HEX-Initial Ideas

Following my research and name generation, I jumped straight into my initial ideas for my brand. I was leaning towards some sort of tiki mask style image to accompany text and so I created several designs.

Although overall I was happy with my final design following that line of idea with the tiki mask design, I came up with this idea of overlapping letters coupled with the more traditional style circular look. Although this is a severely under developed idea, I think, provided I can make it a successful piece, I am leaning more on towards this ideas for the brand.

Seb Lester Presentation

I visited a presentation given by Seb Lester at the Peter Sarah Theater. Seb Lester is a well known graphic designer whose work tends to focus on type based designs. Seb Lester spent the time explaining his past and his journey through the world of graphic design. The main message I took away from his presentation was that, if you are truly passionate and committed to your graphic work, spend time honing your skills, then people will notice you and potentially offer jobs. He showed us many examples of his work, explaining how he was worked for massive clients such as Apple, Nike and Red Bull. Clearly he has spent years living by his own advice, practicing his skills and style until they were as refined as they are today, as result, he has grown massively successful. Clearly this man knows what he is talking about, and the advice he gave during his presentation is something I will be constantly putting into practice.

Glad

Not too long a go, Ant Tran from Glad came in to give my class and the advertising students a quick lecture, giving us some of the background history with himself and Glad, and advice on how to get started in the world of graphic design.

He showed us some of the very impressive work he and the company have worked on, their work for the Nottingham Jazz company was a personal favourite of mine because of its simple design and beautiful textured card that they used for the business cards.

One piece of advice Ant gave us concerned portfolios  saying that our portfolio should be custom made for the job we are applying for, so if you are looking for a job in an editorial environment, your portfolio should show your preference and skill towards that area. He also said that is important to stick in when looking for a job. There are always thousands of designs out there to compete with, and finding a job can be a long process but eventually you WILL be noticed by someone who likes your work and will hopefully offer you a job.

Portfolio for interview

After much deliberation and work hunting, I was able to create my first draft of my portfolio for my interview on Friday. While my portfolio is by no means as creative as some of the portfolios I have researched, I feel the clear presentation of my best pieces of work is more then suitable for this interview.

As my research suggested, I added some small piece of text just to give each piece some slight context. Without it, the viewer has no reason to think that this piece is going to job it was designed for.

There are some parts of my portfolio that are more developed then others. The Family Explorers work for example, I found that the pages looked far to blank with the logo being as simple as it is, and so, I created and added the background to those pages, constructed using the logo itself. I also, for my Little White Lies piece, created a page showing my creative process throughout that project. I also, as requested, provided my CV, which, once I explain the D&AD project, should hopefully look impressive, putting my ideas into practice.

Self directed brief

Due to my preparation for my interview, I am a little late to start my new project. As part of the Portfolio Production module, we were told to pick projects that will help us develop our portfolios, so ideally, we would choose projects that help fill out our portfolio with work we have not focussed on much so far, or choose work that help to establish our preferred style of work.

I spent a lot of time trying to find a clothing based brief, ideally one that focussed on the designs for clothing, however, I could not find one. When researching portfolios, I found on several occasions that self directed briefs are more then welcome if it shows a greater range of skills.

I decided upon a brief where I was asked by TOPMAN to create a series of illustration based designs for shirts, hooides and vests. The idea being that these illustrations would bring about a more unique style of clothing thanks to the hand rendered look.

To begin this brief, I thought I would begin by created a brand for this capsule collection, so I researched into brands and the modern trends that are present in this area such as the use of negative space, traditional style logos, and logos that use shape.

After this I decided upon a name for my brand, creating a mind map to help me through the process. I began by thinking of words to do vaguely with Illustration, and tribes and their symbology came to mind, following this trail, I settled happily on the name HEX, a short snappy name which I think suits the ideas I have in mind quite nicely.

CV-Update

In preparation for my interview on Friday 22nd March for my top-up year in Creative Practice so that I can achieve a full BA Hons in Graphic Design, I felt it was necessary, as I need to provide one, to update my CV.

When working on my D&AD project, I said from the beginning, I wanted my piece to be something that I could show to a potential employer that both shows that I am available for employment and some of the skills I possess. During that project, I looked at creative CV's and found that many of the them, however designed and illustrated they maybe, were still, generally, sheets full of text. So I thought, what is the point in saying on your CV all the skills you possess, anyone can say that, why not instead, SHOW the skills you possess within your CV.

As such, when I found out I needed to provide a CV for my interview, I immediately thought, why not use my D&AD piece for the purpose it was designed for. As a result...

...I created this. Only slightly different from my D&AD piece, a bit of scaling and moving here and there, the addition of some details but the point of my D&AD piece was that it would not need to be altered very much. From here, I shall be working on, what is essentially, my first draft of my portfolio in preparation for my interview.

Final Show meeting

Today was the first of, what I'm sure will be many, Final Show meetings.

While the presentation was not particularly long, it gave a good idea about the sheer amount of work that will be going into it. Things like themes, banners, invites, all need to be decided upon and made. Individuals need to print out work, produce portfolios, produce business cards, decide how to display their work. The final show team needs to organise the opening night, as well the bulk of what I have already mentioned, and that barely scratches the surface.

The final show will be taking place from 10/06/13-14/06/13 with Monday being the main, opening night. Fortunately, for me, I am not part of the planning team, so, for the moment, I can be left to developing my portfolio, leaving me all of May to get my own ideas together.

What makes a good portfolio?

My final module for the year (excluding PPD which is this blog and Work Based Learning which is the documentation of every detail for placements and live briefs) I am tasked with producing my final portfolio. This portfolio is something I will be using for my up coming interview for my Creative Practice Top-up year, my final show and finally interviews for jobs. My portfolio will act as a display for all of my best work, showing what it is I am capable of, as well as my style of work. I will cover the range of skills I possess, and explain how each piece was a success.

To begin this module, I was given a research task, to look at what it is that makes a good portfolio. I needed to look at examples of portfolios, evaluate them and compile a list of sorts giving tips for the construction of my own portfolio.

Upon completing my research, I was surprised to find the creativity undertaken in the presentation of an individual work. A portfolio is not just a matter of printing out your best work nice and big, on high quality paper, the way you go about presenting each piece further displays your style of work and the skills you possess. One tip I found particularly insightful was that your portfolio should have a strong start, to blow away anyone looking at your portfolio and a strong finish so that they are not leaving your portfolio seeing the worst work that was in there.

From here, I will begin working on a new, self directed project in order to flesh out my portfolio, I will constantly be keeping my mind the tips I have researched, as well as constantly thinking about ways in which to present my work.

Mark Your Mark-Final Piece

In the end then, I would say that I am very pleased with how my final piece has turned out. Although illustration helped me on a previous project, I feel that the photograph I used has been a great success. The construction of this piece involved using a texture for the background, a few tools such as the burn tool, the use of water colour textures which were styled, filters and custom brushes. I definitely managed to achieve my desired effect when I envisaged this idea. My one criticism is that, because of the combination of my fairly low quality image and the Cut Out filter I used, my hoodie which I aimed to have blue ended up becoming quite dark. Fortunately this does not take away from the overall image. Lastly, using the appearance panel in illustrator I was able to quickly create the text that I desired and was able to apply it to my Photoshop document. As was the goal with this brief, this is a piece of work that I will be placing within my portfolio as one of my stronger pieces.