A year of possibilities

The last week of uni before the Christmas break and already I'm starting to make plans for the new year ahead. This week I have been talking with an adviser, part of the international experience faculty, about the opportunities and offers that are available to me whilst at University. I also wanted to find out more about the module spoke about recently in one of our lectures on ERASMUS and the possibilities of placements in a working studio abroad or studying at a faculty in Europe.

He suggested to research some potential opportunities in Europe suggesting to look at Scandinavia, Finland, Sweden, Cyprus, Madrid, Milan and France in particular for Graphic Design. With a link to the application needed to fill out and return by January, this will be task to complete over Christmas as well as applying for a passport and emailing my portfolio and CV along with a covering letter to possible work placements to undertake.

Many students on the graphic design course have been talking about an up coming visit to China with our course. I wish to find out a little bit more about this chance to experience their culture, universities and the creative industry out there. I believe that taking part in this trip will help me get to know my peers and tutors more, develop myself and work and help my CV and experience of graphic design globally.

NAP x

Portfolio & CV

With my recent plans in the making I have redesigned my creative CV and put together some portfolio pdf's which I aim to send out to creative agencies and studios in the UK in the hope to gain some work experience or feed back on my work. Below our my details such as online portfolios, contact details, skills, experience and how I have displayed these in a pleasing format to represent myself.

I have yet to compile more portfolio pages such as these below.

NAP x

Making plans for the future

Our second lecture was based around opportunities abroad, a talk from IEMS (international experience for students) explained the process of their work and showed previous students trips. I am already familiar with the program as last year I enquired about a course at Shillington College in Australia. (I briefly mentioned this in an old post in my PDP last year). This lecture gave us information on the ERASMUS scheme and the possibilities of studying in Europe, with fees paid by the university with grants.

As well as thinking about making plans to study abroad, I have been focusing my time on creating some personal branding for myself so that when the time comes to apply for work experience to undertake in the last few months of my second year at uni. I will have a cover letter, CV and portfolio to showcase. This will also help me in applying for international experience studying or working abroad.

Today's seminar focused on our CV's and the experience and skills we have and are developing, I had previously wrote a CV this summer in preparation for the year ahead (below). I plan to add to this and strengthen through out the year and my journey through projects, placements and work experience, I also plan to add to my skills audit.

(My first draft for my creative CV)

We were also asked to think about possible professions/ career objectives and bullet point some actions/plans to take. I would like to explore the idea of teaching vs. working in a settled design team for a company. I would also like to think about possibly freelancing, to make a little extra money this year at university.

NAP x

... Many more to go

Our longest running project will be focusing around technology and increasing our knowledge in a variety of platforms to create our artwork. With a moving, static and interactive poster to create a campaign we have been set a revolutionary movement each to use as our subject matter. All posters created by the class will work together to advertise an exhibition. So far with this project we are in the research and development of ideas stage, I plan to showcase my posters and concept when finalized.

A new brief was set this week with the very open brief of creating a book based upon the name 'A hard rain'. No other requirements other than the title and the materials size - A2. In the next few weeks before Christmas lectures on typography will be held to help us visualise our ideas and aim to be a source of inspiration.

It has also been revealed to us that more briefs will be set before Christmas, with many projects and plans to juggle this festive season is going to be a very busy one!

NAP x

One down....

Our first deadline was yesterday and here is what I have been working on. I was asked to create a first class set of stamps which would be issued around the time of the Brazil 2014 Fifa world cup, along with a manipulation of the first class set to achieve a second class set. I choose to focus on the positives of what the event could bring to the locals, I found a project called 'Painting the Favela'. This project focused on updating the slums of Rio with vibrant colours and patterns on the exterior of surrounding buildings to give hope to its residents and onlookers. I chose to illustrate the buildings and the whole street for my subject matter on my stamps with a strap line 'Brazil 2014 World cup' to create a link back to the event.

NAP x

Hello 2nd year!

So a week back into my second year at university with four modules to balance, level 2 of personal development planning of creative pathways began. Last year's level was based around our own personal style and researching contextual artists relating to our work, reflecting with an in depth analysis. Level 2 is focused around the outside creative word and the industry, working on our own strengths and weakness' to develop into an employable designer. This year we have been asked to start planning our own path to employment and looking for opportunities that could possibly help us to achieve any set goals or achievements.

I mentioned in a previous post about the possibility of a year abroad studying or in a work placement, as well as focusing on my work this year I hope to also make plans for my future by gaining as much experience as possible and undertaking new and challenging projects.

NAP x

A mature (cheddar) film

As promised here's a little snapshot into the filming of our video inspired by PES and the site plate interactive. We wanted to showcase are 4 main topics which we have decided to base our pages on, the origin of The Moon, the space race and astronauts, the anatomy of The Moon and its craters and finally The Moon in the media. We wanted to animate everyday objects bring them to life in a playful and funny way as we felt it would fit with the overall tone of our website. I love our results just from quickly viewing all the pictures we were able to get an idea of how it will look, we now need to add in a few introduction scenes with text and credits, but heres a small selection of photos.

We will add a white screen to finish so as to illustrate the flash from the phone. I really enjoyed this style of filming, it was so easy and fun using everyday objects I hope to develop this further into a new medium to work with. Branching out into film will help strengthen my range of mediums and give a possible advantage, any experiments I pursue I will sure to document in the Easter break. 

NAP x

The End Is In Sight !

We also had our critiques today for our book cover as part of our Design in Context module, I was able to reach my final design in this session will the help of my tutors and peers around the class and their feedback. I'm very happy with the my result and hope to submit to Penguin in late April 2013.

My final Cover 

This week I have also been working on my essay discussing a quote from the extract 'The Crystal Goblet' or 'Printing Should be Invisible' by Beatrice Warde. My main focus was on psychedelia and transparent designs such as time tables, schedules etc, i'm very lucky to have the people in my life especially my family. They were a great help in writing this essay as my father (as seen in my Psychedelic Love post) and my cousin Jerry Richards (mentioned in my Music post) have both experienced the era and the lifestyle and were both happy to supply me with their stories and answers to my questions. 

The goblets represents methods of portraying the same content (wine), I'm always looking to push my work that little bit further and felt what a better way to present my essay than to apply these two design styles to it. For hand in on Friday I now need to print my essay after the applied designs and mount my cover, after that it will be a very long awaited 3 hour drive home to Blackpool.

NAP x

PES

Today we took the photos needed to build our video for the homepage, we wanted to create a fun handmade, playful stop frame animation. Ben showed me a few videos on youtube of animations created by PES yesterday, I had never seen these before and loved the style. Surprisingly Simon showed a few today in our lecture. 

A few of my favourites from PES 

His website portfolio is so inspiring!

Our plan for our video was include our 4 main topics we have discussed relating to the moon, however still include our concept of cheese. This style allowed us to 'play up' the humour and playful side we have to our website whilst bringing all elements together. 

We hope to have a finish our film on thursday by adding an opening to the video and credits with text, we also need to add either a soundtrack to the video or sound effects. I really believe what we have achieved today will look great on the website and be a great section in our portfolio. 

Hope to post the video on Thursday.

NAP x

"The Cheese Group"

There has been a lot of progress since my last post on our group project building a website of 12 pages talking about the moon. Recently we have began our coding for each of our pages, a brief outline of my design is below, we have decided on a 3 column layout with a simple pastel colour palette. 

I designed the logo to sit in the centre of each page, we all wanted the concept of having the same logo on each page but we wanted our own pages to stand out from each others. Taking this in to consideration I choose to have 5 different versions of our logo, the difference being the colour, this would fit nicely with our choice of pastel colour scheme and join all pages together in a house style.  The logo will be a rollover image so that when the mouse is hovered over the logo the text 'The Moon' will appear in the centre like above and when moved away only the coloured moon will be left.

I hav now begun coding the layout and design for each of my 3 pages (example above) so that all I will need to do is place the text, finished illustrations and any links into the coding of the pages. I've chosen a very space age inspired design to fit with my topic. 

We now need to film our 30 second intro video as a group, to feature on our homepage. We have been bouncing some ideas around and not many have stuck but today in class we were given the exercise to draw the story board for our films and discuss. We have split into pairs and have come up with 2 ideas, I influenced by the website plate interactive and our clinical fresh style of design featured on the homepage and my individual pages. We plan to film our final decided video on monday so that the main group work will be completed before the spring/Easter break next week. 

In the Easter break I plan to write up 400 words for each of my pages, have the illustrations and imagery for my pages and the direct mail will be designed and printed. 

NAP x

The Wind in the Willows 2

So lately I have been slacking in my posts but not necessarily in my work! I've decided to concentrate my book design on The Wind in the Willows. As I believe my concept for the design seemed stronger and more refine than the idea of representing The Big Sleep with Orchids. It looked to me like everyone else had this same idea in our classroom so by steering away from this I wanted my work to stand out and surprise people. 

The Idea for my book cover is to have flowers and insects such as butterflies and bees flow from the exhaust pipe of Mr.Toad's car. This is to represent the idealistic view people hold over the country of being pure and natural, the colourful clusters of flowers also work to create that spring setting the book opens in. By layering the flowers and insects in a claustrophobic way, I believe it will appeal to a younger audience as they intrigue and sense of fun and curiosity will attract them to the book and allow their eyes to explore the cover by following the wrap around image. Below are some developmental variations of my book cover which experiment with the different backgrounds.

Above - "The net curtains" the name given to the a popular choice amongst my peers and my tutor, that tradition English feel I was hoping to create from the inspiration of Charlecote Park clearly comes across in the fabric background as mentioned in class. I feel the subtle grey hues work well as a contrast against the vibrant flowers and the texture of the fabric will be an interesting element for the young audience to interact with. 

Above - "Brown Paper" the second favourite of the variations was the creased brown paper background. In a one to one talk with Simon he found my Sellotape and masking tape prints fascinating  from the accidental textures and interesting layered effect, he thought they were very playful and of that victorian era of flower pressing (this variation is shown below). This feedback session and playful factor in the design gave me the idea to try different textured backgrounds.

I love how the defined crease intersects with the spine to create an interesting composition. 

Below - I was so inspired by the paper cutting artists I featured in a Sunday Run Down post I played with the idea of layering papers with cutout areas to make up the image and text. Also in the the post link above is the artist Ben Giles who influenced the idea of flowers cascading across the page. 

A few alterations are needed before printing and another one to one talk with my tutors but I feel my finalised design is near enough there. I hope to submit a design to penguin in the hopes of feedback from them also and the chance of winning of course!  

NAP x

Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun

Its been a whirl wind lately, from mountains of work to be done to finding new digs. On a more relaxed note my mother and papa came to visit last weekend for mothers day. I'd planned a beautiful day out to Charlecote Park, I love visiting historically old houses to learn the stories told by the people who work there. A few shots of our trip are shown below.

Inspiration can come from anywhere and what a perfect fitting to find some linking to my Design in Context module. Lately I have been focusing my attention towards The Wind in the Willows for my book design, since visiting Charlecote Park I really want to inject that very english feel to my design as I feel it will represent the story setting beautifully and represent the era the story was written in. I found that the patterned wall coverings illustrate this very stately english house feel I was looking for. It is very similar to the work of William Morris.  

In the library I found an information pack which talked about the books, furniture and all events in the Library, unfortunately the books were being kept in storage to protect them from the rewiring and spring cleaning of the house. I came across this very interesting page which shows how they used to write the name of the books on the outside of the pages instead of on the spine, I was so surprised by this fact that it seemed wrong to not see the text in its usual place. 

I picked up a cute little penguin book for £1 in one of the second hand book shops dotted around the park, I have been wanting to start a collection for a while of penguin books for a design purpose. The popularity of colour organised shelves in interior design can be seen in all magazines and online.

I also found this amazing wood table in the kitchen of Charlecote, I openly admit to being a wood addict obsessed with the wood grain texture and tones. 

Below is the wooden surface next to the sink with these little drains, the origin of the name draining board perhaps? I would love to have this in the country kitchen I dream to have one day. 

NAP x