KO Creative talk - 12.10.10

Today we had Kerry Ostermeyer from a design company called KO Creative come into talk to us about what graphics design is really about, she showed us some of KO's work and how they go about setting out and working their briefs. I thought it was really appropriate having Kerry come explaining her thought process and how they generated their ideas on a live brief as the brief we are working on now, is near close to a live brief as we are working with a real client on a venue is going to open in the future. I think analyisng Kerry's folder work will help me in my current work and my future work as a designer, it has given me an idea on how graphic designers work though a brief from Intial sketch work right though to showing the client the finished design. 

KO Creative are a small design company based in Stafford manged mainly by two graphic designers Kerry Ostermeyer and Oliver Shenton with between then hold 18 years of experience, with big clients ranging from reggae giants UB40 and Selfridges&Co to The FA. But they have also worked with clients based in Stafford for example; The MET Studios, Hills Coaches and Katharine House Hospice.
started to look for more logos and past post office logo, presented work to group

KO Creative UK Ltd. (2010) Available from:http://www.kocreative.co.uk/themetstudio.html

 [accessed 26.10.10]

KO Creative UK Ltd. (2010) Available from:http://www.kocreative.co.uk/mrpopples.html [accessed 26.10.10]

KO Creative UK Ltd. (2010) Available from:http://www.kocreative.co.uk/mrpopples.html [accessed 26.10.10]

KO Creative UK Ltd. (2010) Available from:http://www.kocreative.co.uk/ub40.html [accessed 26.10.10]

KO Creative UK Ltd. (2010) Available from:http://www.kocreative.co.uk/ub40.html [accessed 26.10.10]

KO Creative UK Ltd. (2010) Available from:http://www.kocreative.co.uk/ub40.html [accessed 26.10.10]

kocreative.co.uk 

niel 13 october

After 3 weeks of hard-core Harvard Referencing i can now say I have mastered it, Today we were presented with a new brief to take us through to mid November. The brief was to research a German Graphic Designer, with enough research to be able to produce a power-point presentation to present to the rest of the group. The idea of researching the German Graphic Designer was that whilst on our trip to Berlin we would be able to track some of their work down in museums and galleries we visit, which for me could be an advantage as the designer I have chosen is the Graphic Design and Typographer Erik Spiekermann who has offices based in Berlin. When given the task of researching a designer I automatically chose Spiekermann as i know a vast amount about him having written an essay on him before.


Spiekermann has featured in many journals for example; Computer Art, Computer Arts Project and Creative Review, this proves really significant as the designer must be academically referenced. 

After reflecting on the choice of my designer, I think that I have chosen the easy option my choosing a designer that I'm already familiar with. I think in the future I should broaden my chose, if i continue to use the same designer for all of my project I will not learn about new designers working in the industry. I am still yet to email Erik Speikermann, so i may need to research other designers if I do not receive an email back from him.  

Iain/Simon 20th September 2010

Over the past two weeks we have started a new brief with the theme linked to the idea of "Journey".
My initial idea for my journey would be a physical journey I take regular to my Sisters in High Wycombe, but as I would not be visiting my sister over the Half-term break, So I decided to base my journey on a train trip to a totally random place and gather an archive of information including leaflets, flyer's, tickets, souvenir, plenty of picture of scenery. But also how I feel on the day, what the weather is like and what people on the train are saying. 

I have now started to look into the work of more artists that inspire me, for example Tom Judd, Julia Midgley and the typefaces from designers on misprintedtype.com, I have some examples of their work below. In Iain experimental lessons I have experimented with the methods of Tom Judd and Julia Midgley. Julia Midgley uses newspaper, pen & ink and paint in her work. I have used this method on a number of my experimental piece.  

Midgley, J.(2004)Newspaper Drawing Walker Art Gallery 
Acrylic Ink[online], Documentary work, availble from: http://www.juliamidgley.co.uk/documentary.html
[accessed date: 21.10.10]

     Moksha typeface(2007) [onloine], availble from: http://www.misprintedtype.com/v4/
[accessed 21.10.10]

 Pastalaria(2007) [onloine], availble from: http://www.misprintedtype.com/v4/  [accessed 21.10.10]




Judd, T. (2007) Refinery oil on collage with digital photo[online], availble from: http://www.tomjuddart.com/site/painting#/site/images/stories/paintings_image/robin.jpgOverall, we were slightly confused with the how Iain and Simons's lesson's are connected and needed this clarifying, once clarified we understood. I have significantly improved my skills in my experimental sketchbook, I am breaking away from what I think a sketch book should look like and attempting different techniques and ideas. some pages from my sketch book are below.

Sketch Book work


Here Ive attempted to turn the image into a collage, quite similar to the work Tom Judd, but it didn't work out. So I thought arranging the segments of the picture like this, would be more appealing.

The picture above is a copy of a national rail map, covering all key train stations in the West Midlands area. I have used the techniques of Julia Midgley, I have applied pen & ink on top of tea stains.

The Above is an example of a 1-point perspective drawing of Lloyd's Bank in Stafford Town Centre.

'Post Office Brief' 06/10/10

In today's lecture we started our initial research into the history of the 'Post Office', history of the building itself and logo designs. I decided to look for existing logos and example of design systems, Looking for example of design systems was more difficult. I focused on researching into existing logos, the logos I found were from design books from the Library, I have attached some example to the bottom of this blog. I have placed an example of a design system into my research that is wine orientated I deiced to research into this to remind myself with the concept throughout my designs.

REFERENCES: Carter, D(2002) The Big Book Of Logos, Harper Collins, USA

Overall having analysed my research I have designed 8 logos using traditional methods, but I feel need more examples of logo and type design to enable me to create a logo the client is looking for.  

 REFERENCE: Morgan, L.C.(1999) Logos, A Rotovision Book, Switzerland

Learning to analyse reflective writing

For once today we were not doing Harvard Referencing,thank you Niel
In this weeks lecture we were analyse reflective writing

Richard Branson.

I personally think that the extract from Richards book Business Stripped Bare is a very good piece of reflective writing. He talks about how some of his business ventures have not worked according to plan and he reflects on how he has made money from his failures for example one venture mentions in the extract is his plans to
   " put a truly innovative upper-class seat on Virgin Atlantic's planes in 2000"(Branson 2008) Richard claims that this did not work as they left it to long to develop the seats and British Airways got hold of their plans and out innovated them(Branson 2008), they dumped future plans with a cost of £100 million. But that was not the end, the benefits to them were, they had the best business-class flat beds in the world designed by their own team.

Albert Speer.

Speer knew what he had done was bad and that there was no excuse
   "for which one is guilty even if one might offer excuses - simply because the scale of the crime is so overwhelming that by comparison any human excuse pales to insignificance"(Speer 1966).

Having read the extract I now feel that Albert Speer has successfully reflected on his past, he know he has done wrong and is prepared to suffer the consequences. One significant reflection I found in the extract was whilst Speers was in prison the guards held no grudge against him, Speers claimed that he encountered un-corrupted feelings of sympathy, helpfulness, human understandings, feelings that bypassed the prison rules.
  "Many of them mourned loved ones who had dies in the war - in particular, every on of the Soviet guards had lost some close relative, brothers or a father. Yet not one of them bore a grudge toward me for my personal share in the tragedy; never did I hear words of recrimination."(Speer 1966). 

Alan Partridge

In general Alan comes across as a smug, emotionless person who puts everyone down and always ends his anecdotes with the prase "needless to say I had the last laugh".
In this video he is a guest on a radio show along side a recovering drug addict. The recovering drug addict is constantly reflecting on her past mistakes and talking about how she has changed, whereas Alan thinks he is the only person who has changed and always put the other character down for the past. 

The Russian Constructivists

In today's lecture we looked at Russian Constructivism and the Russian Revolution. I have learnt that the Constructivists were a art movement in Russia connected with what was happening in Russia at that time, their key aims were to preserve the past and may way for a new type of art. After the revolution art was being made that had never been seen before.

The objective of this lecture was to get us to properly use the Harvard Referencing System.
For me, the most important aspect of the lecture was not just practicing the Harvard Referencing System, which I am still quite confused about, but learning how the Constructivist Artists worked and wanted to change the face of art after the Revolution.

Having read the papers on the Contrusivists i have now realised that their work may influence me in my designs in the future. I have attached some work by the constructivists to the bottom of this post that i like.