Hamish Muir Lecture

Today we had an extremely interesting and inspiring talk/lecture from co founder (along with Mark Holt and Simon Johnston) of 8VO (a now defunct design collective) Hamish Muir. I had looked at his work when informed that he would be coming to speak and was unsure of what to make of the heavily layered and abstract typographic usage and layout used within his earlier work.

I found his career story particularly interesting, due to the number of places he had studied, the clients he had done work for and his overall work ethos and ethic (in particular his opinion that you don't need huge ideas, just small ones which you can work with to develop a good piece of design or communication). Also he discussed how important having a firm understanding of type in being a good designer. He also stated that he only uses a small number of fonts as there is no need for the huge number of fonts used by a lot of practitioners today. He named Akzidenz Grotesk, Univers and Futura as some of the few fonts he uses.

His earlier work with 8VO is very experimental and ranges from event publicity (Flux Edinburg music festival) and his on going work for Wim Crouwel (founder of total design in Holland) for the publicity and stationery of exhibitions held at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

The lecture covered so much design work and time that it is difficult to note it all here, however I will say that it was without a doubt the best guest lecture I have attended since starting the Arts Institute two years ago.

PPRD Hand In // Work Related Learning // Tutorial with Kit

Today was the deadline for the PPRD unit which I have mixed feelings about. Obviously, I am pleased its out of the way, however it seems to make sense to me to keep it running until the end of the year to enable a full recording of the year (something I plan to do anyway). However I was pleased to the standard I handed in the portfolio, CV and felt my blog was up to date, relevant and interesting (relatively...) and above all, represented my work over the year, including evidence of live and competition briefs.

I was glad that I didn't leave my PPRD to update later and kept on top of it for the majority of the year apart from a few spots (mainly the screen based unit). I do wish I had included more posts just on things that interest and inspire me however there is still time to rectify that within the blog over the rest of the day.

I also attended work related learning today which I am really enjoying, possible due to the small number of us doing the unit (five in all, myself, martin, jenny, siobhan and jamie). I feel it makes it easier to discuss the brief and also gives us plenty of time to work as a group with and without Kit and Neil to develop a decent plan and understanding between us of what we are all aiming to do within the unit. This means some of the visits and lectures can be generic and we can share the results and findings as results.

Hopefully we will secure some worthwhile visits and hear from some interesting people. I plan to try and get an online questionnaire to Experimental Jetset as they are favorites of mine in the design world due to the crisp clean work and work ethos.
Also we have discussed visits to printers, publishers, local and afar designers and other practitioners. All in all it looks to be an interesting and exciting unit.

Finally i managed to grab a tutorial with Kit today after work related learning which has pretty much saved my ass! After a brief discussion about why I had yet to do any work (I worry about starting? I don't know why? Fear of failing maybe?, anyways...). We discussed the brief and she reminded me of some very obvious but extremely important points.

1. Its my professional project its up to me and essentially I can do what I want (as long as it works within my learning agreement).

2. The fact that a grade won't get me a job where as a piece of solid work, which I like, could.

3. Advice from tutors is just advice, do what you like, as long as its relevant!

So all in all today has been a highly productive day, and I finally feel like I can get on after some brief discussion on my professional project, plus PPRD in terms of a unit is out of the way!

The Rest of the Year / Continuation of Blog

Well, just got the rest of the year now, 10 weeks or something ridiculous, in no time at all it will all be over! I plan to devote as much time as humanly possible to the professional project and work related learning units. I am particularly looking forward to the work related learning unit as it will allow communication with well known designers and industry involved professionals. Within this we plan to organize visits and attempt to get guest speakers in to discuss the working world/industry with us before bombarding them with an array of prepared questions.

As for the professional project, fingers crossed!

As I plan to focus on these two projects I imagine the blog cud take a dent in the amount of posts, however I will endeavor to keep track as before as I found keeping an online recording/diary of my working year has been of much benefit to me due to being able to recap on projects, consider the various things I have written whether it be feedback, research, inspiration or other, and develop on these things.javascript:void(0)

The Week Ahead

This week is going to be a very hectic one due to my own poor time planning and organization. I have yet to make a proper start on my FMP after having to work on my PPRD, but thats not really an excuse so I have devised a workplan which If I dont stick to its really game over due to the lack of time left.

Monday - Print all PPRD documents, blog address etc...
- Head to the library and jus research and get going on the fmp.
- Work related learning - produce a workplan.
- Try and get tutorial with Kit (which was ment to happen on friday but ran out of time)

Tuesday - Decide whether to go to london or stay in bomo and attend hamish muir and eden frankham lectures (probably the better idea).
- Finalise decision on idea for FMP. Begin developing an identity.
- Write up Londn Trip/Lectures for work related learning and research

Wednesday - FMP all the WAY!

Thursday - Go in for studio sessions, head to the library get on with work
- Attend rescheduled Lyme Regis Film Festival meeting.

Friday - Studio sessions/library
- work related learning and fmp!

Weekend - WORK RELAX WORK RELAX reapeat as necessary!
On with the show!!

Future Shorts Bournemouth

I attended a small film event tonight at Bournemouth Pier, Future Shorts. I had heard good things from housemates and peers about previous Future Shorts events and decided to go along seeing as I enjoy film generally but also to maybe salvage some inspiration from the beginning wreck of my final major project.

The night was hosted or presented first by one Roger Pratt which was an interesting experience because over the loud speaker they introduced him and I thought 'Who?'. However once he began talking about various projects he had been involved in as DOP (Director of Photography) which I was aware of including Batman, Harry Potter (nothing to be proud of :P), 12 Monkeys, Brazil, and Troy I became very interested in what he had t say. He also had a wealth of film set stories which were very entertaining.

Anyways, the screenings kicked off with Roger Pratt's showreel, an eerie series of overlaid and manipulated scenes and shots, with a truly harrowing soundtrack made up of a hugely transformed series of dialogues and sounds. The films which were presented ranged from arty, to crappy, to really good.

I particularly enjoyed the first two films, the first about two icelandic wrestlers who fall in love and the second about a women who meets arandom man in paris ends up spending the night with him, and falling in love, only to go out ot get them breakfast and to forget where her new love lives, so stuck with the mans dog who she took with her for the morning stroll to the Bakery she attempts to find her way back, which unfortuantely for her, and the dog, she never does.

There was also some student films and local films played which were very interesting particularly a film noir comedy which played off all the stereotypes and speech of the genre eg. She always wanted more dough (money), however on screen the femme fatale steals a jar of cookies from the main character at gun point. HA!

All in all a good evening but I cant help wondering what the other Future Shorts events must be like as I overheard so many people saying that "It wasnt as good as the last one". I plan to attend again if another one happens.

On the design side of things, this event could be so much bigger and better with abit of a design/identity. Currently they have a logo which is ok but their brochure design and overall identity could do with a rehaul. It would be a nice live brief actually. Anyways another event to mention in the FMP.

D&AD Pj's Smoothies

This has been an ongoing struggle as the four of us (Myself, Rob, Alistair and Ben) have had to find dates where we can all meet up an work on it, unfortunately our group really has not worked particularly well since beginning the brief as we have started ideas, thought of news ones and never really stuck with a single idea and finalized a set of visualizations so we have decided to lay it to rest due to the huge amount of other deadlines and project work which we are required to be getting on with (namely the extremely daunting FMP and the PPRD hand in next Monday).

Its a shame as although we had a huge amount of group discussions and work sessions on the PJ smoothies brief we never really got anywhere of note. Our idea was always aimed at the correct target audience of youth (students/young professionals), with focus on the competitor innocent, the sexual innuendos of innocent and how Pj's could play off that, which then changed to an idea in which PJ's became the answer to a number of questions, including, how do you relax?, how do you cure your hang over?, how do you socialize, how do you etc, etc...

The idea using sexual innuendos hit a snag when we discovered someone had already used this idea on the same brief, in a visually much stronger way than we had and decided to leave the idea. In hindsight I feel we should have continued with this idea as after we changed it we were always going back to it and swapping between ideas.

The second idea also changed heavily during the working process, from the use of human models combined with the PJ's pack shot positioned noticeably within the ad to create the rhetorical style question we were asking the audience and potential buyers of the product, to the same idea but replacing the human models with the PJ's smoothies bottle, making the product almost humanoid in the contexts placed. However due to the ever changing idea we only ever got two proper visualizations and upon reviewing our work we decided that they were definitely not strong enough to be entered into the student awards. done.

Here are the two images which got the closest to completion but are obviously not of a finished standard.

Working Related Learning Session (That I Missed!) / Upcoming Dates

This Monday, the Work Related Learning group scheduled to meet on Tuesday (Today) and discuss our plans for the unit. Somewhat annoyingly after ensuring I would be there I somehow managed to forget and miss the session, fortunately Jamie and Martin seem the forgiving type and managed to get some work done without myself, and Jenny.

They managed to contact one Edam Frankham, a dorset based designer/illustrator, who started a print company with his father. They were even good enough to put myself and Jenny's names at the bottom of the email even though we weren't present so thanks are in order for Martin and Jamie. Below is the email Jamie forwarded me.

--->
Dear Eden,

As students of The Arts Institute at Bournemouth we were wondering if it was possible for a small group (4 students) to arrange a meeting in order to discuss the in and outs of starting your own business. We are in our second year of the Visual Communication course and as part of our Work Related Learning unit we are required to take a look at the industry with regards to future employment.

You were recommended to us by Kit Johnson, a Senior Associate Lecturer on the Visual Commincation course. If you are able to help us please could you get back to us with a date and time that is convenient to you.

Kind regards.
Jamie, Martin, Chris and Jenny


And the response recieved.

--->
Hi,

Yeah sure that sounds all fine, happy to try and help. Best day for me this week would be Thursday, or if it's easy for you I can do Monday / Tuesday next week. Any of those days I'm free all day. If you want, we can tie it in with the days your at college. If you want to discuss a time you can get back to me with this e-mail or phone me at 01202 729 100.

Regards
Eden

The plan seems to be meeting with Eden on Monday. Extremely pleased with that result, even though I can't take any credit for the organisation of the meeting.
A good start to the Work Related Learning unit with various other dates also on the calendar including Claire Blackmore on the 23rd March and somewhat annoyingly Hamish from Octavo on the 10th March (annoying because I'm going to London that day).