Evolution Print

Evolution are printers from Sheffieald and today they came into college to give us a talk about print and designing for print. They specialise on ink on paper and getting the print perfect for the large variety of clients they have. 

Notes from talk
the paper is on a pallet and not on a roll
they use vegetable based inks
the main types of paper they use is gloss, silk, uncoated and matt
if designing a booklet try and design 8 or 16 pages
they use B1 and B2 paper
to print in mass quantity they use aluminium plates 
they use lasers to burn the design onto the aluminium plates and then print 
they get a lot of commercial and high end clients 
you can't expect to get a really high quality image on uncoated paper 
always lead the design for the paper

Things that designers normally get wrong
the bleed, always work with a 3mm bleed
when printing a brouche keep pages to singles not spreads 
don't use spot colours with transpanreny because it doesn't work
keep all artwork to 300dpi 

I found this talk quite useful especially the tips for us as designers to consider for when designing for print, it has made me realise just how much consideration goes into designing all printed material.

Cheese Society- Eat and Greet Poster

Our first event has been confirmed for the cheese society I now have to design the poster for it to go round college, post on social media sites and e-mailed around to everyone interested on becoming a member. Our first event is called 'eat and greet B.Y.O.C (bring your own cheese)' this first event will be held at fab cafe on the 10th November at 8pm. This poster is going to be important because it has to catch peoples eye to make them come to the event. 

Again I am going to be using hand drawn type for decorative purposes and maybe some illustration. The information I am going to choose some type for as it needs to be clear. 

I started drawing an experimenting on illustrater with some hand drawn type. 

I then started to think what sort of colours I should have for the poster, the previous leaflets and posters have been very colourful however now looking back at them I think I added too much colour and I think I should of stuck to a tighter colour palette. 

I started to use adobe kuler to help me with some colour decisions 

The poster was put on hold for a while as I decided to collaborate with Aidan off printed textiles as I felt that he could do a better job with drawing a mouse. 

above is the mouse he drew, he admitted he is better at drawing but he was trying to make it in the style of the type, he has a point, a really detailed drawing would look good but at the same time really clash with the type

I thought that the eyes were a bit scary so i edited the eyes and made the teeth smaller 

I started draw and add the type to illustraor 

I was unsure of how I wanted to type to be laid out out so I experimented by hand for a while

Once I scanned in my design and put them in on photoshop I then started to add colour, Hollie the head of the cheese society loves colour and wants lots of it within the design, I love using colour within my work but I want to choose the right colours that complement each other. 

By this stage I really was not happy with the design, there is too much going on and I am not happy with the way the type has turned out. I am working to a really tight deadline due to the delay on the mouse.

I was unhappy with the design so I got some feedback off some of my peers on graphics and they gave me some really useful feedback, some of he feedback they gave 

-too much going on

-dont like the mouse, too big 

-should make it type based 

-need centralising and re organising

I am happy with the feedback it gives me something to improve on and work with 

I decided to look at the organisation of the poster and put the information on the poster that is needed first and then add the type centrally. 

I started to design the type with the mouse smaller and trying to make the mouse as part of the design rather than just having it on the side. 

I scanned it in and experimented with it on illustrator and photoshop to see if it would work

I decided that the '&' sign needed to be coloured in to make it stand out

Once all scanned in I added it to photoshop and looked at colour swatches to go with the logo 

I decided to central to centralise the artwork to make it the main focus

I placed the design on to my template I made and it worked well in colour and looked a lot better than expected 

Here is the final design, Hollie was really happy with it, it will be featured around college and on the cheese society social networking sites.

Visiting professional- Numiko

Today we had a talk from a visiting professional an ex student Thomas Squire, he now has a job in a design studio in Leeds called Numiko. I really enjoyed the talk and it was good seeing someone from our course do so well. He spoke with passion about digital design and it was good to see what projects they have been working on. 

Thomas spoke about a project that he worked on called design for europe, he started off by showing us some of the print things he did for them and showing his process and then he showed us their website that he designed with the help of another designer. He said that he hasn't really touched code since uni but he still designs websites, it is useful to know code but not nessacarry as that can be someone elses job. Above are some screenshots from the project I like the icons he designed, the use of type and the simple grid behind the website. 

Thomas also spoke about another project he worked on called design council, this is a responsive website as it changes as you change the size of your web browser, it adapts to every type of screen, it has a fluid grid. One thing that Thomas did say about this project is that he is still making changes on it as web is constantly changing and nothing is ever finished whereas if you worked in print you would just print it and it would be done. 

Jamie Luca Photographer

While in LA in the summer I met up with a photographer called Jamie Luca and his friend Cory Adam who together have a magazine called 'zine LUTEFISK', they were interesting to speak to about the differences of America and the UK, and had some advise for the future. I now follow their magazine full of fashion art and design. 

Link to the magazine homepage:

http://www.lutefiskmagazine.com/

Jamie Luca photography:

http://www.jamieluca.com/

The cover for the upcoming easter issue of Fisk

An old illustrated cover for Fisk 'fashion, art, draw, travel'

Jamie lives in LA and Cory lives in New Zealand, but they manage to make this magazine working together through online conversations.

They were really fun to speak to and I am glad I met them together, we went to Disney Land and spoke about design and photography. They are now well established from what started out as a small zine. 

They were inspiring to talk to and shows that distance is never an issue when it comes to design thanks to the internet and social media. 

Some recent examples of Jamie Luca's work: 

Reviewing my Identity

Today we reviewed our personal branding from before the summer and to see if we had changed over the summer and whether we think the branding still depicts us as designers. I now need to focus on my visual identity and start to think where I want to be after my degree and time at Leeds College of Art.

I showed some people in my class the work I produced last year for my personal promotional pack and people didn't think it represented me very well, and I completely agree. I think I rushed this project quite a lot last year, but I think I remember being happy with the final outcome, now I don't like the design at all. I think the logo is way to boring and dull the whole pack just isn't very exciting. I need to design something different that would make me get picked from out of the crowd. 

I need to consider

-product 

-range

-distribution 

I also need to consider

-printed material

business cards, leaflets, portfolio 

-digital material

social networks, website, design networks

I don't want my design to be too serious, I want to use bright colours and maybe hand drawn type to keep it individual. 

above are some very quick sketches of some logo ideas for myself, its quite hard to brand yourself as a person because you change all the time and I think I will want to change my logo a lot.