Order of the Mogwai

Final Show

The fundraising activities for the final show have not really gone as smoothly as planned. there were several ideas including a soup/cake sale & a gig that have not actually gone ahead because of lack of organisation & communication of the subject within our group. Our tutors have tried their best to organise us, but without us all getting together nothing has been done.

There is still hope for the 90's themed night, but the student responsible for arranging it with the venue is proving hard to get hold of. Hopefully once this project is out of the way it will be a bit easier to organise & get people together to discuss it. As i have shown, i have designed the poster for the night, but i need a date etc. to use it to promote.

If we do not manage to organise a fundraising activity we will have to split the payment for the business cards and anything else we may need for the show between the class. This was the reason for the fundraiser, so make it easier for people to afford! hopefully though, this is not how it will end up, this 90's night is looking like our last chance to raise some money.

Portfolio

As our final show is approaching I have had another look at my portfolio & would like to update it. At the moment, these are the pieces I am planning to display, but there is a high possibility that once my Final Major Project is completed I may wish to include that work.

This is an article I designed in 1st year for a Typeradio interview with the design team Syrup Helsinki. I would like to include this as it shows I have experience with Quark & I need to display all my software skills if possible.

This piece was created when I was experimenting with printmaking. I also combined it with Photoshop to include parts of photos taken in London. It all seems to blend well though, you can't really tell what has been photoshopped in because I took the image & created a brush set from it. This gave it the same effect as the hand printed items. This image demonstrates my ability to try new techniques.

This was also a 1st year piece, the brief was to appeal to young people to stop dangerous behaviour around the sea. I was very pleased with the way these images came out & am satisfied they communicate the brief well. The first image is the poster along with the postcards at the bottom.

These images will probably all be displayed together, they are all gig posters I have designed. But the last one, I am now considering to take out as it was more a poster for a party than an official gig. But this is the sort of work I love to do, so i need to make sure I include examples like this.

This is a CD design for a local band called Maheno, it was just an insert for a plastic wallet, so only 2 sides were needed. Again, this is the sort of work that really interests me, I get a lot more involved when music is part of the brief. This shows a more minimalist side to my design, so it would be a good idea to include this to show I have a good range of styles at my disposal.

This CD design was for my own band, we all discussed the ideas for the front cover & then I sort of took control of the design as a whole. The rest of the band liked it though & this was the design we settled on. This shows quite a mix of styles & seeing as I designed the logo too i think this would be a good piece to display my skills.

I created this on 1st year & it is still one of my favourite pieces of work. It was designed as a postcard to sum up my home town (Bournemouth) & what it meant to me. It shows the seaside part of the town, which is the main attraction, & it also shows part of the Mister Smiths logo which when it was open, was a popular live music venue which I went to a lot.

This was something I did outside of college, just for fun really. I made a set of t-shirt designs in a similar style, with this being my favourite. This is something very different to the other work I have decided to include with my portfolio, so something I should use. the majority of it was done using Illustrator & I think you can see that which is another skill I need to show off.

This photo is one that I took to use with the RNLI project. I might choose to diplay them both together as they are related, but I would definitely like to show that I have experimented with photography. It is something that I am interested in & I would like to show how varied my design interests are.

This is a collection of greeting cards I designed on 2nd year, they were all birthday themed & laid out as operating instructions. They seemed quite popular with you I showed them to & the designs worked very well with achieving the desired look. I will most likely include the actual cards i designed as well as this photo, this is just to demonstrate how well they work as a set.

MoDiP

I was part of the group that originally designed the new MoDiP logo on 1st year (Me, Tom Green & Jess Sergent-Tipping) so this was a nice continuation of that. As we all contributed to the logo design, we all had our own different interpretations of it. So when we designed a flyer together there was a lot of mixed ideas which did not neccessarily make sense together. This year, when that part of the brief was set again (flyer / poster / postcards) I decided to go it alone to let my ideas shine through. For me, the circles in the logo were the perfect way of showing the textures of what this museum has on display. My poster & postcard were actually chosen by MoDiP as something to use for their advertising. Here, in the poster you can see how I have focused on textures rather than whole objects using the circles that were inspired by the logo. Originally, the text at the bottom was all the same size & all to the left with the logo occupying the right side. But after talking with Francis who was running the project, I focused on the information they decided was most important & needed to be seen clearer. The rest is just extra information once the attention of the viewer has been held. The font choice was not my own, it was set by the MoDiP team, but I do think it works well. I probably would have chosen something very similar had I been given total creative control.

My postcards followed the same theme of focusing on the texture of the objects. All with the same layout of the logo on the right & image on the left. This was intended so that the postcards would be seen as a series & possibly a collectable set. The images leave you guessing what they could be & if you couldn't guess, you turn the postacrd over where it shows a small version of the complete image plus details. These details were not actually available to me, so I just had to pass on what I had & Francis was to take them to the MoDiP team to get them to add the needed information themselves.

Jonathan Barnbrook

Jonathan Barnbrook is a graphic designer & typographer who came in to show some of his work & to talk to us about what he does. He was also able to share his experience with us in regards to leaving college & getting work. After the man talk in which he just explained his work and the fonts he had designed, he took us to the base room for a presentation he had prepared on how to succeed after college. He talked to us about how we needed to come across ton interviewers. This was the part I really enjoyed the most as he was completely open & honest about what we needed to do. He explained how it is not just important that we sound professional & serious about the job but we also need to come across friendly and fun. I assume this counts with most, but not all businesses. But I have taken it on as good advice as what I have always been told up to now was that I need to be very serious & being too personal is discouraged, whereas Jonathan suggested the opposite. He also explained the importance of the portfolio over qualifications. Apparently there is a lot more emphasis on your actual work as opposed to what grades you have!

Although I am not a huge fan of Jonathan Barnbrooks work, some of it is alright, but in general I think his design work is over cluttered & I personally do not like the majority of his fonts. But having him come to talk with us was a great & very informative opportunity from which i have come away with some useful information. It definitely fills me with a bit more confidence of getting a job that I enjoy.

New York

New York Trip

For last year's educational trip we went to Berlin, this time we visited New York! I had a great time, unfortunately though, due to flight times we didn't get that many full days in New York. But while we were there we went to MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) which really surprised me. Whereas I would generally go to agllery & see odd things i liked with most of it not being that interesting, this gallery was almost all work that caught my eye. Below are some of the many photos i took while looking round. There was such a variety, but all of great work that I really loved.

What did disappoint me though was the amount on the Helvetica exhibition, as this was the main reason I wanted to go. What was on show was very interesting, but this was only a very small portion of the gallery. It showed a few different uses of the font & a brief history of the font. But it didn't make too much difference, as like I said, the rest of the gallery was very interesting.....

As well as MOMA, there was some sight seeing & shopping. We visited the Empire State Building & took the trip up the near the top. We also took the ferry to Staton island which lead us past the Statue of Liberty. We did not actually go to the statue, but this ferry got us close enough to take some decent photos.

CV

This is my current CV as it appears on screen. But when I print it out I have either printed on a white card with rough texture or various types of handmade paper to give it a very personal feel. The font is Alte Haas Grotesk, the main reason I chose this was to coincide with my website which uses the same font. It works nicely with my work & represents me quite nicely. Nothing too fancy & quite similar to Helvetica but not quite. & although I like Helvetica in design I didn't want to appear using it as a cop out as I can imagine a lot of CV's using that font & I want to stand out.
This is a scan of what my CV looks like once printed out on one type of hand made paper I have experimented with. It gives it a nice rough edge & I really like the effect made by the ink getting caught on the edges! It gives the whole thing that added personal feel & it definately stands out over the usual standard paper printed CV's.