Harri Larkin - Initial Conversations

I got a phone call earlier from a friend asking if I could mock up some logo ideas that her friend had had for their bands logo. The band is called Harri Larkin and is based in Bristol.

The description I received was that they wanted a chess piece as the symbol, and the text to say either the full band name or just the letters HL. I chose a knight as the piece to use because it's arguably the most illustrative of all the chess pieces and is asymmetrical, which makes it more of a symbol and less of a badge. 

Whilst it followed their instructions it ended up looking very corporate and clearly wasn't suitable for a band at all, especially given that they really like The Ramones logo and wanted to use it as an influence, something they told me afterwards.

It was a bit frustrating that their guidance led in the complete opposite direction to where they actually wanted to go, so I told them to leave it with me a couple of days and I'd send them something back that was more suitable.

More information about this stage of the live brief can be found here extended practice blog.

LinkedIn Job Notifications

I recently discovered at William Hill that seems like a good fit for me from an e-mail sent from LinkedIn, so it's worth paying attention to these e-mails.

Masters Courses

I've recently been looking at Masters courses that interest me for future reference. Whilst I don't want to go straight onto one after graduating, it's something I would consider 2 or 3 years after graduating after taking a break from education, which I'm growing a bit wearisome of.

I'd want to stay in Yorkshire. Having lived in Sheffield all my life until moving to Leeds for University, I've grown comfortable in Yorkshire. I find that when I've visited other cities there tends to be a different feel about them to ones in Yorkshire. I particularly like York.

I enjoy working on projects designed for human interaction, be they digital UX design, physical packaging, or augmented advertising and marketing. With this and location in mind I found some courses that I'd be interested in looking into further:

University of York - Social Media and Interactive Technologies
York St John University - Design
University of Leeds - Advertising and Design
University of Sheffield - Marketing Management Practice

I'd like to spend a bit more time in York before going to an open day to see if I could envisage myself living there, as it's been a while since I've been. Hopefully this can intertwine with my City Under The Floorboards brief for Extended Practice.

Research Journals

Having put a lot of time and effort into my dissertation and having received very positive feedback from my dissertation tutor, I've been looking into potentially getting my dissertation published in a research journal.

Two I'm looking at in particular are Critical Commentary, a journal promoted within university, and JAWS, a journal recommended to me by my dissertation tutor. At this moment in time I prefer the latter as Critical Commentary doesn't allow articles over 7,000 words and wants to retain copyright of all submissions, which would mean I'd have to shorten my dissertation and have less freedom to use it in future should I need too.

Help With Textiles Student's Design

A student on Printed Textiles recently asked me to make them a candy cane for use in one of her designs she wanted to enter in a competition because she wasn't confident doing it herself.

She offered me half of the prize, which I turned down as the student is a close friend, and I deemed it unnecessary as it didn't take me very long, she insisted on some form of payment though, so we agreed on 25% of any winnings from the competition.

I asked her to specify what size she wanted it and if she wanted any highlights or shadows etc to make the process as quickly as possible, this was the result.

These are the final designs where it's been used:

 

Joining LinkedIn

This morning I joined LinkedIn, I feel like it's necessary now, as I've started talking to people more and am more actively looking for live briefs, something that I haven't been doing until now.

I've filled out the majority of the information required to give as complete a profile as possible, although I'm yet to find a suitable photo for my profile picture.

I've requested to join groups relating to my interests, inculding Tropical Fish and Snooker.

Alteration to Self-Promotion Logo

I wanted to review my self-promotion logo from last year to check it was still appropriate for my work this year.

I wanted to make it more reflective of my personal interests, which is what my work focusses on to a large extent this year, so I tried incorporating the shape of the tail of an angelfish into the logo, as fish-keeping is one of my main interests.

I wanted to see how the shape looked by itself, but it's just too bulky when filled with a solid colour and loses it's elegance, as well as looking like a moustache.

I instead tried change the shape of the B to the tail shape, but I found that the curves contrasted with the points in the M making it look a bit confused. I was also told that the B looked very reminiscent of a pair of breasts, which isn't appropriate at all.

Getting rid of the points using the same shape made it look a bit like the McDonald's logo, and it was far too open.

I went back to the previous stage and added an extension to the fish tail, but I didn't like how this made it less square and made the B less obvious.

Given that my logo will be placed on business cards that very in shape to represent the projects in my portfolio it's probably not a big issue that adding the fish shape to the logo doesn't work.

Some of the feedback I got last year was that the B looked like an R, by putting my name underneath the symbol this was no longer an issue, but it limits the flexibility of the symbol if the text should always be placed underneath it.

I found that by extending the line of the B slightly this was no longer a problem, so the logo for my self-promotion will remain largely unchanged from last year, it's simple and gimmick-free like my work and personality.

When I start getting a better idea of what projects I'll be including in my portfolio I'll start working on the designs for the business cards, which will then lead in to some form of website. This shouldn't be too far away now though, as my extended practice is running smoothly.

Conversation with Simon Pickles at the University of York

Simon got back to me yesterday from the University of York about the doing some design work for the film City Under The Floorboards, he apologised for the amount of time it'd took and said that he'd like to work with me.

He said that he needed a logo and social media presence doing fairly quickly, with promotion and merchandising at a time that suits me at a later date. The policy of the university means that they're not allowed to pay me, but this isn't an issue for me because the project shouldn't be too time-consuming, as well as potentially providing me with opportunities to work in York in the future, which would be great because I love the city.

I replied, but I made clear that it's a slightly inconvenient time at the moment because of the timing clashing with my dissertation hand-ins and tutorials, which are my priority at the moment.

Assessing Competition Briefs

The competitions that I considered entering have now all released their briefs, these were YCN, D&AD, RSA, and Starpack. 

I had initially hoped for a packaging brief, so Starpack were the ones I was most looking forward too, however, I found them to all be a bit obscure apart from the Nestle one, which had the opposite problem and was too vague.

The D&AD briefs all seemed either very campaign-based or a bit dull, so none of them really caught my attention, the RSA briefs tended to have the same problem.

YCN were a lot more varied, and I found that The Saucy Fish Co. brief had a good balance of commercialism with fun, and freedom with restriction.

On top of The Saucy Fish Co. brief, I'm also planning on doing the A Clockwork Orange Brief from the Penguin Design Awards. I recently watch this film to try and gain a practical understanding of existentialism for my CoP essay.

Help With Poster For 'Travelling Man Presents BA Hons Illustration Party'

Joe Shiels asked me to help him with a poster to fill a gap at an exhibition he's helping to curate, 'Travelling Man Presents BA Hons Illustration Party'.

The exhibition is heavily illustrative, and so the poster needed to not overshadow any of the illustrations, so Joe requested it be type only and stuck to the colour scheme of the exhibition. 

This is what we came up with:

Edenspiekermann and MetaDesign

Edenspiekermann and MetaDesign are design agencies heavily influenced by Erik Spiekermann, one of the most well-known and successful signatories of the 2000 First Things First Manifesto.

The below images are work done by offices of Edenspiekermann in Berlin, Singapore, and Amesterdam for Optivo, The City of Amsterdam, and Utrecht City Theatre respectively. Their similar aesthetics despite their different head designers are examples of how modernist design tends to look very similar and easily replicated.

Eddie Pillers description summary of a modernist lifestyle is “an aphorism for clean living under difficult circumstances”, which, if extended into Graphic Design would suggest that Edenspeikermann have allowed, to some extend, modernist principles to become more important that result of following the principles. 

If this is the case then you would expect Spiekermann himself to be very committed to the other principles of the 2000 First Things First Manifesto, such as the opposition of commercialist culture. Despite this, MetaDesign, a company founded by Spiekermann himself, have clients including Bosch, Volkswagen, Raiffeisen, Audi, Karcher, Coca-Cola, Siemens, and Lacoste.

This is a practical example of how First Things First's ideology is nothing more than an ideology, it's impossible to work in practice because of how capitalism works, which is undermining of the anti-capitalist message set by the 2000 First Things First Manifesto.

Optivo (Link)

 

City of Amsterdam (Link)

Utrecht City Theatre (Link)

Sources

http://www.edenspiekermann.com/
http://sanfrancisco.metadesign.com/
https://vimeo.com/52431977

Contacting Simon Pickles at the University of York

I received an e-mail earlier about a potential live brief that I could work on in place of the DOPA Solutions Parkinsons Pen. 

It's something that fits with the work I'm doing this year quite well, and something I'm interested in doing, so I e-mailed Simon expressing my interest in the project.

I hope to hear back soon.