Placement Update

This past week I have been enjoying my first week of placement as Big Communications in Leicester as a graphic designer. My previous blog posts had charted my application and interview so it seems only right that I post a quick update on how my placement has been going so far...

This week I have been working on emailers, livery, print work and branding so it has been a really varied few days but great for experiencing a whole range of tasks in a short space of time. I think I have been keeping up with the fast paced work place well and loved that I was working on real life campaigns that might actually be used!

I hadn't had a great deal of real studio experience beforehand so it was a steep learning curve the first few days as to how the studio functioned. Many of the people in the creative team work in pairs of copywriter and art director; something I was aware of but had never experienced first hand before so took the opportunity to quiz an interning copywriter and art director on their experiences. I was interested to find that both had studied graphic design (as I had) but diversified into their new roles. It made me feel positive about the various opportunities I could expand into in the future if I wanted.

In general I have had a productive, educational, creative and fun week. Being on placement has really taught me so much in such a short space of time and it's really satisfying to do a job that I have been trained for and working towards for 3 years, especially with such a respected and successful agency.

One of the benefits aside from the actual creative work is meeting like minded creatives and being able to have a fun work environment as well as a creative and interesting job.

N.B I didn't wan't to shove an SLR in peoples' faces on my first few days so decided to include this quote from one of my favourite designers, Saul Bass (from here) that I think is quite apt.

The poster is taken from my Pinterest board "Inspiration" which you can follow for typographic and design based pins.

Found Designs #3

Following previous posts along a similar theme (see here & here) I have collated more of my iPhone photos into a "Found Designs" blog post. These posts, as implied, are interesting illustrations, packaging and typography examples I have found while out and about.

My favourite designs here are a postcard from Aberystwyth using old style typefaces with an impressionist style painting to give a suggestion of the vintage sea side era.

A beautiful typeface on a memorial plaque I came across while walking my dog.

Interesting packaging design for some chocolates. The box uses foils to give the box a sense of luxury in contrast with a modern style of the package and typography.

Prima Oliva Branding

A friend recently approached me about helping him rebrand his company; Prima Oliva. The company makes and sells specialist olive oils to wholesalers, restaurants and pubs. The brief was quite open so there were plenty of avenues to research and explore first. After some research and developing a logo I came up with this.

The new design takes reference from traditional olive oil bottles and street sinage, combined with a clean style to give a modern and sophisticated approach. The colour palette was key to make the new branding relevant to the company as the light greens and yellows can be associated with the olives, olive trees and the oil. 

This is a super quick mockup of some potential letter heads, business cards and compliments slips that will create a clean and consistent brand for the company.

Business Cards

As the degree show approaches I have been collecting and ordering the various elements I need to make my exhibition. One of the things I ordered were my business cards, which arrived today. I had been investigating into business cards for some time as they have been on my to do list for months, but finally ordered them last week from uk.moo.com.

I have used MOO a few times before, most recently for my postcards, where some of the prints had been smudged. However, when they arrived today they were neatly packaged and the print quality was really clear and vibrant. I possibly went a bit overboard and ordered 200 so there would be plenty for the show.

I wanted the design to be simple but incorporate things that gave an indication of my style. The design is simple and clean but includes elements of texture; a prominent feature in my own work.

You can get 10% off your next order at uk.moo.com by using this code.

Found Designs

Since I got my iPhone earlier this year I have been taking photos all the time. I never normally carry a camera with me or even profess to be good at photography, but being able to take a photo of a great piece of typography or illustration can be a great reference for future design projects.

I find things that I like everywhere; on parcels, in Tesco, the Frosties box even inspired some design work for this project. This is a few of the examples I found while out.

Logo Design

Through a design project at university I got in touch with the people from the computer science department, helping them out with design work and creating some illustrations. It's been fun working on more web based projects as I haven't had a chance to work in that area before. To start with i've been making some web illustrations and a logo design for this great website on html 5. You can visit the website and see the design work live at http://www.html5tuts.co.uk/

As well as logo design i'm also working on some web banners for a similar project, it's been a challenge to visualise SEO and web analysis for users that may not understand these terms. It's a really useful and creative project to be involved with and I hope to work with the department further.