Blue Bridge Record label...

This is a live brief we received at college to design the logo for the college record label, after several different approaches I decided to keep the logo fairly abstract and concentrate on making it as eye catching as possible.

YCN Brief, M&S Plan A submissions.

I finally submitted to the YCN competition on Friday afternoon, but still have a week or so before I hand in the project as a college brief so I will probably spend a little time this week just tightening up layout and type, and maybe mocking up the leaflet and hang tags to be photographed. But overall I think its pretty much finished, it has been a good experience writing and allocating time for this brief myself and has shown me where I need to focus to improve my workflow and time management. On with the next project!

Front of bags

 Back of bags

Hang Tag with PlanA info for bags

PlanA information leaflet

Dave McDonald lecture.

So yesterday we sat down for a lecture from senior creative Dave McDonald from http://www.infinitedesign.com/ a creative agency based in Newcastle. Dave was inspiring and passionate about design and discussed his career path which began in the mid 90's where he worked in London for several large branding agencies but was not taken by the London lifestyle, and so returned home to carve himself a niche in the North East. He showed us examples of work from when he left Newcastle College before the days of the internet and explained his work process to promote work, through to his work for Infinite Design. Throughout this talk Dave was adamant that a reason for his success sprang from always mixing it up between personal and commercial work and that one often influenced and improved the other. Following this part of the talk Dave gave advice on the best approach to a career in Design including what he looks for in a potential employee, he summed this up by saying he looked for three main things, firstly Personality in that a person should be relaxed/professional/honest...Portfolio genuine as far as your work should be your own, confident, you should be positive about your work and hold your convictions, receptive as throughout a designers career you will face a lot of criticism and you should be graceful and receptive in how you handle it. Passion brave/committed/positive, he said that if a potential employee displays some or all of these traits they would be far more employable than say a person with a knockout portfolio but who did not relate to these things, as they are the people who you will see the most in your week and that a good work relationship is paramount. Overall i found the talk to be firstly inspiring but also it was good to hear someone being so passionate about design over 15 years after he began as a creative, but also giving an insight into design as a career. Finally the last point Dave made was that if he had his way he would keep all north eastern designers in Newcastle as he feels Newcastle should be a strong design community and I completely agree.

Dance City branding

Virtual Motion Dance Company branding

Portfolio presentation ideas

I have been looking at developing my portfolio to showcase my work for upcoming interviews and have just been gathering information about how best to display my work. For the portfolio itself i'am going to use a post binding technique to give a handmade yet professional feel so will be looking at something like the image below...

As for content and how it will be displayed I think where possible I will try to show my work in situ, so if it is stationary it will be mocked up and product shots will be taken, again the same for any other mock ups. For web work i'm going to take an agency approach and mock sites up onto Imac and macbook images to show how they will look on screen. So hopefully overall the portfolio should have a more commercial feel, watch this space.

YCN brief continued...

Still on with the M&S brief but getting close to the end now. I have finalised the PlanA logo itself now so am developing this with the bag range. Looking a little bit different than the last time I posted but after a bit more research and a setback with a broken Imac I have ended up going for a more refined style which plays on the original M&S branding colour scheme a bit more. Hopefully I should have everything finished by Friday as the clocks ticking and there are more projects to get underway, so I will post final pieces then. (click on images for larger versions)

Narc Magazine update...

I submitted my entry for the Narc magazine cover and C.D. at the end of last month and was pleased to be shortlisted with ten other students by Euan from Narc. We all sat down and discussed our pieces and since then have been waiting for the results to come in. I did'nt manage to scoop the cover, but happily have been picked to have my submission featured in the article alongside the others shortlisted, so a small victory at least.