Visit with Jay at Enjoy Studio

After talking to Jay at the christmas party he gave me a card and a piece of his work and said to get in touch about coming down and having a chat. I gave him an email the other day and although he is currently doing some work in london for a few days he was more than happy for me to come over and show me his studio space.

I went down on thursday and ended up having a really good chat for probably nearly 2 hours! The studio space where he is set up is near the WY Playhouse, its a really old and somewhat neglected warehouse/office space, but the amount of space that was available and just having a complete environment that was quiet where no-one would bother you was actually really nice. I asked him all sorts of questions about the things he was getting up to and looking at. As it turns out he has currently being back and forth from london working on an interesting education project, he is also working on the re-vamp of the Nous Vous Website and a couple of comissoins. ]

I asked about where he started and how from finishing his degree he found work and so oninturn this led to the discussion on my portfolio and Jay gave some great crituque, not just about the work but about the presentataion and delivery. Jay left uni and took a more relaxed approach to the development of his worka and didn;t setup the collective until over a year of leaving uni and spent his time working and simply earning a living. And for he first few years of the collective a steady job was used to pay for the expenses of his creative side.

On my portfolio jay commented he enjoyed more looking through the tactile piece of print that i had produced rather than the more mundane and somewhat cliche of having my work presented in photographs in plastic sleeves. Something to think about would be the packaging of my portfolio.

On the subject of originality for my dissertation it did in fact crop up. Jay's studio space didn't actually have internet access and that brought up questions about how he finds inspiration and how looking at other people's work can influence your own. Jay talked about how jay will create something and then as time moves on other people may look at his work and although he may have disliked it, someone will pick it up and to an extent copy the visual styling. Jay believes that orginality is something that in today's design world it does not exist, especially in something such as graphic design and it shouln't be seen as such a benchmark to set your work against.

Brass Visit

From the Christmas party I attended just before christmas I met a few different designers in different fields, I handed out some of my work, the typefaces that I developed, and they seemed to like what they saw.

I got in touch the other week with Dan lancaster who works at marketing agency brass and asked if I could come down to have a look, he replied and asked to bring my portfolio with me too. Although I still feel my work is in a bit of a state at the moment I took the opportunity and met at the agency in Headingley yesterday.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, a small office maybe with separate rooms with designers hanging about in each one. The space ended up being huge and the building itself was split into 2 part the old and the enormous extension that was on the side. The place inside the extension seemed to be the place where most of the design actually went on. The digital part of the agency which looked at online marketing design, the print based & identity design side (where I was and there was only me Dan and Mike) as well as the account holders and such.

I asked plenty of questions about the business about how they operate and how the work comes down to them, the clients themselves and how they negotiate ideas in particular in pushing their ideas forward as both dan and mike seemed to have a particular interest in high production design and polished visuals. Whether it be through type, layout, photography, use of fine printing costa and ultimately pushing for a high spec idea. We also discussed the industry in general and how everyone seems to know everyone, mark howe in-fact used to work at the agency. what I also learnt was that recently andy lodge the previous head of their department had left and there was a desk space free, I asked about work experience and such and tried my upmost to make it clear that I was available and looking for placement and internships now and next year.

In terms of reviewing my portfolio I feel that the kind of work I want to do isnt truly reflected in the work I presented. I put my work down a lot and although I have done some live work because of the negotionation I made I didn't end up carrying on strong concepts. We discussed my identity and discussed how although i wanted to give a simple impression the use of type didn't push anything enough to stand out. I was on the right lines of just using a simple typeface but I should consider using something different, dan agreed that being too bold can be off-putting but not standing out can leave me in the dark.

Overall I had a really good talk and to be honest brass is the kind of place I would like to work. I'm going to be keeping in touch, I think dan wants to know a little bit more about the craft fairs that I get involved with. I think this could be the start of something important.

Albion Place Commission for Artsmix

Artsmix got in touch with me before christmas asking me to produce a flyer for their latest event at Albion Place. I used this as a chance to do some work for them and used it as one of my smaller projects for my module submission where I extended the range into ambient advertising and merchandising. Overall I am quite happy but I am tempted to re-jig the flyer again. This project is now available for viewing on my website.

Kevin Cummins Flyer

The Creative networks team asked me to come up with a flyer for their latest event. Renowned photographer Kevin Cummins photographs to this day major bands around the country and has done so since the 70's photographing the likes of david bowie, the sex pistols, R.E.M and Oasis.

Flyer

105mm x 148mm

Black on Uncoated Recycled Stock

Leeds College of Art Pop-up Shop

After weeks of planning the event it finally took place, the first ever Leeds College of Art Pop-up shop. Overall I was happy the event took place and was impressed by the amount and quality of work that was on offer. I feel that under different conditions that the shop could have done better on its promotion and been given a proper budget to work with, I felt as if I barely touched it and could have been better distributed. I also strongly feel that the amount of commission for the event was too high to be expected of students and I later found out that this was not discussed until much later after application.

This project is now available on my website which I've been trying to update with more work.