Personal Branding

I always find it hard to please myself when it comes to my personal branding. Anything I design I always find myself not quite liking and always feel theres something I could change or develop. I've gone through a few different designs in the past and have settled, for the moment anyway, on one particular design, finally! 

Something about this logo wasn't quite right. I really liked the colour, and shape, however it didnt seem quite eye-catching and individual enough. I did like the personal touch of my hand writing, however the design just wasn't 'me' enough, which obviously it should be!

This was a lot more of a sleek design, and has a much more of a corporate feel to it that the previous one. I kept the colour which I liked, and the flow of the letters, however, again, I didn't feel it reflected my personality enough, and almost had quite a boring feel to it, which is not a way I want to represent myself or my designs!  

My current logo is the one above. I went back to the circle shape as I feel this is very versatile and can be put into anything, be it different colours, or textures, etc. I personalised it by creating it solely using the pen tool on illustrator to create a flowing feel with my initials, something which ended up taking way more time than I anticipated! Unlike the others this was produced using illustrator so it is a vector, which is much more suitable for a logo. I went with a different pastel colour just to change it up a bit, but again it could fit with almost anything, but as purple is my own favourite colour it again adds that little bit more personality.

Design agencies I'd love to work with!

SMACK 

“Our secret formula. Work hard, play hard; be bold, stay hungry; and always exceed expectation.”

Smack is a very recently established design agency, only set up on 2012. It stands out to me as an agency I would to love to work with as its founders have a fresh, straight-talking approach to design. Considering the fact the agency its self is only one year old, their client list is extremely impressive, including the likes of Aston Martin and Ebay. I also find the founders themselves inspiring as they created the agency from their own living rooms, before quickly expanding and now working with a strong team of 7. 

PIXELDOT CREATIVE

“The Pixeldot team is formed of great people who know their stuff, not jacks of all trades, but specialists. Individually we’re great, together we’re awesome.”

Pixeldot Creative specialise mainly in branding, an area of graphic design I have a personal interest in, making them an agency I would love to work with. Their work has a very professional and definitive style to it, which is a style which appeals to myself personally. Again, they have a huge list of extremely well known clients and are an extremely successful agency, therefore there would be endless learning opportunites. Not only does the agency and their ethos appeal to me, but their website in general is a huge selling point, with fluid navigation and a stylish layout.

WE MAKE AWESOME SH.IT

“We’re a collective. We’re about the awesome.”

We Make Awesome Sh.it immediately stands out as an agency with its eccentric name. What mainly attracted me to this particular agency was their clients. The majority of their work is for music and televison, both particular interests of my own, especially music. Working within an agency which specialised in my particular interests would be a huge learning curve, as well as extremely enjoyable. Not only that, but again, as an angency, they have a positive ethos and their passion is obvious, which is a large selling point to myself as the general atmosphere and mindset of an agency is just as important as the work they produce. 

Digital Applications - D&AD It's Nice That

This brief, set by It’s Nice That via D&AD. The brief required a new and exciting ways to stay engaged with their original audience. This could be produced through a poster campaign, a publication, an event, an app or something completely new and innovative. They wanted to spread their commitment to showcasing great work in an information overloaded university world. I wanted to create a poster campaign, which I could use to enter for the brief, as well as use to personally improve my own digital skills.

I created three somewhat similar posters for this brief, each depicting different sceneries. I chose this particular design, as I wanted to take the ‘world’ aspect of their brief and develop it. I like how stylized these designs turned out and feel they appeal to the very wide target audience, which included students, teachers/lecturers, as well as those who don’t know what ‘It’s Nice That’ is. I feel the vector art is quite a broad style and the bright colours throughout help to make the posters stand out. What I would like to further develop is the message its self as this was simply a quote running across the top of each poster. I feel these could be adapted to really promote the message of the company more, however, the fact the posters aren’t too obvious also draw in the attention, and interest, making the audience enquire further.  Throughout this project I improved my skills within Adobe Illustrator, which I had previously lacked beforehand. In particular, I worked mainly with vectors and the appearance palette and felt considerably more comfortable with the programme after the project.

Digital Applications - Roberto Perrino

Roberto Perrino is a graphic designer specialising in advertising and print design. One of his main influences in music and his portfolio features a lot of music related event posters, which have a style I personally feel is very aesthetically pleasing. 

There is a heavy use of typography throughout a lot of Perrino's poster designs, again, similarly to Sebatsian Nikolaou, Perrino tends to use a lot of sans serif, bold fonts, simliar to the likes of Bebas. 

There is a heavy use of textures and gradients and light effects to draw the eye into the centre, throughout Perrino's work which I feel are little touches which really finish off the final designs. I feel these techniques work most effectively in the `blue exhibition' and the `mountains beyond mountains' posters. He also tends to use darker colour palettes throughout his designs which are also very effective as they are very bold and always work well together. For example, in the  `mountains beyond mountains' poster, it has a very simple brown and neutral colour palette, however with the imagery, gradients and textures this rather simplistic colour palette still works very effectively and the design is most certainly interesting to look at. Again, smaller touches such as the second `mountains' actually being behind the image of the mountain, really shows that a lot has thought has been put into what the most effective layout would be. 

Digital Applications - Sebastien Nikolaou

Sebastien Nikolaou is a graphic designer with a focus mainly into illustration and typography. I personally like how his colour palettes always seem very effective, with colours complementing eachother in all of his designs. 

A lot of Nikolaou's work tends to feature collages. I like this effect of layering up many different textures images and shapes and is a technique I have always wanted to improve on personally. For example in his `grmin!' peice there is a combination of mixed media and shapes, all layered up in the centre, against a neutral, blank background, which effectivlely draws the eyes attention.

Typography is another heavy feature in Nikolaou's work. The majority of his fonts tend to be very bold and the majority of the time sans serif. He creates an interesting and bold effect by using contrasting colours. Or, for example in his `tonic' poster, he has used both gradients and individiual coloured backgrounds behinds each peice of text in order to draw the eye to the bolder artist names. I personally like the effect all of the gradients create in this image, as well as again the collage style with many vector shapes all built up behind the main image. Again, the texture just finishes off the image, giving it a less flat and plain feel.

 Another effective technique is that used in his `Animals' image, where the colours of the image behind are the fill of the text, only darker, which brings the text forwards and makes it stand out, rather than blend into the background. 

Digital Applications - Research and Inspiration

I began my research by gathering together a range of inspirational posters which I personally like the the look of and the techniques used throughout. I want my design to be quite typographically focused therefore I looked into a range of posters with similar intentions. This is a way for me to get my ideas and motivation flowing and to help me decide which kinds of routes I would like to go down with my designs. Again, I must keep in mind the skills and techniques learned throughout my digital skills lectures therefore I can combine those with the inspiration from these posters and begin to create some initial ideas for my designs.

Digital Skills - Walls Ad

This weeks digital skills session was all about typography styling using adobe illustrator. This involved using skills such as tracking, kerning, 3D options and getting to grips with the appearance palette. This was a very helpful session to me as I was previously quite unfamiliar with the appearance palette. I learned how to add new fills and strokes behind or in front of the text to create the effect shown above. This technique is great for commercial adverts like the one I've designed as it really stands out, as do the bright and bold vector shapes. This also gave me an opportunity to practise my previously learned skills with creating the vector images within illustrator and also placing the image in situ.