Professional Project//Final Major Project

On the 29th January we were given our latest and final project of the Visual Communication course. This project was to be extremely personal. The Professional Project draws together my practical and professional knowledge of my chosen specialist subject area and provides the opportunity to plan and produce the practical work required to the highest professional standard, either working to a live or simulated professional brief. The brief will reflect industry standards and the area(s) of practice in which I would like to concentrate professionally after completion of the course. The unit requires me to consider all logistical and organisational aspects of the brief and to define my proposed solution in a Learning Agreement.
The work will also be displayed in the end-of-course exhibition. The Project thus not only draws
together my creative and practical knowledge and skills, but also presents my best possible
work to a public and professional audience.

Aims

A1: To consolidate your creativity and practical skills in response to a ‘live’ or simulated
professional brief.

Stick to what you are good at!

A2: To develop your creativity and your knowledge and understanding of professional
practice.

Research into design companies and appropriate media

A3: To develop and produce a professional standard of creative work in response to a ‘live’ or
simulated brief.

Make sure I keep up the high, professional standards

A4: To prepare you for employment, freelance work or further study.

My chosen career subject.

Learning Outcomes

LO1:
Demonstrate a professional standard of creativity and practical ability, including:
• Work that is technically comparable to that made within a specified genre.
• Work that shows an awareness of contemporary trends, styles and
subject matter, within commercial contexts.
• Work that shows a high degree of creativity and aesthetic judgement.

Identify the genre that I am working to. Appropriate research - current, past etc

LO2:
Demonstrate a professional ability to plan your time and your work, including:
• Project time planning.
• Working successfully with others in the production of creative outcomes.

Take variables into account, timetable, feedback, client interaction

LO3:
Respond appropriately to the demands of a professional/self initiated brief, including:
• Appropriate creative outcomes to industry/work related briefs.

Make sure I stick to my own brief.
Present it as to a client.
Leave 2 - 3 weeks to print.
Keep the brief very broad! Leaving room for change.
Look at London Graphics Centre.

IDEAS

• Hotel branding and architectural design
• Car Design - Re-design an old model
• Some type of Photography
• Web Design
• Font Development
• Branding
• Identity
• Rebrand Top Gear, Idents - Channel 4
• Fashion? - Brand Development:

1. Logo
2. Website
3. Stationery
4. Clothing Design

Look to Bench, Topman, Burton, ASOS, River Island, Republic for inspiration and research.

Catell Ronca & Hayley Potter

This is a very outdated post that should have been up ages ago, but there you go! On Monday 5th January an Illustrator named Catell Ronca came in to give us a lecture on illustration and freelancing your work. Here are the notes:

• Define your market
• Research potential clients - Writers and Artist yearbook
• Address the correct person
• Self promotion! - How special are you?
• Think outside the box
• Tiny little books
• Feedback sheet
• Create a website
• Illustration Mindo, corroflot
• Network - Keep in contact with people
• Get commissioned - confirm commission in writing. Stating the fee and © your name.

Show your portfolio (Hardcopy)

• Relevant work
• Commissioned work at the front
• Work you are proud of
• Experimental work at the back
• Maximum A3 portfolio
• No more than 20 pieces
• Business Cards
• Who can the Art Director recommend

Pricing
• What will the piece be used for?
• Is it a big client?
• Circulation
• Always do an invoice!
• Paid within 30 days

On Friday 30th January 2009, an illustrator named Hayley Potter came in to give us a talk on her work and how to promote ourselves in the industry.

Young Illustrator
Graduated in 2007
'Four Letters of Love'
'Don't Panick'
Draw what inspires you and never get rid of any work

Overall I learnt quite a few helpful tips from Catell's talk and will put them in place when it comes to it.

Website Project

I haven't really spent much time on my blog for quite a while now. Since my last post a lot has changed, including my final website layout. In the end I chose to go with an arty feel, the second design on my last post. This was because no matter how many times I change my mind over the designs I had created, I ended up getting bored with it. Having too many ideas can be worse than having none at all.

Overall I am pleased with the progress I made and the knowledge I picked up with this project. I had been looking forward to this project for some time, since I seen the second year’s websites when I was in the first year in fact. I am glad I decided to do it in Flash as I think I would have just struggled a lot more in Dreamweaver, I haven’t quite got my head around that yet, but it is on my to do list! There will come a time that I will have to design a website in Dreamweaver and I plan on updating my knowledge on it very soon.

I think the aspect of the assignment that surprised me the most was the amount of information I took in about the world wide web, HTML, java script and action script. At first it all looked like chinese but after a while I got used to it and coding became fairly second nature.

I will take a lot away with me from this project and I am pleased with that being the case. I have learnt a lot from tutors and the assistants that were always there to help. Good project indeed!

To view my final website click here and enjoy

Website Progress

It has been a quite some time since we were give the website assignment. To be honest it has been very testing, I have come up with so many ideas, each one getting better and better. But eventually it had to come to an end. Most of my designs were dark as per usual, so whilst sat at home in Jersey after a good day at work, I decided I was going to attempt a design in white and not use black at all.

All the ideas that I had come up with previous had the use of my name as the main focus. Yet I was getting frustrated with how the 'J' in my name never really worked well with any font I wanted. So I started playing around with names for myself, this turned out to be very amusing. In the end I started messing around with my middle name; Mark, and came up with markedDESIGN. I also wanted a logo to go with it. I knew exactly what I wanted, and the reason for this was the way Lime:Green works, all their work is very sharp and perfectly laid out, nothing is left untouched. Here are a couple of my previous designs that I would like you to see in order to see my progression.

When I came away from the briefing, I knew it had to be simple, therefore I came up with this:


As you can see it is very basic, yet not unacceptable. The second a traced back to the CMYK as in my previous work:


This worked really nicely and was made in Flash with subtle yet cool motion tweens. In the end I decided it wasn't mature enough for what I wanted, yet I wouldn't dismiss using this design for something else. The next design is my final:

As you can see I have decided to use the markedDESIGN and the logo as my identity. I have posted it as my blogger title image and posted it on my flickr account as well. The website is still in progress with just the portfolio section left to do, but will keep you updated and as soon as I've finished it I will post the swf.

Let me know what you think

Flash Reloaded

It's been a while since I've set about doing a blog. I've been very busy over the Christmas period, I worked at Lime Green again which is doing me good, especially as it is improving my Uni work. But first off, I have some notes that need to be put on here from the Flash recap lesson, so here goes...

Actionscript 2.0
Time based
EPS 8 (Illustrator)
.swf (Illustrator)
Frame rate:
12fps - web animation
24fps - tv animation (UK)
25fps - tv animation (US)

Select everything ---> Click and drag over it
Convert to symbol ---> Button

3 Buttons = 3 Key frames
Click between Layer 1 and pencil to highlight all
Needs to be housed in HTML
New Layer ---> Stop
Window ---> actions ---> timeline ---> double click ();
Movie clip controls ---> user controls
Timeline control ---> Flash moving through time, previous frame etc
Browser/Network ---> Linking to external files, links etc
Click on Button 2 ---> actions ---> movieclip ---> on (release)
next line, timeline ---> goto and stop (2) (2 represents the frame number)

Circle > convert to symbol > movieclip > holder > centre > double click > delete > single cross
To get back to backboard click 'Scene 1'

Actions > on (release)
loadMovie("images/onoff3.jpg","holder")

Link to external website
Actions > on (press)
getURL("http://www.limegreencreative.com","_blank")

Text Button:
Double click on text
UP - When mouse click is released
OVER - When the mouse is hovering over
DOWN - When the text is clicked
HIT - Clickable area. Draw a fairly big square over it so whole area is active

Make sure the control button is way off screen.

Control > Actions > on(keypress"")
drag._x+=10;

///////////////// - Acts as dividers

To drag with the mouse:
New Layer > Actions >

drag.onPress=function(){
drag.startDrag();
};
////////////
drag.onRelease=function(){
drag.stopDrag();
};
////////////
drag.onReleaseOutside=function(){
drag.stopDrag();

hit.onEnterFrame=function(){
if(this.hitTest(drag)){
hit._rotation -=10;
drag._alpha -=3;
if(drag._alpha<20)}
hit.onEnterFrame=null;
hit.rotation = 0

All looks very straight forward right? Once you have the program in front of you and you start playing around with it it becomes pretty straight forward.