Sevn - The 3rd year Magazine

This is the first issue of Sevn, our course's magazine showcasing what is going on in Third year Graphics at MMU. As the first group of seven people, we came up with the name and concept for the magazine, obviously based on the fact their are seven people in each group and hopefully seven editions! Our theme for this issue is construction, as we are constructing the premise for this magazine and we are surrounded daily by construction works in uni. If you want to take a look at the full magazine plus other issues, have a browse here.

Front cover.
I designed this logo which picks out the VII for seven. This was planned to be printed in a
spot varnish with bronze highlights.

D and AD North Poster

Over the weekend I've been working on a couple of A1 posters to enter for the D&AD North Poster Competition.

This was some information we got in the brief...

Event title: D&AD North Lecture 3: GBH are 12

Multi-Award winning Design & Advertising agency GBH talk about a dozen of their most important projects to celebrate their 12th birthday. As well as a show and tell of some of their diverse work for Puma, Eurostar, Royal Mail, SLS Hotels, Virgin Galactic, Land Securities, and others, GBH have devised a new kind of Q&A. Each audience member takes part in a giant raffle, where GBH artifacts from projects past and present are the reward for randomly selected questions.



POSTER 1

So for one poster I decided to focus on the fact that it was their birthday, and thought I'd bake them a cake that would be fitting of D and AD to make them! (for the non designers out there, D&AD are famous for giving away yellow pencils as design awards).. I then used the light of a candle to create the text below.

The text at the bottom reads:

"To celebrate their 12th Birthday, multi award winning design & advertising agency GBH talk about

 a dozen of their most important projects. And to help them celebrate we baked them a cake. Aren't 

we nice.

"For a slice of the action (but sorry not the cake), and a chance to win some genuine GBH artifacts, don't miss out on this lecture."

POSTER 2

For this poster I concentrated on the theme of the Q&A raffle, and turned the D&Ad logo into the side of a raffle drum. The dotted lines hint at a tear off raffle strip down one side.

The text at the bottom reads :

"AS IF OUR LECTURE ALONE WAS NOT ENOUGH OF A DRAW, YOU COULD WIN WIN WIN IN OUR Q&A RAFFLE.

"Award winning Design & Advertising agency GBH talk about a dozen of their most important projects to celebrate their 12th birthday. As well as a show and tell of some of their diverse work, GBH have devised a new kind of giant Q&A raffle. And if you're lucky enough to have your question picked out, you could win some genuine GBH artifacts from projects past and present!"

Summer Project

This Summer we were set an infographics brief, where we had to record our lives in detail and then produce some work from what we had found out. I recorded quite a lot of different pieces on information, from what time I woke up, to exactly everything I ate, to who I had internet/phone contact with, to what I wore. After filling in my questionnaire every day for the month of August, I wanted to create a form of annual report - or rather a monthly report - of everything that I’d done that month.

To represent data, I decided to use real objects that actually somehow relate to the subject they are describing, and then turn these into line charts, bar graphs and pie charts, amongst other forms of infographics. I then made this into a series of spreads within a booklet, of which a selection of the pages are photographed here.

NikandCarole

Over summer one of the placements I completed was at the agency Nik and Carole for three weeks, in which I got involved in so many different things and learnt alot about the industry.
Carole very kindly wrote me this reference about my time at NikandCarole :

Laura joined us for 3 weeks over summer and was a perfect fit at Nik and Carole.

Very enthusiastic and uber confident, not only did she get stuck in to everything we asked her to do, her insights and ideas surpassed all our expectations. Working on a variety of projects from packaging and branding, literature and even product design it soon became very clear that her versatility and genuine passion for the industry would shine through no matter what we threw at her! Thank you Laura and good luck in your final year.

Work Experience at Cube 3

As part of my work experience placements this summer I went back to Cube3, who during the last year have moved to their new offices in the centre of Manchester! This is the third time I've been to Cube - the first time being when I was fifteen, way back before I knew much about Graphic Design! They made me feel like part of the team and definitely allowed me to be even more involved with everything they had on those few weeks. 

One project I was involved in, was an infographic project for Cube themselves to use to demonstrate visually the process they go through in a brief to prospective clients. Alongside Tom, we created this diagram which shows clearly the flow in the creative process. I got to do most of the illustrations, something which I really enjoy doing. 

One other project I was given was to produce a  pitch document that they would then pitch to prospective client 'Glendale'. Glendale are a national company who provide services in the environmental sector, including grounds management, horticulture, and even golf site management - a main feature of these we decided being 'grass'! Glendale wanted a new company brochure / folder that could house other case studies and brochures, so for the first pitch we decided to present them with the unusual prospect of having artificial grass on the front of the folder to really make a tactile impact and go with their strapline 'a deeper green'. This would make them really standout in their sector! One concept had a cut out hole through which you could see the grass, something which would further emphasis the idea of a 'deeper' green. I also wanted to incorporate the swoosh of the existing glendale logo and so that can be seen throughout the concepts. 

Work Placement at Creative Spark

I've just finished a two week placement at branding and digital agency Creative Spark in Manchester. I had loads of fun, the team were really great and the studio produced some fab work while I was there and won quite a few pitches. So I thought I'd include on here a couple of pieces I did while at Creative Spark.

This dance poster was for Kathleen Atherton Dance Company's annual show and should hopefully be going to print. They had named the show 'Dancing on the Keys' and so by combining the dancer's ballet shoe ribbon with the piano keys I think the image cleverly suggests the name of the show.

WHAT'S ON ROB?

Creative Spark were also doing some preliminary designs for new brand and website 'What's on Rob?', a site to let students know of all the offers and events on in Manchester. I got involved in the research stages and then moved on to branding, producing my own logo and web homepage for the site. Rob will get to choose which of the brands he likes with the design team, so there's always a chance this could go through.

STATIONERY

Letterhead front and back

Compliment slip and business card

WEBSITE - homepage

Rise of the Apes brief

In line with their new film to come out this autumn, Rise of the Apes (prequel to Planet of the Apes), 20th Century Fox released a brief which asked designers to promote the upcoming movie. My short teaser animations could be sent around the web, shown on websites or on television, and centre around the idea of 'warning' the public via public service announcements that 'The Apes are Coming'. However the animations are in a way quite lighthearted, as whilst using warning signs, and trying to show an element of panic, they reference to the usual things we see monkeys doing - such as jumping on our cars at a safari park, the ape in the Donkey Kong game, or even references to King Kong. Unfortunately I never entered my work, as I still wanted to make some changes after feedback which was then too late for the deadline.

Here are the animations storyboarded...

FLUX magazine project

We were given a few of the features for the upcoming Flux magazine to experiment with for magazine spreads. For once, I wanted to try be a bit more hands on for this project - it's been a while since I've got off the computer! So I tried out some things with creating my own type, and type within images. I'm not going to lie, I still used the computer for some bits, but at least the aesthetic is a bit of a change for me! I'm also going to try and get into photography a bit more, so I tried a couple of fashion shoots - one just a fashion editorial, and another a Pina Bausch inspired dance/fashion shoot. I think there's still a lot that could be worked on - wish I'd given myself more time too, but I enjoyed the change and the challenge, and think some of my pieces give interesting results!


Fashion Designer ANN DEMEULEMEESTER

Composer PHILIP GLASS

Film Director FEDERICO FELLINI

Choreographer PINA BAUSCH - Here, the mud letters are based on her dance piece, Rite of Spring, performed on a stage covered in dirt.

Pina Inspired shoot.

Fashion Editorial

    

Identity Workshop - 'Fresh' Sandwich Shop

In this workshop I was given the task of creating an identity for Laura Jackson's fantasy company - a sandwich shop named 'Fresh'. The main theme of stripes - suggesting layers in a sandwich - which can be seen on the knife in the logo, is continued in promotional items, such as give out post it note stacks that say 'Don't forget to eat at fresh', or stackable napkins, and use of stripy knives instore.

Me in the prospectus

I've recently received this photo from my university, which is to be used in our undergraduate prospectus! Last August I undertook a placement at Cube 3 Marketing in Bolton, who are now situated in Manchester. And so a while back uni came to take a photo and ask me about my time there.

My placement was also featured on Creative Boom Magazine's blog here.
I would love to go back there this summer too so fingers crossed!

Ian Anderson Workshop

The two Ian Anderson workshops of this term have been great experiences - extremely challenging and exhausting but totally worthwhile, and full of learning experiences, in particular presentation skills.

In the first workshop we had a few hours to create a self portrait of ourselves as a designer, and then  the following day had to create a logo for the person next to us taking influence from their self portrait, and then present this to the group. Emma had chosen Francium, due to its reactive properties, conveying how she reacts well to new people and experiences. My identity is primarily for use as an online website home page, the idea being that as someone rolls over it, the logo would 'react'. The 'bonds' would break and reform, flickering through different positions, and the word creative also reforms to spell out reactive. Here I have storyboarded it as an idea, (left column) and also created business cards for Emma.

Renaming Ian Anderson

A while back, designer Ian Anderson (Designers Republic) set us a brief to rename him, and create an A1 poster explaining why. He then picked some of us to participate in a workshop which I was lucky enough to be chosen for! During my research on him, I found there were a lot more google results for lead flute player of Jethro Tull, also named Ian Anderson, as well as a few others with the same name. As Ian Anderson's design work stands out so much, I decided that his name should not result in any of these 'mix ups' and decided to announce a 'big name mix up' where the letters of Ian's named were mixed up to form his new name. And I was also hoping he would find my modified image of him playing the flute instead of Jethro Tull rather amusing!

Back to blogging

We've all been so busy getting our work completed for assessment that it's been a while since I've posted any work! So thought I'd get my blog back up to date.. watch out for lots of posts to come..