The Weekend With Yinka Ilori
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Showing posts with label Contact Reports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Contact Reports. Show all posts
you could work 24hrs a day, every day, and that still wouldn't be enough
0 comments Posted by Leah Wild at 7:57 pmTwenty-Four Seven aims to provide students with an insight into the design world by highlighting some basic issues that need to be considered before starting work. Twenty-Four Seven draws upon the experiences of internationally renowned designers, with email comments from Tom Roope (Tomato Interactive, UK), Alexander Gelman (Design Machine, NY) and Jan Wilker (Karlssonwilker Inc, NY) and interviews with Jonathan Ellery (Browns Design, London), Peter Saville (London) and Adrian Shaughnessy (TiRA, London).
Twenty-Four Seven has been designed for you to print out. You're downloading a print ready .pdf with bleed and trim marks. We would recommend you scale to fit an A4 page and print it double sided. Once trimmed, you can spiral bind and keep your copy, forever. Enjoy!
download the pdf here
I hope they don't mind me posting up photos from when I was on placement there...
I was offered a 2 week placement at Fudge Studios in Bolton in the last couple of weeks in September 2008. Getting up at 6:30am and not getting home til gone 7pm some nights, those 2 weeks were a real shock from the cushy college communte and workign hours! I knew it would be worth it at the end of it all though. I was very nervous on my first day, I didnt know what to expect at all. Andrew Birley gave me a tour of the studios, showing me where everything was and I was then given a computer to use in the Designers room.. for the first week Gav and Robin the senior graphic designers were in and in the 2nd week it was mainly Gav and Christian, Christian being a junior designer. I was asigned the task of designing a blog for a new project management program Fudge had made and seeing as though i'd never done anything like that before, I found it really difficult, but every now and then, Gav would ask me how i was getting on and show me a few pointers. It was interesting seeing what they were up to too. When Gav got given a new brief, I noticed he worked in a very similar way that we do in college. He would research competitiors, see what design was out there and then rought mock-up on the mac some quick ideas and then post them up on the wall and call everyone round to get their opinions. This is something we do at college, but this was a much more quicker working pace... did he all that before lunch!
It was interesting to know that they had a seperate room for all the technical and website making side of things, and they had more tech staff than designers.. eventhough they were in a different room, everyone got along even realised I got on the same train as.... I want to call him Pete but i'm not sure... but we used to walk from the station to the studio together and i got to ask him a few questions about what he did once he graduated.
Also, though general chit chat, it turns out me and Gav had the same tutor on the ND Course at Stockport College so we got to talk about that too.
Whiclst I was there, they were working on the England Squash Identity.. I had to stick those 48 A3's on the wall that you can see on the phot above.. but I got insight on how they prepared to present their solutions to the client.. gathering everyone round to discuss how it should be presented and in what order. Again, very similar to how we work in college.
On my last day, Andy Eccles had a talk with me asking me how it went and what I got out of the placement and just told me some words of wisdom, and also mentioned that I could contact him agan should i need any references which I thought was extremely nice of him.
Following on from the placement, I bumped into Dave Eccles and Gav when Peter Saville did a talk for GF SmIth and he seemed keen to know what i was gettin up to at college. And I also got an invite to their end of year party which was a lot of fun.. hopefully I'l pluck up the courage to get networking and start making more contacts :)
Whilst on a college trip to London, Guy Lawrence, our kind of guest tutor this year, passed on the details of an ex student of his called Alex Jurva who now works at Hat-Trick design. I emailed her on behalf of myself, Ryan and Dave and managed to arrange a day when we could go down to show her my portfolio. When we arrived and the doors of the lift opened, we were greeted with a large open plan room that was very white and airy with wooden floors. There were quite a few desks to one side of the room and on the other appeared to be a social area with again, a big book shelf and comfy seats and couches. We were lead into what looked like a meeting/conference room with a large table. We each took turns with showing Alex our portfolios. I had the tricky task of going first, having to explain each project as I went along. Reflecting back on it, I think I may have rushed through my work instead of allowing her time to look through at her own pace and think about what she was seeing. Her feedback however was very useful, telling me of ways in which she thought I could improve certain pieces but also showing interest and asking questions why I did what I did. She particuarly liked my paint splatter toy soldier kosovo poster. We were there for about an hour but Alex explained that the studio was very busy at the moment and that she'd soon have to go back to work which is understandanle. She did however makesure that she got to show us some of the work that they did themselves and also asked any questions that we had. Alex had only graduated the year before but had managed to get herself a job in such a well regarded graphic design company already.. and in London too! I left the portfolio viewing feeling encouraged and that maybe that it was possible it may happen for me aswell. When I got back to Manchester, I followed up the visit with an email to say thank you for her time :)
The Chase are possibly the design company that I regard as having the most relevance to my work. All of their pieces of work contain clever ideas and concepts and when Lise Brian came into college as a guest speaker, I particularly liked the promotional items they designed.. especially the christmas tree card.
In this card for The Chase, the sum of the stamps conveniently amount to the cost of first class mail. It's cleverness is in the simplicity and that's when you know it's good design.
The company have adopted a philosophy which is on the first page of their website but that they also showed at the very beginning of their presentation.
“There was once an old Indian craftsman who carved elephants from blocks of timber. When asked how he did it, he would simply reply, “I just cut away the wood that doesn’t look like an elephant.”
I think this philosophy tells anyone that they are a company all about creativity. They can see the potential in materials and have strong ideas and views; they can see things differently to other people.
The Chase work in many different ways, they design…
· Logos & symbols
· Branding
· Literature
· Promotional Items
· Posters & Calendars
· Exhibition & Outdoor
· Stationary
· Books
· Packaging
· Screen
I think this would make working at the company fun and exciting as you get to work in different ways for different projects. You can be more creative and adapt to different ways of designing.
Their logo designs are very clever, a favourite being the logo for Leaf Street.
The client is an environmentally friendly housing association in Northern England. A leaf becomes a row of houses, which then becomes the logo. With all their logos, they look simple but are all clever in their execution.
Their work instantly interested me and when we got given a list of briefs to choose from for the D&AD student awards 2009, I chose a Direct Mail brief for Crisis. It was a brief unlike any others that I've done and also one of the hardest.. but I'm very proud of the end result.
I've emailed them as I'm very keen to get a portfolio viewing but I'm still waiting for a reply. I know that I'm aiming high as they one of the best in the country, but if I had to choose a practicing design agency that I could relate to the most, The Chase would be the one. As I've mentioned in my Issues and Practices piece of text, I'm not going to give up trying to contact them, maybe email just isn't the best way of trying to get in touch with companies anymore.
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