Cheese Society- Merry Christmas Cheesus Christ

Overall the event went really well, it was a great venue to hold the event, some people brought their own cheese, we provided some cheese and cheese was for sale. We made some more sales on the 'cheese on tote' tote bags to make up for costs of the cheese. A great way to start the festive period. 

Cheese Society- Happy Birthday Chesus Christ

above: featured in The Tab article for last years cheese themed Otley run, Cheesus Christ. 

In honour of Cheesus Christ himself we decided to throw the Christmas themed party named 'Happy Birthday Cheesus Christ' 

We managed to get permission to go the Homage2fromage a pop up cheese restaurant in Leeds. The event will be held on the 8th of December people wearing Christmas jumpers and getting merry. 

Logo development

Above is my logo from first year but I have stripped it back without the colour because I realised that less is more, and that the black would go with everything. Although I like my logo like this I think it does look a bit plain and needs something else. 

I experimented with colour first, using one block colour and then using a gradient, I like them both however I need the logo to adapt with all of my work and I don't think I can select just one colour to define me as a person. 

After experimenting with colour I then wanted to experiment with pattern, a simple pattern that works when the logo is small and large. I used half tone dotts for one side of the A and i really like how it has worked. 

I experimented with colour and pattern and felt like it was too much, so I think I am just going to stick with the black and white pattern. 

It works well on social medias, I think I am going to use this logo from now on, it works better with no colour as it can be adapted to everywhere it is placed and the half tone dotts make it look less boring. 

Cheese Society- Eat and Greet

The Eat and Greet is the first event of the final event of myself and Hollie running the Cheese Society. The first event of the year is aimed at first years joining the uni and cheese fans from previous years. 

The first event people bring there own cheese as conversation starters as the event is titled 'eat and greet'. To promote the event I created a poster to put up around uni, advertised it at the freshers fair and promoted it as an event on Facebook inviting people. 

Here is the poster, I made it using a collage technique, keeping it fun with cheese clouds and the cow shouting about the event. 

We managed to book Friends of Ham a cheese, meat and wine specialist in Leeds for the event, booking and contacting Friends of Ham went smoothly and they were excited to have the cheese society in. 

The event was a success, people came through the advertising as we didn't know many people there (which is what we wanted). We sold 7 tote bags with memberships at £5 which makes up for the cheese brought. I am really happy with the way the event went, people enjoyed the night we gained good feedback.

Feedback Workshop

Todays feedback workshop was all about feedback and the types of feedback we gain and what we find useful feedback. 

There are two types of feedback

• Formative (on going feedback)
• Summative (feedback at the end of a brief)

We were asked to think of 10 examples of each 

Formative

• Crits 
• Talking 
• Critical 
• Opinions 
• Presenting 
• Getting idea's across 
• Communication 
• So you can improve 
• Moving on 
• Seeing whats worked 

Summative

• Tutor Feedback
• Feedback from non graphic designers
• Grades, knowing where you are at
• Reflective 
• Critical feedback 
• Informative 
• Reaction 
• Fresh eyes 
• Honesty 
• Evaluation 

After we had 10 of each we then came together as a table and selected the best 10 of each. Then another table viewed them and then selected 5. Then from that 5 as a group we selected the best two of formative and summative feedback. 

DIY Identity

How do you demonstrate you SKILLS and SRTISTY?
KNOWLEDGE and CONCEPTS?
THINKING and MAKING?

These are aspects of your continuing design practice as a student and potential professional designer. You should be able to make others aware of your skills and context or your work, how can you of this visually, what is your language? 

Consider the following when developing your identity? 

INFORM / EXPLAIN / PERSUADE / INSPIRE / ORGANISE / PROMOTE / INSTRUCT / INTERACT

There are an array of physical and visual formats that your identity can take, these may include… 

BUSINESS CARDS / STATIONARY / BLOGS / ZINES / T-SHIRTS / PUBLICATIONS 


Some questions that we thought about today was whether business cards are actually still relevant for us as graphic designers or whether people just need to have an online presents. 

Some things I need to think about is the materials that I use for my business cards, something that people find different and interesting. 

I also need to take into account the audience, who do I want to speak to and how am I going to grab their attention? 

A good way of thinking about it is thinking what would I want to receive in the future if I become a successful designer? 

Social media is now such a big platform for showing your work, I think I need to take more advantage of it and actually show more of my work.

I have realised I need to keep my Behance and my tumblr up to date and put my work on there as I complete it. 

I much prefer designing for print, so I am thinking of making a small zine or a newspaper of my work to send to studios. 

One good point that did come up in today discussions is how long are people actually going to look at you business card/ design for. The impact needs to be initially there and grab the audience straight away. 

I have decided that I need to develop my personal branding a lot more to get my name out there to studios, the ways I am going to do this are: 

- make a full working website
- finalise my logo
- think of ways my business cards could become interactive / more interesting 
- maybe make my business cards part of a collection, people wanting more of my design
- make a publication of my work to send via post to studios, something that will make them want to contact me

DR. ME

Normal Mailer

We all know the expression "you've got to speculate to accumulate"

Regardless of whether you intend on stating your own creative studio, joining a small studio or working for one of the design behemoths we want you to understand the importance of sending out mailers to people that you want to work for, work with or just be friends with. 

By the end of today we want to see a pice of work that you feel sums up your creative practice, this could be a beautiful bit of hand drawn typography, a collage that makes us question your sanity, a psychedelic drawing, a mind bending painting or something indescribable. 

After today we want you to take your creation one step further and turn it into a mailer, make something that you'll want us to keep, make it unusual, make it brilliant, maybe the peice you'll make will end up being a screen printed cassette tape cover that you'll make a bit of music for us to listen to? Who knows? 

We want you to post us the mailers to our studio by Monday 26th October so that'll mean you should have it in the post by the Friday before. Send it to the studio address"

DR. ME
Studio 104 
Islington Mill 
James Street 
Salford 
M3 7HB 


Some of DR.ME's work: 

I really liked their use of collage within Dr.Me's work, I like how random it is yet it is done well and precisely. When Dr.Me first started out they started to send mailers out to studios they like in the hope of getting some work and the studio to take a look at their work. They created random mailers to grab studios attention, something they would want to keep. What they did worked and managed to get them some work. 

Eugenia Loli

Dr.Me reminded me of some of Eugenia Loli's work because of her use of random collage, I really like her collages because they are all done so well and look like they tell a story. 

Tyler Spragler

Tyler Spragler is also one of my other favourite collagers, I really admire his use of colour and how well they all work together in each piece. 

Todays work:

This is the collage I created in today's Dr. Me's session, to create this I used an old Vice magazine and cut out images I found interesting. The background is made up of old pieces of wrapping paper, coloured paper and squared paper. The collage doesn't say much about me other than showing my fear of getting old. I really enjoyed this brief it was so nice to get away from the computer for a session and create something hands on with scissors and a pritt stick. Overall I am really happy with the outcome, I think it would catch peoples attention if I sent it as a mailer, I think it would be something that people would question. I would like to experiment further and create more like this to send out to design studios and hopefully get a reaction. 

Here are the mailers that I sent off to DR. ME. They all say something about me, one being the cheese societies new poster, the christmas one featuring my donkey patch and the legs one that I created in the session. 

Cheese Society- Screen Printing bags

This year as part of the membership for the cheese society we are going to ask people for £5 for a membership, included in the membership will be a screen printed tote bag. The reason we have put the price up from £2-£5 this year is so we can buy more cheese and cover more cheese costs. 

As we are screen printing tote bags I exposed an A1 fabric screen for the design to fit on comfortably. One problem we did have when screen printing is that we couldn't see where the bag was so when screen printing the yellow background onto the bag it was sometimes off centre. Once the yellow was screen printed onto the 50 bags, it was even more difficult trying to line up the the type onto the yellow, this was a problem that we could do nothing about, it took along time just to line each bag up separately. 

Overall I am happy with the way the tote bags have turned out, some are better than others and we accounted for ones that we messed up. We now have a good amount of bags to sell at our first event with the membership. The bags will also be good advertising for the cheese society in general. The remaining bags from the event will be kept in student union for people to purchase, and the bags will be taken to every event that we hold. 

Summer Presentation

Level 6

Who I am as a designer
- a creative with an attraction to colour and hand drawn type
- I enjoy using colour within my work, but I think I've learnt that sometimes less is more

What I want to do more of
-publication, because I enjoy experimenting with different layouts
-branding, I enjoy creating things with one uniform house style 
-web, I would like to learn more about web this year and make my own site

COP 3 Question 
-I want to carry on the same themes from my COP2 question, exploring publication in the digital era
-I want to see if the publishing industry is suffering the same as the music industry has due to new technologies. 

Research areas
-there's a lot of areas I have been researching into
-I want my main focus to be with magazine publication, briefly touching on newspapers
-how the internet is making our lives easier but at the same time how people are becoming more obsessed with social media ect.
-also going to discuss how we will always need print and the different viewing qualities and experience it gives you 

Slow movement
-this summer I read 'in praise of slow' by Carl Honore
-Carl Honore believes that the western world has a massive emphasis on speed effecting the quality of life
-how new technology and the internet is speeding everything up, people have no patients
-living the fast life instead of the good life
-how we should sometimes slow down step away from technology and enjoy life

Briefs
-I have started to look for briefs for extended practice
-One brief that I am going to work on this year is called 'vital force' a new fashion brand that a friend from home is setting up, she has asked me to do the logo and branding
-this year I would also be interested in entering the royal mint competition, doing a branding and packaging competition on starpack and entering briefs for D&AD and YCN
-I am also going to work on a collaborative brief with a fashion student creating 60's screen prints including bright colours and patterns. 

Cheese
-I am doing all the designs for the cheese society for all the upcoming events this year including the dairy disco and the cheese ball

PPP 
-this year I want to create my own website, take sometime to learn more about designing for web
-I still like my logo, however I think I am going to use a less coloured version to make it versatile everywhere
-Also for PPP I am thinking of creating a newspaper or zine full of my work to send to design studios 

Context: YOU!

Brief: 

Explain who you are, your values, your identity, your purpose... in terms of who you are as you, a person not who you are in terms of graphic design. 

this is telling, not selling

Task one: Know who you are

Task two: Communicate it

You should use this opportunity to showcase you.
Once you know what you want to say, impress us with how you say, show and present it. Use your creative skills to communicate what you want to say; from poetry to a poster any medium is appropriate. 

Your story is of course a work in progress, its still been written. Focus on your journey to date, a suggestion perhaps whats to come. 

I started to initially think about myself as a person and what i'm interested in outside of graphic design. I came up with a few initial ideas including, donkeys, 90's fashion and design, oriental, cinema, hand drawn type, pizza, banana's and colour. 

After much thought I thought of doing doing various things such as postcards, using materials such as tracing paper and making a small zine about me. I think I prefer working for print but creating things digitally. 

I created a digital collage that I think represents me well as a person. The two donkeys in the collage are my donkeys paddy and patch. There are two of them because I think I work best when I am collaborating but normally with just one other person. The donkeys are situated in NYC somewhere I visited last year as I have now realised I much prefer city life. The coloured textured sky is a piece I created last year, it represents my love for colour, texture and pattern.