Magazine Development Video

As part of the magazine work we have been doing we were required to produce a video of the development of design from start to finish. The video had to last roughly a minute long and this is mine below.

Semiotics Talk

Today we had to do a 5 minute presentation in front of around 20 people. We had to talk semiotically about a chosen piece of design from our pathway. I chose an AIGA poster designed by Stefan Sagmeister in 1999. I chose this because I like the radical work that Sagmeister produces and this piece had lots of different features that I could create connations from. The poster itself is of Sagmeister after he had the information of the poster carved into his body using a knife. I think the advertisement works as it is memorable, shocking, has vivid imagery and colour and most of all it grabs your attention.

New Scientist Design Deadline

These are my final designs and the final finished project from my magazine brief.

Liverpool Design Symposium

Starting off the day at 10am we met up with James Graham from Thoughtful and he showed us around the Tate Gallery exhibitions which are part of the MADE UP campaign which Thoughtful Art Directed. We then had a tour around Liverpool which is the Capital of Culture 2008 and there is a real buzz around the whole town with artwork evrywhere about the Liverpool Biennial. We were shown around the landmarks and engineering feats such as the sliced building where part of the building spins around and a huge mechanical spider floating between buildings.

After lunch we saw a lecture by Bruno Maag about Typography. He is the director of Dalton Maag in London and Zurich. He talked emphatically about the importance of type within design and how the smallest detail is of massive importance. He and his company have designed fonts for Tottenham Hotspur, BMW and Mini.


We looked at the uses of Sans Serif and Serif fonts and their functionalities aswell as their aesthetic qualities. Typefaces can also save lots of money. He showed how he saved money for the Phone Book by cutting 10 lines of addresses off each page which saves ink, paper, packaging, petrol and the environment.

We then had a break and came back to the optional show of D&AD awards which showed a number of the candidates for D&AD awards and a lot of the winners also. Some of the work was brilliant and something I aspire to. Stuart from Thoughtful who we have been working with spoke about how the work is judged and answered questions about the politics being involved between agencies.

The whole day lead onto the final lecture by Matt Pyke of Universal Everything. In contrast to his name Matt works alone in his office at the bottom of his garden which is even more extraordinary when you read his client list which includes Nokia, 2012 Olympics, Nike, Apple, Lovebytes and MTV.

Matt works simply from a laptop and contacts clients and anyone he commissions to work by using iChat and e-mail. He obviously works with very talented programmers to create the amazing work that was shown during his lecture. The animations seem impossible to make for someone like me but it does give you inspiration to think why can't I do work like this as new technology becomes more widely available.

www.universaleverything.com

www.liverpooldesignsymposium.com

New Scientist Rebrand

Another 7 day brief has been the design of New Scientist Magazine. We have to design our own grid systems and layouts as well as a new masthead, front cover, editorial page and 2 DPS's.

We are given an article as the main feature of the magazine which is about the relation between creativity and mental health problems. My idea of creative thing is about it being ' outside the box '. The box represents the brain and the ideas all fall into place as boxes can be built, emptied, opened up, overfilled in the same way a brain could be.

Box graphics lend themselves to my idea about fragility etc and i will be screen printing a limited edition full front cover onto card to replicate this. It is a 3D interactive cover that can be built into an actual box if required...and the packaging will reflect the fragility by having fragile tape around bubble wrap. I will post images of the final outcomes soon...

Uniform Design 10th Anniversary and Design Symposium Afterparty

As soon as we arrived at the Tate, James from Thoughtful gave us a brief outline for the day and then told us he had managed to get hold of 5 free tickets for Uniform's 10th Year Anniversary and Symposium Afterparty. Me along with Ed, James and Martin jumped at the opportunity and then proceeded to book ourselves into a hotel for the night.

We weren't sure what it would be like but we got there and there was a live band and it was ful of people. We noticed that Matt Pyke and Bruno Maag were in the next room. It looked like a VIP room and quite intimidating for lowly students like us but after a while I plucked up the courage to go and speak to someone. I spoke to the D&AD President, Garrick Hamm, all about the day and asked Matt Pyke if he could spare a few minutes to come and speak to me and my friends in the next room.  As we hadn't expected to be doing this we had to come up with some questions quickly, He said that we should involve ourselves in lots of different areas of design to become useful in not just one subject of it. We wanted to know why he doesn't want to build his company into a big money making machine and he said he is scared of overheads and wouldn't like to do average jobs just to pay the bills.
Communication is predominant to Matt as he doesn't see many people face to face and uses the internet to its maximum advantage with its email messaging services.

The way he told us he works is that he gets the work, comes up with a concept and then commissions the best people to do 'the impossible stuff' i.e. the animation and effects. Whenever he gets a mental block he likes to get away from the work and come back the next day with fresh ideas. Initially I had only planned for him to speak to us for a couple of minutes but it ended up being around an hour and then we all got our photo with him.

After speaking to Matt I then went and asked Bruno Maag if he would come speak to us. He was very happy to and came over straight away.
We asked a bit about his background and how he got into Graphic Design and he explained that,coming from a family of engineers, he ended up engineering for work experience. He said he did not want to file metal for a living and ended up at the Basel School of Design after doing more work experience at a printers where he loved the process of design to finished print and the sounds and smells of it.
We talked about our own course and briefs and something he didn't agree with is the way we are made to write essays as part of the course when we should be taught to be better designers. This is made worse with the fact that around 50% of designers are dyslexic. 
He said "It's all in the detail, punctuation has to be perfect, and where everything is spaced, is very important." and that students aren't taught this enough.
James asked him whether he gets bored of his own brand identity and he said, yes, eventually. After seven years of his current Brand Identity, he has slowly started to change it through letter heads etc. He said how the hardest thing to do is your own Brand Identity, also the fact that ideas can be the best ever, but if its not executed correctly, its a waste of time.
One thing I had wanted to ask from his lecture earlier was how he commands an audience with such confidence and can talk for so long without stuttering or forgetting bits. His ethos was practice practice practice. He said that it doesn't matter if you get things wrong because you will learn from your mistakes and get better from it.

We talked about the way type could be animated and other animation but Bruno didn't like it as when they are turned to still image they lack any subtlety and appear crude. Someone asked about what Macs he uses and he says he doesn't he went as far as sayin 'I hope Apple die!' He only works with 2 Macs and evrything else is all run by Windows which he says is far superior. This realy surprised me as I find Macs to be much better.

We asked if he does any of the actual design work anymore but he tends to do the lectures, promotion and general running of the business, however he does take 4 weeks out of year to get involved in designs.

He went onto add that these days it is not about brilliant concepts, but more about classic clean cut basic design.
He believes the D&AD is a money making machines that he has no interest in being a member of although they do a lot for students and promotion of their work

In contrast to what a number of people have told me he said to keep your ideas to yourself and copyright them if you can because money makers will take your idea and produce it making money off your work.

After chatting together for what was almost 2 hours I said I know we have kept you for a long time but can we have a picture with you but he actually asked if he could stay with us for a while so we had the photo taken and then chatted even more. About more general issues aswell as design. I bought Bruno a drink to say thanks for the time he had spent talking to us. We then said Bye to everyone at the party and went out making the most of our night in Liverpool by going out in the town centre.

Gillian Blease Lecture

I visited a lecture given by the illustrator Gillian Blease today at Stockport College. She has done work for some high profile companies such as The Guardian, Express and Barclay's Bank.

Gillian spoke a lot about the people and art around her that inspires her. This, I felt, was a very important part of how she got to where she is now. Also she spoke about having work rejected and not letting it get you down because often clients don't have the same visions as you do and at the end of the day you need to give the client what they want.

There has been times where she has had to decline work as there was too much other work already to do. This is one of the negatives of her basically working from home and as a freelancer. However, Gillian likes having the freedom of being her own boss and not having the distractions of working in an office.

www.gillianblease.co.uk

Concept Studies

We have been working on a 7 day brief for Concept Studies which today we presented to our tutor and fellow students. The brief wasn't a normal brief, it basically gave us a license to do whatever we wanted and think of the world as if we didn't already know it or as if we were a baby again..I took the idea of being a baby again literally as I had been talking to my mum  the night before about the way people have memories but don't remember what it was like before they could walk or talk. I decided to create a photo essay loosely based on a day in the life of me as a baby. I had to get in the mode of being a baby and crawled around the house taking pictures of what a baby would see, including being in the cot, feeding times, a day out and bathtime. I had to get hold of some props such as nappies, dummies etc. and had some helpful models to get my images. I looked at the way Stewie off family guy is a baby but has adult views and added this idea to it by putting my own views to the images by adding captions. To finish it off I added a song that uses the Rugrats tune called Take Me There as it is about a journey and was appropiate. Over the top of these I added sound effects of what the baby could possibly hear at the time of the images being seen.

innocent drinks ideas

We have been working on a 1 week live brief for innocent drinks through the design agency Thoughtful. We had to come up with ideas to promote innocent's brand in any kind of way. The emphasis was on the health benefits of their products but any ideas were welcome. We worked in pairs on this brief with people we wouldn't normally work with and this experience I'm sure will benefit us in the future. We presented our work in front of Thoughtful and fellow students aswell as being filmed. I worked with Andrew Dranfield and we came up with 6 ideas which were... 1.)large model pieces of fruit with a straw coming out of them which become a drinks fountain that the smoothies come out of 2.)innocent fruit yoghurt pots 3.) an advert -- showing innocent taking the finest pieces of fruit and destroying them in a massive blender..idea being not so innocent after all. 4.) collectable innocent character bottles 5.) Fruit Olympics--a games festival replacing conventional sport items such as bats and balls with fruit with prizes to be won. 6.) poster or viral email campaign. showing fruit such as 2 cherries and a banana for example created a public perception of it being a rude image even though it is innocently just an image of fruit. 

These ideas are all being sent to innocent drinks in January.