D and AD hand in

These are my final pieces for show at D and AD. The brief was to Re-design the Taschen magazine for the new breed of multimedia tablet devices. For the show I had to produce at most 4 show boards to explain my idea and an animation which shows how the application would work on a tablet device such as an Ipad.

TLK 3 - Freelancing

The third TLK lecture invited two freelance designers: Joel Lardner (an illustrator) and Chris Wharton (a web designer). Jane Richardson who is a senior member of recruitment agency Aquent was also there.

The main subject of the talk was looking at how students were to get a foot in the door with companies, how to approach them and employability. As a freelancer the most important thing is to create the best professional profile you can. Whatever research you can do into a company they can do into the employee too. There were some helpful suggestions of links to look at such as behance and sortfolio two types of online portfolio. When looking for jobs twitters tweet deck could be a useful resource.

It has influenced me in my extended major project, because it has made me think about how graduates look to the employer. There are plenty of social networking sites to build profiles and brands, including Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. When a prospected employer can type a candidates name into google, the first thing that comes up will be these social networking sites... so it is important to keep professional and personal profiles separate.

The Other Guys credits

This is another great example of well done infographics. I am still really interested in this area in visual communication and see it as one of my paths after I finish uni!

Keaton Henson narritave film

I found this video as part of the research for my EMP. Keaton Henson creates a narrative piece for the packaging of an album. I think the visuals are strong and the narritave process relates to part of my EMP creation. I would like to find more videos like this which could influence my final piece.

Sky - Better Effect

I saw this the other day on TV and really like the use of animation over film, for the next two months I shall be concentrating on my designs for my extended major project. The brief I have set myself is to create a piece of film/animation based around the subject of online persona. I have already began to look at brand identity in the attempt to come up with a formula of how internet users perceive themselves online. I would like to create a narrative which raises awareness about how this data concretes itself online.

Hitting blanks

It has been particularly hard over the past past weeks to find motivation to do the Taschen brief for DNAD. Especially when you find out they have already completed the brief for you. I have tried to collate the positives from the experience so far, on the preview page people have reviewed what they think of the application. They have left some pointers on where to improve the application, which has helped with my research into the usability.

click here to see the Taschen app

TLK 2 - The creative process

The second in the series of TLK lectures invited back David Burton of Redweb, Bella Lewis Smith of Salad, Ross Cleaver of Revolting and Paul Leon who is a Freelance designer.

Like the first lecture there was a layed back atmosphere to the discussion, which brought out some key points in the creative process, one of the main topics being the perception of freelance work, should artworkers be paid for work while they are at University to boost their portfolios or should payment be the experience gained from working with a client? There was a good spread of views from students on different courses, mainly illustrators doing work on magazine artwork.

I had the opportunity to speak with Ross Cleaver, who had spoken of working in Australia for a year. This was a worthwhile opportunity to find out some information as it was one of my options in the pipeline after I leave Uni. The main objectives I learn't were through inspiration. In order to be inspired I need to keep life fresh, do something different each day and be curious about everything, that way I can spark ideas more easily.