Designer Visitor's NOTES

Over the last few weeks we've had some designer's come in and talk to us about how they got to where they are today and what sort of work they do / have done in the past. They gave us some excellent advice....

PLUG IN MEDIA:

• An agency based in Brighton
• Mainly web, games and interactive projects
• Add more personal creative projects to portfolio
• PRELOADED - Brighton competitor
• Look at portfolio's of design companies you want to work for - Take projects you particularly like to interviews
• Tweet more
• Make a personal creative blog
• Show the work you love in interviews - Talk about why it's 'cool'
• Talk about why the company will benefit from you working there
• Have an understanding for more than one area but eventually specialize and be 'super good' at it

JONTY SHARPLES:

• UX Design direction at ALBION LONDON
• Gifford Gaff
• Wonga
• Skype
• Bet fair - Front room
• Live Ebay adverts
• Campaign magazine
• Albion London - West Coast & Cell
• Giff Gaff: Sim free chickens!
• Tobias & Tobias
• Top 3 interview must have answers: What do you love doing most? What do you do best? What do you want to be doing in 18 months time?
• 'Dont forget the bigger picture'
• Be open and honest with your CV
• Push the best skills you have, forget the rest
• Advice for print work: Get to know; Printers, Charities, Start Ups
• WORK FOR FREE
• Do LOTS of personal projects
• AOI - Association of Illustrators
• Julie Harrison - Paper Cuts
• Do free illustrations for magazines
• CV: 1 single side of A4
• Portfolio: PDF: 3 pieces of work with little description
• Twitter
• Flicker

STUDIO MAKGILL:

• Steven Fisher - Photographer
• MADE IN BIRMINGHAM: 'Central AVenue' typeface - rec-created Victorian font. Victorian flourishes yet contemporary, flood coated paper booklets
• THE LOLLIPOP SHOPPE - Branding & Identity design. Typeface: Wanted to create a physical thing, as the furniture they sell. White embossed foil cards, laser cut signs with plain white paper behind, Anthony Burrel Notebooks, all advertising for Lollipop Shoppe in magazines
• BENCH !): Re-design of chairs for Spitalfields Design Week. They created floor vinyls, leaflets & Panel info
• BRASILIA
• Strathmore paper video
• A YEAR AND A HALF OF INTERNSHIPS!
• To approach companies: List of favourite design studios, short email, small PDF of work, 2 or 3 pieces of work max, let the work talk for itself
• What they look for in interns: Ideas & thinking behind your work, 'good understanding of good design'
• He started his portfolio from scratch after uni
• Do more personal projects of things you love
• Be fast paced - Don't be to precious with your work - GET IT DONE
• Red up and study print - Improve your knowledge of paper and colour
• G F SMITH - Printers - Order samples!

I found Ollie very inspiring and helpful. I absolutely loved his work and getting to see all the samples he brought us. It really made a difference to be able to touch and feel the end products instead of just seeing it all on screen. He definitely pushed me even more towards design for print. I just think such beautiful work can be achieved and it really inspired me to go for it in our independent projects. I spoke to him about internships and he seemed fairly interested so I will definitely be emailing him my portfolio once I have finished our independent projects to see if I am lucky enough to get some experience in their studio which would be fantastic!

Evaluation

Here is my final Illustration complete with Little White Lies masthead...

It's a little fuzzy shown on blogger, the one uploaded to D &A D was pretty perfect!

Overall, I am very proud of this... Although it isn't what I wanted (in my head) I think it works well. When I came up with this idea, I was very excited, I think it's a great concept and thought I would dive straight into it without much difficulty... However, this wasn't the case! I soon realised that I found drawing a lot harder than I thought, having not really drawn much since high school (well, people at least). It took a lot of practice, tracing paper and layers to make this work. I've used halftone dot effect for the colour which I think really brings it to life as a real comic book.

I like how the masthead sits as though it is swinging from the sun and is not directly centred, old comic books weren't perfect and this stays in line with that.

The type in the top left hand corner finishes it off perfectly, I think that people who have seen the movie will really appreciate it, even if it is a little cheesy... it is a comic! WHOOSH!

Work in Progress....

After a lot of sketching I eventually came up up with this pencil drawing. I used tracing paper and built the design up by hand using layered paper.

I scanned in the drawings and drew over the outline in Illustrator with various different brushes. I did this in layers going over and over with different strokes...


I experimented with halftone colour dots to get the old comic book CMYK dot feel, I really like the results...

I roughly sketched how I wanted the text and again scanned that in. I drew over this with the pen tool and found a spot on Miami Drive Pink that works really well...

Portfolio...

Today we reviewed our online portfolio's in class. Mine needs updating, I haven't put any work on there since the middle of our second year, and I'm not to keen on the overall design. I like it's simplicity but everyone suggested either removing the grid or making it a lot more subtle, which I agree with. I like the portfolio being on the home page, there is no need to move around much, its right there for the viewer to see...

Once the user clicks on a box on the portfolio/home page they are directed to another page with all that clients work flowing one after the other. I have decided that I will narrow the work that I put on my portfolio site down to my favourite/best pieces and keep another blog for all my work together...

I want to keep the text box on the left column... With a brief description of what the work on the particular page is for, but with very short, simple text like the design.

Case Study: Fred Deakin

In our theory lesson we were asked to present a case study on a designer / artist of our choice. I have decided to do Fred Deakin (Lemon Jelly/Airside).

I have always been interested in Fred's work, I discovered his music first, he is one half of the electronic music duo Lemon Jelly. I went to see them live many years ago and the visuals were absolutely stunning. I then discovered that Fred was behind the artwork. He studied English Literature at Edinburgh University, whilst putting on student club nights in the city, this is where his interest in graphic design began. He created all the artwork for posters and flyers for his club nights and also created moving visuals for the dancefloor.

After graduating he moved to London where he became a lecturer at Central Saint Martins teaching Communication Design.

He then started the design studio Airside which is still going strong today, they have produced work for clients such as Nokia, Virgin and Greenpeace to name a few.

I have made the short 5 minute presentation below

Roy Litchenstein and others...

As I said before I want to have different textures and colours in my illustration to make it stand out, I immediately thought of Litchenstein's dots... I thought this could be a good technique to use maybe on the cape... Looking at his work has also made me think more about the title of the film. I wanted to keep the style of the Miami Pink script Drive typeface, but thinking about it maybe I should use a bold comic book style type laid on top of the artwork like the 'Whaam!' below...

I found these images below of sketches of Litchensteins work. I really like the style, especially the loosely coloured in crayon colour on the second image...

Pitching my idea...

I wrote a basic plan to pitch my idea... I covered the following; The brief, what it is asking me to do, summarise what I am doing, why I am taking this approach, how am I going to do it and why its different. I had a quick run through with Chris and he suggested to change the order.

Below are my pitch slides...

Briefly introduce what brief I have chosen:

"I am going to create a portrait of the driver as a superhero. I will do this in a comic book style but using mixed media with digital, painted and hand drawn elements..."

"I have always thought of ‘the driver’ in Drive as a kind of superhero character..."

· "The heartthrob good guy protecting the ones he loves..."

· "The iconic Scorpion jacket acting as a Batman type emblem..."

"The main feature song in the film singing the line ‘A real human being, and A REAL HERO'"

"I then started researching the film in more detail and discovered this is exactly what the directors intensions were, he compares the film to a fairytale, he says..."

“Well, the driver character is a mythological character, he’s like Shane or John Wayne, he’s part of American folklore, the hero that comes in and protects the innocent from the evil that men do.”

"After researching old Little White Lies covers and many different illustrators I think using different materials and textures bring a lot more depth to the work, making it more interesting to look at..."

"The words ‘A REAL HERO’ will be written on the cover as part of the illustration."

"The title ‘DRIVE’ will be hand drawn but in keeping with the infamous hot pink script typeface used in the film..."

"I’ve played around with different layouts and views, its pretty annoying that the Little White Lies masthead sits right bang in the middle of the page!"

"I think I’m going to go with the driver standing in front of the car holding the bag of cash. The background will be dark with lampposts shining…"

"After watching an interview with a designer from Little White Lies, the most important element of this brief (although not actually highlighted much in the brief itself) is to have a great concept, a hidden meaning…. Little White Lies covers all aspects of movies whether it be the music, art or culture."

"The magazine is read by ‘adventurous film fans’ who are ‘design literate film geeks’"

"I think my idea brings something different to the brief, it isn’t a classic portrait of a famous still from the film, it has a concept that the ‘design literate film geeks’ will have to think about and appreciate..."

I think my pitch went down well, they seemed to like my idea. I got some good ideas for the drawing style from the feedback, I am going to really emphasise the 'superhero' stereotypes on the character, for example making his muscles super large and maybe turning the iconic jacket into a cape.

Comics & Superheros...

As I have decided to go down the comic book route, I thought it would be wise to research comic art old and new... Looking for various ways in which I can pursue the film to become comic book like. I will be studying superheroes especially as this will be the only character in my scene...

The classic Superman art below without colour helps a lot with drawing the framework of my character. I will need to really push this superhero idea to make it work, hugely emphasising muscles and maybe tweaking parts of the driver character such as turning the scorpion jacket into a cape...

I really like the way the below image is coloured. I was done by hand using acrylic, you can tell this in the rough texture of the rich blue background. I like the idea of using such a rich colour in the background in my piece, maybe using bright headlights or lampposts shining through lighting up the driver...
These were done by the same artist, the same method has been used with colour, it almost looks as though it has been applied with a sponge...

I will be using some kind of comic book style type to say the words 'a real hero...' Either in a speech bubble or in a block corner like in the image above with a handwritten comic book typeface.

There is a series of comic called Commando based on stories and tales from the war. It was made in the 1960's and continued to be produced until the late 80s... They have now launched an iPad app with static images from the original comics themselves, this has been very helpful to look at, there aren't too many comics with actual figures of normal people in, they are all monsters and superheroes so it has helped me understand drawing peoples faces...

I bought some comics online for ideas... I got a selection of Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, a Vietnam war one and the graphic novel GhostWorld... They have been super useful as they all use different styles and have various characters whether it be a superhero, animals, architecture or real people...

The main thing I found in these old comics was how prominent the CMYK dots are. I absolutely love them and will definitely be using that kind of style in mine, there is a halftone dot effect which I can play around with in Illustrator, using various types of gradient I think it could create a really nice effect.