Johnny Hardstaff

I loved Johnny’s sketchbooks, full of drawings and ideas, which looked like a work of art in itself, leading to the development of his infamous animation of “The History of Gaming’. It mesmerised me how he’d graduated without any software skills yet managed to make this retro animation just by using Photoshop.

What caught my attention in this talk was when he questioned how orthodox we are as designers and how we're playing it too safe and don’t have fun with what we do.

A topic he raised which I found interesting was about ‘corporate manipulation’ with a fine example of a Whisky advert. 

One of my favourite pieces of Johnny's work is the orange 'paint pouring' advert and how this is also very much centered around 'corporate manipulation',  showing us how Orange as a Service Provider can give to consumers so much more which is uncontainable. 

You should watch this - amazing attention to detail.

Peter Saville

It was shocking to hear that Peter Saville entered the subject of graphic design on a misunderstanding of what graphic communication actually was; he explained how he liked the look of it rather than the reality of actually doing it. He was drawn to designing mainly aesthetically yet naturally must have sunk into the concepts/ideas behind design to become so successful.

He described how from 1976-1977 he designed record covers and said it didn’t matter what was on the cover as long as it was fun, it wasn’t intellectually challenging as no research, pitches or arguments were involved. This was until the 80s when music videos became a serious medium. 

Kamikaze Pilots

Brief: "Equilibrium gymnasium for males, tee shirt design must include text 'Kamikaze Pilots' with related imagery. One colour as will be screen-printed."

I don't know what this has to do with a gym but this is what I came up with. I like it. 

During my placement I hardly received any feedback, which annoyed me because I didn't know if they liked my work or not, just a simple yes or no would have done. I still don't know whether they used it... 

Work Experience - MRP

Everything has kind of fallen into place for me this Summer. I didn't think I'd get a summer job so quickly but doing so, meant talking to Matt, a boy who was in A Level Graphics class and getting work experience at Midland Regional Printers in Basford, Nottingham where he works. 

Of course during Summer they were really quiet for business which meant I could sit down with them and see how they went about design for printing. They explained to me how printers and designers generally don't tend to get along because apparently designers make their lives quite difficult when it comes to printing their work... unauthorised font licenses,  CMYK/RGB and spot colour confusion, bleeds etc... but although I didn't do much in terms of design I learnt quite a lot. 

I didn't have a clue what printing plates were... a different metal plate for each CMYK and spot colours, amazingly precise, obviously. 

I was very tempted to borrow the pantone solid coated swatch book forever, but I didnt :) 

What annoyed me on this placement was how stubborn people can be when it comes to personal tastes, because it was quiet they asked me to mock-up a calendar for them to print and give out to clients. I mocked up a simple colour-coded calendar and wall planner relating to the seasons and temperatures which they didn't seem sure about. They showed me their past calendars which were absolutely awful - basically 12 stock images they'd brought. What the fuck? I wanted to be sick.  

PC to Mac

Thanks to my lovely friend Nia, I got a job in a pub in Deansgate with her during my second year's last term. This was the only reason I could afford to buy a mac. I was getting really desperate because my PC was beyond shit, crashing all the time, making it really difficult to actually do simple things on it. Obviously I took major advantage of the student discount available from apple welcoming a macbook, free printer and ipod touch into my life :)

I've got everything on it I need, and in the coming few weeks I'm going to attempt to teach myself (with a little help) how to make websites, before basing my dissertation on them. Not quite sure how yet...

From now on I'm going to stop being so damn lazy. 

I've got a new job at Clarks which is going to take up a lot of my spare time but I'm desperate for money. In the process of leaving my current job because it's terrible hours and denies me of a weekend. 

Homebase

Seed packet designs for Homebase competition brief.
To target novice gardeners with an organic/earthy feel.
I tried to create a new identity which could span across all Grow Your Own products with a nice sense of consistency...

Futureshock Book Covers

A studio project. I chose this set because I had already read 1 and a half of the books... Obviously as book covers they are meant to reflect the stories, but this project was to avoid clichés. I chose to have these different windows representing the sci-fi idea of "looking into the future" with a shape to symbolise an idea/aspect of each story.
Circle = wormhole in time.
Bars = the most restriction within the story.
Square = telescreens.
Triangle = flames.
Ta da.