Personal & Professional Practice

Tuesday, 7 May 2019

Skill Evaluation

This year has been the most productive in my life thus far. Fully engaging with the final year of the degree course has had great benefits both personally and for my future career. When comparing my work this year to that of last, the progression is more than significant. I feel that I have a much deeper understanding of the graphic design discipline and have an appropriate skillset in the adobe software for industry level work.

As such, I have aspirations to apply for an internship at Lundgren & Lindqvist, a Swedish graphic design firm based in Gothenberg. I have been following their website for most of the year and their more alternative projects and heavy focus on publication design has both intrigued and motivated my practice. Their style is very in-tune with my own aesthetic, and thus the sort of design I see myself working in on a professional level. Plus, the opportunity to live in Sweden for three months would be a valuable growing experience.

Through the occurrences taken place throughout the year within my engagement with professional correspondence, I am aware more than ever of the need to persist and stand out. Simply sending an e-mail is not enough. Hence, with my new self-branding, and time in summer to carefully curate my website, Lundgren & Lindqvist can definitely be a plausible option.

Nonetheless, this is not set in stone. I also want to explore my options within festival design. This has always been something that interests me, and a 10 week course in Bristol offers students the opportunity to learn from Emily Eavis herself. I believe with my experience in music visual design and overall branding campaign’s, this is an area I could possibly thrive in.

Since I spent the year really engaged in the extended practice, more of my external commission work was for friends. Instagram is a platform that has stressed me out in the past, however since engaging in the small profiles I have set up, I have a better grasp at the scope of opportunity available in building connections and gaining clients. As such, I plan to make an effort after Uni to branch out and utilise social media to gain more freelance work on the side of whatever I do. This is aided by the knowledge learnt from PPP sessions as well as through peers who have popular profiles, into the most successful times to post, and how to cater to a graphics audience through the production of your work – e.g. scanning imagery and favouring black backgrounds.

My social media pages will be further supported by the ongoing development of my website. As I now have the domain for a year, I have intentions to populate the website with a constant refresh of content as appropriate.

London has a lot of opportunity and I feel very lucky to be based in such a vibrant city. Over Easter alone I managed to go to multiple free talks and events dedicated to creatives. I plan to distribute my business cards to an appropriate audience through these opportunities, and see where that takes me. My plans are loose because you never know what opportunity is going to come knocking.

Nonetheless, I do know for sure that whatever I decide to do it will be in a more alternative studio space, that prioritises independent/grassroots/small-scale companies over the big corporations, as that is a big part of my ideology.

Monday, 6 May 2019

Self Branding: Evaluation

6C2, 6D2

The overall self-branding project was fun and experimental. Self-reflection is always really useful when progressing, and this was an opportunity for me to express myself into a coherent visual language.

The success of this project stemmed from having no preconceptions for how I wanted my branding to look. By simply letting the process inform itself, the design was able to adopt a basic concept whereby the design elements were extracted and informed from each step of the process.

For example, my film photography-based layouts are the basis of my unique style. Their success stems from the colour of the images being used to enhance the over visual reception. As such, the colour swatches from them informed the palette for the branding. This in turn, was carried by the logotype which was discovered through freelance projects, which when researched aided the idea of diversity and futurism. Furthermore, due to its Bauhaus context, the type thus fitted perfectly into a grid system. The grid imagery was taken from a selection of papers I had scanned from my personal favourite project Around The World In 80 Pages, which was essentially a publication of these compositional collages. Hence, the overall branding ended up being a combination of my best assets, pooled together to create a coherent and reflective design. A combination of the analogue and digital, successfully communicating who I am as a designer.

The design did experience some drawbacks but utilised them for the overall development. As there were no double-sided print slots left, the business card design adapted a fold output, which I found to be more unique and relevant. Additionally, the postcards became more personal, due to applying the text by hand rather than print. This also meant a nicer stock could be used to print on, making the images themselves better quality.

Self Branding: Production

6C2, 6D2

Outcomes:

A clever play on the design process – contextualising the logistics of the trade through grid systems and bold structural type.
Show I like to play with colour and is vibrant like me.
Grain/noise textured to present the analogue, and my love of film.
The variety represents diversity and reflects my personal agenda for all-inclusive design - the colour pallet’s cover a wider audience’s tastes.
Postcards of my best shots to promote social interaction, again referencing nostalgia and the analogue / physical acts. On the back a positive note to send to someone dear, and brighten someone’s day.
Website and branding is lower case to be colloquial and friendly as those are the kind of clients I want to attract, with a laid back vibe.
A concertina book because it’s the most fun of all books.
Old-school 3D glasses to match the colour scheme, the grid system and the idea of play and nostalgia. This little extra is meant to reflect the publication process, of printing 2D but bringing the contents to life through stock and design.

Digital Print

Due to printing restrictions there was no way of printing double sided. This was not a problem, as it meant the design could adapt with this obstacle. The fold reflects both my love for publication design and the research into ways of standing out from a flat pile of the same thing, whilst also presenting me as being open – a key pillar of my personal ideology. For the postcards, the notes were therefore written by hand, simply aiding the personal feel expected form traditional postcards.

The outputs were thing printed, trimmed, folded and bound accordingly.

A matte stock was chosen for the envelope and business cards, to best present the grain texture, and gloss and satin for the postcards themselves and the accompanying foreword.