Hello...My name is Mia Tivey and I study Graphic Communication at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Currently residing in your hands is a collection of my finest work, so make sure you look after it!

I’m currently available for freelance projects, and will be searching for full time creative employment from June 2013, so if you like what you see, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

‘I’ Newspaper

YCN Student Awards work in collaboration with a number of different companies, in order to set various briefs. This year, I chose the brief set by ‘I’ (the sister tabloid of The Independent). The task was to make ‘I’ the most read newspaper amongst students. Short-term, my idea is to ‘recruit’ students to be paperboys/girls and deliver papers around the campus (whilst roller blading, for that

The image above is an illustration of a newspaper dispenser. It would be branded, thus making it eye catching and (hopefully) entice students!

The image to the right is an illustration featuring the attire of the student ‘paperboy’, and another student advertising the newspaper. I have made sure to adhere to old newspaper selling techniques and tradition during this project, as I feel that it has made the premise more cohesive and clever.

extra contemporary twist!). Long term, I propose the installation of newspaper dispensers (very common in America and parts of Europe) near existing vending machines and other well populated areas. Simples!

little singing bird

Little Singing Bird make bookmarks, brooches, buttons, cards and loads of other lovely things. All products are entirely handmade, so it’s a fairly small enterprise, but recognise the importance of having an online presence nonetheless. I was asked to design an e-commerce website for them. There were a lot of factors that I had to consider whilst designing, but I feel that the end result is truly reflective of Little Singing Bird and stands out from the (highly competitive) crowd.

This was my first experience of designing a website; it was a fantastic learning curve and I learnt an incredible amount in the process. Learning how to save files correctly was invaluable alone! The job gave me a real taste for web design, and inspired me to design (and attempt to build) my own website. As a whole, it’s definitely a skill-set that I would like to pursue a lot more in the future.

Why not explore the website properly? Go to: www.littlesingingbird.co.uk

Sustainable:me journal

Me as a vector!This is an energy saving light bulb, obviously.

Lots and lots of drawing was involved in this project.

I am SO proud of my vector gingham! It looks real!

During one of my recent uni projects, we were asked to keep a journal to document our work and research. We could choose whether the outcome be for print or screen based. I chose to make a newspaper, as I thought that it fitted with the theme of ‘sustainability’ rather appropriately. I did loads of drawing for this project, but I wanted to be sure that I would be left with something that truly reflects me, and I think that the end result does.

I used an online company called ‘Newspaper Club’ to print my paper. I set up a document to their specifications, and then they printed it onto newsprint for that truly authentic newspaper feel.

I learnt a lot about designing for print whilst making this, of which I am extremely grateful for. And hey, look, I’m a dab hand at making newspapers these days!

Borrowed this little fella from my ‘Forgotten Language’ Project...

slow food on campus

We were asked to identify a ‘cause’ or organisation that we felt strongly about; I chose Slow Food UK, and more specifically, Slow Food on Campus (their student led initiative). I contacted them, and through conversation, gathered that they want to raise their profile in order to encourage people to join Slow Food groups. With my specific audience in mind (students aged 18 to 25), I set about devising a campaign that would appeal to them.

The image to the right is a design for a fruit wrapper. Having worked in a green grocer’s myself, I know that often, soft fruit is wrapped in a piece of waxed tissue paper that displays the company’s name and logo. I think that they are quite nice things to keep (in fact, I found out that Picasso used to be an avid collector!) and I thought that it would be quite a cool thing to design in conjunction with my SFOC campaign. Fruit from the canteen would be wrapped in these, hopefully encouraging students to choose healthy alternatives and join the Slow Food on Campus group!

The image to the far right are my ‘bake snails’, an idea I had for a poster advertising a hypothetical SFOC event.

I feel I have created a strong visual language, which can be transferred onto a large range of media. Additionally, I have designed a more contemporary identity for Slow Food on Campus, which is considerate of Slow Food’s existing logo, but is more likely to appeal to a younger audience.

grimm’s fairy tales

Scary ogre with man-boobs

Cat/dog/fox thing Another bird just for the sake of it...

The Frog Prince of Bel Air!

Every year, Penguin choose one adult and one children’s title, and set a competition to redesign the cover. This year, the children’s title was ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales’. I did some research into previous covers for this title, and came to realise that they were all so incredibly old-fashioned. I wanted to design something that would appeal to children of today, so I opted for a contemporary vector/cartoonistic approach. I put a screen printed texture over the top which I think adds a tactile element to the aesthetic.

The narrow colour scheme ensures that my design is quirky, and hopefully possesses some shelf appeal too!

Awww...

ultra electronics

I was asked do a series of illustrations for Ultra Electronic’s ‘Audacity Fund’ initiative. What started off as illustrations for a poster campaign eventually led on to the production of a minute-and-a-half animation (of which I story boarded, drew all of the artwork, and then built it in Flash).

The image above is a screenshot of the animation I built active on the Ultra Audacity Fund’s website. Go to www.ultra-electronics.com/audacity if you want to see the whole thing!

The image to the right is a crop of one of the posters in the Audacity Fund campaign.

I’m proud of this particular project; as a young designer, it’s a great opportunity to work on a commercial job, and for such an important client too!

forgotten language

The module was called ‘Narrative and Sequence’, and we were told to make a book or an animation about the poem/short story each of us were given. My poem was called ‘Forgotten Language’, and was about an adult looking back at his childhood,

wishing he could see the world again in the naive, playful way like most children do. The poem is full of metaphors and detailed descriptions, so I thought that a graphic novel would be an appropriate way to portray it’s

meaning. I used typography in a subtle way to reiterate the sombre tone at the end of the poem.

watts, yourres & myne

I was ‘assigned a profession’, that being a Lawyer, and then had to go away and thoroughly research it. The project involved thinking of a name for a hypothetical firm, create an identity, and then apply the identity to stationary items.

I knew from the offset that there would be so much creative scope with divorce lawyers, and as this was a completely hypothetical brief, I could probably do something quite funny!

The name, ‘Watts, Yourres and Myne’ is obviously a play on words, with a subtle difference which is supposed to reflect peoples’ preconceptions of divorce.

I couldn’t wait to do the illustrations for this project - I thought that visually, the concept of household items being stretched would look really good. In particular, the dog is my favourite - I find his expression really funny!

I adopted a naive illustrative style which gives the identity a contemporary aesthetic, and compliments the typography too.