Monday 29 September 2008

Ahoy Shipmates!

So I'm pretty much jumping in at the deep end with this blog keeping activity as I've never really used it before but I expect this post is going to be pretty jam packed as there are few things to let you know about that I should have admittedly done sooner!

So first things first, I have been living in Leeds for about two weeks now. Like it. Like it a lot. The food is awesome (obviously because I'm cooking for myself), the people are awesome (most of them) and I enjoy where I'm staying as well as where I'm studying. So far so good. Oh and I have been growing a moustache, sweet.

Anyway, over the summer I eventually received a nice little brief (no thanks to you Royal Mail) to get me back into the swing of things and to cut a long story short I have been working on two A6 sketchbooks that represent facts about two different letters in a visually interesting way. Not having a choice over the matter I ended up with the letters 'O' and 'L' and because I am feeling nice I have included a few of my developments below.





Whilst completing these pieces I took alot of inspiration from designers such as David Choong Lee and Eduardo Recife as I simply can't get enough of working with collage and illustration; especially if a few vintage materials are used for good measure! Check them out as they're amazing. End.

Next up, I began working on a week long brief (last Monday) in a small group of other 'O' students that I have met since being on the course. In a nutshell we had to devise a presentation that saved our given letter from being fictionally removed the alphabet for the rest of time. After a few coffee's and some friendly discussions we switched from our original idea of a stop frame animation video to a series of promotional posters. With this, the idea was that each of us would be able to produce our own individual piece whilst maintaining a house style through specific aspects of layout, branding (The SaveO Foundation) and formatting. Each poster contained a chosen word that gave out positive and inspiring connotations, as well as a dictionary definition and unique paragraph that assisted in campaigning for the letters existence.

In preparation we mounted our final designs onto professional looking foam-board and presented them as a series. Each poster was also presented with an additional image below which represented how the design would be used within a real life environment whether it be at a bus stop or on the side of a building. (Mine is the central image and I do have to give credit to Ollie as it was a useful collaboration to get everything completed in time).



Overall we were all very satisfied when the presentation was complete and also slightly surprised at what we managed to achieve between given the short amount of time. Stoked.

Over and out. x