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. 

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 1 - Study Task 1

Over summer I did a variety of things that inspired me quite a lot that weren't necessarily related to graphic design specifically. There were a couple of Open Studios events near where I lived so I went a long. I saw a wide range of professional artist's studios from jewellery makers to rag ruggers. I was particularly inspired by any print artist that I came across. It made me think about being more commercial with my own prints and it definitely inspired me to print more. In fact I took a course in screen printing from an acetate stencil and set up a little workspace in my home with the intentions of starting an online shop to sell my prints. However this didn't happen - how ever many prints I produced I just didn't feel like they would sell. This is something I would like to get around this year, to become confident with my work and to be able to value it to sell. 

I also went to Latitude festival this summer, a festival full of culture and arts as well as music. It was a fantastic experience exploring all the different nooks and crannies of the site. There was a forest which contained arts tents and I drew my own passport selfie in order to be more creative and move away from this generation's digital obsessions. There was also lots of comedy, literature and poetry that I went to see which was really inspiring. To see people talk so passionately about subjects and have people pour their soul out in a poem was really inspiring.

I have been doing on going work for Sloemotion and have managed to complete the chutney label designs and now I am working on some chocolate box designs. I have definitely learnt and grown from this experience because I have learnt how to talk to clients and that constant communication is key. I have also set things up for print and had to approve proofs. It has made me more confident in my design work and presenting it to others. It also has made me take critique less personally as I have learnt that everyone has different tastes and opinions and when working for a client their opinion and taste counts a lot more than your own.

Overall I think I have become a lot more motivated to do more this Summer. Having time away from college has made me realise how passionate I am for this subject and it has given me a bigger drive to carry on. I want to do more live briefs this year and look forward to making contacts within the industry.