3 installations, 1 day

So Dan put me in contact with the surface designer Laura Perryman. She design prints graphics, surface solutions and innovative materials. I helped her with several installations she was doing for the Frieze Art Fair.


The installations were inspired by a piece of jewelery from Mimko's upcoming collection. Laura's design reflected the organic shapes within the jewellery, the installation was made up of huge perspex shapes, that varied in opacity, some were completely opaque whilst others were semi-translucent. It had a really interesting visual quality when they were layered against each other.



The pieces that each installation was made up of correlated but an organic & spontaneous approach was taken to create unique arrangement, that maximised the potential of each site.

Daniel Heath

The second interview was with Daniel Heath, he describes himself as a designer-maker with a long held interest in craftmanship - which definitely shows in his work. A graduate of the RCA, he trained in the traditional process of silk-screen printing, and has since set up his studio to create bespoke, hand-printed fabrics & wallpapers - that are truly stunning.


Dan has a strong interest in reclaimed materials which adds something truly special to his work. The mural above, is made up of several wood panels taken from from the inside of old school desks, and then Dan has laser cut a beautiful design into it to bring it to life.

- My first job is to redesign his logo

I expressed to Dan that I felt the current logo didn't suit him, I want to come up with something that captures the playful and sophisticated intricacies of Dan's designs. This is the current logo, it is a nice design but it is a dull contrast to Dan's work.


There is so much life and movement in Dan's designs that I want to design something that has the potential to be animated, perhaps move when it appears on the screen - as soon as I learn how to do this.

I will think about how the logo will work on business cards, and as headers on letters and maybe how I could expand it through the website as an overall branding project.


So Dan gave me some images from his series of Victorian inspired wallpapers, and I got busy designing him a new logo. I haven't done any branding before, but the fact that he is new to this too made a lot less intimidating.

Update - Walker Books

I've spent the summer working my butt off at Love Walk Cafe in Camberwell, attempting to earn half a years rent - as I only get half the loan this year! I'm not quite there yet but I'm itching to get into industry... so I've cut down to weekends so that I can begin placements!
So last week I went for two interviews and landed myself 3 placements! The first interview was with Walker Books, the children books publishers behind the epic Where's Wally, and a childhood favourite of mine We're going on a Bear Hunt. The company appealed to me because they take more risks with kids books than any other publisher and they were looking for someone that likes interactive books - which i do!

The placement is for a month in January and I will be part of their Picture Book team! I am very excited as Book Publishing is something I am very interested in, and I imagine it will be a very good thing to have knowledge of in my career.

Note to self: Must learn how to use InDesign for this placement! Hello Youtube...

Be Brave

The Creative Review has featured an article about LCC's Diploma in Professional Studies that I'm embarking on from July... exciting!

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/current-issue/graduate-guide-be-brave

The Tree of Codes

Yesterday I worked with the graphic designer Sara De Bondt, her most recognisable piece would be the visuals she designed for Celebrity Big Brother.

She has recently been asked to put together a book called Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer. Foer has taken his favourite book - Tree of Crocodiles and derived a new story from it.

He has created a narrative out of select words from each page, the sentences are poetic and intriguing. We physically cut out all the unwanted text from each page, leaving only the words that Foer had highlighted for the new story. The end piece is a sculptural book that is visually and literally intriguing.




 

The Great Escape

This is a project I call 'The Great Escape', I created a narrative where the characters within books came to life when no ones around and make a dash for the outside world.

The End.

[insert name here]

We were set a project to produce our own 20 page newspaper inspired by a story in any of the main newspapers.
My newspaper is a response to the story of the betting shop - Paddy Powers that had 'sponsored' a church confession box. It lead me to question the intention of their sponsorship, the company had requested to have their name on the front of the confession box if they forked out the money - I saw this gesture as a blatant form of advertising.


My newspaper argues the right advertisers have to invade public space with their messages, while the public is forbidden. We have messages flashed at us everywhere: buy this, watch this, drive this...
But if we want to say something in our public space, it isn't that easy. Put your art in the public space, paint a mural, tag a wall and we're breaking the law. Even though adverting is basically tagging, both want maximum distribution of their names.
Our laws say that we can be bombarded by corporate messages, we can have their words and images shoved in our faces, but if we want to express ourselves then apparently we are criminals

These spreads here are initial ideas, I want to make a more substantial publication then this 20 page mock. I'm going to develop these pages much further, include more hard core info, writing, interviews and case studies. But for some initial ideas I think I'm starting to get my point across, and am pretty pleased with how its looking.

Above is an idea for front/back cover.

The images are a mixture of my own photography, images sourced from books and the internet.

100 Drawings

We had to do 100 drawings over Easter, they were broken into 5 categories; objects, people, furniture, architecture and vehicles.

One set of my drawings is a kind of portrait of my friends Shen and Dan through objects; I spent a whole day on their sofa drawing everything of theirs around me. For some reason Shen has a barbie, but she was fun to draw.

Penguin Design Awards

Things got serious a week ago, I entered my first Design Competition the Penguin Design Awards.

Students were invited to design a whole new cover look for the classic, Alice in Wonderland, reinventing it for a new generation of child readers and ensuring that it remains an integral part of childhood. This is my design...

I noticed that Alice in Wonderland covers usually subject Alice, these covers make you feel like you are observing someone else’s adventure but I wanted to make you feel as if this was your adventure

The story is all about Alice’s curiosity of this fantasy world, I thought about arousing curiosity by creating a still life of strange objects which could draw the viewer in, mirroring the way Alice is drawn to numerous strange objects throughout the story.

Lewis Carrol pours out word play so I literally played with the text for the front cover, making my still life pour it out.

I wanted to celebrate this brilliant British story, and what better way then with a tea-party, quintessentially English. So the tea-party still life functions in two ways - to celebrate Englishness, and to invite the viewer into the world of the book with a seemingly interactive set up of objects you feel you can reach out to.

the 10 commandments

We were set a brief to design our own version of the 10 commandments, I wanted to write the commandments I'd learnt as a designer. I decided to use art materials to typographically deliver my text as my commandments were going back to basics; and art materials are the basics of any designers work. I brought them to life, in the same way they bring our work to life.