PPD

In the presentation we did after the Summer holidays I said that I wanted to develop my website and promotional work, write a really good dissertation, make more design contacts and continue to work on designing publications. I think I have managed to do pretty much all of these over the past module and Christmas holidays. I’ve updated my website and portfolio with my latest briefs, written nearly 7000 words for my dissertation on grids and talked to some well known designers. In the last module I tried to choose briefs that would be appropriate to my design practice and I think that the majority of them allowed me to develop my type and layout skills on various different formats of publication. This was important to me as these are my main interests and strengths as a designer.

In the last module the first brief I did was the LCC public arts strategy as a collaboration with Jane. Doing this brief was good for deciding how a publication with such a variable content should be laid out. Even though the proposal that myself and Jane submitted was not chosen to be taken forward it was a good exercise for us both as we had to create an aesthetic for the brochure in just under a week. This was also a chance to practice collaborating with another person which is always useful. However our presentation skills was what really let us down when submitting our work to the client and I have now learnt that how something is presented can be as important as the actual work. I don’t think I’ll ever take this for granted again as well presented work is all part of being a professional.

Next I worked on some cross stitch kits that would be marketed as do it yourself Christmas cards. It stemmed from my interest in typography and my love of cross stitch. I feel like I spent too much time on this project probably because I drew out all the card designs by hand first. I think this helped me to create strong designs and helped me to create something better than if I had just started on the computer. I just need to speed up the decision making about these designs. In the future I need to make a detailed time management plan as to avoid this kind of error. I am also proud of the instructional leaflet I designed for this project. The design for print sessions we had with Mike really helped me when it came to laying this out and by keeping things simple I think I managed to create some effective instructional diagrams - something I hadn’t really done until that point.

I found that I struggled quite a bit with my Lost In Translation brief. It was based on the translation of idioms into different languages - which is a part of languages that I really enjoyed when studying French, German and Spanish. This project started off as a publication but evolved into something more out of my area of expertise - paper crafting. I decided to display the translations using different reveal formats and spent a lot of time researching these, trying to find out the best way to score & fold in order to make things pop up or fit within another part. I looked at many different books and websites with explanations on how to do it but it was actually creating mock ups and testing things out that allowed me to find the best way to create the reveals. I had more success when instead of using typography or illustration, I used photography. I used macro shots of different textures to connote the imagery conjured up by the phrases. I think I had the most problems with this brief because of my lack of crafting skills but by simplifying the reveal formats it became a bit easier to manage and the images used helped to improve the overall look of the work.

The brief that really helped to me to focus on my layout skills was the invisible grids exhibition. I had to come up with a visual identity that would reflect the subject of the exhibition and would work on various different formats. I am most proud of the 4 page leaflet I created as I feel that it looked really professional and I’m looking forward to continuing this brief on as a part of my final major project. This brief also introduced me to exhibition graphics as this was something I hadn’t really thought about before. I had to think hard and try various layouts and font sizes to try and figure out what would be appropriate for the large scale of the walls. I really enjoyed this and would like to do more large scale work in the future.

In the holiday I updated my portfolio with a couple of the briefs I did in the last module and will be sending this out as a PDF file to various companies. Hopefully they can give me some input on my work and be willing to arrange some studio visits. Some places I would like to visit are Form in London, Rare in Sheffield, Love Creative in Manchester, Deep in London, Crush in Brighton and Purpose in London as they do some stunning work and I already have a contact there in the form of Paul Felton - the author of The 10 Commandments Of Typography who helped me with my portfolio and dissertation. I also updated my website with some of the things I did at my work placement in the Summer at BrandNew and the briefs I did in the last module. I have continued to update my wordpress blog on my website with more personal design work as well as things that inspire me and designers I would like to work for. I recently ordered some business cards from Moo. I got a pack of 50 printed with either my logo or an image of my work. They were printed on matte stock to make them look modern but not too flashy. It has my website address on it so I can now hand these out whilst networking and people will be able to see my work wherever they are. I also made accounts on Behance and Society6 which has allowed me to get my work out there as I've been featured on the front page of Society6 a few times now.

At the end of last year and at the end of the summer I said that I wanted to focus on publication design and after the last module that is still very much my aim. Ideally I would like to work for a magazine such as Nylon but I would be just as happy working at an agency creating things such as leaflets, brochures, flyers and posters. I don’t really mind what kind of audience I engage with as I think that versatility is a good thing. Doing the exhibition brief has opened me up to working with large scale graphics and I would like to do some more of this. I did some as part of my placement in the Summer but would prefer to do something with more creative freedom as opposed to just artworking. I would be interested doing in wall graphics for restaurants or window displays - something that exists in the real world, not just within the confines of an exhibition. I’m looking forward to starting the final major project and hopefully my work will improve in both quality and professionalism.