I Don't Know

After many (too many) weeks of trying to sort out my final major project I have begun the fun stuff. Here is my first attempt at a visual for both the logo and style for the project. I will elaborate soon....

Star Student

Huddersfield university produce a prospectus every year (really??) Within it there are sections where students who have had the magical huddersfield/placement experience give a little bit of schpiel about their time and show off a bit. I've been chosen to be one of those show-offs : )

So, some of my work will be in there and I also had to have my photo taken with a prop of my choosing. I was shot by a really cool photographer who made the experience, which could have been really awkward, a super fun one.

Had a right laugh. Heres some of the pictures :

Me and my girlfriend decided on this one for the prospectus, just because its such a natural photo and wont really make any sense to anyone.

Type attack/battle concepts

A project I am pitching to lecturers to inspire a greater interest in typography throughout students in all three years. It will work much like the type battles on typophile.com. The student with the winning typographic piece, using the specifed font, will 1. get the font family (of course) and 2. have the possibility of having their piece displayed on a classroom wall (along with future winners)..

YCN - Fedrigoni

I should really be writing my dissertation right now, but, well.... this is just much easier and more fun. Plus, its been a while.

Last month I worked on, probably one of the most unlikely to be fun projects to date. The brief, in short was to create a campaign for the paper company 'Fedrigoni', that entices creatives to go to and regularly use Fedrigoni's new London Showroom. The brief specified that the campaign must showcase the huge range of papers that they have to offer, which looking back I think I ignored.

The project I set myself was to hold a creative rock paper scissors tournament in the showroom for all the leading creative companies in the London area. I thought this would work because:

1. Who wouldnt want to beat their creative competitors?

2. There is every possible chance that anyone can win as it is not based on skill

3. Everyone likes a bit of fun.

The tournament itself actually took a back seat because a star was born during this project. A star that shines so brightly I couldn't keep my eyes off it to the point where it blinded me slightly. That star is BEPPE FEDRIGONI...

Beppe, contrary to popular belief, is the founder and owner of Fedrigoni Ltd, and founded his beloved paper company after his fall from rock paper scissor greatness. After a realisation of how much paper had done for him, he decided to give back, to paper.

Without blabbering on too much, an invitation would be sent out the creatives that contains a package. Inside the package is a scroll containing the first two posters above explaining who Beppe is and what he would like you to do (enter the tournament) and also Beppes famous signature glove for practice purposes.

I will put up the whole typographically illustrated Beppe Fedrigoni story on the next post along with the packaging and tournament poster that will be used for the campaign.

One thing ive learned from this project is to have fun and dont try and do everything yourself.

Massive hand to Kyle Shrives for his help with photography, Marc Stevens for playing a better Beppe than I could ever have imagined, Olly Separamadu for the perfect Gopan Rao, Steve Godfrey for his comic genius and James Hughes for his encouraging enthusiasm and ideas.

I think i'll use that if I actually win the YCN award....

Adidas Sambas

I got some of these, last year I think, when I needed some new trainers. I saw my lecturer wearing some, of all people, when I was in college and thought 'they are some slick ass trainers'. When I finally got some from a shitty sports shop for a cool £30, the bumming began.
I don't know what it is with these trainers, I remember my lecturer saying he loved these trainers and I could tell by the tone of his voice he genuinely had a special place in his feet for them and I can see why!

They are the balls! I've fallen for them and am seriously thinking about just buying another pair once the soles of these have worn down to my socks, which will probably be ages yet as they are sturdy mutha' footers. I've also found,since acquiring them, that many other people have some connection with them and I reckon its probably a good connection. Heres what people have said to me:

'Oi! you in the fuckin' Sambas', to which I kept my head down and walked that little bit faster.
'Whats with the Sambas? its not 1980!'
'I hear you can get them in white with black stripes now. I'd kill for some of those'
'Nice kicks man'
'I had some of those once, the big tongue with the logo is right cool'

Whats with these trainers???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adidas_Samba heres some more info on them if you love these trainers just like me.

FINISHED

No particular order. You will see a piece Ihavent put up yet which is the LSTN final piece.As you can barely tell what it is from that pic, heres the digital image:



Next up is entering the YCN competition.

http://www.ycnonline.com/

Thanks to Kyle Shrives for sorting me out with some sweet photographs.

LSTN #3

For the final 2 weeks of this 5 week project we have been set a task to design a webspage for one of Urban Outfitter's side projects.

The side project is called LSTN and showcases the latest in cool music that you should be listening to.... kinda made me realise how uncool I am right now. Anyway, check out what Rob Loeber has already come up with to see exactly what im talking about.

http://lstn.urbanoutfitters.com/

There were three factors which made this project harder than the rest:

1. We were given 2 weeks to produce the artwork, which for students means go to tvshack.net for 5 days straight before even thinking about ideas for work.

2. It was Halloween and I also has a visit from my brother, which meant two unavoidable nights out.....unavoidable.....you know what I mean.

3. There were 20 tracks on offer

The last on the list there, to me, meant thinking of an idea that would be able to stretch across 20 different artists. This made me hesitant to rush into an idea because I didnt want to spend loads of time on designing a concept and it ending up looking crappy, therefore putting me further behind. So, I made an effort to write down ideas and nail something before starting.

My initial idea was to use the jigsaw as inspiration for design for the following reasons:

1. from my research I found that the kind of people that like these bands like their design to be nostalgic and retro, cool and geeky.

2. I like how each piece is individual but comes together to make a whole

I wasnt really impressed with how the designs were coming out, and a lecturer of mine said that jigsaw pieces were a big no no in graphic design. So, I changed it up.

In short I thought about what I can get for free just like LSTN, and realised you dont get anything good for free. Which makes LSTN pretty good. So, to emphasise this point, I collected all the free stuff I could get, which ended up being all things from restaurants and cafes etc......pretty much condiments. But it really caught my imagination and each sachet or packet started to become it own individual piece.

Im really tired after today and need my sleep for 2moro. Heres the final outcome of the condiments...


Ill post the final later. Gotta sleep.