Quote...

"Graphic Design is all around us, from the packaging that your food comes in through to the receipt you received or bus pass you used today; colour, space, image and type make up the core elements of design. These elements are what create the unique look of a product and are the building blocks for the whole brand: get the brand right and other marketing components will follow. Each of these elements creates the design by reacting with the others, for instance, the colour of the type has an effect on the image, as the space has an effect on the type and so on.

Graphic design has been with us from the beginning of time and will continue to be with us as we move forward into a digital age."

Something I found when browsing on the Grafik website. I like it, I'm forever trying to find out what Graphic Design is and this inspired me to look into it more. I think that it's a nice definition.

Promoting the colour RED...

I don't think I've mentioned that we had a creative partnership brief set a few weeks ago and I worked with a friend from our year called Lauren. It was a real eye opener as I'd never worked in a partnership before. The reliance to produce and stick to your part of the plan was quite demanding and I was worried I might let her down. I found myself working harder as I had to stick to my part of the bargain and it was also only a 1 week brief. I find myself producing better under pressure and working to shorter timescales as I'm so lazy and always end up leaving things to the last minute. Time management always seems to go tits up with me...

Anyway here is some of the work we produced. We chose from a few options to produce the colour red and in effect made an awareness campagin to promote safety to young people through the colour red. It was aimed at students, particularly between the age of 18-26. The 3 most important messages we wanted to put across were,
Safe Sex
Don't Drink and Drive
Date Rape

To do this we produced a set of posters, flyers, leaflets and wristbands.

Calendar Brief..

Something I struggled with and didn't really manage to get my teeth into..
My intention was to design a calendar for the year 1981 representing the year through type and colour. I don't think I really achieved this and if I have time it's definately something I plan on going back to to improve on and try and produce a better resolution! These are the 3 pages I was asked to design..

More Inspiration I showed in my presentation..

Si Scott is an illustrator I've also mentioned on here before but would like to say some more about. I showed some short slides of his work in my presentation mainly saying how i love his fluidness and delicate approach to illustration. He is so unique and inspirational for so many people and has really started to make a name for himself now. I find all his stuff beautiful to look at and although some people may find it 'samey' or boring I seem to remain ceased to be amazed by his talent and originality. It is something I'd love to strive to and be able to do in 2nd year. I find him very inspirational and engaging.

Presentation..

Just a quick word to say I had my power point presentation the other day. I think it went OK...nerve racking but not half as bad as I was expecting and all in all I found it really quite useful to see what everyone else did for theirs and was nice to see a selection of work too from over the year by us all. It made me feel a little more confident and realise I can do it, I just need to focus more and put my mind to it.
If only that was easier done than said..

Also this is some work that I included in my power point.
The first two images are something I produced for my visual language brief that I lost before the hand-in so never actually submitted to be assessed. It started out as just a doodle and compilation of images I'd drawn but then I decided that i wanted to try and do more with it so I scanned it in and started to manipulate it. I had real fun with it and really enjoyed it. It's definitely something I want to try more of. Doesn't feel like working to me at all, simply the freedom to express myself through image and colour. :)

Phil Dunne

Now this guy inspires me!
Amazing, illustrations and combination of photography, I don't know where to look first. I'd like to briefly touch on him in my presentation and showed slides of his work, these are some I find most inspirational...
I've mentioned Phil Dunne's work before on here right at the beginning of the year. I first came across his work in the March 2007 edition of Computer Arts Magazine.

Photography Elective Cityscape Finals...

These are the other final 3 that I also submitted as my finals. Again I printed these out on photographic A3 gloss paper and mounted them up on A1 mount board. Hopefully they'll be ok. My only criticism was that they weren't all black and white. However had I edited the other sepia image in Photoshop I feel it would have taken away the quality of the picture. I chose to capture it in sepia mode for a reason and felt it should be kept as the original image. The other two were actually taken using the colour accent mode on my camera, not black and white but it's very hard to notice this as the colour which is in them is very subtle.

Photography Elective Portraiture Finals...

These are the four I used as a set for my final portraiture images. I printed them out on A4 photographic gloss paper and then mounted them on A1 mount board. I also printed out the last of the 4 images on A3 photographic gloss paper and mounted that up on A1 mount board because it was my favourite image and I liked it as part of the set but also on it's own.

First Year, First Term, First Brief, Favourite project...

At first I was like oh my god what the hell am I going to do. How am I going to design the numbers 0-9 with the word 'ugly.' However looking back I quite enjoyed doodling and messing about with this project and it just might be my favourite project from this year so far. It has to be my most memorable because it was my first proper project. Looking back at this reminds me how I felt at the beginning of the year, receiving my first brief and wondering what to expect with the worry of what I was going to do. If I was good enough. If would manage to make the deadline. I don't think I can use it for this new Speaking From Experience brief but it made me smile looking back at them and remembering my first experience of the course. Such funny looking birds!

100 Flips Video promotional poster designs...

These are the posters that I produced as part of one of our day projects. I decided that I wanted to design some to work as a set and then explain what they were all about on the last poster with just a subtle bit of text in the lower right hand corner informing of the release date and duration of the video. However I chose to call it 100 as opposed to 100 flips because I also wanted to include the element if mystery to make the audience want to find out more about what the posters are advertising. The film strip that runs along the middle of each is slightly off center so that if they were lined up exactly together they would all work as one long poster. The objects included within the film strip are all objects featured in the video.

Visual Language work...

These are some of the drawings that I scanned into photoshop and played around with for part of my visual language module which I handed in a few weeks ago. Hopefully getting our marks back soon. Hope I've passed!

I'm still alive...

It's been so long since I last posted on here, i guess it's time i put some more stuff up.

I've finished and finally handed in my photography elective. I submitted all notebooks, research and 5 finals. I chose to use the black and white and sepia image from my trip up to Edinburgh and one of the Sage and other bridges in Newcastle. However after much deliberating about whether or not to use just city scape images or portraiture images for my finals i chose to include them both.
I shall put up a separate post of my finals later.

So now onto my final four weeks of the first year. Scarey stuff. I need to pull my finger out and socks up...
We have our final brief - 'Speaking From Experience.'
To produce a graphic response/graphic product/piece of work that makes a statement, comment, observation, instruction or gives advice about my experience of the first year of the course. Should be interesting. I have no idea what to do, there's a few ideas spinning round but nothing I've decided to go with yet.
I know how intimidated I felt and daunting it was for me starting the course. I can imagine how the newbies must feel knowing that they're going to be starting here in September.

I also have to think about what I'm going to put into my portfolio. This is gonna be hard! I'll have to root about and hope theres stuff good enough to whack in. I've got my first tutorial for that this coming Friday.

Errrrrm not much other goss really. I found this wicked illustrator though in a book hanging around the studio. He's called Tom Judd. He studied at Manchester Metropolitan Uni. Here's some his work. I think it's awesome. Totally fascinating and engaging to look at. He started doing notebooks and began a notebook one day that he wanted to do a page in every day for a whole year. Just spending aprox an hour on a page per day. He never prepared or planned just had a go every time he had some free time during the day. Some of them are observational and some are just completely random and weird. He just went with the way he felt that day. This is what I loved so much about it. His freedom to just express his feelings through drawing.





This is a link to his website

http://www.tomjudd.co.uk/