One to One

So I had my one to one with Kaye, the Camberwell Digital Media Technician, I took the opportunity to ask about a variety of computer related things and she taught me some really good stuff:

- InDesign stuff like style sheets & baselines

- how to save and resize images for the web

- the significance of all those saving formats
(jpeg, png, tiff, gif...)

- how to prepare files to be sent to printers
(very important for my placement at Walker Books)

- And the best thing she showed me is how to make an
interactive PDF. Thanks to Kaye I will now be able
to insert my animation into my PDF Portfolio!

Flying high

These are some illustrations me & my sister made for our housemate Penny for her birthday! It's the 3 of us attached to hot air balloons, we stuck them to her bedroom wall to surprise her when she got home!

Alternative Fashion

I had the pleasure of working with two of my favourite people, the talented Rachel Penn and my very own flesh and blood Tida Finch. The girls had made some stunning garments and wanted to photograph them. I got called into model for Penny whilst Tida modelled a dress her & Penny collectively made.

Tida looking hot to trot.

And here I am below (after almost getting run over on my cycle ride here), in a dress painstakingly knit by Penny. It took a lot of jumps to get this shot.

InDesign

I took advantage of my UAL card and the fact that I live 5mins away from Camberwell College, and snuck into an InDesign workshop there. I'm not sure if this is allowed (as I am an LCC student), but there was only two other people at the workshop so I figured my attendance was appreciated! For my upcoming placement at Walker Books they said I need to know how to use InDesign, so I was paying full attention! The workshop was really good, I learnt all the basics - especially loving the placeholder text & how easy it is to write along different shapes (after having a lot of trouble doing this on photoshop)!

But I still felt like there was so much more to learn, so I arranged a private tutorial with the teacher for tomorrow so that I can become a bit more of a pro!

pa rum pa pum pum

Last year Dan (the guy I'm currently interning for) made some really gorgeous xmas decorations, based on illustrations from his victorian wallpapers. They went down a treat.
This year he fancied making a few instrumental pieces. So gave me a selection of trumpets, french horns and tubas to screen print onto wood, the designs would then be laser cut into individual decorations.


Dan gave me the freedom to choose colours; I went for a grape, petrol and maroon colour. At 10am I started a 10hour print-a-thon and enjoyed every minute of it! Radio 6, Dan's sandwiches and chats about the worst jobs kept us going. Here's Dan working away...

He makes me really good sandwiches.

And here are the prints.


The colours came out really nicely on the wood. I did two pulls, in the same direction to maintain the appearance of the grain to give it a slightly aged quality.

Creative Jobsearch Workshop

14/10/10

I went to the Creative Jobsearch Workshop at The Hub, it was really eye opening. A fact that really stood out to me is that only 10% of creative jobs are actually advertised, and everyone is applying for that 10%.
The workshop made me realise the significance of networking. It wasn't until this moment that I realised that all my placements so far have been found through networking.

DH Logo

These are some initial ideas, inspired by the Amazing Jumbo wallpaper, a character in Dan's work that really stands out as being quite iconic.

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...