During D&AD New blood 2012 I picked up this brochure showcasing work from Nottingham Trent University. As well as having some fantastic work inside which can be used for future inspiration, the brochure is really well designed. The cover is of a matte texture and has a recycled feel to it.

Because the imagery doesn't bleed off the edge of the page, the images are framed nicely with the white of the background. The type was really interesting being at an angle reading upwards. The illuminous orange for the names gives the plain white background some vibrancy, with that extra element stopping it from being too bland.

This is an excellent typeface (for the word 'Matilda'). It is elegant and beautiful, especially with the use of colour for the dot of the 'i' against the black type.

I went to Clerkenwell Design Week which was a fantastic event that had a great mix of of different design fields such as furniture, interior, vehicle, graphics, interactive, art and more. What I loved most about the event was that it occupied a large area, allowing you to explore all of Clerkenwell in search of things to look at. Above are some bin bags that have been designed in the style of Bert from 'The Muppets'. These are a brilliantly imaginative design, making even something as mundane as bin bags look appealing. I did something like this for my YCN  Marks & Spencers brief last year, where I designed bin bags to look like beach balls.

I picked up this business card at the Clerkenwell Design Festival. What caught my eye was the interesting texture for the background; it is made from cork. I found it to be a clever and innovative consideration of unusual materials and paperstocks. I felt this was a small, yet significant way to show those who see it that you consider every element when designing, potentially resulting in them taking an even greater interest in your work and potentially employability.

I picked up this book originally thinking it was a business card. BoConcept are a furniture and interior design agency. I think this is a great concept having a brochure that you can carry in your pocket. One thing when going to these exhibiton/promotional events is carrying brochures, leaflets and other material. Also the pages are indivual but then they pull and fold out to create a bigger piece of media. As long as these miniature books are noticable (In a noticable stand POS for example) they would work really well. A lot of thought as been put into the design of this pocket book.

One thing that I've really noticed boom lately is the design of symbols and information graphics. They are something that I personally think look amazing. I love the simplicity and fun that can be had with designing them to portray a message.

This was a great event but I didn't think it was as good as last year. There was still a huge amount of brilliant work though. I particularly liked this piece above which is an advertisment for Heinz Salad Cream. A really clever concept showing food tasting like cardboard. There was a lot of brochure and interactive material though. I picked up a few brochures and a lot of business cards which will be great for inspiration for the year. 

During the exhibition I picked a series of business cards that caught my eye. This is so I have some inspirational material for when I start designing my own business cards but also for other pieces of work. For example, I liked the tactility of this card, folding it out revealing different words to create a message. Even though this is used for a business card, it could be used for pages in a book. Not too sure about the colour of this though.

The simplicity of this card, with it being just in black and white, really makes you focus not only on the name of the person but also other elements you don't always take into consideration. The simplicity made me notice the texture and feel of the paperstock which makes the card much more attractive and natural. The text is also debossed from where it was printed giving an unusual depth to the flat card.

This is a piece of design work that someone did that folds out. This however starts at A6 size and as you fold out each stage there is another message, telling a story as you go along. It eventually folds out to a big page which shows a linear brain. The messy chaotic nature of the lines represents a person's mind and the madness that people go through. One red line goes through which I think represents a thought process.

This was a leaflet promoting Nottingham Trent University. This a lovely piece of design. I like the idea of having a brochure/magazine design that doesn't flip through the pages like normal ones. This one folds out. Would like to use this idea for something during my third year. This has a really engaging graphic style. It combines hand drawn imagery and text with clean digital typography for the main information and body text.

I visited the Bauhaus: Art as Life exhibition at the Barbican gallery. I find Bauhaus fascinating. Every single element used on any piece of graphic design has purpose for its placement and what it represents. I love the use of grids, typography and solid colours and how they marry these elements together to create a simple but beautiful piece of design. Above are some of the sketches I made at the exhibition of some of my favourite designs.

To promote the underground, posters have been put up which use the underground emblem as a canvas with different imagery. These two are some examples. They are really interesting and use many different graphics and graphic styles.

Outside the southbank centre they had a community event where they were building a world map out of pieces of Lego. People and families could come along and build pieces of it. It's a really cool event. I love the use of Lego as art design. Its a really creative toy or should I say tool.

The design for this ticket is fantastic. I really like the use of jagged, streaky lines to create the image as it gives the image sense of movement and pace. It's all the little touches that make it for me though. The little man running along the barcode, the cute and simple information graphics for the date and time, stadium symbol and your name written on the bottom of the purple part.

These are some other patterns and designs that I hav e found through my research which I believe will look really good on the bottles. Will the bottles a contemporary twist on retro!

These are some advertisments that I saw in the Guardian newspaper promoting the Guardian online app. I saw this thinking that they are sort of killing their own newspaper trade by doing this. It's not as expensive as buying a newspaper every day so they are losing themselves money. I know it's probably cheaper to make digitally but even so, it seems to me like they are killing themselves. I really liked the information graphics used for these advertisments though.

This is candy coal which is one of the Christmas presents that I've got for my girlfriend. I love the way it is packaged in a coal bag. All the little symbols and lines make it look so intricate and delicate. They probably taste disgusting but its worth paying for it just for the packaging!

This is the second one I made which would be sent out to friends of the college from our third year team. The card shows a traditional message but underneath is the underlying message of 'I'm cold, have no money, put on two stone'. Really like the electric blue and pink.

This is a cake that I made for my girlfriend's 21st birthday. To create the text I cut out a temeplate of a 1 and 2 using the typeface arial black because it is a very weighty font. I then lined the cakes with icing to help define the shape a bit more. It went stale quite quickly from where I cut it... but it's the thought that counts!

Underneath a bridge near the Tate was a little shop and to display the number they were in the street they lit up the underside of the viaduct with their number using individual lights. Looks really cool.

While in London I paid a visit to the Tate to see if they had any interesting exhibitions on there. Outside they are extending the museum and so around the building site they have these designed hoardings. I really like the geometric background on it and then frames are up with pieces of work in them. It's a great use of what's normally an eyesore space.

These are a coupe of pages that I pulled out from a magazine I was reading while waiting to give blood. I noticed them both for the texture and pattern that is used on the typography. It makes the type really engaging. With these though they contrast brilliantly, for example, the 'sex' one has that patchy texture which can really only be achieved by letter press printing and stamping whereas the other one has very clean crisp lines and shapes that can only be achieved digitally. Shows inspiration of old in the present digital era.

I've seen a few things in magazines and online where people have done some really cool stuff with cutting out of paper. I thought that showing the possibilities available with paper would be a clever and creative way to promote print. I cut the word 'creative' out of the paper amongst lots of different things like a shark fin or washing line. Really pleased with how it turned out.

These newspapers have announced that they will make people pay to read the news on their website. Since the news has been published on their websites, people have been viewing the news here for free instead of buying the paper. The Sun and other papers will also do this. View the link for the full article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8588432.stm 

This was one of the best exhibitions I've been to. This is purely down to the huge amount of graphic design content. I love these information graphics on the wall which represent people's feelings.

In Harvey Nichols they were selling a limited edition version for Bollinger champagne. This is to celebrate 50 years of James Bond and the release of Skyfall. The bottle comes in a specially made case which uses a code so you can open it. Really clever concept. It's a shame that I couldn't afford one!

These are some sketches that I have done for my front cover.The two that I really like the most are the one with the print registration marks around the edge, as I think the registration marks are so intriguing with the colour swatches spirograph patterns. The other is the one with the triangular/ hexagonal patterns. The shapes would only consist of 4 colours, CMYK. This would have a little tab label on it with the title print.

The layout of this page above is really clean and simple. I like how the only bit of colour on the page is the strip that comes from the left that heads the text. The 'LF' in the bottom left hand corner is really beautiful. The contrast in weights within the letters makes the text look really different. I would like to download something similiar to this.

One of the pages in my print book will have some really interesting and vibrant typography. This a play on 'Long live the prince' saying that print will never die out. I got in touch with Barry Irons who works for a printing company who print newspapers such as the Independent, i, Racing News and The Times. His answers to the questions I asked him inspired me to create this piece.

This is the image that will go in the space of the layout shown above for the newspaper page. I used an image from online as a basis. I changed the orientation and angle of the image and then drew it on layout. I wanted to get a scratched, grainy, printed effect which is why I drew it out. It took a long time but should be worth it!

During a tutorial, one of my tutors recommended that I look at the work done by Derek Birdsall. These are some really fabulous prints for leaflets and print material. I wanted to do something overlaying so this is what she told me to look at. I would like to overlay a spread of a book within a book like the images above, keeping the page quite simple.

I thought these were a great promotional idea to try and revive the interest in the art of printing and the printing press. These are fridge magnets that you can buy. An adult substitution for the childs magnetic letters. I think having these would be a constant reminder of how good print publishing is to those who value the printed word.

After going to the Saatchi gallery, seeing those collages and picking up the British design leaflet from the V&A, I think doing a collage is a cool way to show off more skills of working with physical objects. This is the real cut and paste compared to the digital 'copy and paste'. I used images from magazines, newspapers, leaflets and other printed material to create this.

This was an invitation given to me by my tutor that she had been given to go to the One Club show. They are the american equivalent of D&AD. The invitation was printed on a lovely soft paperstock and the printed elements on it were all embossed and debossed in some sort of way. This was a really interactive invitation, feeling the embossed areas. It is beautifully simple and designed immaculately. The type is clean and quite sort of sci-fi.

In the print book I am designing I want to showcase a special print. I've chosen embossing because I really love the tactility and interactivity of it. This was my attempt at it.  It didnt come out too brilliantly but I can see that it will work. I have some thicker card that I can try and it will work then. I used an edging roller I found in my garage to press it. It's going to look cool!

I wanted to try something a bit different that I haven't really seen or used before. My tutor suggested sunographic paper which you use by putting objects on top of the paper and leave it in the sun to reveal an image. I wanted to use smashed up bits of laptop to show in the printed book. I used letraset to rub down the text onto clear accetate which put the text onto the paper. I scratched and twisted the letters when putting them onto the accetate to create a broken effect.

This was my first attempt. I tried having the text and some of the items raised to distort how they look a bit, but it didn't really work too well because too much light hit it. 

This was my second attempt and it came out really well! The different pieces came out really clear and so did the text. The message perfection through imperfection is stating that this piece is more perfection as the end result is so random, which when using a computer the perfect shape or piece of text is achievable by anyone.

This was my first attempt at creating the book case for my print book. I used the Matrix card that I got from GF Smith which has little circles embossed out of it. I thought this type of paper stock would contrast nicely against the harsh triangles that come through from the book's front cover. The triangles need to be measured exactly to place on the page so that the correct colours come through it (which will be CMYK). The attempt worked but I didn't make the spine edge wide enough so it was quite tight and hard to pull the book out of the case.

These are a couple of the pages for my final layouts which I'm ready to go on computer and create. It's really interesting going back through my blog and seeing the process taken to get to the point that I am at now. 

This is the character I designed for the audio page in my e-book. E-books can be read to you which I thought is acting like a servant to you. So I thought the text on the page could be read by Alfred the butler! He has a syri voice like Stephen Hawking as the computer makes the syllables and sounds itself. I recorded it and it plays in the interactive PDF my e-book is on.

The key selling point about the Osprey Brand is the quality of their leather. Therefore I wanted to use this as the tool to sell the product because it is the most interesting leather they have released in their range. For the invitation design I used a leather paperstock to add to highlight the key leather feature of the range.

I've been applying for jobs over the last month and I've finally got an interview! This company is based in Luton. I went for the first stage interview which was basically introducing myself and showing my protfolio. I heard back from them after about a week or so saying that I have got through to the next stage which is a trial brief. So happy I got through. Above is the work I did for the trial brief. The brief was to create at least two of a list of five choices for the brand Osprey London. They wanted an invitation, web advertisment, POS, A2 Foyer poster and magazine advertisment. I chose to do the invitation, POS and Foyer Poster. I also did a finished visual for a potential magazine advert. I wanted to do that bit extra just to show my hardworking nature and wanting to push myself.

 

This is a swing tag which I designed to be attached to the lanyard holding my memory stick. This is just to make it much more obvious so that it doesn't get lost but also it has the instructions about opening the digital e-book and getting it ready to be viewed. A really nice piece of design.