Book Covers

I have completed the book covers for the brief we had to do with an Illustrator, here are two of the covers and the press adds for them. I am currently unable to add the book cover for the first jacket as my files are corrupt for it!
Please click to view large.

Odessey & Oracle Website

The brief was to design a website for the 40th Anniversary release of an album from a list. I chose The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle, heres my web design. The first few images are the loading screen, which eventually becomes the background for the website.

You can view the original cover HERE. We had to stick to the theme of the vinyl cover, so I encorporated various illustrations from the cover.

My Matterbox

After a very long wait, my matter-slightly battered-box has finally arrived. Favourite item has got to be the Original Source sample!

Here are a few photos:

View more images HERE

Ad for TFL?

On a recent visit to London, had an idea for an advert for Transport for London.

(Click for large image)

The Wasp Factory

This brief is to design a book cover/jacket for books (2) that the designers chose out of a hat.

Not all elements have been added, but heres my progress so far:
I have borrowed a set of animal skulls from a tutor at Uni and will be replacing these spears with my own photography of skulls attached by a thick string to poles. I am going to then burn the edges of this cover and use it as the book jacket, and the cover will become a simple embossed skull in a light fabric (I havent fully decided, but this is the idea).

DJ gives it another spin

The DJ (Yosakuda) came to me for repeat work. This time I was commissioned to design a double sided business card In addition to that, Damien wanted the texture to be re-done in a particular way on the logo so I was also paid to do this.In the near future I shall be designing flyers and other material for the DJ.

What I'm working on...

Inspired by many designers and illustrators, I have began mixing photography with my own graphics.

Heres a few photos of what i've been upto:
Images were obtained from Skins.be

The Art Shops New Look

One day competition brief to design the signage for the Art Shop.
My design has been chosen for the Art Shops new look. They will appear on PVC banners, business cards, A2-A4 Posters and A5 Flyers. I am also designing the price list and a section on the West Herts College website. These designs are going to be used once the new building has been completed.

The trace so far...

I wanted to see how difficult it is to do a vector trace of a persons face.
Progress:
It's Angelina Jolie.

Logo Design - Motorsport

I recently designed a logo for a motorsport team competing in the Ford Fiesta Championship. The only constraints I had for this brief were to use Ford Electric Orange, Black, Grey, White and use the words "Nonstop Motorsport."
I will hopefully be designing the website for them, possibly doing the photography for them when I attend their races.

UK DJ Logo Design

I won a design competition ahead of over 100 other designs for a UK based DJ.

Winning logo below, and another logo the client liked.

Nikon D90 has arrived!

Today I got a surprise, and to my delight it was the long awaited D90!

Here are a few photos the D90:

RightDeal Mortgage Co

I approached small companys' and made enquiries about their website, stationary and anything else they may have wanted. I got in contact with a mortgage advisor through a friend who was in need of a new website and stationary.I completed the website within a week, after that I was asked to design some stationary which has been completed.

You can view the website here: http://www.rightdealmc.co.uk

First official logo design

A logo was desperately needed for the club's progression and so window vinyls could be made. I had a few ideas floating around in my head and began posting them on the forum to get the members opinions.

After a discussion and some voting, the club came to the decision to choose my design. Here it is below:
Prices for vinyl making are being sorted out at the moment and you should soon see this appearing on Ford Fiestas'!

Silken Touch (WBL)

Myself and two other graphic designers worked on the identity for Silken Touch. The clients chose to use my logo design and the business card, they have not yet come to a decision on the compliment slip or letterhead for unknown reasons.

I questioned whether it made sense that we were doing this work for free, my WBL tutor replied and told me that our 'payment' would be that my work would actually be used. I went along with the flow but I still had my doubts.

Below are the designs that I came up with. The chinese lettering means 'Silk.'

Helvetica! (Essay)

Some of my classmates and even tutor believe that I have an obsession with this typeface; it's not an 'obsession,' I just like to use it because in most cases it works! If you remember a few posts ago, there I mentioned having to write an essay; I thought I would write a few lines about the Cultural Context module.

As pointless as most of this module was, I actually learnt a few things.

Below you will find my 2000 word essay on Helvetica available for your enjoyment. I enjoyed writing the essay, I am sure you will enjoy reading it and maybe learn a few facts!

Right-Click and Save As: Helvetica Essay

Magazine (Group) Project

The graphic design team had to work with the Illustrators to design a magazine called Monkey Tracksuit which would be on par with the likes of Juxtaposed, I-D, ModArt and a few others. We had a total of 5 graphic designers and 3 Illustrators working on the magazine. The Illustrators were responsible for producing drawings that were related to the subject and style of magazine.

We dediced to use my grid design, one out of three front covers and three of the single and double page spreads. The spreads are as follows: D*Face (Artists Spotlight), Fashion and an Illustrators profile. I was very happy with my outcomes, especially the front cover and the D*Face spread.

The page on the left is the single page spread, and the two on the right are the double page spread. I designed a total of three spreads for the magazine but I put up the one I believe to be the best.

Conceptual Calendar

I had to design a conceptual calendar which was to take place in the London 2012 Olympics at Lee Valley. My first thought was that I had to visit the venue, I knew this would help me generate ideas (as it has helped me from a previous project - Film Festival). I immediately came up with an idea which i took into practice straight away.

I began by drawing interesting lines from the photographs onto Illustrator, this gave me an abstract illustration of the photograph. After this I began making this design look more like the photo by adding random shapes which I randomly placed. I then added my custom made calendar (I placed all the characters individually to get the design I needed). Lastly, I added the calendar month which I did not modify because otherwise there would be too much of the same thing going on.
I had to re-create the London 2012 Logo as it was impossible to source a high resolution copy, and I also re-created the Lee Valley logo, which I added a clever touch to.

I definitely enjoyed this project as I like to work with photography, abstract graphics and architecture (I was initially planning to go into this).

Below you can view the whole calendar, there are 13 individual designs. The calender will actually appear in a booklet.

(Please click for an enlarged version)

Pointless Packaging

My tutor said that this would be a challenging brief for me - it most definitely was. In some cases I refrain from thinking 'outside the box,' because it's simply not needed, and a simple idea can be more effective, but this brief put up quite a fight before I got the right idea.

For this brief I had to design packaging for 1. A Single Orange 2. A Newspaper and 3. A Left Footed Shoe (I picked a Stiletto). Pointless right? Thats what I thought, but when I think about there will be occassions where I may have to design packaging for 'unusual' items so this is good practice.

I wanted to keep a consistent theme within my designs because I believe thats important to the companys image. I realised this from when I looked around my shop; Haribo, for example keeps a similar theme of packaging, but they just change the lower part on the front of the packaging is different.

Below are images for each of the designs I came up with. The actual final Orange is slightly different to this - the white background surrounding the typography is not there.

K to the A! (Kano Project)

This was definately a brief I was immediately interested in, what more would you want then designing the album and single covers for one of your favourite artists? It was definately going to be a very long breif, we were given over 2 months to do this - i'm not surprised as we had to design the album cover, 3 singles (of our choice), a special edition and a promotional item.

I started off by doing the usual, researching through websites, books, magazines and so on. I also paid a visit to Kano's hometown - Eastham, but I found nothing useful there at all but a good lunch at KFC.

The album is called 'London Town,' so we had to somehow incorporate the London theme, which was no problem because I came up with an idea pretty quickly. I developed this idea to a great extent (wish you could see the sketchbook), but I have used photos of London skylines and combined them with graphics equalisers to create a digital landscape.

The three singles took me a very long time as well; I religiously listened to each track of the album trying to understand the meaning behind the song, noting down all the lyrics that I felt were important. Once I had a bunch of ideas, I began trying to illustrate them and then combine them with the design idea I used in the album.

Here are the 5 covers (click for large image):

It's been a while...

Some of you, well, the few viewers I have may be wondering why there has been no new posts since February. Well, January was the beginning of Semester B at Uni, we also started a new module (yawn) Cultural Context; this was pretty much a history lesson. We did get to write a 2000 word essay though, I chose the great typeface Helvetica to write about - I think I have done pretty well on that (I hope).

Work Based Learning became a little more relavent as this brief was actually related to our industry. I had an interesting meet with a local graphic design company, Grow Creative. We had to make a presentation about our contact with the industry as well, this was easy as I had done the work - i'm sure I aced that. The second part of WBL was to (if possible) carry out a brief for an actual client. I worked with a few others and we designed a whole identity for two teachers who have their own business; this job was a complete pain in the arse, I guess this may be the first of many to come... Coping with and explaining to clients designs/procedures etc. is part of the job, so it was a good learning experience.

With our Graphics modules, I think that on some projects it went really well, but there were a couple of others that I was less intruiged by; but you'll see all of these in the next few posts.

Corporate Identity

Design a logo and a range of stationary to create an identity for a company

I find the most interesting piece of stationary to design is the business card. I like the small amount of space to design something that is both aesthetically pleasing and informative.

Below are the business cards I designed for Foodee! (Restaurant) and Paper People (Paper & Stationary Service).

For the Paper People logo I started off by drawing the designs on paper, I then scanned in the design and drew the logo in Illustrator. I wanted to give the impression this company is straight forward, reliable and provides a good service. With the Foodee! logo, this was drawn with a brush pen which set me back £10.60! It gave the effect I was looking for, quite an arty, classy restaurant to dine in.

Christmas

(December 2007)
I've never really been a fan of Christmas, spending all this insane amount of money buying presents! I think people have been thrown off the actual meaning of christmas through corporate consumerism because during this period, all you see is people going crazy and spending hundreds of pounds in shops!

Anyway, the point of this post is to show a photograph that I took during this period on a very cold visit to London.
I specifically wanted to take photos in the evening so I could develop my skills in Night Photography, which is my favourite type because I find the emphasis of the lighting intruiging. Just by changing the shutter speed you can create different effects.

I entered this photo in a fun competition on a forum I regularly visit; UKFN. The theme for the competition was Christmas, so I entered with this photo and won. I find it difficult to describe why this photo fits the description of christmas, maybe because it's obvious in a way? but the bright blue lights with the less obvious red reflected from another building fit the colours you would expect. Also the image of a family walking together makes me think its more christmas because it's a time when the family gets together.

I admit the image isnt perfect, but i'll improve for next time. A tripod larger than 12cm will definately help me :)

First 'shot' at Photography

(November 2007)
Since I have an evergrowing interest in Photography, I decided to take the next step up from my Fujifilm F31FD and purchase a D-SLR. I went for the Nikon D40 with the 18-55mm lens. I had the very basic knowledge of ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed etc. but to master this it was definately going to take a long time.

Here's one photo I took during a regular visit to London. This was prior to the D40 days, so the F31FD is in action here...

F 2.8 / 6.5sec
I think it came out really well considering I didn't have a triopd. 6.5secs!! I like how there's a shadow of people in the image with the bus moving in the background.

Quality ain't all that though :\ which is a shame, but it's the beginning.

Great Success!

(November 2007)
We were given a brief which immediately caught my eye, Poster Campaign. The aim of this project was to create three A3 posters in association with English Heritage, The Guardian and the British Film Institute.

(Left: Original photo of Wellington Arch that I took for the War poster)

I believe that all three images work very well as a group because they have similarities between them and theres a clear theme, but they keep their individuality through colours and bold graphics. We had to keep in mind that we were working with The Guardian, so there was already and etiquette so to speak for the design. I kept the posters sharp and tidy for maximum impact on the viewer.

(Please click to enlarge image)

I'm off to a good start. I thoroughly developed my ideas to ensure that I would be able to get the best results, which paid off when I got a great mark.

Research Project?

(November 2007)
'Creative Reference File' was the title of the next brief. I decided to base the research on the Punk era, I have a great interest in the typography created around the 70's; especially the work on the Sex Pistols album artwork by Jamie Reid.

(Sex Pistols - Anarchy In The UK)

It's in your face, inconvenient, ripped; the use of safety pins, general 'roughness' and not giving a shit (basically), and with the combination of the ransom note type style Jamie Reid has used is just brilliant. It very much describes what punk was about; anti-establishment.

I think if I had worked harder and not been so thrown off by the lack of enthusiasm this project brought I would have been able to achieve a better grade.

The First Hurdle

(October 2007)
The first brief given to us was titled, '48 Squares.' In which we were given the No Smoking logo and 48 words. The task was to manipulate the logo to graphically describe each word clearly, it seemed like an easy task but some words weren't easy to depict.

The deisgns themselves aren't flawless in the sense of being perfectly rendered, but the main point of this brief was to keep on churning out the ideas and not limit ourselves. The 8 i've posted are among the favourites and most creative designs.

First Entry

Welcome to my blog!

Here is where I shall be regularly updating and posting work that i've done either personally, or design work that i've completed through my course.

A little bit about me:

I'm studying a foundation degree in Graphic Design at the University of Hertfordshire. I'm already half way through my first year and it has gone very fast as it's been packed full of projects which have definately been fun. I have been learning new skills; the most beneficial so far has been learning how to use Adobe Illustrator. This has made the work load easier simply because it is a lot quicker to place and manipulate type and graphics to how I want them.

So it's 'so far so good.'