Saturday, 30 May 2009

Where It's At...

All OUG103 (Design Practice) work is on my DP blog: http://designpracticeofleigh.blogspot.com/
This include type and Grid.

PPD work in on this blog.

Edit: Apparently my PPD stuff is on both blogs. Sorry.

Tuesday, 19 May 2009

Portfolio/Presentation

Somewhere in this mass confusion of life and kittens, I've found a little bit of time to slave over this digital portfolio. It's been sort of hard for me because I have a tendency to look back at my old work and really dislike it. However, I've decide to push myself and the following are some of the piece I've chosen so far. It's not everything yet, there is some stuff I need to re shoot or re print out (cats like to sit on degree work and crumple it, who knew.) :


Mailshot: No news is good news part 2
The first part of this brief was to do make three posters on a subject chosen from the Guardian Newspaper. I chose the train fair article as it was quite appropriate to me. However, I really disliked the final results for them but I persevered with the mail shots that where of the same subject and tried my best to keep it simple but affective. (By the way, I burned the guardian posters....)


Visualisation and Ilustration Elective Final
For my illustration elective back in February we had to pitch a movie (existing or fabricated) in anyway we saw fit. I have a guilt pleasure for classic litrature and Nicholas Nickelby is one of my favourite novels. I chose to illustrate one of my favourite scenes but I wish I had been able to do more scene. Maybe when I concour Time.


How To...
Possibly the best thing I've done to date is the "How To" breif? I'm not sure if everyone else will agree but I liked how I was able to approach this brief in several differnt ways. In the end I went for satire in book form and the people who have seen this really got a kick out of it. I now wish I had done more pages to make the book a little thicker.


Adam's Font: A typeface for Adam Townend
Adams Font. This was a difficlut brief for me to wrap my head around until it clicked with me and I simply got on with it. It's certainly more affective than the original letters that I had in mind for Adam which where : Spooky looking and very unlike Adam. After that little insight I spent the following weekend re inventing the work I had already done and shifting it a new direction.


Convince/Persuade us
Group work from the begining of the year. I wanted to include this to show how far I (and the rest of the class) have come int erms of what it is to be a designer. We all thought these where really well done (or atleast I did) and our letter was voted as the best so we must have been doing somthing good. I'm now not as over whelmed with group work, as we're all in same boat. (more or less)

To Be Included:
  • Colab Work (DS Books)
  • Book Of 100: The Marvel Superhero Handbook
  • What is A line
  • Red: Series Of Ten (Red Characters)
  • Pure Poster

Tuesday, 12 May 2009

Mini Manifesto

This is my 5 point mini manifesto as discussed in a PPD session.

What I want to be as a designer;

What I used to be as a designer:

Terrible if I’m being brutally honest. I had no sense of direction and everything tended to look one big unfocused mess. I would close off my ears and refuse to listen to good critique because I believed people did not “get where I was coming from.” I thought I had graphic design down but if that were the case then I would not be on the course.
However, when looking back at my work a week or even a month later, all the flaws would start to shine through. I see the mistakes in my work but most of the time, it’s too late to fix.

What I am now:

There is this little box I have called “Leigh’s safe place” where the harsh world of graphic design can’t et me. I need to move out of this comfort zone but so far I seem to be taking never-ending baby steps. When looking at my work, I still feel very insecure about showing it. Sticking it up on a website or a blog is no problem but standing there in the room with it with others makes me see it as the audience. Sometime this can be a great way of critiquing yourself. However, I see it as not yet worthy and it frustrates me when people don’t see it the way I do.

Three things I want to become:

  • Better at having more pride in my own work. Not to an egotistical extent but to be able to look at something I have achieved and made and to be able to say I did a good job about it. Not to dwell so much if one person out of fifteen don’t like it because I can’t please every one.
  • To realise that I’m not always going to be designing for myself. Of course you can have a little bit of your own personality in your work, but so much that it dominates the piece.
  • Taking in good criticism and using it for my own advantage. If it’s being given to me then I should use and not brood on the fact that not everybody “liked it.”

Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Illustrators

I need to start practasing my anatomey and general illustraion skills some more. But ere's some work I really apprecaite. (Though will never achieve)

http://danielauhlig.blogspot.com/ : Daniela Uhlig







http://tjandamal.com/ (she doesn't give her name on anything, but i know she's a graphic designer from Texas. ='D ) http://bigbigtruck.deviantart.com/ :