Boomer's PPD Blog

Got my first delivery of business cards today. Did the disappoint? Of course they did. A number of problems with them, which is a shame cos I got 2500 of em. You want reasons? Ok here goes...

The type is too small, the gloss has made the White yellow, the colours have run, the logo is too big, I accidentally printed my 'awesomeness' business card but even then spelt sweep ness wrong...

Enough reasons? Shame I got another 2500 on the way then. This time they're foiled though, and it says art direction, spelt right for once. The type will probably be too small but what can you do? When they crop your image there's nowt you can do. Think I'll probably end up making some anyways, but at least I have a logo and font and colour choice sorted.

For now.

I'll probably get bored with it again in 6 weeks

So i made the leap and just ordered some business cards...2,500 of them. Well they were cheap. But i did it using the new identity i've got from my recent brief, so we'll see how they turn out but i'm hopeful.

Got an email today from Steve at paper scissor stone through Amber saying he'd like to have me back again in the summer. Not sure on the details or of anything when it comes to Steve basically, but i'll pop by, see what the crack is and have a chin wag.

Personally i thought my presentation went rather well. I was told when i was practising with Phoenix and Kay that maybe i come off a little negative, and i think if there were a weakness it would probably be that, but i was just beng honest with my opinions and my assessment of where i am at the moment which is what this is all about after all.

Plus my Rock slides went down well.

I'm thinking about getting a batch of tshirts made to sell
Online, but as is quite often the case making a full batch of t's is time consuming and expensive. So I've been looking at a few places such as Factory 4 and others, and I found a small place in Leeds that does short runs of stuff, called St. Inks.

Now I may just be naive, but I expected quote a lot from a professional screen printers. Turns out it's literally 2 guys in a basement. And that's not an exaggeration. They're set up under some massive warehouse just a little way from the bus station. It's proper, proper ghettO. You have to walk through an entire corridor of basements to get to it too. It was like walking to my death.

But they're sound guys who work elsewhere and do screen printing in their spare time so I may have use for them yet, and they're not particularly expensive either.

Got some crazy new ideas for my website, along an infographics type path. One is a crazy wheel where all the thumbnails ring a central section kinda like a colour wheel, and when you click each of the various the image of the work fades in to the central circle. It'd be mental to try and make and youd have to have your photographs right but oh well.

The more realistic alternative is a very stripped back approach, kinda like taking all the detail out of an indexhibit site and having the navigation along the left but written vertical.

I dunno, just spit balling. Here's some sketches see if it makes anymore sense:

Made some changes to my cargo collective site. Nothing major, just changed the templates and got rid of all the super high quality images that were taking up all my space. Wanted to keep it clean and simple though so theres not a massive amount of extra faff.

I've been having a bit of a fight in myself as to what to put on my website/cargo etc recently. I've been thinking about how you send a pdf portfolio thats just a taster of you and your work and the main focus is on the work when you go visit, so i've been thinking the same about the whole web presence thing - how much should i have on there? all of it? half? inbetween my printed and pdf portfolios?

So for my new look Cargo I've taken out a few projects and a few images from others as well.

So plans for Easter are as follows:

1. Email 10+ studios or designers about their practice for design context book

2. Arrange a visit to at least one to see the day to day running and make new contacts

3. Visit 3 printers of varying size - S: St Inks, M: Target Print, L: Duffields

That's just the relevant stuff, a corresponding post for work is on dp.

I play a lot of Call Of Duty (there's a point to this, I promise) and in the newest on Black Ops you can create, using hundreds of icons and colours, your own 'flag' or personal crest. Mine has been for a long time now a yellow smiley face with a massive red cross through it. I'm thinking of adopting it as my logo. Its a bit risky. And not particularily approproiate ha but still, I like it.

My first interview/portfolio thingy was with a couple of lads from Brass. Now when i think of guys from agencies i think of proper business men, or slightly older smarmy fellas who think they know everything. These two could not have been more normal if they tried. I honestly think one of them was younger than me. Anyways had my portfolio tutorial with them and we basically just chatted and went through my stuff. They're primarily digital based, which isnt an issue for me, just ive done a lot of print stuff last module, so we just talked about application to digital media and the like. They liked my Lost infographics especially and said it would be really nice to see it mocked up for digital and said i could send it them if i needed which was cool of them. So i got their emails and hopefully we'll keep in touch.

Yesterday was the digital creative milk round, basically a speed -dating -designers type situation. We had short presentations from the interviewers first in the main studio theatre (which was an experience in itself) and then had allocated time slots with interviews/portfolio tutorials with people from various sides of the creative sector.

Now i don't know if someone was having a laugh or what but i had two interviews, firstly witha couple of guys from Brass, and then with some weird inner city creative circus place, which at first i thought might just be a front for a more serious design place but soon found out was in fact... a circus troupe of gymnasts. Surely i must've been a pity interview, so they met with someone. Anyway i was booked into digital print so i missed that one anyways, but i also caught a guy called Peter on the way out who owns a small printing place in leeds that might be worth a nosey at.

Had a really good chat with Jane today. I'm just struggling abit with regards to contacting people and whatnot, just because a) i feel awkward when i shouldnt really, and b) i've got so much else to do this module i keep putting it off and i really shouldn't. Also i'm never too sure what to say, im no good at just making stuff up. Anyways i took some notes (/she took some for me because i had a rough night ha)

I've taken the feedback i got from mark Howe and tried to make the changes where i could. Im still yet to see what i can get out of this module to go in it but its alright for now.

So we were asked to do a logo/identity. Lets just say mine sucks. The principle is...interesting...but its not done very well and i wont like it. Oh well here it is, it wont be this crap forever:

Had an indexhibit tutorial with Joe today. I'll be honest, it's gonna be complicated. And I don't quite fancy that. So for now I'm going to stick with cargo. Its a simple, easier method of having a web presence, kinda half way between a website and a blog.

But we'll see, I'm not averse to building my website from the ground up and I don't think I'll need indexhibit to do it.

Craig Oldham from Music came today to do a little talk and tutorial type workshop. I think its fair to say he's quite an earthy sort. He swears like a trooper, but he's very direct with his thoughts and how he sees things in the design environment. He showed us quite a bit of his work, but if i got anything out of the presentation itself it was their work with manchester city, which was a set of promotional stuff that basically when they played other teams advertised each of the players who had previously played for that team, so Adebayor for Arsenal, Tevez for Scum etc etc. WHat i liked most, apart from the really simple visuals, was that they'd just gone and slapped big posters up everywhere - billboards, lamposts, side of building, you name it, which for me is quite the inspiration for work in terms of both scale and context.




The tutorial was more of a relaxed Q&A which was great actually, i think he got a taste for us and we got to see designers are just normal blokes. He did say a couple of things that interested me though, firstly about creative cv/folios he said its not neccessary but kinda cool if you have something to leave with an agency or whatever after you leave as a reminder of you, which is something ive been wanting to do with my own work. He also said if you go for an interview or internship somewhere and you don't like the environment, or the people or place etc then say no. He said if you don;t like it don't do it because in the end you will fit in into a place where you like it and they like you. So don't force yourself to be someone you're not - be yourself and be happy. The last main point was that in design you have 2 options: showing and telling. You either show, or you tell, but never show and tell. It makes an ass out of the audience. Like you show an apple, you know its an apple. You write apple, you know it says apple. You show an apple and write apple and you treat your audience like a 3 year old.

Good advice all round then, even if he did eat all my maoam. Here's my notes:

Had a portfolio tutorial with Mark Howe today which was...interesting! Mark is primarily an illustrator and his work doesnt have a lot in common with mine, but I wasn't quick enough to sign up for all the popular tutorials this week and I figure at the end of the day it can only help. So here's my notes from the tutorial:



Mark was nice and helpful, though I got the feeling he didn't like my work ha. But there are 3 main things he said to me that really stuck:

1) black and White is hard to get right

By my own admission at a point last module I kinda just left my lost posters because I'd had enough of them. Mark said when you do black and White it has to be really in the money because it's more difficult to get it right.

2) Don't be afraid to revisit old briefs to make changes

There's no shame in returning to an old brief to put something right or change it to make sure when it does go in your portfolio it's as up to scratch and impressive as possible.

3) Let your work breathe

My portfolio boards are pretty packed, and mark just pointed out that I need to spend a little more time on the layout of my boards and giving my work room to breathe. It doesn't need to be full on explosion of images, just be more considerate and give the images plenty of room so it's not so much an assault on the senses.

There were a couple of projects he just flat out didnt like either so i dont quite know whether to take that as subjective opinion or if they are in fact crap.

Overally I thought it went really well especially considering it was my first if these kind of meetings/surgeries so it's onwards and upwards, time to make some changes to my portfolio...

Just started emaiing this guy who wants a new identity and stuff doing for a business he's setting up. Basically he's going to be creating and selling sample packs of music. I guess its like beats and drums and random stuff like that, but either way its a live brief, which i want to do, and an identity brief which again i'd like to try my hand at. This is what he does now:

Just fully updated my new Cargo Collective site in lieu of absence of a full website, and i think it's a pretty good temporary substitute. Does what i need it too anyways.

www.cargocollective.com/sonicboome