PPRD!

This was the another little live brief that had a quick turn around! The brief required a Christmas card design that reflects the marine industry, by a company called 'Jenkins Marine' they manage boats for companies have worked closely with the RNLI and more recently helped create the artificial reef in Bournemouth. They have clients all around the world who they do business with so they needed a design that is universal and has a Christmas/Marine theme.

The brief it's self was quite broad, there were not many set guidelines as such, apart from keep it festive and nautical themed. I decided to keep it simple.

Essentially I took these two terms, and got them down on paper, and when they were in front off me I arranged the creatures and festive objects in to opposite pairs.

This in turn created some really random but humorous results.

The designs ranged from a dolphin finding a Christmas tree in buried in the sand, to a crab coming across a mince pie!

I used a light water-colour wash which keeps its playfull but precise.

In terms of a rationale, the Christmas card serves it's purpose in that It offers the light-hearted humor. I feel there is a nice contrast between the sea creature and the santa hat drawing of the octopus, just what you need at Christmas.

PPRD!

After our hand in this week we had a some time to carry on with live briefs or D&AD. I noticed that some live projects had the deadline fast approaching so i thought i would have a go at a few. The first was an animal print for the Vis-com fundraiser coming up after christmas. The idea is that we all complete a piece of work that could be framed and put up on display in Coffee Republic for a period of time, and then at 60 million Postcards on the night of the fundraiser. My idea for an illustration was based around the idea of a bird cartoon drawing I created for Screen based 1 last year. I felt that it could be recycled and was to much of an opportunity to make some large scale prints from. I ended up just pimping a group of birds on an electricity cable. A little humor never hurt anyone, also I feel they are salable for the fundraiser. This week we had a screen printing session and I below was the out come, at the moment there are black an white and a few colours mixed in, but I have a plan to add some water-colour washes, roughly over the birds.

Sound posters

Communicating ideas!

Re-brand (Packaging)

Re-brand (labels)

Business identity!

Thankyou!

Hand-in for first project.

So we have just had our first hand in for that massive brief filled with lots of different briefs, vis-com keeping us on our toes as usual. I have to say it was pretty hard going, turning around project after project week by week, but it still wasn't as bad as Text and image last year!. Few things i really enjoyed about this brief like the fact that within a week we would all have an outcome even if it was unresolved, it was really nice to see what people had achieved. I particularly enjoyed the packaging project where I feel I created some of my strongest work to date. Also the communicating idea project was fun because I was allowed to take an idea and run wild with it buy creating a sound installation, well the concept anyway.

In terms of disappointment, I feel the thank-you project lacked something, and wasn't resolved in the sense that the idea behind it or the meaning of it is slightly lost but hey no point crying over spilt beans is there.

For the hand in I had to have everything finished and final or as close to that point so thought I would just give u the updated work.

London Paper

In London we had the whole day to go off and do what we please so a group of us decided to go to some of the places mentioned on the list which included Magma books , V+A and London graphics centre. Here is where I bought some really fine quality paper to use for my Business stationery.

London trip!

So we went to London on Thursday for a little retail therapy, jokes not really. It was for a talk at the London design centre, to see Paula Scher a designer from Washington who has designed the logo for Citi Bank and so much more, Paula has been around for a quite a while now and had her fair share of major jobs. The talk was put on by D&AD, just like the one last year with Kyle Cooper. They basically asked her to go through her long history of work, which was interesting but at the same time I felt her old work was redundant to the common practice of today and I didn't feel that I learnt much to take away and incorporate in to my own work.

On the other hand her more recent work was really quite bold and beautiful, below are some examples,

The MOMA identity was one of my Favorites, a really clever re-brand.

Then there was the floor numbers that took up the whole space of the floor, and got bigger or smaller depending on how high up each floor was.

Not forgetting a brief that required a music college building in NewYork to have

a whole new image, with a very small budget. So they gave it a lick of paint,

and covered it in Typography... obviously!

For the brief I would like to steer away from plain and simple posters for the public, instead create some sort of interactivity with the message. In other words a sound installation, this is one of the few ways I can get my work across to the public in an effective way.

I have been recently researching and agency called 'Greyworld' lead by a man called Andrew Sioban who I hope will help me to realize my final piece.

Heres just an example of greyworld's work. Below is a set of bollards that light up, to the untrained eye they are simply a set of bollards but, but infact the bollards can sense the movement of the people who walk past. Through the sensors sound is released at high or low pitches depending on the speed and aggressiveness the person is walking at when they walk by.

Communicating an idea!

The objective of the brief was to choose one of the videos from the website and collect all the most interesting point of the talk, and communicate to the public in a way you see fit.

So its Friday and we have had this Communicating Ideas brief for a week now and all I have done is look at the various educational videos on a website called 'ted.com'.

After much consideration in to which one would be more beneficial for me, but also the one that would challenge my thinking a little more. I ended up torn between the sound and the consumerism video, upon later reflection and a talk early that morning saying we should think out side the box. I finally chose the sound one.

In the talk by Julian Treasure. He talks about there being 4 ways in which sound affects us 1) Physiologically, 2) Psychologically 3) Cognitively 4) behaviorally. I have chosen to focus on the psychological and cognitive affects of sound. He describes our passion for sound but also the way in which we suppress sound all the time, and more interestingly our common associations with sound sound that evoke happiness and sounds that evoke fear.

Today we had a Laser cutting induction, I had heard good things about this process, but as usual had no work with me, which was big mistake. The man who inducted us was really nice i think his name was Ed, really laid back character. The induction was short and sweet, just the way I like it.

But I did pick up some interesting facts about Laser cutting: It works through illustrator, which means its recognizes vector work and strangely needs to be set to RGB. The designs themselves can be a as detailed or a as simple as u like, the important thing is that the image is made up of a stroke or a fill so the laser can read it. You can create some interesting patterns by setting the power and speed.

So that the laser understands the difference between cutting and etching the stroke and the fill are separated in to blue indicating a cut, and red indicating a singe or etch.

I am glad I found out about this because not only will it be good to know for the future when doing final pieces, but also for the business identity brief I have just done, I will look in to creating a business card in this style.

http://aucbcam.com/

D&AD Briefs

So the D&Ad briefs have been out for a while now and I had had a quick look at a few of them last week but in no great detail. This Monday there was some time to focus on professional projects or what ever you got going on at that time. So a group of us got together and decided we would have a go at one.

We all downloaded the briefs and sifted through the potentially winning briefs, even

tually we got down to a possible three:

* Company called 'onedotzero', who are asking for some sort of moving image which explores the concept of a 'disappearing city '.

* Another brief from 'www.lastminute.com' who require a new campaign so people can get more from the website, with an imaginative and fresh out look.

* The last brief was from 'Lloyds TSB'.

This one asks to create an integrated campaign to bring Lloyds Partnership with the olympic Games 2012 alive.

After much deliberation and carefully considering the practicalities of each we decided to go for the 'onedotzero' brief. It was out of this and the Lloyds brief, it was clear that we could be much more creative with the moving image brief, as opposed to the the olympics one which we would have to consider the all aspects of the Olympics, including the Paralympics and being politically correct.

It would clearly be a nightmare.

Final Re-branding

So just thought I would update you on the goings on of the re-branding project after the first crit iIwent a way with a strong concept but the visuals were not justifying the concept. So the last week was spent trying to bang out an improved logo, labeling and packaging. I have worked hard, with the little time I had in the project. The labels and packaging I feel are nearly resolved some final touches like bringing up the levels of the pea illustration, and just general typography issues like character spacing and paragraph styles. Other areas that need addressing, are making the maquette for the products and packaging.