Mick Greer- Lecture

Last week Mick Greer, a freelance copywriter, came to my college to give a lecture about life in the design industry. Guy Lawrence, one of our tutors, introduced Mick to the group as they had known each other for a number of years. After 20 years not being in touch they met 5 years ago and have been friends since.

Mick studied Graphic Design for 4 years but then decided to get into Advertising as he felt he wasn't that good at design. He leaned heavily towards copywriting and works now with an art director.
His CV includes working for The Chase, LOVE, Amaze and Mccann Erickson.

He started with some maths equations that basically showed that there are too many people and not enough jobs. This proved you have to be pretty special to get yourself a job. This led onto the subject of placements being of huge importance in getting a job. It is all about what you do and how motivated you are.

He told us that once we get a contact, to keep in touch at least once a week and build up relationships within the industry which is the best way of getting a job. When on placement do the jobs other people don't want to do and make yourselves invaluable. Mick also said not to just talk to one person. Talk to a dozen agencies to give yourselves the best chance of being hired in the future.

People often find they are without work for a year after qualifying. This means you need to act before you graduate to assure you are not without work. Agencies do not expect the finished article when you arrive and ther is still a lot of learning to be done after you graduate.

His advice overall was to be tenacious and you will get your reward.

Practitioner Report Dan Ingham/Stephen Owen & Mike Rigby

I have decided to write my practitioner report to compare Mike Rigby, who came to speak to us this year, and Dan Ingham & Stephen Owen who came in last year. I decided this as I also wanted to compare my own thoughts and reflection on what the guest speakers said with the difference of a year’s design experience. Dan and Ste were still starting out on the design ladder but they both won awards at the end of year exhibitions and were entered into the 'New Blood' section of D&AD.
They told how important it was to get into college as much as you can as you could miss important information and being around other people is paramount to improving ideas you couldn't do on your own.
As they both got chances to exhibit their work in London, it gave them the chance to build relationships and contacts with people and show their talents to thousands of people.
Out of 2000 students Dan and Steve won one of the 40 awards given out which is a tremendous achievement.
This led to numerous offers of work which surprisingly they turned down as they want to work at big agencies which is commendable and it seems they are going to follow a similar path to Mike who graduated in 2002 and has been in employment at The Chase, Landor, Moon, Pentagram, Mark Studio and has recently been offered the job as Creative Director at Interbrand in Australia. Therefore, it is good to get opinions from their different perspectives.

Mike's talk was advertised by posters put up around the design department recently featuring the word WOW which since the talk I have realised means Words of Wisdom. The date on these was 26th October which was wrong as it was meant to say November. Then someone designed a poster that said D'oh in place of Wow with the correct date on. These were placed next to the ones with the incorrect date on. I don't understand why you would want to highlight someones mistake and it makes a mockery out of that person. It could quite easily have been reprinted with the correct date on. However maybe this was intentional. The way Dan and Ste promoted their talk was with a screenshot of an email saying that they didn’t have any time to make a poster. I am not sure if this was intentional either or it was a real e-mail but they both got our attention by being different.

Dan and Ste explained they would rather not work on designing kebab house leaflets forever and would rather work on the bigger things. I respect this as it would be easy to take the money and they have decided against this.
Mark seemed to have taken the same attitude and spoke of the positives about being in the design industry. He said it is interesting, challenging, no two jobs are the same, you get to go on photoshoots, you go on free awards nights and that their is a strong design community. Also, people are helpful and it is easy to work from home or abroad. Aswell as this you can work for worthwhile causes and help give people a voice.

The negatives were the long hours of unpaid work, the competitive nature of the industry and the amount of pressure put upon you. The negative impacts are overpackaged items which is negative on the environment and also information overload. He then went onto speak about Studio structure and the hierarchy of staff which I think was more for the first and second years.

Moving onto the subject of placements Mike did a 6 month placement at Imagination and then did a placement at The Chase. Dan and Ste also opted to not take the first job they were offered and they decided to go on some placements with the likes of Thoughtful and The Chase and then moved onto placements with Mark Design and McCann Erickson.
Marks opinion is that placements speed you up and you become ten times faster than before. You get real live projects and you can gain contacts by networking and going on nights out. His advice for getting a placement was to have 6 solid placements in your book, have good ideas well executed, impress tutors and do well at interview. To get the most out of a placement you should socialize, be enthusiastic and positive. He advised us to not let rejection get to us as it does not mean you aren't good enough and will only make you stronger.
With so many people graduating each year from Graphic Design in the North West, Dan and Steve's advice to us was to build up contacts with people, continually improve your portfolio, enter competitions and try your best.


Also starting on a low wage isn't all that bad, Mike started on 13k and left only a couple of years later on 23k. His first project was ironically the project that we worked on at the Liverpool Design Symposium during The Chase's workshop. He achieved what was required and the underlay outsold carpet at the company for the next 2 years which shows what good design can do to sales. With his design he also achieved a 350% store card uptake increase which shows it doesn't have to be a glamorous brief to achieve results.

Aside from design, Mike has travelled the world and advises us to do the same as it is the best thing he has ever done. This is in contrast to Dan and Ste who got stuck into the industry as soon as they graduated. Mike then eventually got a job working at Landor in Australia whilst travelling where he was paid more and had amazing views from the studio. He believes British designers are highly exportable due to superior ideas whereas other countries are more strategic. I have found this when showing my work in New York. He is now working at True North until he leaves to travel again before he takes on his new job with Interbrand.

He says a lot of his time is spent producing brand guidelines which show the look, font, colours and tone of voice of a brand. Although he likes to make time to do self initiated briefs and advises us to do them aswell.

Overall Mikes advice to us as students is to broaden our horizons and look at all types of media. Experiment whilst you can and you are in education. Crit and collaborate with other students. Above all believe in yourself. This is echoed by Ste and Dan who had told us that, due to them always being together and doing the Colleges promotional work, they had received some negative comments and jealousy. This led to some bitchiness because it was always ' Ste and Dan '. This wasn't a problem for them because they were getting slagged of for doing good work. They told us that we should believe in ourselves in the same way and it will take us far.

Overall I think both talks were similar but it was good to get opinions from people at different levels within design as Dan and Ste are attempting to do what Mike is doing right now. The things that Dan and Ste have told us I am certain Mike would say the same as he also seems to be good and determined to do well in the industry. Mike has a more laid back style to myself and Dan and Ste but it seems to work well. They both agree on the subject of placements and being proactive in getting yourself aswell as having strong portfolios. It was also interesting how they all had the opinion that money wasn’t a big deal when starting out. Mike said it soon went up and I am sure that Dan and Ste are now reaping the benefits of their decisions also.

Mike Rigby - Words of Wisdom

Mike's talk was advertised by posters put up around the design department recently featuring the word WOW which since the talk I have realised means Words of Wisdom. The date on these was 26th October which was wrong as it was meant to say November. Then someone designed a poster that said D'oh in place of Wow with the correct date on. These were placed next to the ones with the incorrect date on. I don't understand why you would want to highlight someones mistake and it makes a mockery out of that person. It could quite easily have been reprinted with the correct date on.

However, aside from this I enjoyed the talk by Mike. He graduated in 2002 and has been in employment at The Chase, Landor, Moon, Pentagram, Mark Studio and has recently been offered the job as Creative Director at Interbrand in Australia.

Mark spoke of the positives about being in the design industry. He said it is interesting, challenging, no two jobs are the same, you get to go on photoshoots, you go on free awards nights and that their is a strong design community. Also, people are helpful and it is easy to work from home or abroad. Aswell as this you can work for worthwhile causes and help give people a voice.

The negatives were the long hours of unpaid work, the competitive nature of the industry and the amount of pressure put upon you. The negative impacts are overpackaged items which is negative on the environment and also information overload. He then went onto speak about Studio structure and the hierarchy of staff which I think was more for the first and second years.

Moving onto the subject of placements Mike did a 6 month placement at Imagination and then did a placement at The Chase. He says placements speed you up and you become ten times faster than before. You get real live projects and you can gain contacts by networking and going on nights out. His advice for getting a placement was to have 6 solid placements in your book, have good ideas well executed, impress tutors and do well at interview. To get the most out of a placement you should socialize, be enthusiastic and positive. He advised us to not let rejection get to us as it does not mean you aren't good enough and will only make you stronger.

Also starting on a low wage isn't all that bad, Mike started on 13k and left only a couple of years later on 23k. His first project was ironically the project that we worked on at the Liverpool Design Symposium during The Chase's workshop. He achieved what was required and the underlay outsold carpet at the company for the next 2 years which shows what good design can do to sales. With his design he also achieved a 350% store card uptake increase which shows it doesn't have to be a glamorous brief to achieve results.

Aside from design, Mike has travelled the world and advises us to do the same as it is the best thing he has ever done. He then eventually got a job working at Landor in Australia whilst travelling where he was paid more and had amazing views from the studio. He believes british designers are highly exportable due to superior ideas whereas other countries are more strategic. I have found this when showing my work in New York. He is now working at True North until he leaves to travel again before he takes on his new job with Interbrand.

He says a lot of his time is spent producing brand guidelines which show the look, font, colours and tone of voice of a brand. Although he likes to make time to do self initiated briefs and advises us to do them aswell.

Overall Mikes advice to us as students is to broaden our horizons and look at all types of media. Experiment whilst you can and you are in education. Crit and collaborate with other students. Above all belive in yourself.

Mike Carter Workshop - Orchard

A couple of weeks ago Mike Carter from Orchard recruitment came in to speak to us. He graduated in design and art direction and Orchard have placed more people into design than anyone else in the North.

At the moment 49.188 people are studying in art and design. This is second only to business studies. During the discussion we spoke about what was needed in the industry to breakthrough this huge number of competitors for jobs. The main points were enthusiasm, commitment and organisation. Real industry work requires a whole new level of accuracy. You can't afford to make mistakes before you go to print or it can prove to be very costly to your employers. When making your portfolio you can afford to make mistakes and make them better but when you show your work to people it cannot have mistakes in it.

We moved onto the subject of CV's. These need to get people to contact you. They need to conform to the 3 second rule. If your potential employers see exactly what they need to within that time then you have given yourself every chance. You need to include Employment - What your company does and what you do in it. Aswell as this you need to include education and your number of GCSE's with dates. Other qualifications need putting in order most recent first. We were advised not to put our date of birth on the CV due to ageism. If employers really want to know age they can work it out from our qualification dates. We should not be general with hobbies and only put in references if they are excellent.

With regards to the portfolio the advice was to consider the amount in our book carefully. To fake real prints to make things look like real industry pieces of work. We spoke about portfolios all looking the same which I have noticed about my class. Something I agree with is the way you should let the person look through the work. If you need to explain your ideas they are not good enough. During interview we should be ourselves, know the location and have some knowledge of the company.

We then did a small group exercise which involved having 25 cards with industry and student projects upon them. We could only include 15 cards for imaginary portfolio breakdowns. We did this for different types of job which helped us to understand how to taylor our portfolio to each one.

We were told to always have questions to ask your interviewer. Going around the group we were asked what we would ask. Most people didn't have one to ask. Mine was 'What are your plans for the future?' At the end of the interview we should clarify when we should be contacted.

I found the workshop worthwhile and got involved as much as possible and plan to take the advice into my own work.

Portfolio Visit - Mccann Erickson

Due to an absentee during the D&AD Portfolio Surgeries I was able to go and see a second person in the industry to go over my portfolio. Ironically it was a member of Mccann Erickson who I had a placement with over the summer and am involved with ongoing projects with. He recognised me and asked me about University and the projects I was working on at Mccann as I had never really spoken to him during my time with the agency. I asked about what they were doing at the moment aswell and possible placements in the future.

We then proceeded to look through my work, some of which he recognised, and we discussed each project as we went along. Some people I have found look over your work and then go back through to speak about each piece but we were within limited 20 minute slots although incidentally we overran that time.

I got some constructive criticism on how focussed my Age Concern work was from an advertising perspective although he did like the concept. He particularly liked my elegant typography and the look of my work but had some pointers of what I could do to develop my work further which was great advice as it comes from a different perspective.

Again the amount of work I had in my portfolio was questioned as there was so much but I wanted to make the most of my time there to crit all of my work and get opinions. I have found that opinions vary dramatically about pieces of work from person to person so it is very hard to get your portfolio right for everyone.

He liked my branding work but suggested that I let each logo breathe on their own page each as having two per page is quite confusing and looks like one design. Something else he liked was havin work for small brands aswell as big clients that you tend to get during D&AD briefs etc..

The visit was very beneficial and I will heed the advice to make my portfolio much stronger aswell as some of my work.

D&AD President's Lecture : Speaker Michael Wolff

Michael Wolff Co-founder, Michael Wolff & Company Michael Wolff, a co - founder of one of the world’s most iconic design companies - Wolff Olins - is recognized today as a leader in thinking on brands. He lectures in many countries including Brazil, Mexico, Singapore and the USA. He’s Patron of the Inclusive Design Challenge with the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the RCA (Royal College of Art), a member of the Government sponsored Design and Technology Alliance against crime, Chairman of the Legible London initiative with Transport for London and a visiting Professor at the University of the Arts in London and a Senior Fellow of the RCA He’s a former President of both the D&AD (Design and Art Directors Association) and CSD Chartered Society of Designers. Michael now runs Michael Wolff & Company in London. Most recent clients are 3i, Mothercare and Ministry of Sound in the UK - Citibank and Citigroup in the US - and a new bank in Russia. “I’ve never stuck to one view of what is good in design. My personal goals have always been: to help organizations to express themselves, in their own particular way, for the benefit of anyone with whom they’re involved. And do this in a way that brings value to everyone and to the world that we all share.” The lecture given was very different to anything I had seen before. There was no projected imagery onto a screen and it was more of a conversation than a typical lecture. He began by saying "not knowing is good" which is a strange comment but I do agree with it. I prefer to take risks and make mistakes myself than play safe and produce a boring piece of work. He also said that his advice may not be right which is again correct as design is about opinions I feel there is no right or wrongs. Micheal himself studied architecture at first as he liked to explore what things felt and looked like although it was mostly to avoid work. He has been sacked around 12 times throughout his career. Being inquisitive is a good thing and ther is a lot of value in appreciation and respect. This is something else he said but he did used to model his own work on others. He thought if it looked like a great piece of work it would be a great piece of work. He described insight as being valuable but he rejected it. Insight as I have said before is a word I hate and I like to have my own ideas and implement them rather than sourcing ideas which is something Wolff led onto talking about. Saying that he uses his own mind to come up with ideas and not looking at any annuals. This originality is what I can relate to as I often see plagiarism within peoples work in my class. This point led onto liking what other people like. Because they like it and you respect them you automatically like it yourself. This is very true. Why do Manchester United have so many fans?They aren't all from Manchester but people support who their friend supports. Also people tend to follow who is winning. Which I totally disagree with. I was a Man Utd fan myself until I realised that I only ever was because it was the first kit I was ever bought when I was young. Another point he made which I related well too is about challenging good design and why do people agree on what a good design is? How do Fox's glacier mints get away with having a bear on their packs? Because they challenge it they become successful. He went onto say boldness is good until it leads into arrogance. Who cares if people like what you do...does it work? This is the most important thing he said in the whole lecture I feel as it backs up the way I work. I dont want my work to look pretty or my sketchbooks. It bores me. I'd rather do an ugly but good idea that grabs attention. "Good" design pales into the background anyway. To reinforce his point of liking he highlighted the example of how presentations and lectures don't work as people only laugh if another person laughs and so on. Moving onto advice for students he said that portfolios don't get jobs, people hire human beings. He advised people during presentations to EITHER make people look OR make people listen. Not both at the same time. This is the same for portfolio visits. Why explain what should already be easy to understand. If not you work isn't doing its job. Also he said to not take 'no' for an answer. People will see you. With regards to branding, he spoke about the need to know more about 'liking'. Branding needs to make you feel good and sends signals. Remember the brand you design is not personal to you but it is the customers personality that you are trying to capture within a mark. He touched upon branding cities and believes that it is too big a task. The M for Manchester he described as too easy. Using initials is like branding your pyjamas. He then went onto tear apart the Graphics all around Liverpool, saying they were very poorly executed. This brought a round of applause from the audience so it is obvious that most people agreed. I also agree as I have seen the designs since last years Biennial and never liked it then at all. This in turn lead to him advising us to 'do real things' such as using someones real handwriting for the 'handwritten look' Liverpool logos scattered around Liverpool. Why not use John Lennon's handwriting of Liverpool, he must have written it a thousand times. Towards the end of the lecture people were invited to ask questions. One lady asked if there was too much emphasis on gaining awards. Wolff's reply was that there is nothing wrong with recognition and celebration of your work but if you can't recognise your own accomplishments then what's the point? A Staffordshire University tutor asked how important he felt sustainability was within design. The answer was simple. Very. With the current financial climate everything needs to be sustained including design which means it needs to work in the way it won't date quickly. One of our own tutors Ian Beckett asked: Do you find students are better now compared to past students or are they just different? After some thought he said they were better and this was due to creative inputs coming from all angles because different medias make this possible. There is also talent everywhere so it is more tough than ever. The final question was about clients cutting cost and how to keep creativity within that. The answer was persuasion. Make the client understand that paying that little bit more will get more positive results and be a better investment for the future. Overall, although I would have liked to have seen some of his work, I thought the lecture was very inspiring and relative to my own practice within design. He spoke a lot of sense and I agreed with most of what he said which is unusual. The advice given was valuable and I will take this on board for the future.

D&AD Design Workshop

Myself, James and Mike attended the design workshop which was hosted by a lady from The Chase. There was a group from the MA Advertising course in Leeds and also a tutor from Preston.

We all sat down and introduced ourselves and said a little about what we are doing at the moment within our courses. We then went through a few ideas that I had come up with the night before. I was the only one who had brought ideas along with James because we hadn't had the brief long. It was difficult as we didn't have a product to go off.

We all then discussed the pros and cons of the product in a lot further detail to try and get down to what exactly we wanted to communicate. There were a few good ideas about 'sexing' the product up by likening it to underwear and getting down and dirty on the floor. Price, effectiveness and economy were high on the agenda and we talked about the shift in throwaway culture to people keeping their things. To come up with ideas for the brand we spoke about what coulours and typefaces meant to people and we even named a typeface and colour that would best show ourselves.

We had the idea of colour coding to show the different grades of underlay.

Funnily enough The Chase had come up with something similar which was a nice fresh design but I feel it could have been pushed even further and become more interactive with the consumer.

DBA Education Seminar Speaker: Ian Thompson

Ian Thompson, founder of Thompson Brand Partners gave a lecture about design branding and business. He started freelancing in 1984 but decided to start up a business in the 1990's as he found people who weren't as good as him were becoming more successful.

He is now Head of the DBA - Design Business Association. DBA attempts to tell companies how important design is to them.

Ian spoke about the importance of brand guidelines which need to be worked to show criteria, personality and branding. The objective is to make the client interested. He showed examples of how design can drive sales which included the recent Durex re-design which increased sales 10% in it's first year. This is huge for a company that is already the market leader. Their sub-brand Durex Play became a £40 million brand in 2 years and there was a 290% sales increase it it's second year which is phenomenal by anyones standards.

He then went onto speak about what employers are looking for. This included a desire to learn, freshness, skills, what you can bring to them, willingness to work and to do the boring stuff.

Also to be able to talk about other things in the world outside of design. He sees Wally Olins as a forerunner in branding and feels that a creative project will get peoples attention. He thinks people should ask questions aswell as delivering good work work which gets results. With this you will win. He finally said Quality is the best business plan.

D&AD Student Award's Talk

To start with Fergal gave an introduction into what the D&AD Student Awards are all about. Unfortunately as we struggled to find the venue we only caught the end of this and then he introduced Andy from an agency called 'Work Club' which have a number of high profile clients including Alfa Romeo. They do illustration, game design, TV Branding, web design and advertising. The people who gained 2nd place for their HP video entry are currently on a placement there.

Andy spoke about originality and appropriateness being key to creativity and proceeded to engage the audience within an activity where we had to say, left to right, the colours of words which were different colours to what the word described. This got everyones attention and it was funny which I feel is great for an interesting lecture. He spoke about making people care about a product whether it is washing powder or something better.

To do this he spoke about hiring people who can do your job better than you and getting out of the way. I appreciated this as a recent lecturer in our college spoke about not liking to see someone that is better than him which is totally wrong in my opinion. This led onto the idea of insights and truths. I hate the word insight as I hear it too often and find it contrived but he used this in triangles to make things work. This triangle involved Business Objective - Brand - Consumer. He proved that this worked by showing us a Mellow Birds campaign that they did which was fantastic and very effective. This allowed to touch social media and get people talking.

This talk followed onto the role of technology in design and the way tweets made Foursquare communicate with the public. Everything you see now is already 10 years old. Things are being developed right now that I won't see until my thirties. I find this amazing although from experience knowing about aircraft engineering through my cousin I realise that everything is years and years behind that type of technology.

Sometime the solution is not always advertising. As was the case with a campaign by Burger King. This involved the King being spotted by paparazzi. It was clever and a whole new way of getting attention. People are even buying branding things to wear for their online icons. I find that unbelievable but some people are obviously sad enough to do it.

The talk by Andy was very inspiring and he spoke a lot of sense aswell as gaining the respect of the audience. I look forward to having a look at their work soon.

Liverpool Design Symposium 2009

Yesterday I attended the Liverpool Design Symposium. We left at 8-30 from Stockport to get there in good time to find the place. By around 10, when the talks started, we were right near where we needed to be but still couldn't find it. Then we saw a sign which was about a5 size telling us directions around a lot of construction work which took around ten minutes to walk around itself. We got in late along with quite a few others but soon settled into the D&AD Student Award's Talk. There was then a short interval to allow for setup of the Educational Seminar by Ian Thompson. Me, Mike and James from my course then went straight into the D&AD design workshop which was hosted by Fergal of D&AD and a representative of The Chase where we worked together to create ideas to advertise 'underlay'.

Following this were the D&AD Portfolio Surgeries where I was lucky enough to see two established people from the design and advertising industry and got some great advice on my work. There were two more talks after this but I unfortunately could not attend as I needed a break to get some food. There are no breaks between activities which means things have to be missed whether you want to or not. I then returned to attend the D&AD President's Lecture by Micheal Wolff which was more of an interview.

Overall I gained a lot from the day as a whole and it was definitely worthwhile attending. Getting this contact with industry is invaluable and I try to grab every opportunity to do things like this.

Practitioner Comparison: Tal Rosner vs. Grant Gilbert

For my design practitioner comparison I have decided to write about Tal Rosner and Grant Gilbert. The reason for this is that they are both mainly involved in film and animation and I am also very interested in this area of design.

Grant and Tal come from very different backgrounds and are from totally different countries which means they gain inspiration from different places and cultures. They did, however, both study the equivalent to BA Graphic Design which is the subject that I study also.

When Grant finished the course he worked at planet 24 designing phone boards which was at the bottom of the design ladder. Tal seemed to be more focused on what he wanted to do and didn’t seem to start at the bottom but did what he wanted. Tal had realised from his course that he had a knack for movement and rhythm and Grant hadn’t been so precise in what he had wanted to do at this stage.

The way Tal speaks about his work is much more theoretical and almost scientific compared with Grant. He seems passionate and obsessive over his work in a way that Grant seems quite casual and relaxed even though his are of work brings a lot of pressure. This obsessiveness and attention to detail has brought him massive success within the industry aswell as winning a BAFTA award. Despite this I see Grant as having more respect and a bigger following within the TV world than Tal because he is well sought after by all the main companies for his renowned work. Tal’s work can be seen as very abstract and not to everyones taste and Grant’s work caters more to the masses and doesn’t do much to offend anyone. Although there was a time when him and his workers used up a £1.2 million budget on idents and a new identity for BBC. This was a total brand overhaul aswell as animation. Grant has the expereience of branding and identity from his past jobs that Tal wouldn’t have been able to call upon if he had been given the same job. This general knowledge of design by Grant could be seen as very positive by most people but for pure animation genius Tal would be the man to call as he has produced world renowned pieces including Stravinsky- Concerto for 2 pianos which combined the elements of groundbreaking techno animation with the classical tones of the piano and they work well together.         

Tal prefers to work by himself and not have people interfering with his work. He is totally self taught on After Effects which is remarkable considering the work he creates. His believes adjustment = intrusion. He always tries to make his work tell a story and have a beginning, middle and an end. This can be achieved by working alone and being given blank canvasses to do what he wanted which was helped by a grant from channel 4 which helped him express himself through film. In contrast to this Grant is usually the head of a team or works as part of a team to achieve his objective. Although, he too likes to have his independence as he doesn’t like being told what to do either. He is essentially a freelancer working under the name of Double G Studios.

         Channel 4 is a direct link between Grant and Tal as they have both produced impressive work for big projects with them. Tal produced the title sequences for the hit TV show ‘Skins’. He produced over 70 ideas for this including hidden scenes which had to be paused to see the idea. Aswell as this he, along with 5 other designers, was commissioned by channel 4 to create an experimental video. He was inspired by this poem :

 Calm down

 what happens

 happens mostly

 without you

 by Josef Albers

He is also influenced by 1905-1935 design and modernism and believes that this is making a comeback aswell as the Bauhaus and visualising music. He can come up with a concept at any time and create it without a brief which could then be used 2 years down the line.

         Grant’s work for Channel 4 was again more design based where he worked on the identity using film and image. He was involved in managing lighting, cameramen, concepts etc and created some really eye catching work which was groundbreaking for Channel 4 at the time. From this he also produced the identity for More 4 and this involved animating the logo. There was a massive amount of wild ideas created until a simple logo and animation was chosen which reinforced Grant’s idea that simple design is the best design.

         The way they both go about their work is very different. Where Tal is structured and precise, Grant will go for a softer approach to engage with a wider audience. I don’t think Tal cares much for this and is willing to upset a few people with his attitude and abstract work. If people don’t like his work he believes it’s worth it if anyone else does. Tal liked to work with a grid system where if something goes to the right it will come back to the left etc so his work always had a certain structure. He also used repetition and tiling to give effect of zooming out and pattern. He told us about the technique of grading which is the editing of an already edited film where colours can be changed. Apparently a difficult process. Grant likes to take snippets out of the brief and exploit them. This can be seen when he was commisioned by the BBC to rebrand BBC1. The current logo was a red box with BBC1 in which was went to symbolise rhythm and movement but looked boring and not special enough for the BBC. He sought to make the logo softer and show the unity and coming together that the BBC want to achieve.         

         Overall Tal and Grant are very talented in what they do. Tal is more focused on one discipline and Grant is adaptable. In many ways they have similar views to the way they work but produce totally different work and have their own very distinct styles.

Fake Identification Project and Lecture

Fake ID consist of 2 people named Joshua Trees and Ivan Martinez. They met in San Francisco a number of years ago after Ivan had achieved a Masters in Mathematics but wanted to do something related to design. Joshua was already based in the area of Graphic design and Fine Art. Yesterday we worked on a project that involved making sound and dialogue from what we make of a single image. The theory behind this was LISTEN but spelt in 4 letters as LSTN. This stands for Language, Sound, Text and Noise. Today we were given a lecture about this which was very different to what I have experienced in any other lecture. There was lots of sounds and voices played. Accents and tones of voice were shown to work as tags and identities so you can tell what type of people they are from sound. They spoke about the idea of tagging which gangs often use to mark their territory in the form of graffiti etc. If one gangs tag is written over by another it is seen as a challenge to a confrontation. My favourite bit of the talk was when they played the cheesy tunes followed by the computerized message 'please hold we know you are waiting'. It is something that all call companies seem to do even though its very annoying and patronising.

Craig Oldham Lecture

Yesterday Craig Oldham of 'Design by Music' gave us a talk about what we should expect in the first year of life outside University and in industry. This was constructed in the way of 12 points which he then went on to talk a little bit about each.

Craig spoke about the difference between logical and emotional design. Whereas logical means simple and clean-cut design, emotional tries to engage a response in the viewer. Craig advises us to focus on one of these styles as it will help us in the long run. This is advice I have been given before but I prefer to work with both.

This ties in with the advice of knowing what your strengths and weaknesses are and working to your strengths will really benefit you if you are honest about your weaknesses as this won't matter because you will work with people and get help in areas you struggle with.

Craig touched upon the subject of portfolios and how not to make them contrived with the repetitive idea of holding a poster up and taking a photograph. If there is no idea behind it then what is the point in doing it. I agree with this although it does conflict with prior advice. Something which tends to happen during the course as design is so opinionated.

Placements, Craig believes, are very important and worthwhile in doing as experience is invaluable. He went on to say how, although there are large numbers of people graduating per year in the industry, we shouldn't be deterred from doing what we want and if we are driven we will go places where others will fall by the wayside. He says its all about being ahead of the competition which makes perfect sense because at the end of the day we will all want the same jobs.

This lead onto industry contact. He showed us a contact tree of all the top design agencies and how they are linked together and then showed us his own contact tree which is quite impressive considering he has only been doing this for 3 years since graduating. Once you get to know one person you may get a contact or meet someone else and then opportunities can arise and this pattern can continue until you build up numerous contacts.

Something I have been dubious about in the past is sharing ideas. Craig is of the opinion that sharing ideas is a good thing then if people copy you it is a good thing because you are doing something right. This is good but people can also rip you off when you do this and I'm not too sure.

Craig spoke about life outside London for designers. We are lucky as Manchester is probably the second biggest place for design outside London and there is plenty of good agencies here but there are so many in London that it would be good to go down there and see some places.

The talk ended by Craig sayin its important to have a life out of design and try lots of different things. It can help clear your head and anything and everything can inspire your ideas. Also write any ideas down that you have or do personal projects as it could help you in the long term.

Rick Poynor Lecture

A few days ago I attended a lecture by Rick Poynor at Sheffield Hallam University. Poynor is a writer who has a real interest in design monographs. He reviews monographs in magazines etc but also produces and writes monographs. He founded Eye Magazine and the Observer Forum and was in the Helvetica Film. He spoke at length about design monographs and how they are for the 'star' of the design world. They are not very good to critically analyse as there is no right and wrong with them and they can be very opinion based pieces.

The art monograph is the set pattern for monographs and mostly have very simple layouts which integrate text and image well but are often seen as boring.

The monograph can be seen as self interpretation. In the work of Jonathan Barnbrook the work is shown as a whole new construction as it is layered on top of other work aswell as the content and it becomes new work in itself. Layers of 4-5 bits of work are sometimes on each page.

In the case of my favourite designer Stefan Sagmeister, he turns the monograph into a joke and even says at the start of his book 'not another design monograph'. He doesnt take himself so seriously and annotates his own work which is interesting.

The monograph can be for self documentation in the way Neville Brody uses it. His look is old fashioned now because of all the white space but it documented all of his work really well.

Poynor also spoke about the future of the monograph which isn't obvious because of the rise in web based information. The internet is so easily accessed it means that monographs are getting less sales. Now publishers tend to bear the cost so they have to be very cautious when it comes to producing monographs.

 

Fudge Lecture

Today, a representative of the design agency Fudge came into give a talk to us. The talk was different to others I had experienced as he went through 1 single project from start to finish which helped me realise the knockbacks and amount of ideas needed to come to the best conclusion. 

Starting off with a number of rough sketches on anything from paper to post-it notes just to get some ideas out. This leads on to bigger ideas which get sketched out a bit more thoroughly.

The project was to design a new identity for British Tennis and Squash. The word British was obviously predominant in the ideas and the use of red, white and blue was abundant. Typical ideas such as the racquet, ball, lion and rose were the route to go but in a more contemporary way. These ideas were developed and ended up as a choice of 5 logos which then were digitally created in colour and black and white.

Overall it was a good insight into the way a project starts and ends which we haven't been shown so much upto now.

Former Students Lecture

Two of the BA Graphic Design's former students came in today to speak to us about what they have been doing since graduating last year as well as telling us about their experiences of the course itself. They both won awards at the end of year exhibitions and were entered into the 'New Blood' section of D&AD.
They told how important it was to get into college as much as you can as you could miss important information and being around other people is paramount to improving ideas you couldn't do on your own.
As they both got chances to exhibit their work in London, it gave them the chance to build relationships and contacts with people and show their talents to thousands of people.
Out of 2000 students Dan and Steve won one of the 40 awards given out which is a tremendous achievement.
This led to numerous offers of work which surprisingly they turned down. They explained they would rather not work on designing kebab house leaflets forever and would rather work on the bigger things. I respect this as it would be easy to take the money and they have decided against this.

They told us that, due to them always being together and doing the Colleges promotional work, they had received some negative comments and jealousy. This led to some bitchiness because it was always ' Ste and Dan '. This wasn't a problem for them because they were getting slagged of for doing good work. I have experienced this myself to some extent this year also.
Instead of accepting the jobs they were offered they decided to go on some placements with the likes of Thoughtful and The Chase and currently both are on placements with Mark Design and McCann Erickson.
They have had some poor interviews with people who have no appreciation for real design and they had no interest in working for these people
With so many people graduating each year from Graphic Design in the North West, Dan and Steve's advice to us was to build up contacts with people, continually improve your portfolio, enter competitions and try your best.

The talk was a very interesting insight into life after graduating as we often see fully fledged companies and don't see how people start from scratch.

Double G Studios Lecture

On Friday Grant Gilbert, of Double G Studios, gave a lecture on his life from National Diploma Graphics at Stockport College to the position he is in today. After college he went onto do a BA Graphic Design degree in Birmingham and from there he went onto work at Planet 24 for 3 years where he designed the phone and fax number boards. Not the most inspiring job but you have to start somewhere and make lots of tea!

He then moved to Channel 4 for 3 years where he worked with a bigger budget and on the C4 identity using lots of film and video. After this he had a couple of jobs including working at Attic in New York but 8 years ago he decided to be freelance as he likes to make new relationships and not be told what to do! Double G Studios is pretty much only himself but it sounds more substantial to clients and it makes it easier to recruit other workers but rather than sitting at home doing nothing he likes to sit within companies. At C4 Grant designed a lot of the idents and was responsible for getting lighting, cameramen, body suits and neons etc. He used a tent some lights and neon tubing along with some people to create a real eye catching flowing video and showed Graphic Design doesn't need to be flat. It can be Live Action. He has also done a lot of work involving More4.

More 4's logo was designed by Spin and Grant was told to bring it to life and add colour. After lots of wild developments and animations the result was simply the green logo on a plain black background. This reinforced his idea that Simple design is the best. 

Grant likes to take snippets out of the brief and exploit them. This can be seen when he was commisioned by the BBC to rebrand BBC1. The current logo was a red box with BBC1 in which was went to symbolise rhythm and movement but looked boring and not special enough for the BBC. He sought to make the logo softer and show the unity and coming together that the BBC want to achieve. He came up with the idea of circles which show unity and set about looking at how it could be used within a typeface and the idents. He decided to make the circle 'O'  in 'one' the centre of the screen. When making the logo they tried lots of typefaces but weren't happy so they had one designed specially by Font Smith which needed to be happy and rounded but not to modern. Then the points to be considered were how it looked with circles and how big to have it on the screen. This ended up taking 2 weeks itself! Also the Off Air promotion had to be looked at with posters etc. The ident circles were created using mountain bike circles,ring a roses and an animation of swimming hippo's aswell as a lot of others. The swimming hippo's caused a lot of controversy when they were highlighted when it was found out the BBC had used 1.2 million pounds in doing the rebrand and taking 10 months. Grant found this funny as the best projects get the most complaints.

Grant was also heavily involved in the rebranding of Channel 5.

He tells us that 70% of the time he is pitching work which can often be for free and get work mainly by word of mouth and repeat work. As the top TV companies all work together at the top his name gets around quickly so their isn't any rivalry or contracts. His favourite job was working with the Neons for Channel 4 as it all came together perfectly and he was left to his own devices.

Grant is currently a Foreman for the judges of the D&AD Commercial Awards and chooses the people who should judge this year's competition.

Tal Rosner Lecture

This afternoon I attended a lecture by the BAFTA Award winning Tal Rosner. He has worked with Animate TV and Channel 4 aswell as a number of other high profile companies.

Tal started off doing the same course as I am currently doing which is BA Graphic Design and realised he had a real knack for movement and rhythm which then lead him onto the translation of his graphic design to moving image. His Doppelganger video uses all aspects and views of trains, their destinations and stations in a unique way that turns them all into totally abstract imagery. As with all animations, he says, it has to have a beginning-middle and end and tell the viewer a story. He is completely self-taught with After-Effects as he likes to be in control and not have interference. His believes adjustment = intrusion.

Some of the projects he has worked on include Stravinsky- Concerto for 2 pianos which combined the elements of groundbreaking techno animation with the classical tones of the piano and they work well together. In his animations some of the backgrounds change whilst the foreground stays the same and vice versa which has inspired some of my ideas for my chosen animation elective. He has also worked on the title sequences for the hit TV series 'Skins'. Tal created 72 different versions before settling on the final film. This included ' secret frames' Rebellious images thrown in that wont be seen unless paused and looked at closely.

Tal liked to work with a grid system where if something goes to the right it will come back to the left etc so his work always had a certain structure. He also used repetition and tiling to give effect of zooming out and pattern. He told us about the technique of grading which is the editing of an already edited film where colours can be changed. Apparently a difficult process. Skins second series became more mature so the animation had to coincide with this and the film came out of the letters S.K.I.N.S. Tal is currently working on the 3rd series.

Tal was commisioned by Channel 4, along with 5 other film-makers to create an experimental video. He was inspired by this poem :

Calm down

what happens

happens mostly

without you

by Josef Albers

He is also influenced by 1905-1935 design and modernism and believes that this is making a comeback aswell as the Bauhaus and visualising music. He can come up with a concept at any time and create it without a brief which could then be used 2 years down the line.

Overall, I think his work is of a good standard and inspiring when it comes to doing my own animations and it shows the levels I will need to be looking at to succeed in industry.

Truth Lecture

This morning we went to see a lecture by the design company 'Truth'. They are made up of just two people, both of whom used to work for McCann Erickson which is a major worldwide advertising organisation. They decided to do their own thing after some of the jobs coming in weren't what they really wanted to be doing. Over the years Darren from Truth has designed many different fonts that have been used in famous publications and campaigns such as the masthead for Loaded Magazine. A selection of these fonts are Berliner- created 1996, Sodium - influenced by German Design, Bad Angel-experimental and gothic, Mechanic Gothic - best selling font, Nitrogen & Aggregate- both have 1 distinguishing letter, Amplifier-especially made for David Potts Album cover.

They have worked with a number of high profile companies on projects such as: 

AllSports- changing identity to black and white making it less sports cliche. 

Sony- textured credit cards with pearlescent look to highlight the changes Sony create.

First Advice- given 24 hours to complete a logo to go onto Man City shirts next day.

British Council- had to research a lot of colours as to not offend anyone in different countries.

Christies Embrace Mark- produced for free for the good cause.

Authentic Food Company- logo using stamped passport idea to show ethnicity and worls food pictogram.

Durex- packaging for sex aids which was more user friendly and easy to open as well as being discreet.

As Truth are quite a small company they have to commission a lot of work to other people. This, they say, is a good thing as it creates good relationships and can allow you to produce better work as you can choose the best people to do each specific job rather than producing an average result by yourself. They also obviously noticed a big difference when it came to suppliers and prints etc. Everything has to be done yourself when you are in business on your own and you cant just go to the cupboard to get sum pens and paper out. You also have to speak to the customers directly which can be quite hard as Truth explained. For example you hand something to a client that is red. The Client comes back and says I don't like red. You then have to explain why you have done it red and show the reasons for your choice to try and talk them around. They suggest we should always keep work that is wrong to compare it and contrast to show people why you have changed it or haven't. Aswell as this Truth say its important to futureproof and make sure any design you do won't be dated for a long time and can easily be updated if needs be.

Truth's philosophy is to 'Keep it Simple' and 'Less is More'

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