OUGD502 - The Rivalry

THE RIVALRY is a collaboration of opposites who share a discerning eye. While we are inverses of each other, our collective strengths exceed our differences. This duality lies at the center of everything we do. The studio is owned and run by JESSE KACZMAREK and ANDY GUGEL—each a leader in their creative field (BRAND and DIGITAL, respectively)—with offices in NEW YORK CITY and MINNEAPOLIS. Together we create engaging experiences with clients who champion the potential of design.

The Rivalry's design is the sort of design that I appreciate the most. It's refreshing, simple and to the point design that almost seems effortless. Simple colour schemes and contemporary typefaces give an overall aesthetic of cleanliness inviting the user to pick them up. The most notable of their recent designs is the Google rebrand.

Caviar Identity

Mithun Identity

This sort of identity really appeals to me because of it's simplicity in just a logotype rather than over complicated symbols. The restraint shown for the colour palette further adds to the sophisticated feel of this identity. I also feel like the layering of stock in the stationary plays a big part to its success. As the design is not simply a flat page, it has elements that move making it more visually appealing. 

http://therivalry.co/

https://www.behance.net/TheRivalryInc

OUGD502 - Taking Care of Business - Website Design

For the website we wanted something really simple and straight to the point because none of us are really interested in web design. So we thought something simple would be simple to upkeep and not too confusing for clients to navigate. 

Also to represent our playful nature instead of adding portraits of ourselves on the about page we put our favourite animals instead. As well as including our likes and dislikes so that clients will treat as friends not just their employed designers. 

We also added a print store page because we wanted to be able to do our own personal work on the side of other client's projects so we thought that selling prints would add a little extra income here and there. Also it shows off our abilities in print if anyone was unsure. 

OUGD502 - Sophie Rose Wall Make Up Artistry

I was approached via my facebook page to create a visual identity for a make up artist student. She had given me some concepts of her own.

These initial concepts that she had created helped me a lot in order to get the kind of thing that she wanted. With the "smoky" effect she was trying to create the illusion of glitter. 

I started by taking a typeface very similar to her serif choices and framed it within a box. I created patterns based on different tools of the make up artistry trade: eyeshadow, glitter, lipstick and eyeliner. I thought that this sort of graphic style could be suited to any occasion and keeping the logo itself very simple would lend well to any situation too. 

However when sending these designs to her she preferred the one where she had found a diamond with watercolour textures, so I tried a range of designs with some quick textures that I produced. 

In response to this she changed her mind once more. Which was rather annoying as I just wanted to do it quickly as I could as I wasn't charging her much. But never the less she wanted to use her initials instead of her full name now. And I suppose this is just what it is like working for a client - sometimes they may not necessarily have the same taste as you as a designer so you have to deal with this sort of criticism and not take it to heart. 

I played around with using her first and last initial with a picture of a rose in between to represent her middle name and she seemed to really respond well to this. After that it was just minor adjustments, changing the colours to ones that are greyscale and altering the type a little.  

And this was the final logo that I created. I learnt a lot about possible work from this process as I feel like I spent a lot more time than I should have done making alterations. If I was to do this again I would definitely charge more as I only charged her £35 for about half a days worth of work. Still it is good practice for me to communicate professionally with a client and arrange payments for future work that I may receive. 

OUGD502 - Study Task 2 - HORT One Day brief

Today we were briefed on a one day brief to complete for Hort, a studio that hopefully we will get to visit when we go to Berlin. A little bit about Hort:

Launched in 1994 (originally as Eikes Grafischer Hort), Berlin studio Hort initially developed a sizeable reputation for its music industry-based design projects. Since then it has demonstrated both versatility and an approach to experimentation through the juggling of big client work (Nike, Volkswagen, The New York Times) and equally fascinating self-initiated output.

For the design I decided that I wanted to play with paper cut after looking at a lot of Snask's work. And the idea of a 3D message to Hort was my best thought. It didn't take me long to figure out what to say because I wanted to keep it cheerful and playful. So I went with "Hello gorgeous Hort".
 

The production of it took a lot longer than I had anticipated, originally I was going to have all of the letters in "Gorgeous" completely 3D with nets and everything but there simply wasn't enough time to do this. So I ended up just laying the paper cut on the work surface and propping up the other words with thick board legs on the back. However this contrast between perspectives of 3D and 2D creates more interest to the composition so it worked in my favour.

What I particularly liked about this was that I could take away the "Hort" and have a general message to everyone so I can use it on my social media pages and so on. 

I was really happy with the end result and I hope that Hort likes it too!

OUGD502 - Taking care of business - Installation Design

We chose 5 key areas to explore within our practice and each chose one to research. I was very intrigued by the idea of interactive design - not digital but analogue. I really like the idea of being able to have something physical for the audience to react to - that communication between the design and the user.

Studio Roosegaarde

Van Gogh Path

https://www.studioroosegaarde.net/project/smart-highway/photo/#van-gogh-path

"SMART HIGHWAY are interactive and sustainable roads of tomorrow by designer Daan Roosegaarde and Heijmans Infrastructure. Its goal is to make smart roads by using light, energy and information that interact with the traffic situation. 


Glowing Lines are lines that charge at day-time, and glow at night for eight hours. The first road has been realised, and will be further launched internationally.


The recent Van Gogh-Roosegaarde bicycle path is made of thousands twinkling stones inspired by 'Starry Night'. The path combines innovation with cultural heritage in the town of Nuenen NL, the place where Van Gogh lived in 1883."

This path in The Netherlands was inspired by the Starry Night Van Gogh painting and it lights up as people walk across it. This means that the path wouldn't need any street lighting by it for people to walk safely as well as creating a beautiful feature to the town that would attract tourists. 

Snask

Malmö Festival 2014

http://snask.com/case/malmofestivalen-2014/

Another piece of brilliant installation design is this 3D poster for a festival in Malmo. I love how the set up was used as the poster and then kept throughout the event so that people could constantly react with it and walk within it. This interaction between design and clientele is exactly want we want to portray in Roots. Snask do a lot of this sort of playful design where they use physical objects within the design rather than being purely digital. It really makes a difference to have real objects that are photographed as opposed to digital vectors. Real objects add a texture and a tactile-ness that could hardly ever be achieved digitally. 

Christian Hergarten

The 2€ T-shirt Machine

https://www.behance.net/gallery/26017969/THE-2-EURO-T-SHIRT-A-SOCIAL-EXPERIMENT

"Berlin, April 24, 2015 – The vending machine standing in the middle of Alexanderplatz in Berlin is a bright popping turquoise. And it promises a real bargain, too: ‘T-Shirt only 2 Euros’. But no t-shirt comes out after the coin has disappeared inside the machine. Instead a video plays on a display, showing shocking scenes from textile factories, where women and children sew without a break. They are paid only 13 cents per hour in addition to working under life-threatening conditions. After 20 seconds an option appears on the display: ‘Buy or Donate’. Consumers are faced with a decision. Do you really want to buy the t-shirt? Or would you rather donate the 2 Euros?"

Another installation design that I found on Behance was this t shirt vending machine. It encourages people to do something out of the ordinary from their day. And also the design itself of the machine is so bright and garish from the grey background of everyday life that it almost beckons people to look at it to see what it does. People would be drawn in by the price of the t shirts but then they are shown what goes on to make these t shirts so cheap so it raises awareness to those who would buy from retailers who support such practices. It encourages you to either buy the shirt or donate it to charity as a result of this video.

OUGD502 - Taking Care of Business - Study Task 1

Once we formed our group (Me, Becky, Laura and Daisy) we got straight into thinking about areas of graphic design that we are all interested in. 

When coming up with names we wanted to focus around our specific interests in analogue and traditional methods of design. We looked at a lot of synonyms of "different" because we wanted to do be a different kind of studio that battles against the digitisation of design. I personally really liked the names "seed" and "roots" because it portrays that idea of going back to basics or back to traditional design in our case.

Before deciding on a final name we thought it would be best to outline our 5 areas of investigation so that we could get a feel for what sort of studio we would be. We really want to emphasise the use of print based media, having something that's tactile that you can touch and feel rather than staring at a screen. 

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 1 - Creative Report - SNASK articles

After I decided that I wanted to do Snask for my creative report I started to look out for any other articles or interviews that they have appeared in or written. I found that Snask (Freddie Ost) writes a section in the back of each issue of Computer Arts magazine named "snaskified" that contains their quirky style as well as useful tips for aspiring designers.

I also contacted a previous graduate of our course who is in contact with Snask to get her help on how to approach them and what tone of voice to use. She was really helpful and suggested that I read up a lot about them before contacting them and perhaps do something different if I was trying to email them to ask for an interview. 

Below are some of the articles/interviews that they have done recently:

Washington Post Magazine Cover

Desktop Mag chat with Snask

OUGD502 - Neon Workshop in Wakefield

At the weekend I embarked on a neon workshop - to learn how to make a piece of neon art. We were told the history of neon and how it was used. Most people call it neon but it is in fact known as cold cathode lighting because the gases used aren't always made from neon. There are many other gases each with their own unique colour. There were a lot of stunning pieces around the workshop itself, each made by the owners.

This particular piece was made out of a number of different tubes with different gases the helium gas which gives a soft peachy colour to the light, xenon creates the light blue light and another gas for the white. 

There was also a small exhibition space behind the workshop with some really interesting pieces. I love the fusion of the different colours of glass to create these pipes. This combined with the ambient blue glow gives them a really calming aura. 

There was also some neon created by an artist (whom I've unfortunately forgotten the name of!) and were blown and bent in such a way to replicate intestines. These are very interesting in the way that the artist has managed to make subtle folds within the curve without letting the glass touch. 

There was also lots of examples of different type that was lit up. My favourite by far was the hand written "Less". I really like how it almost conveyed the less is more ethos within the type, it doesn't have a script or a fancy typeface it is just simple hand writing. Also the colour is not in your face or too bright so it works really well. If I could have afforded to buy this piece I definitely would have done!

For the workshop itself I found it really fun to do! We started out with glass tubing, which we had to put a tube in one end in order to be able to blow through it to even out the diameter of the tube when being curved. I opted for a simple chevron type curve for the first one and it came out beautifully! The tutor was very impressed which made me quite proud. For the next tube he asked us to make a more complex shape with a thinner tube. However when I tried this I ended up curving the tube too much so that it collapsed back on itself rendering it unusable. But overall the experience was really fun and I would definitely love to try it again. I was also thinking about asking to do a sort of internship or a work experience thing because I would love to learn more!

OUGD502 - Study Task - Dreams/Wish List

In our session today John talked about how important it is to be yourself and have your own personalities when it comes to creative design. Everybody is different and we each express ourselves in different ways. Our task was to write down our dreams for our lives and our careers. At first thinking about this was a bit daunting but when I started to think of my own practice I came up with a lot of goals that I could probably reach.

I really like the idea of being able to have my own printing studio. Ever since I discovered print making I absolutely love every aspect of it, so having a printmaking studio with screen printing, letterpress and lino cutting facilities would be awesome. To be able to expand my knowledge and possibly even teach others this I think is my biggest dream.

One of my other dreams, which might be quite achievable to do, is to learn round hand calligraphy and other types of calligraphy. I have actually started to practice with but not properly. My calligraphy style at the moment uses the rules of round hand calligraphy with my own looser style. 

Also thinking about it a lot my dream job would be an illustrator - maybe even an illustrator for children's books. However I don't feel like I have my own style of illustration so that is why I chose to do graphic design instead. I equally enjoy both subjects, I just enjoy the freedom of illustration more, how it can be taken way from the computer screen and I could do it anywhere. 

Additionally I would love to travel the world someday - especially Scandinavia. I seem to be drawn to there because of its beautiful scenery and relaxed and laid back attitude to life. 

From looking at all of my wishes/dreams for my career I think that they are all possible within my lifetime. It's just about putting my mind to it and practice. 

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 1 - Creative Report Ideas

After the creative report briefing I instantly had a list of people in my mind who I might want to interview. The first on my list was Snask, due to their international acclaim I thought that this might be a long shot. However I simply love their attitude to design and their work.

Another designer that I have been interested in lately, and who is more local, is the LCA graduate Eve Warren. Her packaging solutions are very inspiring and considering that I would like to go into this sort of specialism in my own practice I thought that it would be interesting to speak to her about her successes after graduation.

Also I am quite interested in the studio Made Thought, though they are based in London I really love their analogue work and how it's mostly based on publications and printed materials rather than design for screen. Once again this might be a long shot due to the size of the studio and how busy they might be.

OUGD502 - Manchester Print Fair

I took a day trip out to Manchester to visit the Manchester Print Festival at the People's History museum.

There was some really inspiring work there, like below, which was very typographic based combining bold sans serif type with textures to make them look almost chiselled and 3D. I particularly liked the boldness of the type on its own when it was enlarged. 

I really liked this stall run by two people who study on the Graphic Design course at Manchester School of Art. Their work was really abstract and in a lot of their prints they use special screen printing effects such as marbling and blending the inks. The use of the almost neon colours against the stark white background really makes them pop. I bought one of the prints for myself and it is now hanging proudly on my wall.

I also fell in love with this risograph book and I regret not buying it now. It was a photography book full of images of shutters of shops when they are closed. They printed it using a risograph printer so it was printed one colour at a time. So when you looked closely at the pages you could see the grains of each of the colours C, M, Y and K. It really was beautiful and every page quite interesting despite the bland subject.