My Portfolio, business cards and Mail shot.

Open publication - Free publishing - More portfolio

Above is my portfolio. It is quite satisfying having a complete portfolio finally.. It started it a good few months ago and changes almost every week. I am going to have to be happy with it for a few weeks now.. although I don't think I am having my portfolio out at the end of year show as I am having a show reel on the mac. But I think Fred was considering having a table full of everyone's portfolios. I will have it ready just in case. Below are my business cards. I am really happy with these. I love the yellow of them and the stock is pretty good. I have ordered another 100 for the end of year show.

Wedding Invites.

This is not my usual style. But this is the invitation I am working on for tom & ting. I wanted it to match with the save the date but to move away from the lantern theme. So i picked up on the detail on one of the lanterns of the birds on a branch. Ting is also having a bird cage at the wedding to display the table placements so this links quite nicely. 

I am going to print this off now onto some off white paper/card and see how foiling the illustration in gold goes. 

After getting some feedback from Ting, I have developed the illustration and invite a bit further. I have organized and arranged the type better, and have changed the birds to be similar to the ones on the save the date. I also added the logo onto it. I originally had the idea of it being like a pear tree, so i added a few pairs and had the logo hanging off the tree.

I am creating wedding invites for Thomas & Ting. I am unsure if this is going to be part of my submission but thought I might as well put it up here anyway. They were really happy with this design which I was really please about. They wanted the theme of lanterns, which I think works really well - it is elegant and not tacky or cliche. They like the idea of having a 'logo' - something that was personalized and could be applied to other things throughout the wedding. Ting gave me the idea of using the two T's to create a symbol like the pie sign but still making it obvious that is was two T's. Overall, a sucessful piece and Ting is a good 'client' to work for! 

Paper Scissor Stone.

These are the images of the flyer I did for paper scissor stone. The images on the front were my idea but Tom create the illustrations. I am really happy with this piece, it looks lovely and the stock is really good.  

I have been doing my placement there for a few months now, even though I have not been doing much work for them recently I have been able to make some good contacts. Steve has chosen to sell two pieces of my work in the shop and online, which I am really excited about. It is the ampersand and the cities print, which are going to be printed A1 size and foiled in gold. Si Scott part owns Paper Scissor Stone, and he is a really good contact to have. Even though I have not been in contact with him directly Steve has passed my portfolio on to him in the hope he will be able to circulate it for me. 

http://www.paper-scissor-stone.co.uk/

A visit to Mind Design...

So, I took my portfolio to a studio in London called Mind Design. It was an eye opening trip really, and changed my attitude towards graphic design and my approach finishing this course. The guy i spoke to, Holger, had a more laid back attitude towards graphics. He said he could sense I was stressed and pressured to do well and get a job straight away. He seemed to think that this was not necessary, I already had a portfolio and a website on the go and I now needed to focus on finishing my final major project and creating a cracking end of year show. It put it into perspective for me. I do already have a body of work to go in my portfolio, it does need improving but I have already proposed to have update and completed 4 of those briefs by the end of this week so I can move onto finishing the rest of my proposed briefs for FMP.  

Holger gave me some brilliant ideas, In a way it ended up being like a crit on my work and it was really good to have some feedback from someone who has made a living out of the exact kind of work I aspire to do. He seemed to think I had the ideas there, but at times my Portfolio of final pieces were confusing because I would get a rush of ideas and go off on a tangent before completing the previous idea. I see this now,  but I also see it as a good thing. I would rather have lots of ideas and be able to go back over it and improve and select the best ones than to be really stuck for ideas. He also made me realized, I can't just skip out the hard be. I have been looking at studios that I would do anything to work for, which tend to be smaller studios. We all have to work from the bottom, especially if we want to learn things along the way. I did get the feeling that Mind Design were anti commercial or anti corporate design (he did describe it as 'we all have to do that commercial crap or free work for our mates to work our way up')

Creating my business cards. I really liked how they came out, although the text was done with an image and so that was very slightly pixelated which was the only disappointing thing. I have stuck to the theme of yellow across my website and branding.

A screen shot of my website...