misc & Self Initiated Work

Work I don’t expect to get marked, have done for fun or as a favour for friends yet still shows a degree of skill in design or using design software.

Illustrations

My friend Sian asked me to make some illustrations for her Grandpas birthday and I was happy to oblige.Not getting too much chance to use my illustration within Uni it’s always nice to break out the pencils and get some illustration work done.

Apparently he loved them and I may be getting another call next year for another set.

T-Shirt Printing

So far this year I have made T-shirts for my friend Liz who needed some promotional t-shirts and some for my friend Ash who wanted some for a presentation, where he and some classmates had created a company. I also created the original logo for this faux company (they had a name change and product change after asking me to create the logo).

I’d like to think I’m well skilled in screen printing and really enjoy the process. One of my favourite areas to work with alongside bookbinding but not many of my posters lend themselves to it due to the extra time and cost it takes.

Photoshop Tutorials

An old rugby friend of mine has recently been working for Harlequins Rugby Union Club. A lot of his work involved making blog posts and creating a general buzz about the club.

So I got a few phonecalls over the last few months asking for tips and advice on how to do certain things with Photoshop. Mostly how to manipulate images, picking out colours, crop, blend and combine images.

I enjoy using photoshop, just haven’t always found ways to put all the techniques I know how to use into use.

Fundraising

I originally had these in my portfolio as filler but think they are better suited to go in here rather than as a major part of my portfolio.

In an effort to raise some funds for the degree show I have contributed in a number of small ways making cards for various cake and card sales. Some vinyl stickers to go on your laptop, using the apple logo as a visual joke and also some t-shirts. One t-shirt design was for the Adam Brandon- Arron Tierney created TeeTwelve and another as a collaboration with Chris Scanlon.

I really enjoyed doing these smaller projects and they’ve managed to raise a bit of money for the degree show so I’m happy with that.

Work Experience

Over the summer I spent a month with clothing company howies.

I had sent them an e-mail not really expecting anything back, especially as I wasn’t keen on my portfolio at the time, so it was a pleasant surprise when I got an e-mail back asking me to come along.

It was a real eye opener and I learned so much. For my first proper work experience to be at one of my favourite companies was a surreal experience, sitting alongside the other creatives working on their famous catalogues and also helping out with posters and plans for The Do Lectures, a howies sponsored event that aims to teach about sustainability and innovation.

I drastically improved my abilities with photoshop, had some practice with conceptual thinking, layouts and also art direction with photo shoots.

I have been told I can go back when I finish Uni for further placements, would love to take them up on that offer.