It's up to you - Studio Brief 2 - OUGD402

For this publication I want to focus on the things that I have learned about myself and about Graphic Design over this past year and so I want to create some sort of book or printed publication, as this is what I have enjoyed the most this year and it is what I want to continue doing throughout the course.

I began to look at different ways of creating a small booklet, but I also wanted to find something that is a bot out of the ordinary and not what you would expect from a standard booklet. The booklet needs to represent me and what I have learned over the last 9 months and so it must be creative and must show off some of the skills and techniques I have learned.

 

I really like how these publications are created, by taking away from the page rather than printing upon it, and the concertina of the first book is really interesting. However I don't think that something like this would show off a lot of the things I have learned this year and would not be very readable.















I think that the idea of having fold out pieces of paper and inserts in the publication is a good one, as it would give me the opportunity to write a little more about my progress and what I have learned over this first year of the course, whilst also giving the opportunity to have pictures of work and inspiration throughout the main booklet.

I think that using different sizes of paper within my booklet would be a good idea, as a way of differentiating between different sections of the booklet and different aspects of my year. Also using different coloured stock would work well so that I can spilt up my booklet into sections of work and learning and inspirations etc.

As a front cover for my booklet I want to keep it fairly simple. I was also thinking about other aspects to promoting myself and the idea of a business carder promotional card would work well to do this. As I was doing some visual research I came across this book that incorporated the business card format into the front cover and so I thought that this would work well as a front cover for my booklet. I could create business cards that look good both in and out of the book, using the area covered by the slit in the page to my advantage. 

There are numerous ways that I could slot the business card into the front page and so I will look further into this, and see how the business card will look both in and out of the slots in the page. 

I then needed to think about what content I would put into my booklet. I need it to be simple and easily understandable as I want this booklet to be more of a visual representation of how I have grown over the past 9 months on this course. However I still want to write about where I want to progress onto over the summer and beyond, and also include how I have come to make this decision from the things I have learned this year. I think that this should be mainly focused on the things I have gained from within university and how this has helped me progress, but I also need to include things from outside of uni such as my trip to Australia, which really helped me to grow independently and figure things out for myself. Also, living alone, away from home has really helped me to progress both personally and professionally as it has forced me to be more independent.

I want to keep my publication balanced with type and image and so I have collected a selection of images that I could include, some of my own images and some collected from other resources


When I began this Graphic Design course in September 2012, I knew a little about the subject and nothing about living alone. Since then I have grown and matured both personally and professionally. Looking back on the past 9 months and the work that I have produced in this time, it is easy to see how my design process and practice has progressed and improved. This was also the first time I have lived away from home, and so was forced to grow up personally and fend for myself which has been a very exciting experience. 

Personal -  Moving from a small town to a huge city was a big culture shock to begin with in September, but I have really enjoyed living in Leeds.

Professional - 

Australia - My trip to Aus was really influential in my decision to progress with print based work, and books and magazines in particular. In Melbourne there was an incredible shop called MagNation that sold purely magazines of any kind you could think of. Some of the magazines weren't too exciting but the design section had numerous exciting publications that I discovered. One of these magazines was Process Journal,and independent look on graphic design from around the world that is published by Hunt&Co in Melbourne, Australia. 
I met some really incredible people over in Hobart who I think have a much more relaxed attitude to life in general that people that I have met elsewhere in the world.Hobart itself is a beautiful city and I felt really relaxed and at home while I was there. The food markets were amazing and the whole city seemed to be full of creative people with a much slower pace of life.

 Process Journal - Hunt&Co.



























As well as this I want to include other things that inspire me such as certain design studios and work. 

While I was researching into my 'speaking from experience' brief for design practice, I came across a really interesting studio called Anagrama, who are based in Monterrey and Mexico City. One piece of work that they did on branding a restaurant was really interesting to me because o the use of type and colour, and how the whole of the brand fitted together seamlessly, even including the interior and exterior of the restaurant. 

 Although I have never done any branding work, I think that it would be really exciting to explore this over the next year and see where it takes me. I'm interesting in carrying the look of the brand over numerous materials and environments and how well this could work with different types of branding, whether it be corporate branding for a company, or branding for a product or place such as this example.

Another example of restaurant branding from Anagrama.