JOE ALLAM SEMESTER 2.0 PORTFOLIO SECOND YEAR
THREE VISITS: LONDON UNDERGROUND In response to the three museum and gallery visits, I created a series of parody posters mimicking the style of the London Underground design. I wanted to create something that looked authentic and had a touch of humour to it. I really appreciate the style that the Underground has developed with it’s signage so this was presented as a type of tribute to the success of the style. The first designs that I made were some simple info-graphics showing details of the lengths of each line and the amount of stations per line. Using the existing colours that represent each line, I made it recognisable and easy to understand. I also worked with the idea of existing posters that inform people to “report anything suspicious”. I used the Underground logo to communicate the message and wanted to add a touch of humour to each of the posters.
London Underground
London Underground
Number of stations
Length of lines (miles)
January 2011
January 2011
25
14.5
49
46
36
17
29
16
60
40
27
22.5
34
41.5
50
36
53
44.3
16
13.3
2
MAYOR OF LONDON
1.5
Transport for London
MAYOR OF LONDON
Transport for London
London Underground
London Underground
London Underground
Report anything suspicious
Report anything suspicious
Report anything suspicious
January 2011
January 2011
January 2011
MAYOR OF LONDON
Transport for London
MAYOR OF LONDON
Transport for London
MAYOR OF LONDON
Transport for London
London Underground
Report anything suspicious January 2011
MAYOR OF LONDON
Transport for London
London Underground
London Underground
Check for delays before you travel
Check for delays before you travel
tfl.gov.uk
tfl.gov.uk
MAYOR OF LONDON
Transport for London
MAYOR OF LONDON
Transport for London
ANGER
STRESS
PANIC
LOVE
ADVENTURE
FASCINATION
JOY
AWE
TRUST
MAYOR OF LONDON
Transport for London
(Left) This was inspired by a poster that I saw at the London Transport Museum showing the different logos for each type of transport (past and future)
ORIGINS: CINEMA AND FILM I decided to look into the origins and timeline of cinema and film. I wanted to do something that was completely hand rendered and not using any digital processes. Firstly, I made some notes on what I thought cinema was and recognised some key points in the history of cinema and filmmaking. I wanted to make something that could be understood easily by the audience as not a lot of people will know about the evolution of such an everyday thing.
(Above) Some sketches that I made related to the origins of some of today’s cinema and film. I’m not really used to sketching so this was a bit of a different approach for me.
MANIFESTO In a group, we created a manifesto based collectively on all of our ideas that would lead the style of design that we were looking to create. The key elements and practices that we decided were paramount to our manifesto were: The use of mixed media, form before meaning, open promotion and externalisation, consideration for work, hand produced elements, learning new skills and crafts to inform our work, self reliance within publishing and distribution as well as having a passion for the process. From this we set out to make a series of postcards that we would each represent. I chose the word ‘Form’ as it is something that I go by strongly. I believe that something needs to look good and
have some visual impact before you even get to the meaning of it. Collectively, our postcards would display the infinity symbol and this would be a way of referencing them all together. To continue the brief, we also made a collection of prints related to many types of weather. I chose ‘clouds’ as my theme and decided to create a print based on the Photoshop filter ‘render clouds’. The piece shows a Polaroid style photo of some digital clouds on a gradient that represents the colour of the sky as well as the colours of the Photoshop logo. I wanted it to have a sarcastic tone that only designers and people familiar with Photoshop would understand and appreciate.
SPADES
SPADES
SPADES SPADES
SPADES
SPADES SPADES
EXTRA MANIFESTO: PLAYING CARDS
SPADES
SPADES
SPADES SPADES SPADES
SPADES
KING OF SPADES
QUEEN OF SPADES
JACK OF SPADES
TEN OF SPADES
NINE OF SPADES
EIGHT OF SPADES
SEVEN OF SPADES
SIX OF SPADES
FIVE OF SPADES
FOUR OF SPADES
THREE OF SPADES
TWO OF SPADES
ACE OF SPADES
Working as a group of four; Sinéad Birmingham, Russell Beswick, James Martin and myself designed a pack of playing cards. We each focussed on one of the suits to make the whole 52 card set. I chose to work with ‘Spades’ initially making some sketches of ideas and then I digitised them to make the whole suit. It was quite a fast paced process and by the end of it, we were able to distinguish our designs from one another based on the styles that we have each developed. I think the final set conforms to the manifesto that we had previously written out as well as address our own personal styles.
(Left) The full Spades suit. (Above) Closer detail of the design of each card.
APHORISM: 30 SECOND ANIMATION Hannah Dawson, Alanna Palmer, Lyall Davies and myself worked together to create a 30 second stop motion animation that was based on the aphorism ‘Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.’ After many different ideas, we chose to work with coloured triangles that would animate around a canvas displaying different forms of imagination as well as formatic patterns of invention. We wanted to give the audience an impression of fun chaos as well as challenge our abilities to create a successful stop motion. We decided to go all out on the rig and set up with lighting kits and precisely marked out our canvas area as well as drawing storyboard for the whole animation. (Right) Early sketches for an idea that wasn’t developed.
We took about 700 photos in total and I was very pleased with how the final video came together, but there are definitely some areas that I know we could improve on. The main problem that we encountered was the skylight above the canvas that we were working on. Throughout the days that we produced the video, clouds in the sky were distorting the light into the room and therefore gave a non-uniform effect to the lighting in the video which created the impression that it is flickering. Another issue we had was the triggering system for the lighting that we were using. We were using the in-built slave feature which means that the main light would fire the secondary light using infra-red. Unfortunately this wasn’t working very well and we had a number of misfired shots that we had to retake. However, unless we purchased some higher profiles wireless triggers we wouldn’t be able to resolve this and it was beyond our control. The music that we used was a piece composed and performed by Lyall specifically for the video. I think it worked extremely well with the style of the video that we were producing and made it very easy in post-production to fit everything together with Final Cut.
http://vimeo.com/20598038
PAPERCO DIRECT MAIL: BRIEF 1B For brief 1B, I worked with Russell Beswick to create a piece of direct mail targeted towards designers and printers. The item we made was designed to be a keepsake, styled to look like the base of a tree trunk with layered sheets of paper on top that would hold a complete sample of the PaperCo 9 Lives range of recycled stock as well as information about the closed loop recycling methods that PaperCo are proud of. The main idea was that designers would keep this on their desk at close range so that they could judge what paper to print their designs onto at a quick glance. (Left) Initial sketches and some of the ideas that weren’t developed any further. (Right) The finished prototype made from layers of balsa wood glued and sanded together.
PAPERCO: LIVE PITCH Presenting our ideas to PaperCo was a very good experience as it gave an insight into the process of meeting with a client to win a commission over other designers. It was also good practice to create the presentation boards to back up our ideas. Overall, I think our pitch was successful and we were able
to explain our idea in full detail. I also feel that we had a strong prototype to give the clients a better understanding of our idea. (Above) Our presentation boards that we used during our pitch.
DESIGN ANALYSIS During the months of March and April I tried to secure a work placement at various different design studios but unfortunately, I was unsuccessful in getting anything so I decided that I would take the route of ‘Design Analysis’ for this part of the semester. I decided that I would look into the effects a design studio’s website has on the viewer based on the layout, usability and profile of the site. I decided to look into this as I quite often find websites that are missing key elements of usability and therefore affect the user experience. This can sometimes be harmful to the overall thought of the company before their work has even been considered. With this thought in mind, I decided that I would create a criteria of aspects to ‘rate’ these websites with. I had 10 areas that I would mark them on with a score out of 10; 10 being the highest achievable mark. From that I could create a score out of 100 that would allow me to order the websites. The areas that I looked at were: layout usability, layout innovation, consistencies within the design across different areas of the site, the type of profile that
they write about themselves, contact information, whether they included a blog or news section and whether it is well kept, the impression that I was left with, portfolio usability, portfolio innovation and whether they had a mobile site or at least designed so that it would work well on mobile devices in the current desktop style. I applied this process to 25 different creative studios and then collated all the data into a spreadsheet to begin analysing. I also took notes on every site so that I could have some written information as to why certain areas were successful or not. I wanted to gather this information so that I could apply it to my own website and future sites to make sure that they are successful by learning from other peoples mistakes as well as my own. (Right) The table of data that I collected.
Design Studio
Layout: Usability
Layout: Innovation
Consistencies
ProďŹ le
Contact
Blog/News
Impression
Portfolio: Usability
Portfolio: Innovation
Mobile
Total
A+B Studio
7
8
8
7
6
0
7
7
9
0
59
Airside
8
5
7
7
8
6
7
8
6
3
65
Apfel
8
7
9
7
6
0
7
8
7
6
65
Central Design
6
4
5
7
7
0
6
5
4
4
48
Chase Jarvis
8
6
8
10
7
10
10
8
7
7
81
Feltron
7
7
7
9
6
7
8
7
6
4
68
GBH
6
4
4
6
5
8
6
4
4
2
49
Ilovedust
8
6
7
8
4
7
8
8
5
4
65
Jade Design
6
4
7
1
6
8
2
3
4
4
45
Jasper Wiese
5
5
9
2
4
0
4
7
7
5
48
Jelly
7
7
8
7
8
8
8
6
8
2
69
Ji Lee
7
6
9
6
6
1
5
8
6
3
57
Kemistry
7
8
7
7
8
7
8
8
8
4
72
LIQUID
3
5
5
5
6
3
6
3
5
1
42
Mat Dolphin
7
7
8
8
6
7
7
6
7
5
68
Naked Penguin Boy
6
4
5
5
6
6
3
5
5
3
48
NB Studio
6
4
7
1
6
0
4
5
5
3
41
Neave
7
9
9
8
6
4
8
9
9
1
70
Shiny Binary
8
5
7
7
6
0
7
8
4
5
57
Signalnoise
7
6
5
8
7
10
8
7
7
7
72
Studio8
5
5
7
7
7
0
6
7
6
3
53
This is Real Art
6
9
7
6
7
6
7
7
9
5
69
Turner Duckworth
7
8
8
7
8
7
8
7
9
1
70
Vault49
8
7
7
7
8
7
8
7
7
0
66
Webb and Webb
7
3
9
6
7
6
5
6
2
3
54
CHASE JARVIS all website out of Easily the best . ed ys al ve an of the ones I ha ut of all of the yo la r ea cl Such a t as well as grea work on show of os fo and vide background in a It really gives f. af st all of the am te e th on of great impressi is . Chase’s blog ly lid so ng ki wor o-t up l kept and extremely wel any behind-the m g date postin s. ur to and scenes videos
SIGNA LN James OISE c friend omes acros ly with s his we very broad casts ekly and posts. He pos up-to-date ts insp blog comm en ira His blo ds other de tion and s g ig mobile also has a d ners well. e s of wor tyle. Really dicated nic k presen and lots of it e layout ted as ! being Studio open. friend Extra detail ly and contac with t incons form. Blog is the istent with d a bit esign though .
CENTRAL DESIGN Portfolio laid out like a blog which can be overlooked straight away. No up-to-date section such as news or blog. Good section about what they do and who they are.
JADE DESIGN Not set up as a website, more of a blog. Very well kept blog with news and information of other design activities but unfortunately their own work is lost within this. Not entirely obvious which is designed by them and which is just mentioned in the blog.
MAT DOLPHIN The header and navigation links are mostly in the way of browsing. They are a big distraction and having seen the site on a mobile browser, it would work so much better to have this ‘stick’ at the top of the display. Or at least only have the links float as you scroll.
NAKED PENGUIN BOY The design of the site doesn’t strike me as coming from a design studio. It looks more like a tacky game reviewing website. Very outdated and has an odd scrolling to the right which hides everything. The portfolio of works isn’t very well explained. It all looks a bit too busy. There are a lot of contact methods.
JELLY sections are The portfolio aking e illustrator m divided by th gate inded to navi it very long-w ng up lli a lot of scro and involves e ’r ey ecause th and down. B click e you have to m na listed by The t all of them. through almos ith w is very good contact page ing a be ns of directio the addition f. el ge its part of the pa
KEMISTRY nt ut and differe Nice grid layo No k. or w g tin way of presen e ile site, but th dedicated mob er th ra l5 m are ht vimeo videos sign ws fits with de Ne . sh fla an th ay m t bu the site of the rest of y layout for heav st be e th not be reading.
FELTRON Gives a good sense of profile and his blog shows the process that he engages. Contact didn’t have direct email link. I liked how the work was shown with the other ‘projects’ still visible below.
NB STUDIO rtfolio’ just No sign of current ‘po recent work. archives and some ct for an nta They ask you to co ages load Im o. oli rtf po up-to-date ow nd and as background to wi cut off. No es therefore sometim on on the ati orm inf d backgroun nky clu studio at all. Sort of interface.
APFEL Nice linear design with the scrolling. Would be useful to have some page jump links to certain posts. The lack of blog is surprising and slightly disappointing. There is no mobile specific site however the main design works quite well in landscape.
WEBB AND W EBB They didn’t appear to be proud of their own work and se emed to shy away fr om giving an impact both visually and in writi ng. Generic layo ut that didn ’t give the impressi on of long ru nning design stud io. Nice incl usion of Map in cont act.
GBH The who le site do esn’t see go anyw m to here. The links are inconsis re tent with many no ally clicking t onto any thing. A link to a few YouTube video or their You to Tube cha nnel but nothing really us eful. The well kep blo t and in my opinio g is much m n ore usefu l.
SHINY BINARY Very simple style that makes me want to keep scrolling down to see more work. The lack of blog is a shame. Although no mobile version, the large images and straight orientation make it better viewing than others.
JI LEE NIce little personal webspace for a big name Art Director who has just left Google to join Facebook. Shows a great range of work both personal and commissioned. Shame there isn’t a blog to go with it, but at least there is a twitter feed.
JASPER WIESE Great portfolio, very similar to signalnoise but an extreme lack of any text. No explanations or descriptive pieces about anything. Barely a name is written.
ST rary ILOVEDU ontempo dly and c n of studio n ie fr ry Ve dditio ke the a find style. I li e hard to it u q s a W as . s w photo n as it ct sectio ta ge. n a o p c a e th y down a w lf a h hidden
RTH DUCKWO their whole TURNER of t ng layou e the Interesti k li y . I reall an portfolio ea where you c .pdf id m re u to h s broc own cu r u o y d s etc. downloa nd to colleague u ro d h to sen ite whic least sh webs Fully fla rk on mobile. At wo . doesn’t t details e contac v a g they
AIRSIDE map and Good contact page with SImple . ails det t tac con le multip y and eas it top navigation makes k. loo to ere wh w quick to kno wreel ‘Portfolio’ is simply a sho how r nde wo which makes me nice be uld Wo rk? wo old is the jects pro ual ivid ind e som see to on their own.
NEAVE ent Very personal developm s menu axi xy the e lov I x. sandbo The . ped that he has develo d profile is exceptionally goo “Turn nt, me com l fina the h wit the computer off and go outside.” I really enjoy the Television mode.
STUDIO8 Very bus y layout with a lo things h t of appenin g up and the page down . Too mu ch to make me enga work posted ge. I fou myself s nd kimming ov because there wa er things s too mu it. ch of
A+B STUDIO The lack of blog really lets this down for being quite high scoring across the board. As well as it being made fully in flash which isn’t support on mobile devices.
LIQUID Extreme ly frustr ating lay scrolling out of co sensitive ntent. It’s all too . Blurrin ess style everywh is ere and not very appealin g. The pro file of themselv es corporate seems very ly worde d and no indepen t very dent. Th e blog is extreme ly out of syn rest of th e design c with the a date wit h posts. nd very out of
VAULT49 Really nice layout of wo rk and lots of it! Studio presen ted as being friendly and ope n. Extra detail with the contact form. Blog is a bit inconsiste nt with design though.
ART THIS IS REAL the tive layout with va no in Really n be a little search tool. Ca st but gives a fir at g confusin e pression of th very smart im ile site, ob m no gh ou studio. Alth ith ade cleverly w it has been m . ed at HTML5 integr
These are the notes that I took for each of the websites. They are more for personal value, but they explain some of my reasoning for why certain sites got a higher or lower score in particular areas of the criteria.
SCORE
10
10
10
9
9
9
8
8
8
7
7
7
6
6
6
5
5
5
4
4
4
3
3
3
2
2
2
1
1
1
0
0 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
0 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
CRITERIA
Rather than just having a table of data to look at, I wanted to create something visual that I could look at and easily analyse the data. I came up with the idea of making a graph that would generate these constellations. With this method, I can look at all of the websites or a select amount next to each other and get a quick but thorough understanding of their successes and failures within their website design and functionality.
The process is quite simple; points are marked on a graph that has the criteria along the X axis and the score along the Y axis.
The points are then joined up and a constellation is made from the data.
The constellations can then stand on their own to be analysed against other websites.
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
This is the constellation for Chase Jarvis’ website. The highest scoring out of all of the websites I looked at.
2
1
0 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
WORKSHOPS I have attended and participated in a number of different workshops this semester. I’ve found them to be extremely useful in gaining new skills and putting them into practice. A number of them have ended up as end outcomes and pieces of work. I particularly enjoyed the HTML/CSS workshop that led me to creating a webpage fully with code for the first time, as I had previously made websites with Adobe Flash. This then allowed me to continue learning web skills in my own independent practice and I will continue to develop these in the future. The CV/Portfolio workshop was also extremely useful in gaining knowledge of what designers expect when receiving a CV or portfolio and tips of getting a work placement.
(Right) This is the cover for my first completed CV Portfolio since the workshop. It was an A6 swatch sample style swinging booklet with my information and a selection of work included. I sent this to Russell Saunders from GBH as he had mentioned that he would give feedback and was potentially looking for a student to have a work placement at GBH. He responded with some feedback and I made a second booklet for him but from then on, I didn’t hear anything back from him even after following it up. I will continue to make my CV and portfolio and will be sending it out to selected other designers in hope that I can gain some industry experience.
WEB DEVELOPMENT During the HTML/CSS Workshop I learnt how to fully code a webpage using HTML and style it with CSS. I have had experience with web design previously for myself and for a couple of clients too, but they have never been fully coded in this manner. I have been looking to learn this skill for quite a long time and was really pleased that I’ve finally made my first few steps into this area. This first page gave me the idea of creating my own sub domain for my current website called ‘sandbox’. I wanted to create my own little space to play with web tools and learn new skills. This has been quite a large part of my independent practice over the past couple of months and I am planning to create more websites in the near future. (Left) CSS Project 1 from the workshop (Right) sandbox.joeallam.co.uk my new web play area where I will develop ideas and try new things.
http://sandbox.joeallam.co.uk
INDEPENDENT
PRACTICE
WHAT AM I DOING? There are quite a few different things that I have been doing within my independent practice. It isn’t necessarily all linked together, either. There are some things that I have actively set myself and other areas that have been spawned from briefs related to the units beforehand. Firstly, I’ve been reading. Unrelated to the briefs that have been set I have taken out a few books from the library over this semester to learn about certain processes and disciplines within design. I’ve found them to be very useful, even if only for specific details. I hadn’t really used the library a great deal before, but since taking the first couple of books out, I have been making much better use of it. I’ve read through 5 books in the past
few months; Digital Color and Type by Rob Carter, brand.new by Jane Pavitt, A Type Primer by John Kane, Print and Finish by Gavin Ambrose and Paul Harris and Designing Sustainable Packaging by Scott Boylston. The typography and printing books have been especially useful as these can be quite technical areas of design with precise requirements rather than being based on opinion or artistic merit. Over the past couple of years I have taken a serious interest in typography but it has only been in the last 6 months or so that I have been learning a massive amount about editorial typography and writing copy rather than just designing with type.
WEBSITE CONVERSION TO HTML FROM FLASH For the past few years, my website has been made with Adobe Flash. For no other reason than not knowing any other way of making it. I’ve been wanting to make it fully in HTML and CSS for quite some time but have never had the starting point to learning how to do this. Flash, for a few reasons is a major hassle. Essentially, it is not a practical way of building websites as they are made as a movie with buttons that tell the browser when to start and stop the movie giving the illusion of different pages. It makes it extremely difficult to update and time consuming to make. The application itself still doesn’t run as smooth as applications like Illustrator even though Adobe has owned Macromedia for the past few years now. Overall, it really is a tough challenge to stay on top of building the site. Furthermore, flash is not well supported across mobile platforms such as iOS on the iPhone and iPad which has also driven me towards creating an HTML version of my site. When I attended the workshop based on HTML and CSS, I gained enough ground to make a start on converting my current website into HTML. I had a very minimal understanding of this process, but the small amount that I learnt in the workshop
http://joeallam.co.uk
was enough to make me want learn a lot more and make a real start with the conversion. I used a large amount of web resources and a few former colleagues of mine that are now working in web design to help me. There were times when I was completely stuck over small details, such as the spacing between elements and I would be using the process of trial and error for hours at a time until I worked it out. At times it was very frustrating and I had no one to turn to but a Google search. However, after a couple of months working on occasional days, I finished the conversion completely. It is a very rewarding process and I am pleased with the end result as it means I can now update the whole site a lot quicker and easier. The next stage that I will take is to make a mobile site with iOS and Android platforms being the main priority. Hopefully, this will increase traffic from people on the move reading links from places such as Twitter. Overall, my new website has 12,153 lines of code and 242 files in 27 folders.
I’ve decided to use sub-domains for each of the sections of my website. This is for two reasons, the first is that I think it looks and sounds nicer and secondly it is to create shorter URLs which is a bonus when forwarding links to people.
(Above) An example of design.joeallam.co.uk (Right) An example of photo.joeallam.co.uk
(Left) letstalk.joeallam.co.uk and blog.joeallam.co.uk (Above) The application Coda by Panic. The coding and file transfer application that I chose to use after testing out a few other competitors.
DESIGNERS ARE CURIOUS CREATURES Just as I was about to get to sleep one night, I had this idea for a typography poster based around a quote I had just thought of. Scared of forgetting about it, I got out of bed and drew it in my Moleskine. This happens quite often when I am trying to sleep but weirdly, the aspect that was keeping me awake was the overhanging question mark on the second column. A few days later, I remembered about the poster and made a mock up version in Illustrator and later applied it to a texture that I had previously added to my library.
I wasn’t fully happy with the textured poster that I had made so I decided that I would work on it again and submit it to the Alternate Lab Exhibition at the Rag Factory. Using a photo of a Covent Garden street entertainer I had previously taken last November, I created this digital illustration to fit with the exhibition brief ‘Make Me Think’. The poster was submitted to the gallery but was never displayed.
MOLESKINE I received a free Moleskine sketchbook from the editor of Creative Review, Patrick Burgoyne after visiting the offices in London. I’ve since used it as a way of jotting down quick ideas that I’ve had. So far it has mostly been typography of certain things that I’ve thought about or heard. I have made these with the intention of converting them into digital posters at some point in the next few weeks.
PHOTOGRAPHY: VIRGIN LONDON MARATHON Continuing my passion for photography, I went to watch the London Marathon on April 17 with all of my camera equipment with the objective of getting some good quality shots to put in my portfolio. Being so close to London, I’ve made it my goal to go to as many high profile public events as I can to make the most of what the capital has to offer. So many of these things are taken for granted and I want to witness them first hand to say ‘I was there when...’ I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Marathon as everyone was in such high spirit for each other and the runners. Quite often you would hear cheers from spectators to runners who they did not know but needed some extra support. I think this spirit transitioned over to me as well; as I’m really pleased with the quality of the shots that I got.
PHOTOGRAPHY: LONDON I took a trip into London with my camera to visit Primrose Hill as I’d heard that it was a great place to get some photographs and I’d never been there before. I spent a couple of hours there taking photos from high and low perspectives and also getting some candid shots of people too. The weather was quite bland and there wasn’t anything special or different about it so in post production I enhanced the colours and added some slightly dramatic lighting to the sky. I think it was quite a successful trip albeit quite a brief visit.
CRITICAL EVALUATION This semester has been quite a turning point for me within my degree. I feel as though I have changed the way I think about myself as a student and I feel like I’ve put in a much bigger effort with the extra things happening at University such as the workshops and resources such as the library and media store. The biggest event to happen was my decision to leave my job at Apple after almost 3 years of working there. I decided that I needed to focus on my university work a lot more and that I needed to have those extra days back in the week. It was a tough decision that took a lot of thought as it has been a big part of my life as a career opportunity as well as creatively. Looking back on it now, I’ve realised just how much more focussed I have been since leaving in March. I’ve been able to stay on track with the briefs and my own independent practice for continuous days without disruption. In the long run, it has definitely been the right decision. As far as the work is concerned this semester, I feel like the workshops have been the most important days to me. For instance, the CV and portfolio workshop with Russell, fees and negotiation and brand strategies workshops with Jules, HTML/CSS workshop with Aaron and the personal development tutorials with Sallyanne have all been extremely helpful. I’ve also visited some design studios which have also been equally as helpful to me. I was lucky enough to go to JWT, Kemistry and Creative Review which gave a broad viewpoint across multiple
disciplines within graphic design and allowed me to see an industry perspective of what some design studios look like. I’m very pleased with my independent practice, especially the web work that I have been doing. Considering the fact that I had almost no clue about what I was doing, I feel it is a major accomplishment to have taught myself a large amount in such a short period of time. It is very rewarding to see all the long work put into coding come to effect in the web browser. I would’ve liked to have had some more commercial style briefs set such as branding or advertising or even just a few more briefs that had a specific end outcome. I feel like the vast majority of briefs are extremely open ended and have an infinite amount of outcomes available. Although this can be good practice, I would have really appreciated some closed briefs as well. It seems as though the only brief that had any specific outcome with set requirements was the aphorism video task. I really enjoyed this task because it was direct to the point and it was good to see everyone else’s work at the end which could be compared next to each other. I went to a couple of exhibitions and galleries this semester which also helped inform my practice. Pick Me Up at Somerset House was once again very inspiring to visit, much like last year. It was great
to see some work printed at such a high quality but holding it’s appearance of being independent. It made me realise that I could potentially set up a gallery space and have work for sale as well. Another exhibition I went to was Wim Crouwel, A Graphic Odyssey at the Design Museum. This was extremely inspiring to see almost a whole collection of the Dutch designers work. Even though the majority of it was made before computers were used within design, it still had great relevance today. The typography was probably the best part of the whole gallery and really inspired me to make some work in a similar style. I didn’t have a great input during the time of the ‘Lab: Make Me Think’ as I didn’t really feel comfortable working in that style of environment. I came in for a few days and the lack of structure was really distracting for me. I was heavily involved with my website at this point and I really wanted to finish it completely, so I mainly worked from home during this time. I did work on a poster to submit to the Rag Factory gallery but for whatever reason, my work wasn’t chosen to be displayed. Overall, I have the impression that this semester has had a better effect for me as a student. I think leaving my job has played a big part in that and I feel so much more dedicated to the course now than I ever have. I feel as though I will be easily on track for the third year of this course in September.
Over the summer, I am planning to start a little project that I have wanted to do for quite a while with a few friends. The idea is to create a collaborative website and blog that we can all connect to and display our work as well as post inspiration and work in progress. I’m not sure how long it will take to set up but collectively it should be a good experience and hopefully by next September it will be up and running fully. I am also looking to gain some work experience in the industry at a design studio in London within my spare time over the next few months.
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