COP BOOK _ Digital PDF

Context of Practice

Branding Product Design Campaigns Copywriting Type & Grid

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Index

I’m a conceptual driven Graphic Designer who is specialised in branding and art direction. My practice focuses on creating honest and clear communication that carefully considers audience and tone of voice. I’m particularly interested in helping to create brand stories through the use of type, colour, shape, layout and copy writing.

My influences come from primarily design-led backgrounds, wether that be branding, art direction, advertising, large scale campaigns, architecture, product design, photography or typography. Index, is a directory of influence which has helped form and contextualised my own practice.

Branding

Paul Rand Wolf Ollins Pentagram Reply Studio C&G&H BVD

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Branding

The ‘Google’ definition of a Brand is the “name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s product distinct from those of other sellers.” This is true, but ot me, a brand is muchmore than this. A Brand is the face of a company, it is what puts a friendly face on what sometimes is an inanimate object. Brands help sell product and help businesses comminicate.

Succesful brands are well thought out, well cosidered and well engineered. They need to be clear, need to communicate and most importantly need to be timless. This section of the book explores succesful, classic brands and designers that have stood the test of time.

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Paul Rand Dieter Rams George Lois Massimo Vignelli

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Paul Rand

Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition.

Design can be art. Design can be asthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it’s so complicated.

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Paul Rand Dieter Rams George Lois Massimo Vignelli

Paul Rand was an American art director and graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, Enron, Morningstar, Inc., Westinghouse, ABC, and Steve Jobs’s NeXT. He was one of first American commercial artists to embrace and practice the Swiss Style of graphic design.

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IBM Poster Design IBM Poster Design Various Brandmarks

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IBM Magazine Design Design Conference Poster IBM Customer Support Leaflet Ford Brandmark IBM Poster

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Wolff Ollins

Wolff Ollins are what I’d consider a modern day version of Paul Rand. The brands they create are bold and impactiful, but also clean, well considered, with a touch of timelessness to them.

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London 2012 Olympic Brandmark USA Today Re-Brand AOL Re-Brand

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Pentagram

Pentagram create brands that are sleek, proffesional and that can stand the test of time. I particularly like the type treatments they create, these stencilled brandmarks for restaurant GATO and iconic museum logo for the V&A in London.

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GATO Branding V&A Branding JigSaw Branding

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Reply Studio

Reply is a design consultancy based in New York City. The brands they create are often heavilly type based, and play a lot with shapes and formations of letterforms to create content-rich experiences through brands which is inspirational to me.

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Guggenheim Branding P&S Branding

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Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv

An iconic design firm specializing in visual identity and brand design. The form and application of their brands is out of this world. The swiss-influenced brands they create are powerful and timeless, something to which I aspire to when creating brands.

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PanAm Branding NBC Branmark

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PBS Branding US Postage Stamps Mobil Branding

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Museum of Modern Art Smithsonian Institution

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BVD

BVD are a Swedish based studio with an obvious influence from Swiss Design. There design uses lots of Swiss Bold Typography along with Shape Colour and Pattern to build beautiful Brands.

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7-Eleven Branding 7-Eleven Custom Typeface

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Inglesta Shopping Branding Signage / Wayfinding

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Product Design

Dieter Rams Braun Apple

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Product Design

As well as timeless Graphic Design and Brands I’m also very much influenced by Product Design and how the Timelessness can be transferred into this area. Classic Modernist product design such as Braun and iconic designer Dieter Rams is where a lot of inspiration is sourced.

I feel that the area of Product Design and Graphic Design is interchangeable. The appreciation for clean concise and honest design can easily be transferred to the appreciation for a product that is free of frills, works efficiently and stands the test of time, such as Apple, which is no surprise to why the creative industry runs using this product.

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Paul Rand Dieter Rams George Lois Massimo Vignelli

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Dieter Rams

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The value, and especially the legitimisation of design will be, in the future, measured more in terms of how it can enable us to survive, on this planet.

Dieter Rams

Dieter Rams is a German industrial designer closely associated with the consumer products company Braun and the Functionalist school of industrial design.

In particular, the work that Dieter Rams thought up for Braun is a massive inspiration to my personal practice. The way that he managed to create uncluttered, clean and innovative practical solutions to users problems helps to epitasmise the importance of good design.

Good design should be invisible.

Braun

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Braun Products Braun Brandmark

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Braun Event Poster Braun Wristwatch Braun Radio

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Apple

The way I see Apple products are a modern day version of the same asthetics and philosphy that was applied by Dieter Rams and Braun. Living and Working with Apple products as a designer helps you appreacite great design.

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Apple Macbook Apple Webcam Braun Radio / Apple iPod

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Campaigns & Copywriting

Geroge Lois KesselsKramer Hey Studio Jessica Walsh Berger & Fรถhr Uniform The Beautful Meme Craig Oldham

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Campaigns & Copy Writing

Most of my work focuses on creating sustained Campaigns, often held by good copy writing to help bring a brand to life. This next Section of the book, explores some inspiration in these areas.

Starting with some masters of Advertising and helping to realise the importance of catching attention through design or copy writing and also looking at some more contemporary versions of this skills being applied to help bring succes to a particular campaign or company.

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Paul Rand Dieter Rams George Lois Massimo Vignelli

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George Lois

I am in the poison gas business. Advertising should make you choke, make your eyes water, make you feel sick.

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George Lois

George Lois is an American art director, designer, and author. Lois is perhaps best known for over 92 covers he designed for Esquire magazine from 1962 to 1972.

Aside from the Esquire covers, and more importantly to my personal practice, Lois managed to construct a large number of amazingly successful advertisement campaigns throughout his career, often led by well thought out, well constructed, clever use of copy writing to help grab attention and create sales for a variety of different American products that are ultimately a huge source of inspiration for my practice.

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Chromstran Nylon Leggings Tommy Hillfiger Advertisement

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Chess Championship Poster Levy’s Jewish Rye Keri Advertisement

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KesselsKramer

Erik Kessels is a Massive inspiration to me personally, After visiting his talks and his studio in Amsterdam, I love the way he works with his colleagues and clients. He create often humorous Ad Campaigns for his clients that pack a punch.

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Hans Brinker Budget Hotel

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Hey Studio

Hey are a forwards thinking design studio based in Barcelona.

They mostly work in brand identity, illustration and large scale campaigns. Their application of shapes and colour is superb and definitely where some of my inspiration is sourced from.

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Film Festival Campaign Braun Systems Posters

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Jessica Walsh

Jessica Walsh is a multidisciplinary designer living and working in NYC. Now one half of Sagmeister & Walsh, her work explores the bridge between hand rendered and digital. Often photography based with Tons of character.

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New York Times Advert Azione Fashion Range Design Week Magazine Shared Voices

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Berger & FĂśhr

Mostly focussed branding, Berger & Fohr believe that design that is practiced with principle, intention, foresight & responsibility will shape the future, and I’m all for that too.

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Colorado City Branding

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Colorado City Branding Dies Starter Branding

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Uniform

I share the same passion and drive as my soon-to-be emplyers, Uniform, who create honest, innovative creations that are packed with character. Brands and sustained campaigns, throw in some Art Direction and beautiful things happen.

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Oxford Playhouse Campaign Belling Campaign

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The Beautiful Meme

After speaking with Tom and the design team from The Beautiful Meme, they got across the point to me of how important copywriting is within design work. From that day forwards, I applied their philiosphy to all of my briefs where relevant.

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Design Museum Campaign Bespoke Tea Branding Opera North Campaign

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Craig Oldham

Craig Oldhams humour wit and general outlook on Graphic Design is something to firstly take notice of, then be inspired by.

He simply tells it as it is, and this helps influence my throughts and feelings towards Graphic Design and in partocular trends.

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Self Initiated Magazine Self Initiated Poster

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Type & Grid

Massimo Vignelli Peter Saville Karl Gerstner Wim Crouwel

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Type & Grid

Typography is verbal language in visual form.

What is more simple, honest, clear and beautiful than that.

Type and Grid is a constant thought and consideration throughout every single thing that I design. It’s more of an in-built natural occurance for me, that happens when I design.

For us Graphic Design is “organization of information.� There are other types of graphic design more concerned with illustration or of a narrative nature.

Nothing could be more useful to reach our intention than the Grid. The grid represents the basic structure of our graphic design, it helps to organize the content, it provides consistency, it gives an orderly look and it projects a level of intellectual elegance that we like to express.

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Paul Rand Dieter Rams George Lois Massimo Vignelli

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Massimo Vignelli

I like design to be systematically correct, syntactically consistent and pragmatically understandable.

I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant and above all, timeless.

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Paul Rand Dieter Rams George Lois Massimo Vignelli

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Massimo Vignelli is a designer who has done work in a number of areas ranging from package design to houseware design to furniture design to public signage to showroom design through Vignelli Associates, which he co-founded with his wife, Lella.

He has said, “If you can design one thing, you can design everything,� and this is reflected in his broad range of work.

I believe that this quote symbolises where I personally source my inspiration from and that is a variety of different disciplines with design, which I find important.

Massimo Vignelli

The importance of the organisation of information in a visual form is imminent when looking at Vignelli’s work. I am especially influenced by the maps, signage and wayfinding he created for the New York Subway.

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New York City Subway Map New York City Brand Guidelines Knoll International Branding

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Helvetica Type Specimen New York City Branding New york City Subway Wayfinding

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Grids, Columns & Margins

This book, like all my work is built on a series of Grids made up of Columns and Margins. This level of Mathematics within design intrigues me, and inspires me to help make information visual.

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Image One Image Two Image Three Image Four

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Peter Saville

Peter Saville is one of the reasons I found myself falling into design so I thought he needed a mention. I love the way he plays with shapes and colour but in a very systematic approach.

This is a constant influence throughout my work.

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PostModern suicide (Vinyl)

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A Selection of Vinyl Designs created for band, New Order Iconic Vinyl Sleeve Designs for Factory Records

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Sam Lane Graphic Design samlanedesign.co.uk

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