Max-O-Matic

Ever since Art Foundation i've been really interested in the work of a Graphic Designer in Barcelona called Maximo Tuja. I love how you can see all the texture on the characters and nothing on the background. He's done a whole series of posters and prints which are all based on the things that inspire him, " i don´t know exactly what they are and where they can be found. Inspiration=nonsense?"

Second Year Begins

So its been a good few months since i last updated this, but second year has begun, and first term is almost over. This term has mainly been focused on Visual Systems and Preparation for practice. 

Within Visual systems there were 3 projects, the first laying out and creating a system out of text based on Slumdog Millionaire. I chose only the text that spoke about the film itself, and stayed away from any text talking about the issues and consequences of the film. I just wanted to keep my design clean and simple with no emphasis on poverty etc, as i figured that would be pretty popular. For some reasons its the wrong way round, should be 90 anti clockwise:

I originally had a beige background but it didnt really fit in with keeping everything clean and simple, white was much crisper. For the text i had to rotate each line by 4 degrees. I used a circle text wrap and inverted it, to be able to keep the text exactly in the shape.

The Big Chill Festival

My brother went to the festival last year and if i can get enough money im going to go this year with him, i came across this in the Guardian. Its one of the posters for the festival and it was created by a third year graphic design student from Cardiff called Matt Needle. Again its following the collage style that im determined to get back in to. As much as i love clean cut, simple design, it doesnt inspire me in the same way that the above does. Its all about composition and manipulation.

First year over

So my first years over, which seems pretty scary and daunting. i feel i've learnt alot this year and that my work finally follows a structure when it comes to laying out text and huge amounts of writing. I've also finally learnt how to use illustrator after years of claiming i will over holidays :].

 As much as i've loved this year, it will be good to have longer projects and perhaps experiment a bit more in second. i suppose the first year freshers life has kind of swept me away and there have been a few times at the beggining of the year i put my work below my social life but im hoping ive managed to pass everything! i mihgt of just jinxed that, i suppose i'll find out on wednesday.

 Next years going to be alot more work orientated. something that will be made easier in moving out of halls! it got quite suffocating living where i learn, i think i'll blame that for my nights out. It'll also be brilliant not having to listen to Guys and Dolls or COD at 5 in the morning from the room next door. It all went downhill when my neighbour got massive speakers. 

Eduardo Recif

I've always followed the work of Eduardo Recif, an illustrator who works mainly in collage but also creates some pretty awesome hand-drawn type. In the last couple of weeks he posted some new illustrations, the majority of which encorporated some renaissance paintings. I've always loved his use of papers and his compositions. i think the one above is perhaps my favourite, its called 'bright side' . i love the floral papers, the saturation and the vintage feel it has. 

I think that next year i might go back to collage, and focus more on handmade and detach myself from using adobe software quite so much. 

Magazine Spread

This project introduced us to InDesign, yet again we wernt allowed to use any other programme... Learnt alot about it so it was helpful! We had to choose an article and illustrate and redesign it. I was way to indecisive about what article to use so i ended up opening a random page in the newspaper and using that one ha! it was all about student beauty pageants at Londons top universities.

These are 3 typefaces i had to design... we were set the task of coming up with an appropriate typographic layout for a profession. The first is Clumsy Magician, the second Graphic Design student and the third was Accident Prone Acrobat. These were done when i was just getting to grips with illustrator. We had certain limitations with this project, the first being that we couldn't use photoshop or any other programme other then illustrator, this was to help us get to grips with it quicker.. we were forced to use it and put outside our comfort zone which was actually really good :) The second limitation was that we wernt allowed to use imagery. This rule stayed for the whole of our Typographic Studies project, up until the final project.

September to december cont.

The colours a bit fucked up... it looks blue on my screen for some reason ha.. its really not mean to be that colour!

we had to come up with a typeface design for our name... pretty basic... we had like a week to do it and it was the first time i had used illustrator so it was pretty informative and useful!

september to december

I thought it was about time i uploaded some of the work i had produced beginning of my first year! its gone pretty quick and I'm pretty scared about no longer being a fresher. I wish I'd tried harder on these projects but first year life was too much fun ha! its all pretty average stuff... nothing to be proud of, but I'm hoping that by uploading it i'll see how much i will have progressed over the next few months!

The first piece of work was for a project called Colour (its a quarterly magazine from United Colours of Benniton, its been pretty controversial in the past). We had to create an A4 design showing one thing that we value. I chose the quietness of my home town and its history. It was pretty rushed.. i reckon i could of done better to be honest ha!

flashhh!

so we've moved on to the next project.. finally learning flash.. we had our first encounter with it today.. the simple bouncing ball and turning it into the shapes and stuff.. all pretty basic stuff but its the first animation i've ever done so it was quite good! alot to take in.. think its going to take a while to get to grips with!

Im working with my mate Ellen on this project.. we have to find 2 sets of statistics or facts that suggest inbalance... so far we've got:

a sloth only moves when its most neccessary, but when its being chased by a predator its top speed is 0.17mph.. where as its predator the Jaguar can reach a speed of 65-70mph! 

so basically the sloth is fucked.

we're yet to come up with our second one!

Bauhaus campaign

I've just finished a 2 month project in which we were put in groups of 6 or 7 and given a design movement to study and to create an exhibition for... we were asked to write a 5000 word essay between us, create appropriate layouts, covers and generally just turn it into a professional book... it ended up looking pretty good :).

we had to come up with loads of merchandise as well! so we made notebooks and rubbers and tshirts and bookmarks and god knows what else.. nauman got a bit carried away ha.

Simon in our group created this amazing poster which seemed to go down well with our course leader which is always good! we also had to come up with a presentation which is yet to be given yet due to our class all having mumps ha! bad times.. 

Me and two other girls in my group, Kate and Helen.. had to design and make a model to represent the movement... we must of come up with around 7 designs before both our tutors felt happy with it.. The model above is in Bauhaus 93 font, with text down the front in Universal. when we first got the B's cut there was a fuck up, and the guy in charge of our group got it cut the wrong size and font... we tried to make it anyway but it was a disaster so we had the best moment in the entire project of completely destroying it... it was amazing :) and so we recreated it how we wanted it... in about a day and a bit.. pretty stressful but ended up looking alright!

Everyone else in the class created brilliant campaigns.. they were all so different... particularly liked Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts... they both looked so professional and really pretty :)

It was a really good project, dragged on a lot! and there was conflict with certain people but for the most part it was pretty fun :) i wish we'd got given a different movement as Bauhaus stood for functionality and everything was pretty simplistic. 

waste of time? yes no maybe?

so i've finally done what i was meant to do about 4 months ago. finally got a blog. 

I'm going to be honest it seems like a total waste of time, I cant see anyone actually bothering to read this and looking at my work :)

Im hoping once i post all my graphics up here i'll see just how much my works changed since the easier times of art foundation... literally seems like a doss thinking back. x