Personal Branding. OUGD602

For my personal brand I want to show my strengths as a designer in a visual way. I decided to change my personal brand from last years PPP because I didn't feel this represented me as a designer anymore and I think that I have changed a lot over the past year. 
Firstly I thought about my strengths and how they could be displayed throughout my personal brand.

My strengths as a designer :
Layout Design
Print based design
Handmade design

 Type based branding is the most appropriate way to show layout skills and the use of multiple colours for the business cards is a great way to have them stand out against other business cards, especially when kept inside a wallet or purse. 

A physical and handmade portfolio or mail shot is the most appropriate way to show my work as this shows the type of handmade design and physical products that I create in my practice. 

The use of stock and colour is also really important to me and so this should be a consideration when designing my business cards and overall brand. 

The business cards show my interest in layout design and the use of interesting colour and stock to enhance the designs and give them a luxurious feel. The layout is kept simple so that that the information is clear, whilst still being interesting to look at. The coloured stocks can be changed each time the business cards are printed so that they can be different every time which is important to me as I believe that design should be ever evolving. The type is a modern serif font that is bold and easy to read so that the information is completely legible.

The letterhead design is similar to the design of the business card in that the main element of it is the layout design, and it shows my interest in this type of design. The layout frames the main content in the centre of the page showing that the content is the most important aspect of the design and it is clear and easy to understand. 

My portfolio design also represents me as a designer and I think that it is important that it is a printed portfolio. I wanted to create it as a mail shot that can be send out to studios that I like and also can be printed as an A3 portfolio that I can take along with me on visits to studios as well. 

As part of my portfolio I created a mail shot that can be sent out to many different studios that I admire. The mail shot will include a number of postcards with images of my work and a short explaination about each project on them. This is for the purpose of showing my work to a professional level and getting my work seen by professionals who are already established in their field. 
The layout of the postcards is similar to the rest of the branding in that the type frames the work and is bold and clear. The postcards have room for four images of each project which is enough space to give a good idea of my design practice. 

These postcards will be packaged together in a small box, small enough to fit through a mailbox, so that they are easy to send to professionals. This box will be branded in much the same way with the type and layout the same as the rest of my personal brand. 

Unique Experiences

I have just been watching a tv show about the best restaurants in the world and I was really inspired by one in particular. 
Food has always been a huge part of my life, and I have always been very excited about cooking and the artistic side in particular.
Niki Nakayama is the chef and owner of N/Naka restaurant in Los Angeles California and her approach to food and customer experience I feel really relates to my work creating artist books and unique experiences with each thing that I create. 
Nikki Nakayama creates indvidual menus for each of her customers and keeps records of what each customer orders each time they visit, so that no one ever eats the same thing. Each experience is different for each individual person, and I think that this is a great philosophy to have when it comes to any piece of artwork. 
I want my work to be unique and catered for each persons interests and needs, so that nothing is repeated. 
It is obviously very difficult to create a unique experience for every individual, but without moving forward and changing, everything will be the same and ultimately become un-inspiring. 

I believe that there can be a lot of crossover between art, food and design, as these are all incredibly creative and can be interactive for the user. 

PPP Presentation 2. Friday 20th February. OUGD602.

At the beginning of the year, this was my original manifesto. Throughout the past few months it hasn't changed too much, however working with other designers and artists, and visiting studios and going to talks I have added to this manifesto.

I am still very much interested in print and layout within design, and I am also passionate about using different printing processes within my work. Since writing my dissertation about traditional printing processes within publishing, I am looking more into alternative printing methods and what processes work best for different projects and publications. The YCN Whistles brief has also gotten me more interested in packaging and promotion in retail, particularly fashion retail and this is something I want to explore further over the next couple of months at university. Working with other designers and artists on a few of my briefs this year has shown me that working with like minded people within the industry is something that I am really interested in also. 

These were my goals for this year at the beginning of the year and I think that I have made a lot of progress on them. My dissertation research helped a lot with learning about a variety of printing processes and I intend to try as many as I can and learn about even more throughout my time at uni and afterwards. I think that I have improved upon my layout and editorial design as well with the briefs that I have chosen. I have definitely been working more with other artists and designers within the briefs I have been doing throughout the year, and also have been working with clients outside of the art and design world which has been really interesting and fun for me. The only thing that I need to work more on before my time at uni is over is to create a strong personal brand for myself so that I can better get my work out into the world.

These are the briefs that I wrote for myself at the beginning of the year, however most of them changed or I didn't do because of other opportunities coming up. I created the food culture of leeds publication as a small zine, which was one of my favourite briefs so far. For this I collaborated with two photographers and an illustrator from within uni, and I also interviewed Matt Dix, one of the creators of Leeds Indie Food Festival. I really enjoyed working with other people to create something that we were all happy with and excited to do. The artist book turned into another zine working with just one photographer from uni. She wanted a promotional book of her work to give out to potential clients and it was really exciting to do. We worked together to create a really exciting piece of work which we are both really happy with. The rest of the briefs that I wrote for myself have either changed slightly or I have decided not to do, because of other opportunities and new ideas. 

These are the briefs that I have either finished or are working on at the moment. I have really enjoyed most of the visitors to the course so far, especially Dr Me and Intern Magazine. I really enjoyed the hands on and creative approach that Dr Me had to their briefs, and Alec from Intern Magazine was really inspiring to me, as setting up my own magazine is something that I would love to do in the future. Ilkley Literature festival was a one day brief to do the layout for a journalism workshop which was really exciting. It was the first live brief I had done for a client that I was actually getting paid for and so the pressure was huge, but overall I really enjoyed it and both me and the clients were really happy with the result. The one brief that I am most excited about is the yearbook. We put in a lot of work to the presentations and I was so happy to find out that we actually won! But now there is a lot of pressure coming from the other students to make the best yearbook so far, and so this will be really interesting and exciting to do!

So far this year I have been getting a lot more involved with the industry outside of uni. I have been to visit a couple of studios so far, and am in talks with a few others to see if I can visit them and hopefully get myself a placement somewhere. City Edition Studio in Bristol was a highlight for me, as Jono who owns it set up everything himself and has made a name for himself around Bristol, and now has a lot of work coming in for him. Leeds Print Festival was also a highlight for me. It was great to see the amazing work that is being created throughout the UK using print, and the talks were really inspiring and interesting to listen to. I have also been expanding my knowledge of digital design, going to a couple of talks about web design and the web design industry. Although i'm not really interested in web design, I think that its important for me to understand it more and know about the growing industry. 

City Edition Studio Bristol Visit.

On a recent trip down to Bristol I took this opportunity to visit a studio that I have been interested in for quite a while. 
City edition studio create mainly print based work for galleries and art and culture events around Bristol which is an area of design that I am interested in. 

Jono runs the studio from one room in Spike Island that used to be the ladies toilets, and so it was a very small studio. However he managed to fit a lot into the studio including his own Riso printer!
It was great to see a designer that is using different printing techniques, and when he couldn't find a decent Riso printers around Bristol, he took the initiative to buy his own and so is the only studio in Bristol that can do this type of printing in house. 
Jono also creates a lot of artist books which is really exciting for me as this is a huge passion for me within design. 

I learnt a lot from this visit, including that although the studio space is lovely, I don't think that I could work by myself in such a small studio and I would like at least one other person to talk about designs and ideas with. Jono also told me that the secret to getting design jobs is putting your name on everything that you design and this should be written into contracts so that any work that goes out into the really world can be traced back to you. 

The Print Project Visit.

On Wednesday 22nd October, I went over to Shipley to visit Nick at The Print Project as part of my research into printing processes.
I had a really good long talk with Nick about what he does and why he chooses to use letterpress printing over digital processes, which was really insightful for me and I have learned a lot about how the process is used in the modern day.

Digital print has created a throwaway culture as it is easily accessible and cheap to create. We come into contact with digitally printed material on a daily basis and so it has become to norm to throw it away. Letterpress however is an art form and needs a lot of skill to create. It used to be that many people would work in a letterpress studio, each with their own set of skills, but now Nick works along most of the time and has had to become skilled in many different areas.

New technologies have moved letterpress forward, such as using laser cut wood to create patterns and shapes to incorporate into the practice and use alongside the traditional type.

Letterpress van use a lot of stocks and so it has a more tactile quality to the work, unlike digital print where they had to create new kinds of stock so that the machines could use them. Digital printing doesn't have this tactile quality as much, as the paper can be very different.

Digital print is wasteful and uses a lot of ink when printing. The prints coming out of a digital machine usually are not alined and so this creates even more waste of paper when the excess paper is cut. Letterpress on the other hand is a very precise process and so the waste can be easily managed.

There are limitations to letterpress in that the size of the press determines how large a print can be, whereas digital printing can be much larger because they can use rolls of paper instead of single sheets.

The design process has moved away from being a hands on and tactile process with the rise of digital technologies. Instead of first drawing and planning, we tend to go straight to our laptops. This has contributed to the rise of the 'diy designer' and away from skilled, hands on design.

Glastonbury Free Press- a collective of letterpress printers that Nick describes as an "underground scene"