Wonderland and 18th Century France

In the last two weeks of this term, the tutors set a Penguin competition brief, or rather two. The briefs were for Alice in Wonderland (Puffin) and Perfume (Penguin), more specifically to make new covers for them.

Working in a sketchbook was fun (minus the horrific flashbacks to GCSE and A Level Art), and I got a draft for both ready for the assessment in spite of the Essay we were doing at the same time.

Challenges always come in threes, or Sustainable:Me?

The main part of Year 2 Term one's Module was the Sustainable:Me? (or maybe Me!) part. We were briefed by Lulu, a member of the Futerra sutainability group, on a product or products that would educate the design community about designing sustainably. Our tutor told us that we would be doing both a web/screen-based and print-based out come to be assessed (both in groups), and also a personal product that would not be assessed, but would be examined by the member of Futerra.

The group projects were initially a challenge as not only were we organising with a group, but for the first time we were working on two projects at once, so we had to plan meetings between both. This brought out the best and worst in people, with unprepared-ness hindering in places from some people.

Nevertheless, by the end of the brief we all had something to be proud of, and my outcome for the solo project was something I was pleased with, concept-wise if not in the execution.

Don't let the bells etcetera etcetera

Well, this is my last day in the 'diff until next term, I'm looking forward to Christmas with the family, it's gonnabe good to see my grandparents too, haven't seen them in ages.

Had to say goodbye to the missus too, but I'll see her soon. This second year of uni has been much more of a blast socially, I had a good time last year, but the stability of Cathays has meant all us grimy students are in one place, so we can drunkenly stagger to and from each-others houses fairly quickly.

Eboy oh boy oh boy

Work for amnesty international by eBoy


I've been interested in the eBoy graphics collective, and thought I'd mention them on my Blog.

Pixel art has always amazed me, the amazing detail, the retro look and in the case of isometric pixel art, the strange perspective-less-ness.

eBoy are the Dons of pixel art, and have done artwork for Coca Cola and Basement Jaxx, and they always sneak little pop culture references into their work.

I am a massive fan of theirs, I've got a poster on the wall and my awesome Girlfriend bought me their Pixorama book for an Early birthday present.

So the gist of this gush is, check them out, you won't be sorry!

http://hello.eboy.com/eboy/

Kevin Spacey and the new PEN camera from Olympus

I'm sure you've seen the new camera adverts with the mighty Kevin Spacey in them, with his coolness and all. Awesome celebrity usage in adverts aside though, the camera looks really nice. It's based on the old Olympus PEN series, and has the same sort of retro look, with the brushed metal and awesome leather handle.

It seems like the ideal camera, it's got the versatility of an SLR, but is a lot more compact. There's only one problem for me, its price of £699.99 (slight discount on Amazon of 583.23). So I think I'm going to have to wait a few years before I can afford it. Still, what a looker!

A review: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/OlympusEP1/

First few weeks of second term, YCN and D&AD

To ease us in to the new module of Print and Web, I did a review of one printed publication, and one website in a pair with Andy Niven.

YCN
The printed publication we looked at was the YCN annual for 2009/10, a showcase of budding designers and illustrators.

We thought the book was really well laid out, using paper finish as well as tone to distinguish between the main gallery part of the book, and the brief section.

The use of a quirky typeface for headings (cooper black) and the colourful headings themselves made the book exciting, but not distracting away from the content of the book.


I'll update this post with images and the D&AD analysis.

Some design on a 'Design' blog? *dies* (Bonus feature, no more essay!)

I thought I'd start with the first bit of design I did as a personal project. I only learned InDesign last term, and so wanted to have a go and see what I could do with it. I started with the word claustrophobia, and went from there. By reducing the letterspacing on individual letters, and distorting the horizontal and vertical sizes of the letterforms, I gave the impression of there not being enough space, whilst only using two elements, the heading and the line of text.

A big thank you to the makers of the typefaces:
Prozac Buzz typeface by Bolt Cutter Designs - http://www.boltcutterdesign.net/
Rough Linen Typeface by LastSoundtrack - http://lastsoundtrack.fontspace.com/
Damn the Man typeface by [Unknown] (if you know please tell me so I can thank them :) )