Time for an Update

So I havent blogged in a long time, been quite busy with work and deadlines.
Theres been a few projects since we last spoke and its time to update you on them.


Alongside the zine project which you may have read about we were doing a branding project in which we had to come up with a brand image for a museum exhibition  showcasing dead and lost tech, I chose to look at the evolution of circuit boards and how they got to what they are today. We had to produce 3 parts to the project, a logo/brand image, 3 display panels and up to 3 pages of an accompanying website.

I must admit that i really struggled with producing a range of idea's, however I came up with quite a simple but strong idea, that i could work through all the parts needed.

This was the brand image

The thin green lines represent the circuits on all the different boards and became a really nice, consistant element within the work, these were the display panels, designed to hang around the exhibit

The panels were intended to run throughout the exhibit, with each panel being linked by vinyl strips along the floor, adding a little bit of fun for younger children.

This is a small taster of the webpage I created

Even though I didnt give this project the attention it deserved I still feel it is a really good out come.

Next up The Beauty Of Books...

5 copies of happiness!

Its done! 5 copies of my zine are complete, it wast a particularly stressful process either, my printer has a copy function so I didn't have to rush and the whole imposition process went pretty smooth because I had done all my pages in a bound form already.

SO

Here's a few snapshots to tie you over to review day....

Binding, for the old zine

So this zine project is a good excuse to look at book binding and the like.

Its something I've been intrigued in for a while but never  really had the means to give it a go.

There are so many different methods of book binding its a bit over whelming so I've decided that the most appropriate methods for a small zine would either be saddle stitching or stapling.

Since my zine has more of a scrapbook feel and isn't self cover ( the same paper as the main body of the publication) I think that saddle stitching them would be more appropriate and as a plus it is far more durable.

Zine Research part 3------Murder can be Fun

This is one of the more obscure zines I've looked at, Murder can be Fun

This quirky zine bases itself around bizarre death, murder, mayhem, crime, disaster, weird books and even weirder people. It began in San Francisco in 1986, being published by a guy called John Marr, having been running for over 20 years, Marr researches vigorously every issue into the different strange deaths and oddities which have occurred and then tries to document the funniest.


The zine started out as a 16 page, xeroxed publication and has since grown to 48 pages. There have only been 20 different issues which is not a lot considering the time it has been around.

It seems to have a mixed style, some illustration some cliche photography, but no real experimentation, I like it but it seems like the safe option, nothing wrong with that but I want to make something a bit more unique...

Threadless, take 2

So if your reading my blog you should know by now about how much I enjoy t-shirt design just doodling a character and slapping it on a tee ( theres a lot more thought than that, but that shortens my typing). The goal at the moment is to get my foot in the door at threadless, a community of tee designers who vote on one an others designs with the ultimate goal of going to print and to sale.

This isn't my first submission to threadless, I was crushed a few weeks back when my Muffin tee idea didn't make it to scoring. Personally its my most favourite design I've done, but they think it needs work. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

So having been knocked back by that I began work on another tee, "8-BIT hero", this was initially part of a uni project and the character has basically grown more than he was ever designed to. 

I considered the placement a lot more on this design and really wanted to get it right.

It took about 3 days between submitting it but the finally approved it, I was at the scoring stage! the hard thing about promoting it is that you need a threadless account to vote, and when asking my fellow designers to vote, few could be bothered with the hassle.

2 days into voting it had an average rating of about 1.65 out of 5, which isn't great, at this point I realised I was being a bit to kind with my voting style and that the community is rather harsh.
Due to the low scoring, 2 days into its 7 day period the design was removed from the running...

Its annoyed me but looking at some of the most successful designers on the site, the proportion of printed designs to that submitted is ridiculous so i will just have to keep trying I suppose......

Photography Briefs

So to run alongside our Zines brief we have been set a photography brief every week, to take 10 shots of a select subject following the 'rules' of photography (i.e. rule of thirds, leading lines, etc.)


The first Subject we were given was the subject of beauty, I have never been great at photography but its amazing how much a picture can be improved by a good camera, thanks tash xx
I tried to get a nice variety of subject in my shots and when I went out on my shoot only had a few idea's in mind so a lot of it was worked on the go.

The second of our shoots was named 'In Every Frame', this was a night shoot making things tricky, i had gotten comfortable with the camera during the day time, and was lining up shots quite well. At night however the camera's auto focus becomes very tentative and it is mostly better to manually try and focus, still getting the hang of it though. Another thing about this shoot was we had to shoot a model which involved directing a suspicious target without he/she knowing, surveillance.

Our 3rd and sadly final shoot was on vernacular, theres been some confusion as to what we need to actually photograph for this so I think what everyone comes up with is gonna be slightly varied, I thought it meant to describe somewhere just through association and not the obvious parts of the town,( Cathedral), My main idea to work on was the railways which made lincoln, there is a lot of the original engine sheds and signal boxes still in plain sight.

i'm actually a bit sad its over cos i've grown fond of photography, I intend to keep at it tho, its a useful skill.

Idea's illustrated

So after our YCN lecture a few weeks ago i looked into there in house magazine, Idea's Illustrated.

Its basically a quarterly magazine they do in which they give a word or term to a group of illustrators and have them work around that.

This quarter? HAPPINESS!

 Now i'm not a great illustrator but this sort of thing interests me and just from this one issue i have gained confidence in having a unique style.

This edition was a nice round £5 well worth it, i'm thinking could develop a nice ol' collection of these beasts.

YCN-Visiting Lecture

So on wednesday I went to my first guest lecture, a visit from YCN. I've heard about YCN briefly before and about the awards they give so I thought the lecture was gonna be fairly straightforward, explanation of this years award briefs, which it was.

What I didn't know was that they also have an in-house design firm which is responsible for ads as big as the Becks Art Label campaign, it really brings it home when you meet the firm of a design that you recognise.

 I have seen the labels before and thought to myself I wonder whose concept that was....

They also produce a quarterly magazine called Idea's illustrated, basically they give the one idea to a group of illustrators and gather quotes from designers around this idea or word and they then put the 2 together in a print publication, this quater its the Happy issue.

 I've just Purchased it......couldn't resist.

I never realised that often as part of winning one of the briefs you end up working with the company and creating a final, real design that gets put to the market, your almost always payed for your time too, these briefs seem well worth getting involved in even if its just to beef up your CV.

There was also a small talk stapled to the end of the YCN one by the guys from design studio PROPAGANDA- the guys who made GHD's corporate image, Propaganda have a strange concept for there business, they don't just design they try to break down and rework the entire company, its actually a really cool way of looking at how to re brand.

Zines Research Part 2---Mike Perry

Mike Perry is a graphic designer/ typographer/ illustrator who has quite a unique style... I think its brilliant. I have a thing for people who's designs aren't necessarily classed as the norm but end up creating there own style, and it may not be to everyones taste but they keep goin with that style, because they enjoy doing it, people like Jon Burgerman and mike perry fit this perfectly.


Mike Perry has a near constant flow of zines, there seems to be no reoccurring theme other than his illustrations, I couldn't find a proper title but it seems to be something he does regularly.  The illustrations which make them up I find great, the hand drawn style and qwerkyness of each drawing just makes it feel personal to you rather than something with over 2000 editions thats just several prints.

They aren't technically your average zine, each page explodes with colour as opposed to the xerox-ed feel of more traditional zines, but the colour works well with the content. They are also not quite so low budget in zine tradition, one copy of this will set you back a tidy $12, personally I would pay that cos I am growing rather fond of the guy's work.

This video is basically his explanation of his design process, the exact mindset that I admire in designers and like to hope I think the same way as.

There is a one off speciality zine which I have to mention, a lot of it is blown up work from past zines but still very impressive considering the size. He created this GIANT zine for an exhibition in Portland, all I wanna know is how the he managed to bind the bastard!

Check him out, really unique style that I love.

Mike Perry.....DONE

Next on my zine research-Murder can be Fun

Zines, Lets get started!--------Research 1

So we've been given a new brief, to create a zine based on the idea of community (we had a research brief over Xmas to look into a specified community, mine was video gamers). I guess i should start by explaining what a Zine is......in its basic form, its a fan made mini magazine on a specific topic, usually between 16-32 pages. Its not usually politically correct or unbiased its about the writer getting his views across more than trying to win the reader over and sell copies. 

The zine has huge origins within the original punk scene and are often very low budget, due to financial restrictions the original zines were cut out images and hand written type, mass printed from a black and white copier, this black and white print method became more of a trademark of zines than a necessity.

Sniffin' Glue was one of the first Zines to be created, in July 1976. Punk music was not widely accepted across television and publication in its early days so Sniffin' glue, even though it only ran for a year, is one of the best sources for early photography and information on the music scene, readership reached over 15,000 at its peak.




 Now the design of the thing is pure DIY, no former knowledge of layouts or anything involved, its purely about getting the point across, this rag-tag style is quite attractive, it adds a lot of character to the publication, making it very personal. I don't really like the style but it fits the subject that's being written about perfectly, it seems that almost by mistake they has been some un-known thought put into the design of it.


Next time on Zine Research-Mike Perry's Graphic Zine

Time to get Dressed......so to speak

Lately I have really been working on a side of graphics that I would love to specialise in and hopefully make a career out of.....creating graphic tee's.
I spend a lot of time lately on http://www.threadless.com/  and could quiete easily work through my student loan on a single shopping outburst. I am envious of the designs that make it through and often kick myself for not thinking of the often comical concepts!
I spend a lot of time designing characters and the doodles, all the friends in my head and they all seem to work well on t shirts.

Obviously this guy had to end up on a shirt, my original character and probably my designer trademark.

So here are a few more of my designs and they all seem to be working and from those who have seen them all seem to approve.

Heres the most recent design i've been working on, its attributed to a mister Harry Winfield, but i shall not go into why.

This is the original flat art.

This is the t-shirt that was born from it.

Any feedback is welcome.

Typeface Sluts! *UPDATE*

So I have done some more research and attempted a few more designs

There is a variety of typefaces and the innuendo has a nice variety from blatantly obvious to subtly sexy ;)

Could I please get some feedback please?

Typeface Sluts!

So we got given a few projects to tie over the christmas holidays, the most visual of which was to create a type 'tart' card. The brief was to look at tart cards which prostitutes leave in phone booths, basically there business cards, and a mixture of typefaces, we then had to create one of our own, based around the characteristics of the typeface we chose, the funnier the better, good thing I have a filthy mind, made coming up with some puns rather easy. 

It was a brief circulated within the design community and some of the submissions are brilliant. http://www.wallpaper.com/sex-issue/tart-cards

This is my attempt at creating one would like some feedback please, theres a few more idea's in the works also so this may not be a final.