DR. ME Studio Talk

DR. ME is a creative studio based in Manchester and The French Riviera, and is made up of two graphic designers/creatives, Ryan Doyle and Mark Edwards.
Their talk was insightful into the way in which they work, including their design processes, as well as some of their influences for much of their work.

Influences include Neasdon Control Centre and Mike Perry, with whom they worked with for 2 months as students.

One of their first projects together was to produce a record sleeve for Dutch Uncles, an English pop band and their album Cadenza. The design for this album consisted of a hand-cut, contemporary collage, and this fed into most of their future projects. Not only did this project develop their own unique style of work, but it also inspired them to create more visuals for music, taking opportunity from local venues and musical friends. DR. ME suggest this for many new graphic designers, as it gives you freedom to experiment and helps to start getting your name out in the industry, even if it only starts off small and locally.

365 Days of Collage
This was a project that came about from their love of found imagery. They wanted to produce a piece of collage every day for a year, which could be affordable pieces of artwork. The size and price of these collages were dictated by the least you could pay for a large envelope.
As a follow-up to this, they produced a book titled 'Cut That Out', which is all based around contemporary collage within graphic design - their own work, as well as the work of other designers who use a similar style.

The main pieces of advice I gained from this talk was to:

1. embrace collaboration
   - different people can offer different skills and knowledge.
2. make your own trends
   - do not follow trends, make your own and be yourself, everyone has a unique sense of style, work with your own imagery.
3. do not be afraid to ask
   - send out mail, let people know how you are and what you can offer, give them constant reminders.

Brand Nu, Radim Malinic

Everything is a Work in Progress

Radim Malinic of Brand Nu is an art director, graphic designer and illustrator originally from the Czech Republic, now based in London. The ideas behind Radim's work are split into three main categories: inspiration, influence and information. Inspiration comes from colour. How can a colour communicate a certain message or emotion? For example, orange is the colour of ambition and success, and is typically used by Nike in their shoe box designs. Influence comes from experience. Experience comes from work and everyday life. Last of all, information comes from science, one of Radim's interests. His talk took us through what he called 'process 101' which aimed to help us form ideas within our own creative practices

Process 101
Search
- Ask questions and look for reasons.
- There has to be a balance between want and need. What a client wants is not always appropriate, therefore you must work on initiative to produce a pitch which focuses on what the client needs most.

Direction
- This is what Radim called the difference between good, great and amazing.
- When you have an initial first idea, do the opposite of this. Try to avoid cliques and not to be too obvious, put a different spin on the 'original' elements by telling the story in a different way.
- Try not to follow trends, develop your own unique sense of style, be true to yourself.

Skills and Knowledge
- This requires an understanding of what makes you different and stand out from other artists/designers.
- You also need to have an understanding of what you are creating your work for. Understanding your audience, the subject of your work, etc.

Meaning
- Creating work for the right reasons.

Making Ideas Happen
- Act on moments of inspiration, you never know when they may be useful in the future.

Point to remember:
"Miracles can happen on any size wave".
"Face a fear every day" - challenge yourself, work outside your comfort zone, otherwise you will never develop your skills as a designer. This will help you to produce more informed and well developed work.

Jo Blaker: Sketchbook Talk

Jo Blaker studied graphic design and advertising at Leeds College of Art before progressing on to an MA at the Royal College of Art. She does not put labels on herself, therefore her work consists of both illustrative and graphic elements, whilst other pieces of work can be seen as using elements of fine art in her practice. Her practice is mainly sketchbook based and this is what her talk focused on. Jo's inspiration for projects comes from the collecting and gathering of resources, particularly using images that relate to colour, line, materials/texture, and form. Much of her work is based on organic and natural forms in particular, for example looking at the changing form of seaweed when the sea washes it up and back in again. She relates this to a style of writing called 'nature writings' whereby people tell stories which show a connection with nature, such as through travelling. Jo uses these drawings as a different form of thinking and this is what forms the basis of her sketchbook work, trying to think through different ideas in a visual way.
This talk really motivated me to draw and inspired me to utilise my sketchbook more throughout my projects, including my own self-directed work. It taught me not to worry whether or not such work is 'good' or related to a current project, but to just document things that inspire you anyway because you never know when it may come in use. It also allows you to visually work through and develop ideas which could potentially have a big impact on an end product as well as your overall creative practice.

Interview with House Industries, Ken Barber

House Industries is a graphic design studio and digital type foundry, founded in 1993 by Andy Cruz and Rich Roat, originally starting off as Brand Design.
The studio specialises in hand lettering, which bares the same principles as layout design. For instance, Ken Barber suggests that in creating letterforms it needs to be considered how each letter relates to each other. You need to communicate a sense of balance and contrast, and understand the way in which elements relate to one another.
This relates to Massimo Vignelli's beliefs about the importance of the syntactical elements of a project (for example, type and sizes), as he also believed there must be an appropriate and balanced relationship between these elements, showing how they relate to one another.

Barber believes that to become a good letterer must have an understanding of type history. For instance, referencing existing typographic forms to produce your own hand-written forms, as this provides a foundation or underlying system of typography for which you can work from. Again, this can be considered to relate back Vignelli in his ideas of semantics, whereby he believed that you must research the history of a subject to better inform the nature and development of your work.

Along with these important elements of lettering, the main piece of advice I will take from this video is to be your own client. Provide yourself with self-directed projects in order to gain new skills and knowledge within design that, as a result, can help in the progression of your own work.

http://www.gestalten.tv/motion/house-industries

The Vignelli Canon, Massimo Vignelli

Vignelli's aim in publishing this book was to better inform young designers of typographic principles in the hope of improving their design skills, as he believed that "creativity needs the support of knowledge to be able to perform at it's best".

Part one focuses on what he calls 'the intangibles', which includes ideas on topics such as appropriateness and discipline, with the most important aspects of design, in his opinion, being semantics, syntactics and pragmatics.

Semantics refers to the search for meaning of whatever it is we have to design. Vignelli believed that this can be achieved in any project through researching the history of the subject to better understand the nature of the project and to find the most appropriate direction for design development. He stated that "design without semantics is shallow and meaningless, but unfortunately ubiquitous". In order to completely understand a subject in all of it's aspects we much relate to the receiver as well as the sender so that it makes sense to both, which means to say the design must have meaning. 

I believe Vignelli is both right and wrong in his opinions of semantics. I believe that for a work to be more informed, it should have a meaning behind it. However, there will always be some form of meaning behind everything we do, even if we may not be aware of it, therefore nothing we ever do is meaningless.

The idea of syntactics is the discipline that controls the proper use of grammar in the construction and articulation of phrases and design language. In graphic design this concerns the use of grids, typefaces, text, and illustrations, for instance. For a design to be consistent there must be an appropriate relationship between various syntactical elements in a project. For example, how type relates to the use of grids and images, and how type sizes relate to each other. 

In terms of pragmatics and discipline, Vignelli believed that "whatever we do, if not understood, fails to communicate and is wasted effort" and "without it [discipline] there is no good design, regardless of style", suggesting that design without discipline is anarchy. These ideas relate back to his ideas of semantics, that if there is no meaning behind a piece of work or the meaning is not communicated effectively, then that piece of work is useless. However, nothing is a wasted effort. Even if a piece of work does not effectively communicate the desired message, through the time and work put into such piece of work so much will have been learnt to help you grow as a designer. It allows you to see where you went wrong and what needs improving, whilst also learning new skills that can help to inform your own practice as a graphic designer.

Part two focuses on 'the tangibles', which includes typefaces, grid systems, colour and layout. In terms of typography, Vignelli's main belief was "I don't believe that when you write dog the type should bark", suggesting he prefers more objective approaches. He believed that there are six typefaces which should only ever be used and these are: Futura, Helvetica, Bodoni, Century Expanded, Times Roman and Garamond. The idea that 'type should not bark', I believe, depends on it's appropriateness and how it is used. If used in an appropriate way, decorative fonts could be quite effective in communication, such as in aid of the teaching of a young child. However, not all type needs to be like this, therefore there should be a balance when considering such elements.

In relation to these ideas of typography, Vignelli also believed that the relationship between type and paper sizes is an important aspect of design. He believed, for instance, that the size of the type should not be increased to make the message louder, and calls this "intellectual vulgarity". White space provides silence amongst a design and this should be the essence of all typographic designs.

Overall, Vignelli is an extremely opinionated designer. In terms of this publication acting as an aid to help young designers in their practice, most of the ideas and principles should be considered but interpreted in an individual way. Otherwise you would not develop your own sense of style and informed design practice, but instead regurgitating Vignelli's own personal opinions. 

OUGD402 - Time Management

This session was all about time management. It aimed to help organise our time better throughout the coming weeks. To do this we started by focusing on the things we have to do to maintain a healthy life and our responsibilities, such as eat decent meals, get enough sleep, shower, attend college. These responsibilities were laid out into a weekly timetable from 7am to 12am every day. This timetable aimed to show us the time we have spare and so, in comparison, we created a 'want to' list of activities we would like to do within this spare time. This list included things such as, start learning German again, buy a new car and join the life drawing society at LCA.

This session helped me to focus on the things I have to do vs. the things I want to do and how these could both relate to each other, such as 'want to buy a new car' and 'have to look for a new car'. However, in terms of time management it is hard to stick to a strict weekly timetable like the one below showing each individual hour in the day. I also found it hard to be realistic in how I usually manage my time, as activities and responsibilities can change week by week or day by day and I feel that this did not help me to manage my time better. Instead I found myself focusing more on what I felt was the most important and appropriate thing to do at each specific time.

OUGD402 - Dealing with Stress

The first task within this session was to anonymously write an answer to each of four questions:

1. What negative thought have you had today?
2. What are you scared of?
3. What stresses you out?
4. How do you de-stress?

Fig. 1. What negative thought have you had today?

Fig. 2. What scares you?

Fig. 3. What stresses you out?

Fig. 4. How do you de-stress?

From these answers, we then went on to pick three answers to each question to create a set of twelve answers. Answers in relation to question one included: "whether I am good enough to be on this course", "I'm wasting my time" and "I'm not going to get my work done on time". Question two: "failure", "people judging my work" and "not having good enough work". Question three: "deadlines", "being behind on work" and "thinking about stuff that might not even happen". Question four: "walking", "sleeping or taking a nap" and "calling my mum for reassurance".

The next process was to take these answers and produce a haiku out of them, such as:

Waste Of Time
Am I good enough to be on this course?
I don't want to waste my time.
Let's sleep instead.

Fig. 5. Class haiku's based on answers to first set of questions.

I personally feel that this task was helpful. It allowed to me write down a few of the negative thoughts I have had throughout this course so far rather than keeping them to myself. The task itself was quite reassuring in a way that it allowed me to see that others were feeling the exact same and that I am not alone in how I feel. Producing haiku's out of these thoughts provided a fun way to express my feelings and the feelings of others.

How could these be used to help a particular target audience who may having the same thoughts about stress?

Suggested target audience: A-level students.
Concept: Spotify playlist/extension to the app.
- uses thumb print recognition and scanner to determine how stressed you are through your pulse rate and chooses songs to play accordingly.
- the higher your stress levels, the calmer the music.
- also references music you have recently listened to to determine what music to play.
- reads out haiku's within the playlist using voiceover artists with calming voices.

Concept: An academic studies textbook.
- a general revision textbook to help a-level students with their studies.
- has such haiku's printed after every chapter, along with a positive-looking illustration of things going wrong to create juxtaposition.
- this makes the students realise their stresses and negative thoughts, and therefore forces them to have to deal with them (de-stress).

OUGD402 - Group Task - Identity

Group exercise on how others perceive us. 
Everyone in the group was asked to write down a few words or phrases about every other member in the group about their personality and appearance, ultimately showing how we see them.

Words used by others to describe myself:

• Honest
• Friendly
• Reliable
• Caring
• Considerate
• Determined
• Truthful
• Punctual
• Lovely
• Polite
• Infectious laugh
• Quotable
• "The Ron Burgundy of Graphic Design"

At first consideration, this task seemed challenging as some members of my group I had only ever spoken to once or twice when briefly introducing myself at the start of the course, so it was hard to judge these individuals not knowing their personality that well. This therefore meant that my judgements were solely based on appearance and the small amount of conversation I had with these individuals before the group task.

I feel many of the words used by other group members to describe myself are mostly truthful and would naturally consider using them myself to describe my personality. For example, many words suggest I am perceived as a trustworthy, friendly and approachable person which I generally consider myself to be. However, it was hard to tell whether everyone in the group was being completely honest for fear of sounding rude.

Other words from people whom I have gotten to know better throughout the course so far gave words and phrases such as 'has an infectious laugh' and 'quotable' due to my tendency to laugh a lot, and to spontaneously say stupid things and quotable one-liners, hence the phrase "The Ron Burgundy of Graphic Design" which makes reference to the film Anchorman. 

These words and my perceived appearance will be of help to me when introduced to the self-branding project, as not everything will be coming from myself and be so one-sided now that I have an idea of how others see myself as well.

Offset Sheffield - Saturday 22nd October 2016 - Droga5

Droga5 are an advertising agency based in New York. Their talk suggested that what works best within advertising is abstract elements which do not necessarily push the story along, but gets people thinking. For example, Under Armour, Phelps ad uses abstract scenes to communicate a sense of wonder and inquisitiveness. In this, they remind us that people do not love advertisements, they're a disruption and so people are not willing to engage with them and this must be broken in the first instance to create an effective ad. This requires conceptual thinking as an essential element that usually informs every creative decision, and links to their decisions in the production this ad.
Their talk also provided lots of advice in relation to the idea that advertising is all talk. Using a quote from Gerhard Richter "you can only express with words what words are capable of" they provided ways of how to get around the problems of having to talk about your work before it even exists. The first point is in regards to referencing - use visuals and sounds to illustrate mood, how should the ad feel? For example, their ad for Under Armour, I Will What I want, uses breathing sounds and the sound of both positive and negative comments being smacked onto walls, which was very effective in communicating mood and meaning without necessarily talking. Prototyping is also important - you should create something before you show it, get a sense of how it will work. Conceptual thinking - ideas that can be talked about easily, 'to illustrate x we must do y', must be clear and simple as ideas are described and interpreted differently by various people.

Offset Sheffield - Saturday 22nd October 2016 - Laura Carlin

Laura Carlin is an illustrator and ceramicist based in London. Her main sources of inspiration come from books, film design and characters. Despite this, she believes that you should step out of your comfort zone every so often in terms of inspiration and style of your work, as you do not necessarily have to like a certain piece of artwork but you may be inspired from the idea behind it. Her illustrations for The Iron Man, a children's book by Ted Hughes, is ... of this belief. These illustrations include subtle differences and ideas which you have to pay close attention to notice. For example, in the book she gave the iron man a shadow and not the townspeople to show their ignorance towards the man. However by the end of the story every character has a shadow when they are finally able to accept the man for who he is. Carlin believes that illustrations like these plant seeds of imagination in the minds of children, therefore no topic is off bounds and you should not steer away from difficult subjects. Children are the harshest of critics and understand more than you think. However, for the children to be engaged with a story, the characters must be believable as a real character. Giving them small narratives in their creation gives them this essence of 'realness'. This idea can also be seen in her own book, A World of Your Own, which is aimed to encourage children to draw, create their own narratives and overall spark their imagination.

Offset Sheffield - Saturday 22nd October 2016 - Florence Blanchard

Florence Blanchard is a visual artist, painter, screen-printer and curator. Trained as a scientist with a pHd in Biology, inspiration for Blanchard's work comes from microbiology, molecules and cell membranes. She combines her science background with art to create large murals using contrasting, bold and abstract colours. Illustrations are typically produced using circle paper as if looking through a microscope or into a petri dish. Her love for painting was developed through graffiti. This background in graffiti still informs a lot of what she does, typically painting murals within industrial spaces or warehouses, such as a burnt down recycling facility, to change people's perception of them. For example, one project of hers was a mural in Hokkaido, Japan on an old building which was set to be demolished. This mural changed people's perceptions of the building and as a result, plans to demolish the building were set aside, showing how Blanchard's work has a heavy impact on such environments.

Offset Sheffield - Friday 21st October 2016 - Pentagram

Pentagram is an independent design company based in London, New York, Berlin, Austin and San Francisco, made up of 21 partners who each run their own individual teams. The company focuses on various fields of design, such as architecture and interior, books, branding and identity, film and websites. Their talk aimed to showcase some of their recent works integrating invaluable advice within. One recent project of theirs focused on the relationship between alphabet and image. Taking inspiration from Edward Johnston, famous for designing the typeface used throughout the London underground system until the 1980's, Pentagram produced a set of ios 10 stickers which integrated the use of emojis with ligatures. This project was of much interest, especially since it related to our recent ligature project. It showed how they have used modern technology to almost create a global language for communication through text abbreviations based on the idea of emojis. Advice taken from this project was to embrace technology within your design practice, as it can have a huge impact on communication as shown in their ligature ios stickers project. However, technology is not the only thing you should embrace. Collaboration is also important. Collaboration creates varied and considered ideas within a project which can help to inform final results, but the process also teaches each other new skills that as a result can inform your overall design practice and help you to consider different approaches to work. As a designer you must embrace and engage with ideas such as these, including 'stupid' ideas because you never know where these may take you and it could all be worth it in a few years time.

Pentagram's Leeds Design Festival 2016 poster designs.

Identity work for Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Offset Sheffield - Friday 21st October 2016 - Moving Brands

Moving Brands is a design company based in London, Zurich, San Francisco and New York. The talk, with executive creative director Darren Bowles, was called 'Creativity for a Moving World' and was designed to give advice that aims to aid designers in further developing their practice. The main consensus was that design has become too clean and refined, meaning it loses quirkiness and opportunity. Design needs to be a messy process for it to end up beautiful, meaning it also needs a good balance between what is considered right and wrong in terms of design. Moving Brands illustrated this through their design for Eircom, a telecommunications service based in Ireland. Shortening the name to Eir, Moving Brands focused on what is essential to Irish life, capturing the properties of air and using film as a medium to capture tone. 

To be 'playful and seemingly pointless' is another important aspect of design suggested in this talk. Experimentation with a wide range of materials and methods provides interesting ways of gathering ideas and allows you to uncover things which previously may not have been known or thought about. You should be unapologetically experimental and let your clients engage with your work in a way that challenges accepted norms. For example, when pitching an idea to a client, Moving Brands often use large foam boards as a way to get the client interacting with their ideas.