submitted boards

These boards were put on and handed in on my submission CD but I wanted to finish up by putting them up here as well. I had problems with issuu yesterday but should be working fine now.

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing - More graphic design

Drop banner and tickets

Just a couple of pics to show this brief in context in the real world. My drop banner photoshopped into the Science museum lobby, and my ticket designs printed and photographed.

final tickets and banners

I have now finalised (I hope) the designs for these now after a lot more fiddling about. Most of the changes are minor but I have changed the font on the motorsport exhibition to a sans small caps italic. this gives a racey, slightly retry feel which I think works quite nicely for this, but the ticket works better than the banner  I think.

drop banners test

I also want to make drop banners as well as posters and tickets for this brief so I have had a go at adapting the existing designs for this format. To make these look half decent I have had to do a lot of changes and I dont think they are quite working yet so I will need to refine these more. Hopefully by tomorrow I will have these working well enough to drop into photographs to make the work appear in context.

finished tickets

I think these are just about done now, these look better than the posters so I need to revist them to make final improvements now, then I need to show this work in proper context to finish the brief.

Age of print Exhibition

 Technology in motorsport Exhibition

The history of computers Exhibition

Mid evaluation/run down on current status of briefs

This post is to look at where I currently am with my briefs, looking back at how things have changed since my statement of intent was written, and to outline some decisions made about the briefs that I havent blogged until now.

First up, my rationale:

'To produce Typographically driven, concept based visual solutions for layout and branding with a focus on print outcome'


Good news, I am pleased that this is still relevant and accurately describes the work I have been doing since I wrote it.


Now to a rundown on the current status of my briefs: (order as described in SOI)


1) Leeds creative Time-bank
Brief completed, this was the first one I finished this module so it seems a long time ago! I don't think I will re-visit this one as I achieved all I wanted from it.  As a pitch for a design direction it's a credible solution I feel.


2) Exhibitions brief
This brief is well underway and I am planning to finish it before the end of this week, I have an interesting design direction for each exhibition and I just need to push out the brief to explore "what can it be" (© Fred) 


3) Lights camera action (film posters brief)
This brief I started ages ago but it has stuttered to a halt unfortunately, its an ideas led brief and tragically I have had only one really interesting idea for it: the James Bond Goldfinger poster. Even this poster isn't really completed yet as I have some adjustments I want to make. The plan is to spend a day on this brief to finish the bond poster and print it and thrash out some more ideas. I would really like to get something good out of this but if nothing new comes from another day brainstorming then I will drop the brief as I cant afford to waste more time.


4) Its all too much (roses 2011)
This brief was always a stand-by, incase something more interesting didn't come in, but I have done some small live briefs instead of looking at this one, so its officially dropped now.


5) Calendar brief
Another brief currently underway, I hope to have something completed by the end of next week. Its been a long term brief, and although I feel I have some some interesting work for it, its still based around experimental and quite minimal layout and STILL lacks real world context so I get the feeling it wont meet many grading criteria unless I can quickly make much more out of it.


6) Creative Networks brief
This was a quick live brief (but not nearly as quick as it should have been!) with only a postcard as an outcome which wasn't really worth the time invested unfortunately. I could revisit this to push the brief out a bit but I would really prefer to leave it and put it down to experience. At least its a real world job, but I learnt more about client management than actual design doing this!


7) KTP brief
This is a brief that I should have never started, I think I felt compelled to do something for this because I went to a briefing to find out more and found there was only 3 of us in the briefing! To be honest I wasn't really interested in the brief, and the 'pack' as it was originally described to us is a longer term project in planning stages that wont be ready to print anytime soon. A week wasted, brief dropped.


8) 2020 perfect vision
A one week live pitch that came on the back of a week placement I did for the company. I pitched the DVD packaging as they asked, but I can see some ways to make this brief slightly bigger so I may revisit this before hand in to expand the scope of this. I think I have come up with quite a neat solution for this and taken existing branding in a new direction so I am pleased with this work even though its more commercial and client led job.


On the whole I am slightly concerned at the moment about the amount of work done, even though I know where and why the time went, I have been working on briefs (or on placement), just not always doing the right briefs quick enough!

exhibitions brief: tickets development

I have spent a bit of time today testing how the exhibition designs will work on tickets, I have adapted the designs direction foe each exhibitions while trying to keep some common traits and using the existing science museum logo.

Exhibition ideas roughs

Just some examplres of developmental work for this brief:

Some ideas generation for the 'Age of Print' exhibition, this sheet was the start of the idea for using crop marks and colour bar eliments that I took through to the final designs.

Same with the Motorsport exhibition, this was the start of the idea (very rough roughs!) to use the car aero-dynamics and lines of a wind tunnel to represent technology in motorsport that I ended up using in the final design.

Exhibitions brief: history of computers/computing

More work in progress, trying to get a feel fot how the computer exhibition might work. I'm not sure about this one but the ideas behind it interested me. I wanted to use eliminates from two operating systems that have become synonymous with computing,  The old MSDOS prompt and the windows icons you get in the corner of each window (I have used this as a typographic break centred). Again its typographic in style, matching the other two, and uses the 'Science Museum' logo in a large overprint

Exhibitions brief: technology in motorsport

Working a bit more on this brief, I have looked at some ideas I had for the 'Technology in Motorsport' exhibition. I have worked up a couple of ideas and ended up combining them into this, still really a rough but it could be worked up I think. I need to think about colours because I wasn't really intending it to be monochrome, its just none of the colours I tried so far worked!

Again I tried to keep it minimal, using a vector I traced of a car and lines resembling a wind tunnel. Font is DIN which seems to have a no nonsense modern streamlined motorsport feel to it, and sits well with the science museum logo, which I ended up using as a graphic element after some experimentation.

Exhibitions brief

Another brief that has been on the backburner. I have have sketchbook pages of ideas for this now so I decided it was time to do some tests of these. The brief is to create branding and promotional material for 3 exhibitions, one about history of printing, one on history of computers and one on the use of technology in motor sport. I have ideas for all 3 and I will try to tackle them together, as I do want some family similarity between them as I want them branded up as Science Museum [no longer called 'The' Science Museum apparently] exhibitions.

This is a design direction for the print Exhibition I mocked up today, using printers marks and digital grid as graphical features together with a very old font:

After I made this I had one of those design de-ja-vu moments where I thought I might have accidentally copied something out there already. I then realised it was a book cover: The production manual I was subconsciously referencing, but I was relieved to see my design wasn't too close and I was using the eliminates in a very different way, exaggerating rather than just showing them. (very good book by the way)