D&AD's easter treats...

Yesterday I held an easter fundraising stall along with some of the girls to raise money for our degree show. We sold lots of lovely easter treats and managed to raise £121.00 which is a good contribution towards our £3000 target! So all in all it was a successful, fun day!

Meeting the Mayor...

As a thank you for the work Helen, Emma and I did on the student safety campaign, we were invited to meet the Mayor of Manchester and the Chief police constable last Friday. It was a great experience and it was nice to see appreciation for the hard work we put into the campaign. It was also good to hear that crime has come down a third this year already....wether our campaign has anything to do with that we do not know, but it would be nice to think it has helped! We were each presented with a framed letter from Peter Fahy the chief constable. This is great to use as a reference for the future and also something for us to keep. We were also given a framed image of one of the posters from the campaign which we have given to the university. Overall the whole campaign has been a great experience for us three, and although it's not around as much as we would like, the artwork is being used for the next couple of years and will hopefully continue to make an impact!

sitting in the exact seat where the queen sat!

signing the visitors book

Panic?!?

A great opportunity has come up for us as a year group, to hold an exhibition at NoiseLab in the town centre. A brief has been set and I started experimenting with a few ideas which I will post soon. Alongside this there was an opportunity to create branding and promotional material for the exhibition, all of which is based around the theme 'Panic' - a hint to how we will start to feel very soon, rapidly nearing the end of our course.

So I thought I would have a go at creating a brand identity and promotional material for the exhibition...even if it doesn't get picked, it is another finished brief for my portfolio and review! Having a quick turn around time and not wanting to spend to long on the project, I spent a few hours brainstorming ideas and doing a bit of research and quite quickly, decided on an idea. Being aware of the quick deadline I chose my best idea and have just run with it...not normally something I would do but it hasn't worked out too badly! Overall I have spent about a day and a half producing the work and I am quite pleased with what I have managed to produce.

Keeping in mind that the exhibition is a celebration of our work as a course, I didn't want the branding to be too specific to any one discipline, and hopefully I have created a graphic that reflects the theme without being too obvious. My idea and concept is based around the idea of panic leading to 'losing control.' The graphic I have created, uses concentric circles, these are used to represent the idea of being in control, the circles are evenly spaced and sized and give the idea of control. As the circles reach the outer edges they begin to become more erratic and distorted, and thus become 'out of control.' I chose the colour palette based on colour's picked from the current Art School branding...purple being the colour used to highlight Graphic design on the homepage.

Invitation

Flyer variations

Poster - layout alternative

I also tested the design in a range of other different bright colours, so could be used as a variation...print a set of flyers and invites in a range of different colours? I also think the graphic could work nicely on its own within the exhibition space.

London born, London Bred, until I die and then I'm dead...

Continuing our lecture series, we had a great lecture today from graphic designer Morag Myerscough. Morag

set up her own cross disciplinary design practice, Studio Myerscough, in 1993, and over the last thirteen years she has worked with some of the most respected, design-led companies in the UK. These include The Barbican Centre, Derwent Valley (Tea Building Signage) the Design Council, Formula 1 2006 exhibition and many many more.

The integration of design and its environment is central to Morag's approach. When working on a brief Morag becomes totally engrossed in the subject, she knows everything about it, and this helps in her understanding of how to tackle the problem and come out with a fantastic solution. Morag does not have any limitations to her designs, if she has an idea in her head, she will find a way to do it! I love her approach to her work, the attention to detail and the passion she has for it...this definitely shows as she has a studio and gallery in her house! now thats dedication! Morag takes quite a different approach to many other "graphic designers" and works a lot with 3-D models to see exactly how the exhibition space is going to look, whilst always making the exhibitions as sustainable and recyclable as possible, considering the choice of materials and how they can be re-used in the future.

Morag was very honest about her career to date which was good to hear, sometimes collaborations are not always successful and it can be best to part ways, however....working with the right team and collaborating with all kinds of different people allows you to spark ideas off each other....you don't have to be able to do everything yourself!

One of my favorite pieces from her collection of work was the London poster pictured above. Morag has an incredible body of diverse, vibrant work, some of which is pictured below...

As always it was the typographic work that I really liked, and Morag showed how this can be taken into exhibtion spaces and almost beaome a piece of art in itself. She told us how she find's inspiration everywhere and loves consuming and observing things.

I think this shows how design does become a part of your life, and not just a job!

New brief..."panic"

Nice work...

New projects...

I can't actually believe how fast this term is going....life as a student is almost over!! Athough I feel I am ready to leave education the thought of it really scares me....for the first time I don't know what I am going to be doing come June when we finish this course. I have no school or university to come back to in September...what a scary thought!

So I have been busy working away on my next set of briefs - as I previously posted my new brief is a celebration of language in it's local forms, accents and dialects. Coming from Yorkshire this is was my initial choice of dialect to work with, below are my experiments and final piece for part one of this project. My initial intention was to have this as a short brief however there is so much to explore and experiment with within the area of language and communication that it has now turned into to a much bigger project of which the second part has begun...

Variaitons of words and phrases in different dialects - it means the same thing however you say it, but there can be many variaitons.

Playing with the legibility of the words - when people speak in their 'local dialect' it can be be very difficult for people from other areas to understand what they are saying - the illegibility of the phrase below helps to express the idea of misunderstanding and difficulty in interpreting a message.

Overlaying variations of words and phrases - each colour used represents a different dialect, however they all mean the same thing.

Along with many more experiments, the piece below is my final piece for part one of this brief - "A celebration of the vernacular of York.sha!" I have recently designed packaging for this double sided A3 poster, and see it being sold as a kind of souvenir of yorkshire - so in shops and places around the yorkshire area. I love the chance this brief is giving me to be more experimental with typography...I have definitely realized this is the area of working in which I love most...