Updated c.v

D&Ad

www.dandad.org

So D&Ad is back, can't believe its a been a year since I submitted the last minute boards for the ambient advertising brief.

Our course was invited to a talk from Riannon James at D&AD. After explaining a little about what she does and what d&AD can offer us as students, she showed us past work from last year the winners and the losers and more importantly why a particular entry succeeded or failed showing us 10 pieces of work that was entered for the Nokia connecting people brief.

Riannon also tried to explain what the judges were looking for and apparently it's a spark, and that spark is:

A good idea

Originality

On Brief

Well executed

Professional standard

Going back to that term spark, apparently its that piece of work that makes you go wow!

So next month when I choose a brief, tackle it and present the finished product it will have to tick these boxes.

Design Buddy!

Today I met with my real design buddy at Redweb.

Gareth Evans, senior designer of the company. We sat down for a quick chat and to get to know each other, he had missed the lunch meeting I had with David last month and it was important that we met to talk about my aims regarding the expectations of me as a student.

We talked about things like a portfolio, blogging and c.v which are all important aspects of me having a career in design.

I was asked what area of design do I want to go down, I was like being asked the single most important question of your life, I stumbled to find and answer.

Perhaps one of the negative aspects with my course may be that i have never had to settle for a particular discipline which in turn has meant I have never branched down a particular path.

I am also aware that this effects most of the people on my course, but for this situation I worried that not having a route will effect my overall buddy experience.

I appreciate that most 40 year olds still don't know what they want to do in there lives, but it wouyld be nice to have some direction.

On the other hand the aims and objectives could be set more generally meaning my goals could be more tailored toward particular aspects of my design.

I doubt this will be a set back and it will require me to do some real thinking about me as a designer

in the future.

After the session I agreed to take to send my blog so that Gareth could get a better understanding of me and my work.

Number Critique

My final idea came from staring at my alarm clock, still with the idea of representing perception in my poster. I looked at how the digits changed minute after minute then hour after hour. I could help but notice the transition of numbers to from the next.

The number space is made up of 7 lines, each one of these lines either appears or disappears according to the number it represents. This beautiful transition i felt could be visualized in my poster.

The design starts off with 7 lines to make up a box and the digit 0. this number is filled with a 30% transparency, I then layer the following numbers 1-9 over the top each time adding another 5% after each number. The idea behind this adding of 5% on each number is that when I finally finish no one single number appears in any other priority than the others.

The quote in the black line is a quote from william Blake about perception.

After presenting the idea and visual it was clear the design was intriguing , but the text didn't

quite marry with the concept

It was nearly there just need a rethink with regards to the typography.

Numbers

On Friday we had our first critique of 3rd year, it had been a whole summer with out one and I was a little anxious if Im perfectly honest.

The week long number project had been going very slow for the first 4 days, with my mind running back and forth trying to come up with this amazing idea surrounding numbers. My initial idea explored the significants of numbers in religion for example the number 12 occurs in religion on 20 different occasions, but trying to create a visual response on a poster for that was driving me insane. So it was backto the drawing board several times before I was visualizing anything.

My ideas or lack of lead me to the perception of numbers, and how no single number was more important than the other.

My initial designs were very complicated and there was no guarantee they would work until they were finished. By this time I only had 3 day left and things were getting desperate, but I then started to think how complicated and technical does this have to be and was I over thinking the brief.

Design Buddies

Early last week all that were selected for the design buddies pilot scheme were asked to come in for a lunch meeting with our potential design buddies, to basically meet face to face so we knew who are partner was. My designer was David Burton, head of innovation at Red Web .

He is part of a massive web based company along with another 100 staff all in different areas from accounts to design to coding. So many different areas to find out about over the coming sessions. We had lunch and talked about the kind of area he was involved with, he told me but I still wasn't fully sure what he did by the end of the lunch, all I did know is that I had been offered a great opportunity to find out a lot about the design industry.

After the lunch I was told by Neil that George Beverly from last week had spoken to him about our meeting and was very impressed with the way I talked about and presented my work, so much that we would like to work with all three of us over the year instead of one person.

Oli, Ben and myself have since met up and decided we would do it in groups so we get more from the sessions.

On Yer Bike

Last week we were given our new brief from the ISTD website. Whilst they were primarily typographical briefs, the outcomes that we design did not have to be typographical, which was nice to know.

The briefs ranged from exploring the word fakery to the beauty of plants, to a complete restaurant brand identity. The choice was broad each offering a wide range of outcomes.

I ended up choosing the 'on yer bike' brief which was asking you to design some kind of information system for cyclist in cities like london. Just like cars in cities have sat nav, at the moment there is nothing for the everyday cyclist. The target audience is anyone who is interested in cycling, wether it be a tourist of the local who goes to work every morning.

For this brief my intended area of research will be with in mapping journeys, way finding, user experience, user centered design, signage, alternative means of communication, practicality and usability of design, just to mention a few.

I shall also look at swiss design, simple but effective user systems in the world for example the Tokyo and London subway system. Also user systems closer to home like the college library system for locating various subjects.