Annnnd the work begins......

After an amazing summer, a lot of alcohol, sun and traveling I'm back to college tomorrow. How deflating. However rather exciting at the same time. I've moved into a new flat and am feeling quite optimistic about the year ahead. I've got two, all be them short placements under my belt and one to look forward to this coming October. Hopefully my plan for this year is coming together. I STILL need to make a start on my dissertation which is starting to stress me out but then that's the story of my life.......
Hello college.
Goodbye summer ;(

4 Briefs to do by December 16th, Dissertation to start and placement in October. Best get crackin!

Work Experience day today!

Today I'm going over to Selby to spend a day at Space Creative. I think it's safe to say I'm very excited. I don't need to take anything with me other than myself however I think I'll be making notes every second I can! I'll update you how it went as soon as I'm home :D

Development sheets...






















The two final logos I produced for the company to choose from...





The brief that was set to me was to design a completely new logo for a company in Malton for their 8th International symposium on wild boar and other suids. Last years logo was in my opinion and Space Creatives, SHOCKINGLY bad. Quite what went through their minds when creating it is a little bit beyond me...
The brief said up to two colour in their specifications and a minimum of two designs. The logo is to be used predominantly for print based work however they also require a version in RGB so it can be applied to their website. I chose these shades of Green and Orange because the Fera website which they are closely associated with use shades of them. I took the pantone colour codes they use and used not the same but similar ones on the solid coated spectrum.
I'm not particularly proud or happy with the resolution I came up with during that afternoon, but it stuck to the brief and they seemed happy with it. I couldn't make my mind up if they were just being nice to me, or genuinely pleased with my resolution. I suppose time will tell if I see it being used! It definitely got me back into the swing of things and my mind ticking over again after the summer 'break' and the gap between my last placement.

Also....... If I'm honest as much as I liked it working for a day at Space Creative I'm not so sure that I liked it as much as Print Ideas and Printing.com in Leeds. Their way of working, studio environment and atmosphere was completely different. I wonder what FPP Design in Newcastle in a couple of weeks will be like........

Work Experience

For the past two days I have been having some work experience at a graphic design and printing company in Leeds called Print Ideas and Printing.com. Both have been really useful I have learnt so much over a short space of time.

Design is...

"Clutter is a failure of design, not an attribute of information." - Edward Tufte

I like this :)

BOOKS!

I've had a treat this morning... 4 new shiny books arrived from Amazon :D haha they are as follows...

100 habbits of successful graphic designers
Pictograms Icons & Signs
Case Study Research - Design and Methods 4th edition
Information Design Workbook

A Design For Life

The legend aka weirdo = Philippe Starck.



The competitors.

I watched an amazing programme lastnight on BBC 2 called A Design For Life. It was the first part thats going to be on over a period of weeks. The description goes as follows...

"In an effort to find a new generation of British design talent, Philippe Starck, one of the world's best known product designers, invites 12 hopefuls to a school of design he has set up in Paris. Over coming weeks he will whittle them down until one fortunate student wins the opportunity of a lifetime - to work alongside the master for six months at his agency in the French capital.

Ranging from unemployed retail worker Jess to college lecturer Ilsa, the students meet Starck for the first time and discover what a larger than life character he is. And they face their first challenge - to head to a local hypermarket and find examples of good and bad design. When they explain their thinking to Starck he critiques them and selects the weakest five for a further nerve-wracking test. When it's over the group of 12 is now 10 and the school of design can begin in earnest."

It is far more about product design than anything else, but i found it really interesting, seeing how people work and explain their concepts. I sat critically analysing their work without even realising it and understanding their 'lingo' it was great! I got really annoyed when the first two out of the selected twelve had to leave because i really didnt agree with his reasonning on getting rid of one of them. What an amazing opportunity, I think I'm going to be glued to the next few episodes and follow it to see who win. Check it out! :)

Definitive Creative - Leeds

http://www.definitive-creative.co.uk/

Dhanank Pambayun

http://evergrunge.com/

The Dreaded Dissertation...

So, as most degrees require you to write a dissertation of some form there is no surprise that my course requires it too. The question I have posed for mine is as follows...

How effective are colour coding systems and information graphics for disabled users?

How successful this is to be I'm not too sure. It was something that came to my attention while on my work placement back at the end of May when I worked at Printing.com and Print Ideas in Leeds. The design team had done some work for a disabled home where they had a coding system that helped the people who lived there navigate from room to room. They used three simple codes. Colour, symbols and words. By combining the three together people would use one or more of the codes to understand where they were going and why. This opened a whole new can of questions for me and really interested me how design for disabled people is considered.
Anyway... I havent spent much time yet in looking into my question, however these are some of the books I have looked at:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/reader/1412960991/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-page
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/0500286353/sr=1-4/qid=1251868997/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books&qid=1251868997&sr=1-4
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/3899552172/sr=1-1/qid=1251869122/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books&qid=1251869122&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/1592534104/sr=1-5/qid=1251869177/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books&qid=1251869177&sr=1-5
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/0500513791/sr=1-9/qid=1251869249/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books&qid=1251869249&sr=1-9

General books on both communication theory and information Graphics I have found are also of assistance.

Space Creative - Selby

http://www.spacecreative.co.uk/

I've organised a day's placement at Space Creative for Wednesday 16th of September, which I'm really looking forward to. They currently have a student in working for them on a two week placement and couldn't fit me in before I go back to college but said they could manage a day. A day is better than nothing and can only lead to better things. What they did say however is that if I could give them some dates I'm also more than welcome to do a two week placement with them when it's convenient for them and my college timetable. So fingers crossed something might work out and lets hope it's the kind of work that I want to do!
I'll keep you posted with developments! :D