Almeter Design

On November 13, myself, Jordan and Andrew Dranfield set off to Brooklyn, New York, in search of a small cafe where we would hope to meet Andrew Almeter, head of Almeter Design, for a discussion about our portfolios.

At exactly 11.00 am the three of us bumped into Andrew right outside the cafe that we had arranged to meet at. Bizarre I know. We each grabbed a coffee and sat at the back of this beautiful, all American internet cafe on a round sofa with comfy cushions. 

He seemed very keen to tell us his history and said it was important to really get into the industry as quickly as possible after graduating. After graduation, Andrew joined a design firm, on a placement, where he learnt everything you need to know when you're starting out. He stayed there for four years after going onto work with a British woman from London as a collaboration. Unfortunately she has now left and moved across the states, so he now has his own company. He also enjoyed telling us about his working methods and ideas. Since being in the industry he has always kept a board on the wall where he keeps things he collects and finds that give him inspiration. He enjoys working combining illustrative work with work done on the mac.   

When I showed him my work he was really impressed! Very positive. He really loved my pencil shaving type face which, I must admit, before going, I was reluctant to put in. But it was certainly worth it. He said I was creative with type and layout and had a natural instinct. However he said again that the layout of the portfolio could be worked on in terms of stronger and weaker work. He said that it is important to show good, strong work at the front and back of the portfolio. I will definitely work on this aspect. But other than that it was a brilliant hour and a half... 

Potion Design

There we were, me and Jordan Harrison, trecking through China Town in the city of New York until we came across building 256...

We were greeted by the team of Potion design in the studio and he stepped forward to take us into a much smaller room where we could show our work and discuss ideas. Potion Design are an interactive design group which means they design work to be displayed via projection methods whereby the audience can interact, like a touch screen mobile phone.

We first spoke about the companies work and asked a few relevant questions as to how the team works and how they collaborate. It was really insightful and one thing we learnt is that you have to be very patient with clients. Never assume that if you aren't happy with feedback as to what what areas of a job need scrapping and changing, that you can simply disagree and find another client. He said there have been many times that he's sent work to a client and has had to change things so much to an extent where the initial work was barely recognisable. So that really made me think about how to be able to drop ideas just like that. Even though you may love them and think they're the answer.

After had looked at both our portfolios, we both recieved similar reviews. One thing he was particularly interested in was the order in which our work was featured in our portfolios. He felt that we hadn't displayed some of our stronger work at the front and towards the back. He advised us to thoroughly check our layout before meeting with somebody in the future. But overall he was very impressed with our work. Said there were areas to improve but to continue getting stronger at what we're doing. We left with a small book each containing samples of Potion's work and were very happy with how the whole thing went. It was a very positive experience and one that I hope to have again.       

These are three developed ideas that are based on a questionaire that we gave to poeple around the city asking them to write down what they couldn't tolerate. Along with imagery I then put together these posters that portray a story of hoe someone can't tolerate something so small and something much more important at the same time. 

Mike Perry

I've recently been looking at the work of Mike Perry, an illustrator based in New York. He's done commercial work foR lots of big time companies such as Nike, Adidas, Bench and schuh, as well as Grafik magazine and less large scale commissioned work. I love his work because of the fresh feel it has to it. It's quite controlled sometimes yet exciting and vibrant. It's wacky yet understandable and legible. 

I e-mailed Mike (30/9/09) to ask him if I may pop in to visit him with my work when I go to New York in November and to my surprise within one day he said yes! I was amazed as well as excited. I sent him some of my work to. I find him to be a big inspiration and would love to apply his style to my practice.   

Here are some designs for products, as you can see a Nike hightop trainer and a bag. I just think it's really inspiring to have your work on merchandise let alone on billboards and ad shells.

I love this typography because it feels so fresh and relaxing. It takes me away from working so controlled and precise. The freedom and colours are what I really love the most. 

This is a six year anniversary piece that Perry did and I'm so inspired by the colour and form of the number. It's slightly Escher oriented but i love the freedom yey controlled element. 

This is content for Grafik Magazine and below a cover. For me these present a slightly David Carson feel in the way by which Perry is designing for a very precise and accurate medium (mag cover) and yet he's alowing the freedom of illustration to work with it. And he pulls it off bloody well indeed. 

Craig Oldham

These are a few typographic pieces to demonstrate zero tolerence (the colour is rubbish. Should be black and red).

We went out (me and Jordan Harrison) and asked 15 people to write down what they cannot tolerate then photographed them. I produced these billboard and bus stop adverts from them.

These are a few ideas aimed at a Design audience. The idea is raise the issue of tolerance by testing if you can tolerate the miss spelling, kerning or mixed typefaces...   

Brief - to come up with creative responses to promote a Tolerance Festival for Manchester City Council.

London 2009

I've just recently been to London to visit the D&AD Design awards. On my travels I came across some lovely, subtle, humerous street art and grafitti.

Stanley Donwood

My favourite designer is Stanley Donwood. He does all the artwork for the band Radiohead's album covers. He works on a very large scale using ink, print, paint and pen. I particularly love his work because it's very expresive. He combines very loose, expressive brush strokes with controlled, intentional imagery and type.

This piece has been done using pen and ink. I love the ways in which he can jump from medium to medium and create similar works.

This is another brilliant book all about the history of magazine covers, the sucess of the most popular magazines ever, and interviews with fantastic designers, such as David Carson and Peter Saville.

One of my main interests lie in Editorial Design, in particular magazine design. At the beginning of 2nd year I bought this book to help me through an editorial brief I got. It's really useful, offering lots of information on grid structures, colours, imagery, layouts etc.

True North

Today 7/05/09 I went on my 1st portfolio visit to meet Alan Herron from True North. As nerves settled and the lift dropped me off on the forth floor of 57 Hilton Street, I suddenly felt relaxed and really looked forward to it.

He shook my hand and we headed for a little office. I revealed my portfolio and he had a careful look through it. He told me that my main problem was the lack of taking creative thinking further in every project. He said he would have liked to see other versions of certain parts, e.g. a series of posters. However he said that the content was fine and there were some really good ideas developing. The layout was fine and the feel of the work was quite strong. I listened carefully to what he had to say and and took into consideration revisiting some of my work to develop further.

In all it was a nice, calm, informal visit which I'll take a lot from. It was also really exciting to have been in a real, professional design studio...

Fake ID

Joshua Trees and Yvan Martinez (Fake ID) are two American designers who choose to work in a slightly more 'experimental' way as opposed the the conventional advertisement, magazine, bill board media that we associate with Graphic Design. Only for big clients will they work in these ways, but otherwise they choose a more original root.

Just recently, April 31, Fake ID came to visit our group especially to do a one day work shop. We were required to doccument a two minute dialogue in the form of a story, commentry, voice over etc. based on an image, focusing how the content within the image came to be. I think most of us were puzzled but after giving it a good go it was quite enjoyable and took us out of our comfort zones for sure. It made me think in a slightly misterious way but gave me a lot of freedom. I had a lot of fun with it.

The next day Fake ID delivered a 40 minute lecture based on sound, text and noise. However it was unlike any lecture I've been to before. When we spent the previous day with them they mentioned that it would be in the form of a performance. They used black and white photographs of people and overhead was sound; conversations, noises of babies, running dialogues etc. The purpose behind it was to demonstrate how 99% of the time we see, observe, are shown things but we don't stop and listen, hear imagery... Over all I found it quite interesting. A little confusing and laborious at times as I think a lot of people did.

True North

Simon Oliver

Glorious

Craig Oldham

A to M

Magazine

These pages are from a Magazine I designed. The brief required you to re-design the New Scientist Magazine containing an article which was 'Creative Thinking'. The theme, tone and image content of the magazine had to based on the article. I found it to be quite a challenging brief as I had done very little editorial work before. However along the way I learned a lot about 'In Design' and enjoyed the professionalism and time it takes to concentrate on the fine detail required to produce a magazine. The magazine was then printed and i was really pleased with the outcome.

Biennial

In November 2008, Thoughtful arranged for our group to visit Liverpool's Biennial exhibition in the Tate gallery and around the city.

First of all we visited the gallery along the docks and found it incredibly inspirational. Thoughtful had worked on the mural that was used to advertise the show and was featured on a large wall in the Tate as well as on the front windows. Having been before, I fully appreciated the work that had been done from the usual exhibitions to the seasonal work.

Afterwards we were lucky enough to be shown around the city by a member of Thoughtful and were in ore by the originality and extremity of the work featured actually in the environment. 'Turning the place over' was a piece done by Richard Wilson. He had cut out a huge circular part of a building in the centre of the city which he had attached to hydraulic mechanisms that rotated the section continuously. It is apparently the 'most daring piece of public art ever commissioned in the UK'.

The big spider that featured on a web which was attached to buildings in a square was another amazing iconic piece. It was bizarre to look up and see the creature outside. It lit up at night too making it much more noticeable.

Throughout the tour there were many more interesting and delightful sights. It felt like going around a zoo. Just the fact that everything was featured in the environment was incredible and it was a really great day out, that ended with a few lectures in Liverpool's town hall by a typographer named and another designer named . Both talks again left me with a lot to think about and gave me great inspiration.

Thoughtful

In comparison to Fake I.D's lecture, in January, Thoughtful, a design agency based in Manchester who worked resently on the 'Biennial Liverpool exhibitions' came to talk to us about pitching. The main purpose was to highlight the downfalls of having to pay to pitch when you start out as a design firm with every intention of getting known, and how easily that investment could be lost. As a fairly new company themselves, they still have to weigh up whether or not their ideas are good enough to impress the client and if they should invest in pitching.

They went on to point out how important it was that when you're pitching to a client, you must always look smart, have confidence, and continue presenting no matter what happens. They said one time they were presenting the three clients had absolutely no expressions throughout the entire presentation, even when they were showing what they considered to be their best ideas. However they continued to finish in exactly the same way they had begun and to their surprise two clients liked some of their work. The work involved were ideas to promote the 'Cream Fields' summer festival. Some of their ideas included poster's, ambient campaigns, mobile phone links via text message and merchandise. Another aspect of pitching that they strongly advised was that whatever you're presenting in whatever form must be shown in different situations, e.g. a poster must be shown on billboards, bus shelters, in shop windows etc.

I found the talk incredibly insightful and quite inspiring to one day be able to pitch my own ideas in front of clients that may really take an interest in my work.

After seeing both presentations, one main contrast is clear. Thoughtful stick to the normal, everyday methods of showing work via a PowerPoint presentation and discussing their work, which is how we have come to expect a lecture to be. Its simple, clear, ordered and makes sense.

On the other hand it was Fake IDs' intention to confuse us with their lecture and make us aware of other senses besides sight. We really had to listen hard to understand it. The images they did use were explained via voice overs very abstractly. Towards the end of their presentation they explain to us that they don't enjoy showing and talking about their work. They said if anyone wanted to look at it then visit their website. The content of the presentation were topics that currently interest them and work that they've collected for a while, assembled in an experimental and challenging way.

I think that I'd like to apply aspects of both presentation methods to my own practice. Allowing people (in particular clients) to see what interests me outside of my work, as Fake I.D. did, will demonstrate that I have a strong knowledge and keen interest in the industry, as well as creating a certain bond, on such a level to be able to perhaps have something in common with a client...
To follow up from presenting research and personal interests, I would then go onto pitch/present my work, as Thoughtful did,