Pentagram

Angus Hyland was design director on this fully illustrated edition of Samuel Taylor Coldridge's epic poem.

There is so much artistic license when visualizing a poem i feel.  This caught my attention because of its awesome layout.  It is quite conventional yet its boundaries are literally pushed away and broken out of. My favorite section os the image on the right spilling over the page and entering a new frame on the left.  So cool.

Anthony Burrill

Hiscox Reports and Accounts

Simply loved the fact that this is an accounting firms magazine, yet it is so cool!

Printed onto mat pink stock with just black ink, it is simple and very effective.  The layout of text image and graphs and even the typefaces are all thought out in a graphical and accessible way.  Makes me happy that even the most boring of companies tries to look cool.

Mat Heinl and his 'Moving Brands' group

I'm not usually a sucker for brand image, but in this case i cannot help but feel suave just looking at it.  I chose this image for the hand drawn logo really.  I have always liked logo design and i think this one has real class.  Firstly it is hand drawn with pencil which adds craftmanship to it.  

I find logo design fun because as you can see here, the designer has picked out symbols or paraphernalia which are associated with the class of people and the lives they live, and then ecorporated them together to make a crest.  Sounds like fun, maybe i should be doing some private practice into this on the side.  After all i'm just are some point i will be asked to design a logo for someone.

Kimou Meyer and Over and Over

Pulling in his passion for old school hip hop as well as 1950's cartoons and hand painted signs, Meyer's "Crooklyn" takes as its subject the somewhat edgy associations that many may connect with Brooklyn's most notorious neighborhoods

Dan Furnborough

Painted and Laser-cut Chip Board

Big Active

I really like the big block printed text on these 'Futureheads' CD sleeves.  It is this hand made printed style, with some grit and grime to add texture, blended with image and text which create this look which i want to be trying to replicate.  As of yet i haven't tried screen or letter press printing to create an outcome for a final resolution... i think it is time i stepped up to the challenge.

This beck CD sleeve and content is epic.  So many images! It is strangely nostalgic for some reason, not sure why, there must be something in there which i can relate to.

Aesthetic Apparatus

A quick dash of inspiration - Claire Scully

"The quiet revolution is the body of work by London based Illustrator Claire Scully inspired by the conflicting and harmonious relationships the urban environment has with the natural world. "The primary focus of my personal work is to explore the relationship between nature and the modern urban environment by the subversion of the familiar and overlooked into a sinister surreal situation using mutation and juxtapositions. A mix of playful humour with sinister undertones of conflict and mutation the quiet revolution is a visual exploration into the relationship between the natural world and the urban environment showing the significance of nature within a cities surroundings and the struggle for power we have with it, by using a combination of printed illustrations with moving image". Claire Scully: Studied for BA Graphic and Media design at London College of Communication (01-04) and Central Saint Martins (04-06) for MA Communication Design. As well as continually working on many personal projects and frequently collaborating with various other artists, Claire works as a freelance illustrator.
Printed / digital
In this section I have my print based / digital work. These are all digitally produced artworks that use some of the main principles of screen-printing but with the bonus of using a computer too I can create work with much more intricate detail. Because of my organic approach to my image making I try to create digital illustration without it looking like digital illustration."

These are not my words if you hadn't noticed...

Speaking From Experience

The brief (in short):
Produce a graphic response / graphic product / piece of work that makes the statement, comment observation, instruction or gives advice about your experience of the first year of the course to next years first years.

Any tone of voice is acceptable, do i want to scare, shock, inform, instruct, advise, entertain or humour them?

I feel as though i should help them as much as i can, simply because the begginning of the course was very stressful and challenging for me and then rest of the class members.

To kick start this brief we needed five concepts, each to do with a different aspect of the beginning of the year; from the studio work to how to deal with sleep deprivation, anything at all.

My five concepts were:
1. The best ways to make fiends
2. How to stay healthy as a student
3. Never be late again
4. Toilet paper
5. Remembering paper formats

After discussing these concepts with our small crit groups a couple emerged as the strong ideas.
The best ways to make friends / How to stay healthy as a student

The Best Ways to Make Friends:
Decided that i could have a lot of fun with this concept. Instead of being serious, i could make a how not to make new friends guide. A couple of ideas for deliverables were a small situation based pocket sized book which they could refer to in the studio. Unhelpful guidance such as;

'sit back and scrutinize everyone in the class by staring at them, but never talk to them.'

This does not have to be book format necessarily. It couple perhaps be a flip pad or swab style book which could hang around their neck. After all that would only add to them looking more strange and hindering their progress to make friends further.

It would be typography based, but could include funny illustrations of an example student acting out some of the situations.

Another idea was a demonstration video with actors acting out how to, and how not to behave around people in the studio.

How to Stay Healthy as a Student:

This would be a more serious piece of work, which would have instructional tone of voice.

It could encompass all areas of health, such as eating, exercise, sleep, work times, socializing and relaxation.

A nice idea was to create an information style graphic personal trainer with tips and tricks for exercise and what to eat. Deliverables included, a calender to refer to in the morning with nutrition guides and an exercise plan. It would also have a day planner to make organisation of the day easier.

However the the deliverable may need to be more portable so they could take it to the gym or the shops so they could refer to it on the spot.

A calender would be good i think, because there are is a set constraint of how it should be laid out. I.e. Date, time and legible.

I try to stay healthy as much as i can, i go to the gym and i eat sensibly, so this would be a good idea to follow through with as i have already got the information about nutrition and exercise in my room. Why bother giving myself more that i need to do...

I think i need to think more about different deliverables though. The calender, or week planner idea is good but maybe by talking to a few people about it i can get a better idea.

Communication is a Virus!

This was our only colaborative brief of the first year. I was working with Gareth, turns out we work really well together! Long term business partner im thinking.

From the list of possible briefs we chose "Get people to try something new."

This was the broadest possible brief title, which was nice as we could then play around with several concepts.
After brainstorming non-stop for literally 2 days we came to the conclustion that we should target the local music scene in Leeds. There is a huge independent music culture in Leeds which is does not get the exposure it needs to really kick off.
We decided we should aim to promote local music in Leeds and spread awereness of it to the people who are unaware how much of it there is.

Our target audience was slightly complicated, as our idea was based on this premise;
The promotional material would be placed in stores and shops in Leeds which have the image of indie culture, such as Size, Exit, Urban Outfitters and the music stores Crash and Jumbo Records. The customers will go into the store, pick up the promotional material (a free compilation CD with local independent music on it, also an insert which has information on our cause) where they will read about our cause and then pass on the information to people they know who do not know about indie music.
So, out target audience should be the indie culture.

Our vision was very big. We wanted to create a community which promoted the awereness of local indie music. Therefore we would have to work with a range of deliverables. We looked at 'Dont Panic' as inspiration, and how they created their whole image. We decided after both presentation crits with feedback from Ollie, Lauren and Liam that we should create a myspace account which would act as a forum and a place where people can talk, exchange and listen to indie music. The free CD would be the way of getting ourselves into the public domain.

After Sketching out our a load of ideas with Gareth and looking at some other indie CD covers we began developing them with CAD. These were my initial ideas and their development. The lines ideas was taken from the Soul Wax album cover. Plus we got the idea of taking the shape of the CD from a Futureheads album. We had constrains on our use of colour, so we used just one colour plus black. I think it looks pretty nice with the one colour.

The name 'Hidden Tracks' which would be the name of our company refers to the probelem we face of uncovering new music in Leeds which peeople are un aware of. They are hidden from the public by the 5 major label music companies which dominate over 85% of the music industry.

These are the initail designs Gareth came up with. After we both produced our inital ideas, we got together to pick them apart to create the final design.

This is what we came up with. However this is not completly accurate. Our final will be printed on cheap, thin brown paper stock. The colour below is as it is so that when printed onto the brown paper it will appear as a red, not too dissimilar from my initial ideas.

For our final outcome we considered the stock, which is cheap and affordable, so that the free CD can be justified and production could be maintained. Also from the existing sources we bought and picked up from Crash and Jumbo Records almost all used cheap materials, and also had a hand made feel. This is what we aimed to achieve.

How To...

Late post, sorry, you know how it is.

Fred finally gets to try out his '1000 how to...' book.
Each member of the year picked a number at random between 1-1000. Little did we know that the number we chose would decide out fate.. did i say fate.. i mean brief for the next 2 weeks.
My number was 264:

How to stop your cat from scratching your furniture.

Pretty cool i thought as i do have a cat scratching problem back at my house. I thought, well i may as well learn something from this so i decided immediately i would take the subject seriously and not put a comedy spin on it. Unlike a book Fred Showed me, about how to care for your cat which was rather disturbing. How to wash your cat and how to give your cat a massage as i far as i remember, both of which involve killing it.


I sketched some cats to be used on the final posters. Tried to make them emotive, sad, playful, cute .. etc so the people in the vet would have an emotional response.

Final posters. They work as a set, they would be placed in the reception area of the vet. Either all together or spread about the space. Together they inform the problem which is cats scratching furniture, possible solutions and also the effects of in-proper treatment towards the cat.

When you go to a vet the posters and information is dull, boring and uninspired. So, i was thinking high impact, colourful and entertaining.

To acompany these posters i thought a flyer would be suitable. It is a simple format that can be made with paper or card. It can also be situated in the vet. Containing the same information as the posters, so that it can be taken away by customers.