Time plan 30/04/12

Monday - Continue Digital Skills file


Tuesday - Placement


Wednesday - Placement


Thursday - Digital skills file


Friday - Digital skills file

Typeverything

I was shown the Typeverything blog by a fellow student while at college, and I'm kicking myself that I didn't find it sooner! The website is amazing, an everlasting page of mind blowing typography designs from all around the world. I've already referred back to this site several times, and if you haven't already checked it out, I highly suggest that you do. 


Here are is a page example from the site, there is loads to discover!

http://typeverything.com/

Personal Illustration

I had some spare time recently, and I had just watched Dracula and really wanted to draw Christopher Lee, so I did! I used a similar illustration style to the one I used in my Little White Lies magazine cover. I'm really pleased with the pencil sketch, I think it turned out really good and I managed to capture his mad expression. I also like the combination with the textures. Really enjoying working in this style recently.


Anyway, here is the finished illustration!

Ministry of sound - I wish I'd thought of this!

While considering my live brief options (eventually choosing Little White Lies), I looked at a brief for 
Ministry of sound, which would have been my second choice for the brief.


Looking on the Behance network, I came across a student who had completed the brief, and I was really impressed by the idea and the finished outcome!


The posters themselves are really nicely structured, but the actual 'saturday' feature on each poster is an amazing idea. She achieved the design by threading cotton around nails, which represented sound wave structures. The posters also glow in the dark, which suits the brief because some of the posters would be on the walls of nightclubs, which are generally dark.


Here are the posters, and some examples of the glowing effect. I wish I'd thought of this!

Week time plan 23/4/12

Plan for this week


-Monday - College / discuss final show ideas / lookbook update


-Tuesday - Placement / start digital skills essay


-Wednesday - Placement / gather final show ideas 


-Thursday -  College / Show final show findings 


-Friday - Continue with digital skills essay

How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul

After many recommendations, I recently picking up Adrian Shaughnessy's book, How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul. I have only read the first two sections of the book, but so far it has some very insightful advice for every young designer.


One point I picked up on was that joining industry is like learning graphic design all over again. Plus on average, it takes 6-18 months for a junior designer to start contributing to a studio consistently.


I found this re-assuring considering I will be looking for a job in the coming months!


So far the book is a great buy, especially for £8, so I highly recommend it!

Website Re-think

I have been working on my personal branding recently, and a portfolio website to display my work on. I thought my original website design worked well but during the easter break, i have been looking through a lot of portfolio websites and decided i should re-think my original idea.

Here is my original idea. I do like the layout and i think it works well, but i think i overcomplicated the layout. From my own experience, looking at a designers website, i would much prefer the interface and layout to be very clean and easy to navigate through. Having too many things to click on, to me, is really annoying when i want to get straight to the work. 

While i think this layout looks nice, i do think it could be much easier to navigate through and slightly overcomplicates things. I also think that since there is quite a bit to look at, it would distract from the actual work on the site, which is obviously what i want to be the main focus.

Taking this into account, i re-worked the design of the site, opting for a much cleaner, simpler layout. The image above shows the 'about' section of the site. I tried a few fonts, but i decided that 'georgia' worked really well with my logo, and was nice and easy to read. I listed all the sections on the left of the website, highlighting the selected section in a black, and taking the dot from the logo to sit next to that section.  I did keep the photograph of my desk from the previous website, as i really liked that and i think it sits nicely with the rest of the new layout.

This is an example of how the work would be displayed on the site. Again, i went with a very clean layout, with a short descriptor of the work at the top. The user would then scroll down to view whichever work has been selected, with the text at the left hand side staying stationery. 

I also designed a contact page for the site.  Looking at a lot of portfolio websites, quite a few of them didn't have an easy way for a potential client to contact them. A lot just listed a hyperlink to their email, which then would open up a new window to compose the message in. Taking this into account, i added in a simple contact section so the user could state their name, email and the enquiry. I'm not sure how hard this would be to code, but i think it would work well on my website.

Finally, I thought it would be a nice feature if i linked in my blog with the website. This image shows the blog open on the website. I would need to change the style of my blog to fit with the rest of my website (text, colour), but i think this could work well and it would be better having a built in blog, rather than having an external link opening a new window to blogger.

Overall, i am much happier with my layout. I think it will be very easy to use, and will help the user to flick through my work much quicker than my previous design. I also think this will be much easier for me to code, which was is always a worry with my inexperience in web design. While the look of the site isn't spectacular, i think it does what it needs and looks professional at the same time.

Now to make it!

-gulp-