G MAN

"Self promotion is one aspect of design that cannot be taught."

Graham gave us a talk today about self promotion, showing some examples of his brilliant work on logos and branding for agencies and his own self promotion. I really love Grahams work as he produces very typographical pieces that really appeal to me and the style of work I like producing. 

So what do you need for successful self promotion? an identity, a portfolio, a website & printed literature.

Being freelance Graham showed us his own identity which he has had a bit of fun with rather than producing a generic boring business card. The bright colour's used stand out and catch your eye and even down to the stock it is printed on shows that extra attention to detail. As he said it is 'those extra bits of detail that separate you from everyone else.' I am going to enter a very competitive market in a few months time so having good self promotion is vital to being a success. I need to stand out from the crowd! making promotional activities varied and distinct...think of a different way to attract attention and get your work noticed. You can tell the high quality of Grahams work and the attention to every single detail and he is involved in every stage down to the choice of stock the work is printed on and also the printing process - you can't just do a great design and think your finished, you need to follow it through to the very end. I love the attention to detail he pays to his work and how he is so enthusiastic when he talks about it...you can tell he really enjoys what he does. It was really interesting to hear about the printing processes and is something I would like to get more involved with as it can really make a design.

Grahams business cards and comp slips continue with the bright colours even giving people a choice of which colour business card they would like - making it a bit more interesting. Even when you have clients you always have to be promoting yourself to get more work.

"Finding clients will be the main battle of your whole career: not only to find clients to start you going, but constantly to be finding them to keep you going."

If you produce good work it should speak for itself but "you have to tell your clients that you are available and willing for more work...don't suppose it will happen automatically."

Seeing Grahams work got me excited about design again seeing how you can have fun and be creative when working with clients. I'd love to produce work as good as Grahams in the future!

Tameside burglary reduction

Following on from the police campaign we worked on we have been approached by Tameside Metropolitan Borough to redesign a burglary reduction initiative card for them. They saw an article about our campaign in the paper and it proves to us that the campaign has been noticed and has created another great opportunity for experience for us. We are currently discussing with them exactly what they want producing but it is more experience for us 3 to work on a live brief. I will keep you posted when things develop...

Get out of the sketchbook...

Last week was 'wacky week' so I signed up for a tutorial with Sue. It was great to get a different opinion on my work and the direction I'm heading in. Sue was really helpful in telling me to get back to being a 'designer' and the work I like doing. I feel over the past few weeks I have been trying to be different and have kind of forgot what I like doing. She also told me to 'get out of my sketchbook' so that is what I have done! My wall is now starting to fill up with silence experiments...

I finally feel like I know where I am heading with this project and I have spent the weekend experimenting further with my photographs. In my tutorial with Clinton last Friday we discussed that I should go back to the house and take more directed photographs and also think about how I felt when I was in there. He told me to look into interior monologues - a text of thought of what is going on inside someone's head, they represent a character speaking silently to themselves and quote their inner speech. So I took a trip back to the house this time with a more focused idea. I feel much happier with the recent experiments I have produced which contain my thoughts and feelings about the house and give the work quite a personal feel. I have picked out the important words in my writing and I guess this is also a form of silence as I am choosing what people can read - physically deleting words to create an abstract piece and also crossing words out. My next stage is to continue with my experiments and begin to bring the photos together to create a more structured piece working towards a final piece. Lots more experimenting to do for my review!

Take a break...

As I mentioned in my previous post I was given an idea for how to get people to give me time to answer some questions for my essay primary research. In my tutorial with Hitch we discussed that I should aim high with my primary research and interview some art directors and he told me to think of a way to get them to give me some time. I know they are very busy people and I hope they will 'take a break' to answer some of my questions.

I have made three small boxes to send to some of the big agencies in London which say 'Take a break' - inside each box are 4 cards explaining who I am and a set of questions for them to answer and reply to me by email. There is a kit-kat and a tea bag and the general idea is that they will 'take a break' - have a cup of tea and the kit-kat and answer my questions. I really hope they will reply as I have put a lot of effort into these little boxes...and I also hope they recieve them with the postal strike,fingers crossed!!

Speaking of my primary research Liz gave me a couple of contacts to email and I have had a response! Adam Richardson the creative/art director at TBWA has answered my questions for me and I am very grateful!

First Class!

Over the past two weeks we have had two graduate students (both with a first class degree) from last year come in to talk to us about their time in third year and what they are up to now... 

Libby Scarlett

Libby had been in previously to talk to us at the start of third year and she came back to show us some of her work. Libby produces a lot of hand-made work which she puts a lot of time and effort into. It is all beautifully presented and you can tell she thoroughly enjoys what she does. Her work all has a deep meaning to it and you could tell there was a concept and reason behind everything she does. Her final piece for the degree show goes to show you can do anything you want. Libby said she spent a lot of her time towards the end in the wood workshop and looking at our course people may think that isn't 'what we do' but it just goes to show the real diversity and openness on our course and you really can do what you want. Although a very different style of work to mine it was great to see that hard work pays off in the end! 

One piece that really caught my eye was Libby's journal which was beautifully presented and just by looking at the quality and final execution you can tell was something she really enjoyed producing. Libby herself admitted that in hindsight she probably did spend too much time on her journal but I think I can relate to her in being a 'bit of a perfectionist.' The overall presentation and idea behind the journal was great, taking time to produce the indexed file and not just throw it into a file. I think it is this attention to detail that makes you stand out.

Nicola Rowlands

Nicola gave us a great talk on how she spent her time in third year, her work experience and what she's up to now. It was refreshing to hear an honest talk from both girls but also slightly panicky in the amount they fit into the year. Nicola talked us through her 'top tips' for getting through the year and afterwards looking into industry and how to 'get in there.' ("Make lots of tea" was one of her tips which gave me an idea for my essay primary research.) Her work is very illustrative hand-drawn work again. She showed us a wide range of work from her time on the course, work experience work and stuff she's doing now. Nicola did a lot of work placements during her time at uni and I don't know how she fit it all in! The pieces below are one's that really stood out to me and show the connection between the hand drawn and the computer.

This powerpoint slide produced for the BBC. It really reminds me of the branding for Code, although quite a different style the simple graphic illustrations are quite similar to their style of branding with the empty tv to hold text and images and their Andrew Rae illustrations.

One of her most current pieces of work for 'Don't Panic' packs distributed throughout September.

I love this identity Nicola created for an interior designer....it is a great identity giving the feel of fabrics and also friendliness with the hand-drawn elements which will really attract people.

It was great to hear from people who have been in the exact place we are all in now and refreshing to be given honest advice. I have a lot of hard work ahead of me!!!

Classic's with a twist...

Whilst doing research for my dissertation I came across this great campaign Love Creative have done for Gola. It really caught my eye so I thought I would put it up here...

It's time to blog...

So it's been a week or so since I last 'blogged' and quite a lot has happened so here goes...

Silence update...

So I had my second tutorial regarding the silence brief on friday and I now feel much happier with where my project is heading. I'm going to keep it quite experimental but have definitely focused my idea onto looking at people's thoughts, fears and emotions that are silent because they are in someone's head and are unknown to others and the house holding all the thoughts. Keeping with the photographs I have already taken I am going to develop this area by taking more photographs and experimenting with them - looking at old materials for example old wallpaper and newspaper and screen printing onto them. Another area discussed in my tutorial was the words to use in the photographs to represent the thoughts and fears etc. To date I have been experimenting with a poem I found called 'silent fears' and I am now going to look at writing my own thoughts of how I felt when I was in the house and looking at 'interior monologues.' I have decided to go down design route 1 creating the fold out document. I want to avoid being too cliche with the fears and old house feel and maybe be more abstract with the choice of words. I want the final outcome to be a sort of collage of silent thoughts,memories and fears. The next two weeks will be more experimenting in preparation for my big review!! 

The design of dissent...

Taking Mac's advice from the lecture on Tuesday I ordered the book "The design of dissent" by Milton Glaser & Mirko Ilic. The book looks at the area of socially and politically driven graphics, "it thrives on shock, wit and instant recognition." Admittedly when I first opened the book I wasn't too sure but spending the time to look through it there are some really clever campaigns in there, some may push the limits of what may be considered acceptable visually but show how something very simple can make a very interesting, hard hitting campaign. 

Seen but not heard....

My continuing work on the 'silence' brief and my initial idea of looking at the silent thoughts in people's heads has led me to look at people's fears that are silent, fears that people have that we are not aware of...this can be linked to our subconscious; the part of our mind that we are not really aware of but can influence our 'silent fears.'  Some of my initial visualizations of silence were around the idea of shadows and how they can represent something about you that others are not aware of and in this context can represent our thoughts or fears. 

I took a trip home for the weekend and in my quest to be more experimental with my work and not just go straight to the computer I decided to experiment with taking my own photographs and incorporate text within them. Typography is an area of great interest to me and so is something I definitely want to incorporate into this project. Looking at how to represent our silent fears got me thinking about the context in which these fears could be represented, places that we think of as 'scary.' I live out in the country and close by is an old derelict farm that has been abandoned for years. I thought this would be a great place to photograph to help visualize the idea of fears....so my dad and I went to the house armed with torches, candles and my camera - like I expected in the pitch black it was a very scary place! 

Being in there and seeing how everything had been left got me thinking about how this had once been somebodies home and it would be full of old, silent memories personal to those who had once lived there.....there was an eery silence about it. Being such an old place the silence in there itself created a sense of fear for me as the rooms were dark and any slight noise sent your imagination into overdrive, being in an empty dark space did give me ideas of how to visualize fears and also realise what some of the fears could be. I did manage to capture some quite good shots with some great shadows that will work well to represent 'fear.'

Below are some of the photographs I took in there...

The next set of photographs show the contrast of the same place from night to day...

I was hoping by going in the day as well I would be able to capture some of the shadows projected into the empty space as I had been looking at similar images in my initial research....disappointingly the light cast into the rooms was not as good as I thought it would have been so the daytime photographs do not fully show what I wanted them to but I do think certain images when combined with type can be used to portray the idea of silent memories lost within the empty rooms. I still feel a little lost with where I am going with this project but I do feel I am being more experimental.... 

Special Collections Library...

At my tutorial on Friday Clinton mentioned the exhibition currently on at the special collections library, and also the resources that are available to us that we should take advantage of while we are still at university....so yesterday Kathryn and I took a trip to the special collections library to look at the original United Colors of Benetton posters as we are both looking at these for our dissertation. We found two of the original promotional magazines for the fall/winter collection 1992; these were not what we were looking for as they did not show the 'controversial' campaigns but they were still interesting to look at. After asking the librarian we found that there were some of the original posters that we could look at, however when she brought them out we discovered....they were billboard size!! this posed a problem as they were far too big to set out and photograph so we had to give it up as a bad job. There are some great resources available to us at our university and the special collections library is definitely somewhere I will visit again.

It wasn't a totally wasted trip as we did get chance to look at the 'Stilled Lives' exhibition featuring work from some of our tutors...Sue, Clinton and Hitch have all got work featured in the limited edition book.

"Stilled Lives is a new collaborative work bringing together artists, designers, poets and writers from across MMU. Edited by Carson & Miller this limited edition volume showcases a striking and thoughtful range of responses to the books held in MMU Special Collections, provoking further explorations of narrative, memory and collections."

Susan Platt 'Strange Library'

 

Clinton Cahill 'Across the Garden Wall (The Last Lads)

Jonathan Hitchen '709.05 KOM'

Johnny Hardstaff...."graphics is a sensation, a quality."

Johnny Hardstaff was our first visiting lecturer of the year...I was not aware of his work before hand but looking at work he has produced there are pieces I recognise such as the MTV 'Cherry Girl' and the Orange adverts.

Hardstaff is a director and designer. Represented by Ridley Scott Associates (London) and Little Minx (Los Angeles), he has directed and designed innovative moving image work across a broad spectrum of both commercial and non-commercial strands of the visual arts. Mass media clients include Sony, Radiohead, Orange, Toshiba, Sony PlayStation and the BBC amongst others.

"Amongst his most notable works to date remain 'History of Gaming' and 'Future of Gaming' (two politically provocative short films designed to first engender then test corporate patronage, now inducted into the National Film Archive), the Radiohead film 'Like Spinning Plates' (long format two track experimental music video), and increasingly a contemporary raft of innovative design based commercials (Sony / Toshiba / Asics / LG / MTV etc)."

The talk from Johnny was inspiring for us to generate our own work in any media that we are comfortable with; Johnny graduated with no software skills and made his first piece of motion graphics 'History of Gaming' using Photoshop....this just goes to show that you can produce any style of work using whatever skills you have, you just have to work hard at it! I really loved Johnny's sketchbooks, each page was crammed full with notes and sketches showing his thoughts and ideas....I like the fact that the pages were full which is something I always try to achieve but not as good as Johnny's! He talked to us about his experiences in industry working in the corporate sector and his battle between producing visually appealing work and the meaning of the work....there is a big responsibility when you put work out there, you have to think about what is does to the people who view it, what is it intended to do? what does it do? It was also refreshing to hear that some elements within his work were there purely because they "looked good!" 

Digital work is not something that usually appeals to me the fact that i recognized some of his work means it must be something that catches my eye, although I did not understand the meaning behind all the work Johnny produces he is a very talented designer and it is always great to hear from people within the industry.

MTV Cherry Girl

Orange

Sony Lens

Rollerball...

Monday was the first screening for Kino 4, showing 'Rollerball' a 1975 film, chosen and introduced by Mr Johnny Hardstaff. I have to admit I wasn't too keen on going to the film club as films aren't usually an area I take a great deal of interest in, but I did actually enjoy watching the film. It was quite a violent film at times,  but as Johnny explained it was a subversive film about manipulation in a corporate world, how the media can be used as a weapon and the elevation of sports stars to "gods."  The next film is being screened on Tuesday night...

ilikeblue.co.uk

This is a design website I have looked at a few times for inspiration, its a website for freelance graphic designer & art director Nic Shuttleworth. I recently found some great self promotional material on there that I really liked, take a look....

I will be looking at getting business cards printed soon and think these are quite simple but very clever and aesthetically great as ideas for self promotion.

First tutorial of the year...

I had my first tutorial/seminar on Friday with Clinton and we had to show our initial response to the new brief. There are 5 of us in the group and I always find it interesting to hear other people's interpretation of the briefs and it always amazes me how everyone has different ideas. I found the tutorial really helpful to discuss my ideas and get other people's views and opinions. I went to the seminar with quite a wide range of visuals that I felt depicted 'silence' and after discussing them with the group I now feel I have narrowed my ideas down. Over the next two weeks leading up to my tutorial I am going to focus on the idea of capturing a moment in time; in the eye of chaos freezing a moment in time and finding some sense of silence even when it may be chaos surrounding you - it therefore becomes a silent image and within this looking at what people are thinking....your thoughts that people never see; subconscious thoughts; irrational thoughts and memories. 

In the tutorial we discussed that this stage in third year can be a time for experimentation and this is what I am hoping to do with this first brief. To try and experiment with my work and not be disheartened if it doesn't always work. I think this is going to be quite a challenge for me as I like to know the direction that I am going in and where my work is leading to but I'm going to try my hardest to be more experimental.....I have to say I am finding it quite difficult at the moment as I am not set on a specific idea but I'm trying to be open minded and I hope a brilliant idea will come to me soon...watch this space! x 

Sounds of silence...

So third year has started and we have our first brief!

Can silence be visual???  

"Research the possible concepts and visual potential of ‘Silence’ and with lateral visual experimentation attempt to conceptually interpret silence in any media or form. You are investigating ‘SILENCE’ a key semiotic conduit and vehicle for the communication of emotion, atmosphere and metaphor –the silent pause, the empty space , the open space for the audienceto ‘reflect’ and project into – You are analysing the psychology of persuasion."

I have to admit when I first read the brief I did start to panic a lot, as at first glance I had know idea how I was going to answer it!? However.....the lecture on Tuesday was a great help to me, seeing images brought in by the tutors began to spark ideas for me and get me thinking in a different way. During the lecture the first image that came to mind was this one I found quite a while ago (I have a sketchbook where I stick any images/typography that I like and that may be useful in the future)

I really love this image, I'm not sure where I found it but it immediately came to mind during the lecture as a representation of our thoughts...this inspired me to think more about what can happen inside our heads even when we are sat in silence. Thoughts that nobody else can hear.

Over the past few days I researched into the subject of silence, trying to avoid the obvious cliches. Looking for inspiration I started looking through my stack of creative reviews, grafik and design books to see if any images stood out to me. Below are the other images I took to my tutorial to show my visual representation of silence...

Shadows - your shadow is silent behind you, but can it be doing something you are not aware of? Maybe in reference to a past memory or something we are feeling that others are not aware of. I really like this image as it is a great representation of shadows behaving differently...this has led me on to look more into shadows and start to take photographs of some that I see to begin experimenting with.

An untitled image found in creative review by London based photographer 'Armando Ferrari.'  "The image features no action to speak of, yet it is a strangely powerful, arresting picture."  The scene in this image feels as though it is set for some kind of drama to unfold even though 'the space is empty.' I feel as though there would be an eery, expectant silence. Something is about to happen, "a sense of violence and menace."

The following two images are two that I found in my book "Area" by Phaidon (a book that I have owned for a few years and is always a great place to look at the start of a new project to find inspiration)  I love these images and feel they really have a sense of silence about them. There is no information on either image as to what it is about but the use of reflection and the image looks calm and relaxing.

This image is actually a poster for a Japanese department store, created by designer 'Nagi Noda.' I think this is a really beautiful image that looks peaceful and almost dreamy, you are unsure of the meaning of the image and it is open to your own interpretation. Although I cannot understand it the delicate hand drawn type at the bottom fits perfectly with the feel of the image.

After the lecture on tuesday Hitch mentioned the idea of time standing still and capturing a moment in time which is an idea I have began to look at it more detail. The following image is quite a controversial image of "the falling man" taken on September 11th, 2001. The man is falling from the twin towers. This image freezes a moment in time - a silent moment. In the photograph he is frozen in time, in his life outside the frame he drops and keeps dropping until he disappears...he is perfectly vertical, in contrast to others and he appears relaxed. He has not chosen his fate but he appears comfortable in this grip of unimaginable motion. To me this image represent silence as when you look at it  you are almost lost for words, although everything surrounding this man would be chaos and loud noise I imagine for him he is falling in complete silence.

There was a lot of uproar surrounding the release of this image with many people claiming they were the ones who took the photograph. It is quite ironic to think that in a moment of such tragedy and devastation people can resort to such things as arguing over who owns the rights to a photograph...