Post Graduate Report

With the final project handed in and two major exhibitions around the corner, it is now time to start planning my future after graduation. I will be researching into the areas of the industry that I think my skill sets would best suit, as well as what these areas, and others, are expecting. To do so I will need to reflect upon my own skills and abilities and identify my overall strengths within graphic design. Also the possibilities of continued study will be discussed, and identifying if these possibilities are appropriate for my future plans.

Reviewing the outcomes from all three years of my degree project, I can clearly see that print design is something I have naturally been drawn to. Throughout the initial stages of my degree I had the opportunity to experiment in many areas of design, this included moving image, print design, illustration, typographic design and others. Even at a very early stage I showed great interest in the combination of both digital and hand produced elements, as I strongly believe both can bring something positive to a brief when applied correctly. When it came to the opportunity to carry out briefs where outcome media was flexible, or the brief was self authored altogether, I seemed to natural turn towards producing outcomes of a printed nature. This ultimately led to producing a body of 30 posters as my final major project outcomes.

During my degree course I have had the opportunity to take part in two work placements within the graphic design industry. Both were very different in nature and gave me a great insight into the scale of the industry. My first placement was at the advertising agency Gravity Global. Based in central London it was a very corporate driven company, with high profile clients such as ‘Marks & Spencer’ and ‘Quark’. Through my own observations I noticed a strong hierarchy within the agency. It seemed that all ‘Juniour’ designers were simply given direct requests as to the visuals they produce, giving them little if any creative input on a given brief. The turnover of work was of a much higher level that what I was used to. For instance one brief from Marks & Spencer’s took a matter of days from start to near completion. Unfortunately by this time my two week placement was up and I did not get to see the final outcome. However it was still obvious that the speed from receiving a brief to completion was at a much higher rate than what I have become accustomed to at college, where projects can last for a number of months.

Recently I have completed a second placement at a much smaller design studio ‘Tag Design’ based outside of central London. Me and two fellow students were notified that the company was looking to employ one of us after we had all completed the week placements. This studio was a much more intimate environment with just a total of three employees. The majority of clients at ‘Tag’ were of the club promotion and club media. Due to the very nature of club media the turnover time for each brief was even faster than the corporate agency I had previously experienced. Towards the end of the three day placement I was completing briefs within a matter of hours. At first this seemed daunting, however once I had settled into the environment and became accustomed to their computer network and client expectation, I thoroughly enjoyed working in the fast paced atmosphere. Fortunately I was offered permanent employment from this studio, and since then have begun officially working at ‘Tag Design’ on a part time basis, until fully graduated, where I will move onto a more full time basis.

I have never found it a problem to learn design software programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. I feel confident when using any of the above programs and my software knowledge has never hindered my project outcomes. I feel this digital knowledge is largely what may have gained me the employment at Tag Design. Rarely are hand rendered elements featured in the designing of club promotion, therefore a good understanding of design through computer software is a key skill set required for any employee in this area of the industry. Another reason I enjoyed my placement at Tag was the element of creative freedom you are given. The director is always keen to hear new ideas and possibilities to create fresh new visuals for the clients. With this comes more room to express myself with the use of my own inspiration or personal ideas, rather than follow direct orders to create a very pre-assumed aesthetic. One thing that has been challenging working at Tag is the time management. As the client contact and turn-around is extremely high, managing your time efficiently is key. It is not really wise to try a number. I am more forced to come up with a concept or idea and just run with that.

A percentage of briefs my current employer receives involve digital and web design. This is something I have yet to experience, however I feel with it being in such high demand in todays technological climate, it is something I am some what eager to learn and be a part of. Working at Tag Design would be a great opportunity to extend my graphic design knowledge into website and flash design. This brings me onto another aspect I must consider, which is continued study.

There are a variety of master’s degrees available for post graduates. They include printing, visual communication, web design and many others. I did seriously consider gaining a masters in design, however after some consideration and through my experience gained in the industry, I decided that seeking employment what be a better direction for me to head in. Not only did a master’s course come with further financial implications, I began to favour working in a realistic environment where I was under pressure to produce final outcomes at a much higher rate. Having talked to a student who had recently completed her master’s course, it seemed that the theme of longer lasting projects continued. I know this is necessary in order for you to present and justify every decision you make throughout the design process. However on a personal level I decided shorter faster projects were a better way for me to begin building a good quality commercial portfolio.

Other commercial opportunities may still become available during both the exhibitions we have approaching us in the coming months. One of the exhibition module requirements was to re-approach our self-promotion strategies. Within this I have produced business cards and adapted a blog to transform it into an acceptable website. Due to time constraints it is impossible for me to fully design and create a functioning website from scratch. Hopefully a mid-term target, having gained experience in web design through my employment, can be to develop and launch an official website promoting myself as a designer.

Exhibiting my work will provide a number of benefits to help me in my future design career. It will place my work directly in the spotlight. Possible employers, press and the general public will be providing both praise and criticize my work which will generate a greater knowledge in creative steps or more effective aesthetics my design style could include. It will also place my work in direct comparison with other design students at my level, especially at ‘New Designers’. This will allow me to judge how my work stands on levels of creativeness, innovation and visual effectiveness. For me this is a key benefit from exhibiting at degree shows, as it inspires me with new inspiration and motivation to always develop and improve my design abilities.

In conclusion to this report my main target I set at the beginning of this course was to secure some form of employment within the industry. I am pleased that has been achieved however I still have plans for the future. I would be pleased to continue working at Tag Design for a number of years, however my ultimate target is to gain a big enough client base and industry knowledge to work part time, or if possible full time, as a freelance designer. Realistically this is a very long term plan and will take years to achieve. However I want to begin working on as many briefs as possible, outside of my main source of employment, in an attempt to achieve this target. Who knows where working freelance could lead to, if very successful then I could even consider opening my own studio, this is an extremely long term possibility, but I do feel I have enough determination and ability to attempt this. Within the industries of marketing and promotion, it seems that software knowledge is invaluable in any employee, therefore a short term plan for me is to extend such knowledge into web design and flash animation software. This will allow me to be equipped to attempt any opportunity, which I may have in the future.

Free Range

After a long hard day of building and preparing our exhibition space i managed to take some photographs of my own area. You can see a selection of these below…

Free Range Exhibition Plans

After some thought and consideration I have decided on a layout for our free range exhibition. My original plans were to have four A2 posters running along my two boards with 8 smaller posters running underneath. To avoid being boring I eventaully decided to have the four A2 posters, but with a further 8 of my posters made up as protest boards, and have them propped up against the boards. This provides a strong visual link to the political aspects of my project.

Below is a mock-up I created in Photoshop, of what my exhibition should look like…

Project Evaluation

At the very start of my project I decided to keep all my work in different books and folders, this is something I had never attempted before. I kept a general research folder, an initial ideas sketchbook, a sketchbook containing my logo development, another for visual inspiration and lastly I finished up with a number of books containing my visual experimentation and general project development. My reasoning behind this decision was that due to the fact this project would require such an extensive body of work, having separate areas to work in saved any confusion.

After submitting the development of ideas module I had a good number of initial ideas that I had started to develop. However I decided to continue my subject research throughout the entire project for a number of reasons. Firstly due to the very nature of Capitalism and how it’s surrounding issues are always changing and adapting. Keeping a constant body of research it insured that my ideas where never out of date or out of context. I feel my research had a healthy body of current and relevant issues and was reflected in my final outcomes. Referring back to my research I do feel I could have focused more research on the specific idea and theories of Capitalism both past and present. The majority of my research involved issues surrounding Capitalism and very little information regarding Capitalism itself. This again was reflected in my outcomes; out of my 30 posters none involved Capitalism specifically.

The idea of having a small A5 notebook for any initial ideas, proved to be a very effective decision. As it was small in size it was something I could constantly have with my and any thought I idea I had could be immediately jotted down for future reference. A number of times during previous projects I have had many possible ideas, but have forgotten to note them down, inevitably these are forgotten and the projects have suffered because of this. The A5 notebook ensured this did not happen again.

One area I felt I spent too much time on was my logo development. My project titled changed at least three times through this development, however this was not an issue for me. At this stage of the project I had noted in my reflection that my work rate need to drastically improve. Branding the project was something I wanted to do however it should have been completed in half the time. However after completing the logo I was very pleased with the outcome. I did not want a logo to simplistic; rather I wanted it to include a number of aspects, which had their own individual meaning. As explained in the sketchbook, I had the wings as a symbol of hope for society and the CCTV cameras were pictured as keeping a watchful eye on this hope. I had the shield, which symbolized help and aid for society yet this shield was divided down the middle. This division symbolized a number of areas such as division within race, culture and class. Finally the earth in the center provided the idea that the subjects this project involves operate on a global level and not just a local level.

When commencing the project I was unsure as to what visual style I wanted my posters to be. As a designer I am yet to still develop a definitive visual style, therefore I needed to create some extensive visual experimentation whilst designing the poster collection. For me it was imperative that all they posters worked as a set as well as individually. I feel I achieved my aim of producing this body of experimentation, four sketchbooks in total. This really helped me to not jump on the first acceptable visual style I came across. I eventually settled on this vector style image making, and also I had developed and approach of using horizontal lines to generate a layer of tone to an image but still only requiring one colour. This style appealed to me due to its link with old fashioned print methods where ink and print capabilities were very limited. This was my final choice of style until I furthered my research of inspiration. I looked further into vintage world war one and two posters and decided my vectored style may be too contemporary and not have enough ‘war poster’ characteristics. I wanted achieve more a vintage look because I felt this would give it an immediate link to historic propaganda and be a slightly different approach to the likes of more contemporary designers such as Jonathan Barnbrook.

I began to look at digitally representing a screen printed in an attempt to give my posters a more rough traditional feel rather then crisp clean vectored lines. After some experimentation I developed a process that transformed any given black and white image to what looked like a black screen-printed image. I would have loved to produce 30 images and actually screen-printed each poster however due to limited resources in college this was not a realistic option for me. After experimenting further with this digital process further I now had two visual styles that I could possibly use. Some visual testing was needed therefore I carried out a questionnaire showing an example of each style and asking which they thought was more effective. After evaluation my results it was clear that the vintage screen-printed look was favored. I then took this visual style further and ended up with ideal visual experiments that achieved my aims.

I initially decided to include a small description of each poster at the bottom of the page. However I eventually decided that this was in a way too basic or obvious. I then decided to select a famous or relevant quote that suited each poster, and have this running at the bottom of the page. This then created more involvement with the viewer. Rather than plainly reading my description they could read the quote then potentially have their own interpretation of the poster. My only regret is that after some visual testing with viewers I found that some of my chosen quotes were not linked with the poster design enough. In some cases it was not entirely obvious as to the message I was trying to express with the poster. Had I carried out this visual testing at an earlier stage I would have identified the posters that required stronger quotes and made relevant changes.

Throughout the project I planned on producing a number of other outcomes around my body posters however most of these I did not follow through with. Not only was this because my posters took longer than planned to produce, but I also felt that designing matching skateboard vinyl’s as an example would have in some way took the project away from its original aims of prompting debate. Having items such as skateboard vinyl’s could have potentially given the project outcomes more fashion related attention rather than political and social debate.

Referring back to my initial proposal for this project I feel I have achieved the target I set. My main aim, as stated in the proposal, was to attempt to prompt debate amongst a younger generation regarding issues and problems surrounding Capitalist western society. After testing a number of my posters on fellow class mates they seemed to universally agree that they felt issues needed attention. However having the main focus of the proposal on Capitalist theories and ideas should have meant that a large quantity of my research should have been on such subjects. As previously discussed this was not the case. If I were to have a chance to revisit this project I would aim to produce a number of additional posters, which portray views and ideas on Capitalism itself as a social system. Current issues were necessary for me to research and visually portray, however I should have thought more about how they relate directly to the Capitalist system.

Due to the extent of my visual development I actually completed the body of posters at a later date than initially planned. Had I complete them sooner my main aim would have been to print numerous copies and actually place them in real environments. Not only would this had provided first hand evidence of their effectiveness, it would have also provided me with a great source of photographic opportunities which would have further improved my book design and give an excellent way of presenting my posters through portfolios in both digital and printed forms. Finally I had an issue when I actually printed the posters for portfolio presentation. I originally planed to print them on an inkjet printer as this gives a more matt finish, replicating the screen-printed look better. However I found that the inkjet printer did not give a true representation of the colours seen on the mac screen. I then experimented with different paper types but with still no improvement. I was then forced to print them on a laser printer, which provided a better colour match, but a glossy finish. The way to slightly hinder this glossy finish was to use cartridge paper. Given its more dull and textured feel compared to other paper it seemed to remove some of this glossy finish and provided me with an ideal look and feel to my printed posters.

New Visual Style

Having been continuously developing the visual style for my posters I am starting to rest on the idea of generating a screen printed feel for them all. I am restricting in the number of actual screen I could use in college, therefore it is not possible for me to screen print print all 30 posters. However I have been working hard on trying to replicate this digitally and below you can see a cropped example of one of my sample posters using this effect.

Update and slight change!

 

Just a quick update…. The project title changed the other week. It is now ‘Do Not Disturb’. I feel this better reflects how society is run in a very specific way and governments and corporations do not want this changed. I have adapted the logo and made some stickers, which can be seen below!

‘Insert Coin’ Project Logo

I have decided to title my final major project for my degree Insert Coin. The whole idea is that we live in a money driven world with many many social and cultural issues surrounding us. My idea was that many rich and powerful people arguably treat society as one big game and nothing is taken seriously, hence the Insert Coin title. The wings represent hope and a revival for our society. The shield, split in half, represents the divisions of people and groups on people in society. The coin stands for obvious reasons. The style and the layout of the logo means it works on a symbolic level however it is elaborate enough for me to incorporate it into ideas such as designing my own bank notes etc. (Click image for larger view)