Next Best Thing at the Brighton Fringe Festival 2014

Here's a picture of my friend Jethro with one of the A3 posters at the Brighton Fringe last month!

Next Best Thing Visual Material

The idea of an inferior alternative and being second best also lent itself well to the visual material that is to be distributed at both festivals. These are the A6 double sided flyers for Brighton and the A3 posters that will be advertising the shows. 

The imagery of a 2nd place rosette is used to reflect the almost but not quite good enough quality of the duo's show.

They are currently being risograph printed by Hato Press. 

Pictures of them will go up as soon as I can get my hands on some of them!

    

Next Best Thing Logo

I recently designed a logo for comedy duo, Next Best Thing.

With upcoming shows this year at both the Brighton and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, they asked me to design a simple, bold, text based logo that also referenced their offkilter and often absurdist act. This would be used across their social media and on promotional material and branding. 

The idea of an inferior alternative and of being almost good enough developed into the logo below; the unbalanced nature of the NEXT edging into the BEST THING gives a clear indication of this idea of being almost there, but not quite.

Small: Thoughts and Projects

I'm going gif mad, but here's a flick through some spreads from Small: Thoughts and Projects 

by Carl Turner Architects, published by Artifice Books (available to buy here)

I interned as a graphic designer for the studio last summer, and one of my jobs was to aid in the design of a practice monograph that would later develop into the final book; organising images, photographs and text, designing initial spreads and ordering the projects so the designers at Artifice could get an idea of what Carl had envisioned for the book. 

A wonderful experience, and a lovely book!

Stephen Willats: Concerning Our Present Way of Living Publication

Here's a gif of some select spreads from the booklet I designed a few months ago for the Stephen Willats exhibition 

at the Whitechapel Gallery, Stephen Willats: Concerning Our Present Way of Living (for more information, click here)

V&A Create! Fashion Festival

I've started an internship last week! Fun beard things which would be irresponsible for me to divulge until the appropriate time. Odd that, considering a couple of weeks ago I mentioned out loud that I wanted to do a series/continuation of my 

beardy man, albeit stylistically as I can't really do etching as easily anymore. And this pretty much is. Labour intensive though, and done entirely on Illustrator rather than handmade but I can't wait to see what it looks like finished. 

Last night I also tidied up a graphic I designed for the upcoming fashion festival at the V&A which is happening on the 

8th of December. The brief, giving to me by the lovely Jazmine, was to make a teaser flyer along with another giving a breakdown of highlights of the confirmed programme to be sent out to interested parties. Really happy with how these came out (pastels pastels pastels) and make sure to come down if you're free! 

V&A CreateVoice Blog

A bit late, but I spent a fair few painful weeks (or the majority of late July and August...bloody coding) designing the blog for the museums youth forum . The section dedicated to CreateVoice and various other young peoples programmes on the website is incredibly difficult to navigate, with everything kind of thrown in one place leaving the viewer to decipher what they can. It's been mentioned by numerous people who turn up to meetings that they had no idea what the forum is about and what we do, so I wanted to communicate this as clearly and simply as possible. 

I wanted it to be clean, simple but with an eclectic touch so I used the logo I had designed previously as a starting point from which I built around the colour pallet and idea of using stand alone buttons or icons to navigate to specific areas of the site. As with blogger templates anyway, a click of the above logo sends you back to home where you can view posts written by members of the forum. I'm super pleased with how it's turned out! 

CreateLate...Graphics

I've spent the last 6 months organising a one night only event at the Victoria and Albert Museum that will take place next month - a collaboration between BA Graphic Design  third year students at Camberwell College of Arts and the museums' youth collective CreateVoice, with whom i've been working for the past couple of years. 

Here are some teaser photos (courtesy of Tracey Waller, posted on the BA Graphics Camberwell facebook page) of starting the process of hand-printing over 2000 flyers. 

The design of the CreateLate...Graphics event has been 
a collaboration between myself and Yasmin Lennon Chong

Decorative Jargon

I really enjoy doing labour intensive work, that almost makes me feel

like i'm going to go blind i have to concentrate so much.

The above work is part of my self-directed work on medical quackery and spin.

although what i've done so far seems to be what other people have told me to

do and, by going through the motions, i've lost a sense of WHY i wanted to do it.

By highlighting elements of serious side effects which are tucked away in the

DECORATIVE JARGON of small print in medical leaflets that are designed to be

as offputting to read as possible thus disguising potential hazards of painkillers

like nurofen which can result in heart attack or stroke // infertility in women.

Suffice to say after looking at it properly, the top type size on each is too

small to be properly legible (or communicate what it's supposed to...effectively

the point of my degree....) and the bottom of the first can only be [sort of] read

if small or far away. and that the fact that the one legible one is off centre.

Hopefully i'll be putting more work up here soon!

here's hoping though.

I seem to be trying my damndest to fail this year.

And by that i mean this dissertation is trying to kill me.

Some Summer Work

slowly but surely... getting a bit nervous now.

Exhibition

Penguin Great Ideas

i've got my eye on a few from the collection.

plus the covers are shit hot

I AM A FREE WOMAN

of sorts. for a bit at least. I can just lie in bed!

and watch my so called life! and not feel guilty!

can you sense the excitement?

These are pictures of my FMP outcome 1; a book split into 2 that deal with space (abstraction, confusion) and place (specific areas on the page- columns, margins) respectively.

Visual Editions

For the 2 outcomes for my fmp was thinking of doing one written piece to collate together all this theory i've been reading, and a physical piece to visualise what i have researched. To go with the themes of space, perception and non-place the written piece needs to be sympathetically designed with the contents.

For this i've been looking at the most immediate designers/ publishers who have used pushed book design away from the expected formats we have grown accustom to. print CLEARLY isn't dead, but it has to do something out of the ordinary to catch your attention.

These are from a range of Visual Editions' books (tristram shandy and tree of codes; extremely loud and incredibly close was also on their website as a lovely example of visual writing). V.E and I.B, i heart you.

http://visual-editions.com/

Irma Boom

Books designed away from the expected. Irma Boom makes tiny models of all her books which provided the inspiration for this one. A 704 page tiny book of tiny books with red printed edges and 450 full colour illustrations. Loverleh.

http://www.typotheque.com/books/irma_boom_biography_in_books

http://designmuseum.org/design/irma-boom

McQ + Cliff

One of the day workshops from last term, it was communication and persuasion with Kate Rogers and we had to change the message of an advertisement of some kind. I chose a fashion one for the McQ label (youth.rebellion.outsider.individuality.rockabilly) has a painful price range that is more accessible for (awful) bankers and city boys than the misfit in 'the streets'...unless they're a fashion student. With this in mind i altered the strength of the logo (smaller so it's more boutique-y)and the image- going along with the rockabilly thing but more wrong. McQ boy looks like a young elvis so who better than young cliff?

Pushpin Off Sweets

courtesy of Container List http://containerlist.glaserarchives.org/index.php?id=78#body

The Geometry of Pasta

I remember seeing this over the summer but foolishly didn't bookmark it or anything so was pleased as punch when i found it again on the imprint website. WHAT A BEAUT, i wish i could do something as good as that and I'd bloody love to work for them. It's almost a crash course in layout in itself, plus the jacket folds out to form a pasta poster. What's not to love? I can't wait to get my greedy mitts on it...

On another note, i can't wait to start doing some actual work again and posting that stuff. I'm a bit sick of just posting bits i've found. Roll on next week, even if it looks to be full of 7am starts...

V&A...again

I've been doing bits and bobs at the v&a for a few months now, helping out in workshops as well as designing an identity for their youth forum CreateVoice. Nothing that was a huge departure for me though; black outlined and hand rendered type but I had some lovely feedback from it which is encouraging. Now to start designing a postcard pack to woo a supermodel!

Tube or False

Dream campaigns; i saw them yesterday on the tube and think they are the loveliest things. They're like fabric throws, all woven and type and pattern and HERITAGE. The patterns are seat cover designs used on the circle, northern, piccadilly, jubilee and metropolitan lines from the 1039's to present.

No surprises, but they're all true but i guess the slogan tube or false sets up the idea that they seem unbelievable but aren't and that just how exciting and interesting the underground is.

I just need to find out who did it now...

(pictures courtesy of the tfl website)