I learnt a lot for the lecture, I learnt that the UK is the highest exporter of creativity in the modern era. I learnt to go further than you believe you can go and to never fear failure, have a good go at an opportunity when it arrises. But the most important advice I learnt was to never be a pigeon hole designer, don't be a graphic/web/fashion designer, just be a designer!
Thursday 27 November 2008
WAYNE HEMINGWAY Lecture
On the 27th October 2008 at 2:30pm I attended a lecture by Wayne Hemingway who together with his wife created the world famous Red or Dead. The talk was very informative and he gave me a good insight into what a designer really should be like. I am going to do a bit of research into TRASHION and VELIB as they portray the design world in it's best form nowadays.
27th October 08
It has been nearly a week since I handed my Visual Communication in Context 2 unit. Overall I was pleased with my end result, I managed to get everything I wanted done. Looking forward to seeing what my result is and how I can improve.
Today we got our second unit; Screen Based Communication 2. The objective is to produce a web site that will house my work, acting as an online portfolio and curriculum vitae. Our site must be designed to be part of an integrated web campaign.
Aims
A1:
To understand the characteristics of contemporary web-based culture and user-centered design.
A2:
To understand the current state of technology in relation to web design.
A3:
To develop analytical skills, organisational skills and creative ability in order to express ideas and communicate information interactively.
I have been looking forward to this project since last year when seeing the second year's work. When I have had a spare minute here and there I have been working towards creating a brand for myself. Last year a friend an I toyed with the idea of creating a media productions company. He is an editor and is based mainly around film, I am a graphic designer, working together we have a broad range of working techniques. I came up with the name AIIEX but we have never really followed through with the idea. I was debating using the company brand for this screen based project but thought better to design my own personal website and look into doing AIIEX at a later date.
Introduction Notes
Website - Online Portfolio
Good industry to get into
Make sure you never have to use the back button the site.
Integrated Web Campaign - Linking it to other sites...Facebook, Flickr, Blogger etc.
Common Type Fonts - Gill Sans, Century Gothic, Arial, Helvetica.
What is the Web? (Book) Rotavision.
W3.org
Web 2.0 - User Interaction - GMail.
Photoshop Online.
View ----> View Source
Window ----> Activity
Could create a new splash page for vizcom.org
Good pencil drawn mock-ups saves you a lot of time.
So does flow charts and story boards.
CAPTURE PEOPLE STRAIGHT AWAY, THEY DON'T WANT TO HANG AROUND!
What I need to hand in at the end
Final Site uploaded on server.
Artwork.
Files on CD-R.
Sketchbooks.
Design Sheets.
Looking forward to it!
Friday 14 November 2008
14th October 08
Today we had the final critique for the Animal Packaging project. It went very well with both tutors and my peers liking the idea and concept of the design. The colour scheme is still to be decided, whether its to be both male and female separately or unisex. These will be decided before the hand in date. We now have a whole week to finish everything off.
Thursday 13 November 2008
13th October 08
After being pretty pleased with my attempt at what my final piece could look like I took it into Uni for an analysis from Neil. He liked the concept of the idea yet didn't think it looked real enough. Therefore he showed me how to extrude and add appropriate shading to make the object seem more realistic. Here was the outcome.
The original Illustrator piece was in colour yet for some reason when I copied it into Photoshop the colour just packed up it's belongings and left. Even so, I am very pleased with the outcome. It looks much more realistic and looks more and more like the real thing. The next thing to do was to add a potential graphic. I chose the snowboarding graphic of the mountain as it just looked the nicest to go with the unintentional grey packaging. Here is the result.
It was also advised to do some technical drawings as well.
PLEASE COMMENT
The original Illustrator piece was in colour yet for some reason when I copied it into Photoshop the colour just packed up it's belongings and left. Even so, I am very pleased with the outcome. It looks much more realistic and looks more and more like the real thing. The next thing to do was to add a potential graphic. I chose the snowboarding graphic of the mountain as it just looked the nicest to go with the unintentional grey packaging. Here is the result.
It was also advised to do some technical drawings as well.
PLEASE COMMENT
Wednesday 12 November 2008
Tuesday 11 November 2008
11th October 08
As the final deadline for the Animal packaging project approaches I have come up with three seperate designs.
IDEA #1
This was my first idea. It is pretty self explanitory. A very simple design that just houses the watch and opens up at a 90' angle. At first I thought it looked nice, yet over time the design just got boring.
IDEA #2
This was my second idea. As your can see it's a lot more complicated than the first one. From the outside it just looks like a normal rectangular box, yet when you open the first section as show in the first image to reveal the watch, you notice that there is a "secret" sliding draw which slides out and opens to reveal a tool depending on the sport. i.e Snowboarding would be a Binding Tool. It would be made from the good quality cardboard that Apple uses to package there Mac range. This would give it a quality feel and would be strong enough to house both the watch and the tool. Plus, cardboard can be recycled.
IDEA #3
I came up with this design yesterday as I was starting to go off my second idea. I really like how this works. The cyclinder seperates into two by swivelling around on a pivot to reveal the watch, or tool, depending which Animal prefers. It is held in its stationary state by a tiny magnet placed inside each section. The second part it that the Animal Logo is a button to release a lid that reveals either the tool or the watch. This is held by a tiny latch that the button releases. The shape is very uni-sex and the colours will depend on what Animal wants. Overall I think it is a very nice design that I could see working well in the industry.
I have also come up with some graphics that would go on each design depending on the sport the watch is aimed at.
PLEASE COMMENT
IDEA #1
This was my first idea. It is pretty self explanitory. A very simple design that just houses the watch and opens up at a 90' angle. At first I thought it looked nice, yet over time the design just got boring.
IDEA #2
This was my second idea. As your can see it's a lot more complicated than the first one. From the outside it just looks like a normal rectangular box, yet when you open the first section as show in the first image to reveal the watch, you notice that there is a "secret" sliding draw which slides out and opens to reveal a tool depending on the sport. i.e Snowboarding would be a Binding Tool. It would be made from the good quality cardboard that Apple uses to package there Mac range. This would give it a quality feel and would be strong enough to house both the watch and the tool. Plus, cardboard can be recycled.
IDEA #3
I came up with this design yesterday as I was starting to go off my second idea. I really like how this works. The cyclinder seperates into two by swivelling around on a pivot to reveal the watch, or tool, depending which Animal prefers. It is held in its stationary state by a tiny magnet placed inside each section. The second part it that the Animal Logo is a button to release a lid that reveals either the tool or the watch. This is held by a tiny latch that the button releases. The shape is very uni-sex and the colours will depend on what Animal wants. Overall I think it is a very nice design that I could see working well in the industry.
I have also come up with some graphics that would go on each design depending on the sport the watch is aimed at.
PLEASE COMMENT
Sunday 9 November 2008
9th October 08
Whilst working on my packaging project I've also been working on the 3AM Media Productions assignment. Over the past couple of weeks we have been conferring with my client on which designs he prefers and have come up with a final. They are as follows;
IDEA #1.
My client wanted me to do something with digital numbers as has been shown earlier in the blog. Yet after talking over the design we both agreed that it just did not work. Lettering could be confused with others and the design just didn't have the nice effect you want from a logo. As you can see from my first idea, I based it round the idea of what happens at 3Am, and the truth is; not much. Apart from the fact the moon and stars are out. So I started playing around with these concepts, and to tell you the truth, the star idea just ended up looking tacky but I quite like how this one came out. I used a font I always tend to use (Century Gothic) which gave it a modern classy feel. The moon seperates the two as Media will change to Films and Music depending on which page you are on.
IDEA #2.
I have kept to a similar concept yet instead of having a slither of moon I went for the full moon. Yet a filled circle just didn't look right, so I just put a fairly thick stroke on it. I also changed the font from Century Gothic to Gill Sans MT.
BUSINESS CARDS.
I was then informed that the client wanted to call the company 3AM Media Productions and use the red circle as the main focus of the design of the brand. You can't have a company without business cards. So here they are. I experimented with all the other colours yet as they wanted to red to be the main focus here is the result.
Play on different circular designs.
After looking into the "finished" design work, my client then asked if there was anything else I could do to the circles to not make them so simple. Here are the outcomes. In the end they decided to stick to the single circle. What do you think?
and finally, just a screen shot of what the current web page looks like.
PLEASE COMMENT
IDEA #1.
My client wanted me to do something with digital numbers as has been shown earlier in the blog. Yet after talking over the design we both agreed that it just did not work. Lettering could be confused with others and the design just didn't have the nice effect you want from a logo. As you can see from my first idea, I based it round the idea of what happens at 3Am, and the truth is; not much. Apart from the fact the moon and stars are out. So I started playing around with these concepts, and to tell you the truth, the star idea just ended up looking tacky but I quite like how this one came out. I used a font I always tend to use (Century Gothic) which gave it a modern classy feel. The moon seperates the two as Media will change to Films and Music depending on which page you are on.
IDEA #2.
I have kept to a similar concept yet instead of having a slither of moon I went for the full moon. Yet a filled circle just didn't look right, so I just put a fairly thick stroke on it. I also changed the font from Century Gothic to Gill Sans MT.
BUSINESS CARDS.
I was then informed that the client wanted to call the company 3AM Media Productions and use the red circle as the main focus of the design of the brand. You can't have a company without business cards. So here they are. I experimented with all the other colours yet as they wanted to red to be the main focus here is the result.
Play on different circular designs.
After looking into the "finished" design work, my client then asked if there was anything else I could do to the circles to not make them so simple. Here are the outcomes. In the end they decided to stick to the single circle. What do you think?
and finally, just a screen shot of what the current web page looks like.
PLEASE COMMENT
Thursday 30 October 2008
30th October 08
Today we were given the latest brief of Vizcom in Context 2. We have been asked be create designs for packaging that will house a new watch designed by Animal. The outcomes have to be innovative, but they should also be clearly indicative of this Animal's branding and aesthetic. RESEARCH IS ESSENTIAL!
As Animal are re-launching their watch collection next year we must create a demand for a product that is currently being superseded by technology. The markets are changing due to the proliferation of technologies such as mobile telephones and MP3 players which all have time-measuring devices included. The task is to convince your audience of why they should buy this particular watch, what is unique or special about it and why they should spend money on this watch rather than other products.
To start off we were put into groups of 6 or 7 to consider the possibilities of the brief and create a base in which we all individually have to move towards. From then on we are asked to develop a 2D representation and maquettes of the packaging always considering how it will fit into an overall campaign. We have to show how we could extend an identity and concept over several types of media.
So in our group today we managed to collect a huge amount of research. We decided to base our projects around the Snowboarding scene as it seems very open to explore and experiment. Our research included Animal's main competition...Billabong, Rip Curl, O'Neill and Quiksilver. We found out about the history of the company, a few designers that have worked alongside Animal and also had a look into different snowboard designers.
As Animal are re-launching their watch collection next year we must create a demand for a product that is currently being superseded by technology. The markets are changing due to the proliferation of technologies such as mobile telephones and MP3 players which all have time-measuring devices included. The task is to convince your audience of why they should buy this particular watch, what is unique or special about it and why they should spend money on this watch rather than other products.
To start off we were put into groups of 6 or 7 to consider the possibilities of the brief and create a base in which we all individually have to move towards. From then on we are asked to develop a 2D representation and maquettes of the packaging always considering how it will fit into an overall campaign. We have to show how we could extend an identity and concept over several types of media.
So in our group today we managed to collect a huge amount of research. We decided to base our projects around the Snowboarding scene as it seems very open to explore and experiment. Our research included Animal's main competition...Billabong, Rip Curl, O'Neill and Quiksilver. We found out about the history of the company, a few designers that have worked alongside Animal and also had a look into different snowboard designers.
Tuesday 28 October 2008
28th October 08
Today has been pretty productive as I've managed to design myself a new logo and brand but also because I have managed to get myself a few clients. The first being a friend of a friend who is an up and coming film producer and editor who wanted a logo and a brief branding for his company 3am Films. I have come up with a couple of ideas yet it is unpaid so far so he said don't take too much time on it at the moment. Here are the design.
The other clients are colleages of my mum. They would like a website done for their property company. There hasn't been a specific brief set and they are willing to wait until after my course in order for me to have the necessary skills to create a decent website. Will keep everyone informed on that. Below is the new logo and branding I've come up with for myself.
PLEASE COMMENT
The other clients are colleages of my mum. They would like a website done for their property company. There hasn't been a specific brief set and they are willing to wait until after my course in order for me to have the necessary skills to create a decent website. Will keep everyone informed on that. Below is the new logo and branding I've come up with for myself.
PLEASE COMMENT
24th -26th October 08
It was a fairly standard weekend to be honest. Catching up on work. Chilling out. Oh and practising a bit of photography as I haven't picked my camera up in ages. Check it out if you have a spare minute. Jamie Cullen Flickr Photostream
Friday 17 October 2008
17th October 08
OK so we are a week into the project and have had our first critiques. I presented Neil and Claire five of my designs. I got good feedback from four of them yet the fifth one, which was the first design I created they didn't like, which was a mutual agreement as is did look inferior to the others. Even so I will stil post it up for all to see.
As you can see it isn't a very strong design and wouldn't benefit the collection in any way. For the second design I used inspiration from the 60 Million Postcards flyer. I really like this design, and the subtle 'Happy Birthday' in the bottom corner just finishes it off nicely.
Because I am using a black background in all the design in the collection, I am having to portray the Black of the CMYK with a White stroke. Even so, it still looks cool. The third and fourth design are probably my favourites. I was attempting to produce one design and ended up with a completely different one, which is never a bad thing. I like how it all fits together, the colours work the layout works, and the text just adds to it. See what you think.
The last design to be critted was the following. I really don't know how this design popped into my head but I find it came out pretty well. As you can see I've been using all the CMYK colours in the image work and then using a simple White for the text. I find this just brings more of an emphasis to the text over the vibrant other colours.
Neil and Claire both then said now that I've used squares and circles, why not try trianges, so thats exactly what I did. The first design I find isn't as strong as the second, but then again it is completely unique in the collection. The second is the a alteration of the circle design above.
Now that I had done the triangles I thought I would try another shape, using the inspiration of a honeycomb I came up with the following. This is my favourite of the collection. Once completed, Neil pointed out to me that it looked similar to an old D&AD book cover. I have tried finding this yet have had no luck, but will keep searching and if I find it, it will be posted.
PLEASE COMMENT ON ANY ABOVE.
As you can see it isn't a very strong design and wouldn't benefit the collection in any way. For the second design I used inspiration from the 60 Million Postcards flyer. I really like this design, and the subtle 'Happy Birthday' in the bottom corner just finishes it off nicely.
Because I am using a black background in all the design in the collection, I am having to portray the Black of the CMYK with a White stroke. Even so, it still looks cool. The third and fourth design are probably my favourites. I was attempting to produce one design and ended up with a completely different one, which is never a bad thing. I like how it all fits together, the colours work the layout works, and the text just adds to it. See what you think.
The last design to be critted was the following. I really don't know how this design popped into my head but I find it came out pretty well. As you can see I've been using all the CMYK colours in the image work and then using a simple White for the text. I find this just brings more of an emphasis to the text over the vibrant other colours.
Neil and Claire both then said now that I've used squares and circles, why not try trianges, so thats exactly what I did. The first design I find isn't as strong as the second, but then again it is completely unique in the collection. The second is the a alteration of the circle design above.
Now that I had done the triangles I thought I would try another shape, using the inspiration of a honeycomb I came up with the following. This is my favourite of the collection. Once completed, Neil pointed out to me that it looked similar to an old D&AD book cover. I have tried finding this yet have had no luck, but will keep searching and if I find it, it will be posted.
PLEASE COMMENT ON ANY ABOVE.
Thursday 9 October 2008
9th October 08
Today went pretty well. We had our final crit for the Look Again / Think Again project. I decided to go for my first idea with the grey squares and got good feedback from everyone. Yet there were aspects of the design my peers suggested needed changing. I have taken their advise into concideration and come up with the following;
The first design change you will notice is that the strap line has been altered to "CAN YOU FIND IT?" instead of "IF IT'S MISSING THEY WILL FIND IT". I have changed this because the majority of my peers believed it to be more of a horror movie slogan rather than an autism awareness slogan. The second suggestion was to change the red square to white and "hide" the missing grey square in another place on the page. This was to show that autistic individuals would be able to find this square extremely quickly yet the average individual make take a while to locate it. I also changed the font to Rockwell as it links better with the image. I am pleased with the outcome and think that the whole poster works well.
The first design change you will notice is that the strap line has been altered to "CAN YOU FIND IT?" instead of "IF IT'S MISSING THEY WILL FIND IT". I have changed this because the majority of my peers believed it to be more of a horror movie slogan rather than an autism awareness slogan. The second suggestion was to change the red square to white and "hide" the missing grey square in another place on the page. This was to show that autistic individuals would be able to find this square extremely quickly yet the average individual make take a while to locate it. I also changed the font to Rockwell as it links better with the image. I am pleased with the outcome and think that the whole poster works well.
Wednesday 8 October 2008
6th October - 8th October 08
Over the weekend and the last three days I have come up with a grand total of five designs! I had a few designs in my minds eye from the get go so just had to transcribe them into visuals. A couple of concepts didn't look too good once put onto paper. Yet I worked and worked at different ideas, manipulating them together, using inspirations from all over the place, and ended up coming up with some cool results.
Every autistic individual had a bit of an "obsession" with certain things. I have had first hand experience with an autistic child and his obsession was papers. He tore us pages out of books into strip, all exactly the same size. No word of a lie he had about 10,000 of them. They were all sorted into different piles, and if one paper was missing, he would know which one it was and would be able to find it. I used that as my starter point for the first design.
Whilst sat watching TV over the weekend I spoke to a couple of my housemates about what they thought of when the heard the word Austism. The majority said repetitive behaviour, OCD related. This gave me the inspiration for the next idea. One thing that popped into my head was a light switch, Tom used to turn it off and on a couple of times before he kept it on entering a
room. There were many different designs before I landed on this one, but this was my favourite.
During the ideas generation crit last Friday, Neil brought up a couple of interesting facts about the hearing of autistic individuals. This led me to do a bit of research on the hearing, which then led to th idea of sound waves. By picking relevant sections of the research I had done, I came up with these two designs.
I do like these designs but it just felt like there was something missing. Recently all my work has been very mono tone and quite dark, so with the idea of soundwaves in my head I came up with the following.
Yet I just stil didn't have what I wanted. I therefore started playing around with a bit of colour, to spice it up a little bit, something completely off the point of autism. This led to the next few designs which I am pretty pleased with. The different colours are just different variations of the design.
Please comment.
Every autistic individual had a bit of an "obsession" with certain things. I have had first hand experience with an autistic child and his obsession was papers. He tore us pages out of books into strip, all exactly the same size. No word of a lie he had about 10,000 of them. They were all sorted into different piles, and if one paper was missing, he would know which one it was and would be able to find it. I used that as my starter point for the first design.
Whilst sat watching TV over the weekend I spoke to a couple of my housemates about what they thought of when the heard the word Austism. The majority said repetitive behaviour, OCD related. This gave me the inspiration for the next idea. One thing that popped into my head was a light switch, Tom used to turn it off and on a couple of times before he kept it on entering aroom. There were many different designs before I landed on this one, but this was my favourite.
During the ideas generation crit last Friday, Neil brought up a couple of interesting facts about the hearing of autistic individuals. This led me to do a bit of research on the hearing, which then led to th idea of sound waves. By picking relevant sections of the research I had done, I came up with these two designs.
I do like these designs but it just felt like there was something missing. Recently all my work has been very mono tone and quite dark, so with the idea of soundwaves in my head I came up with the following.
Yet I just stil didn't have what I wanted. I therefore started playing around with a bit of colour, to spice it up a little bit, something completely off the point of autism. This led to the next few designs which I am pretty pleased with. The different colours are just different variations of the design.
Please comment.
Friday 3 October 2008
3rd October 08
Today went pretty well. We had our crit with Neil first thing in the morning and it was good hearing the ideas of others, giving my suggestions when needed and hearing others opinions to help me. I got a good feedback from Neil and the others and I seemed happy to pursue the idea. For the rest of the day I have done research and idea development. Below is the first idea generation.
Thursday 2 October 2008
2nd October 08
We were given our first brief today; Look Again / Think Again. It was given as part of a new unit called Visual Communication in Context 2. The idea behind Look Again / Think Again is to create an A3 poster with one of the two following outcomes;
- A social issue that in your opinion has been over looked and needs addressing,
- An object which carries values that go beyond it's intended purpose or everyday use.
Monday 29 September 2008
29th September 08
The first day back was a welcomed one, by the end of summer I just wanted to get back to doing some creative work and get my teeth into a nice big project. It was a fairly usual first day; catching up with classmates, a welcome back and introduction to the second year from the tutors and later in the day, enrollment. We also got given our first brief - PPRD2. The set-up to PPRD2 is a little different to last year and the aim for it is to make us employable in the future, enabling us to pursue the career we want. This year is about establishing yourself, your personality, your creativeness, your identity. By doing this you are preparing yourself for the not too distant future.
The ways in which I am going to achieve this is to look beyong the course, find work elsewhere, if it be live briefs or odd freelance work. Building my portfolio and designing my CV to the highest standard is one of my top priorities this year.
PPRD2 Requirements -
The ways in which I am going to achieve this is to look beyong the course, find work elsewhere, if it be live briefs or odd freelance work. Building my portfolio and designing my CV to the highest standard is one of my top priorities this year.
PPRD2 Requirements -
- Complete a progress file (Diary, Digital Blog)
- Build up your Portfolio and create your CV
- Enter Live Briefs and Competitions
- Prepare for the London based End of Year Show
Summertime
My summer started really well, thanks to the success of my work placement at Lime Green Creative Services Agency. For two weeks I worked with a small talented team at a fairly new design company, and when I say small, it only consists of two directors. It went very well and I was offered a possible future position with the company. I have stayed in contact with the company throughout the summer and worked there for another three weeks a couple of weeks before returning to Uni. Whilst there, I worked on designs for many major global companies, including LG, Emirates Banking and Ogier, as well as a few local Jersey companies. By working in the design industry recently, it has got me back into the swing of things and has made sure I am not rusty on my skills for the start of the second year of the course. This I believe, will benefit me in the long run.
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