Project 22 - Too sweet

Design for my confectionary. This was a cool project idea, who doesn't like sweet things? So designing my own packaging was fun. I chose white chocolate ( the best chocolate in my opinion!) I pretty much made something I would buy if I were to see it in a shop. Its aimed at the female market, bunnys, pinkness - stereotypical maybe but I figured if I was going to design something cute and girly I may aswell go all out! It doesn't look as bold here as it does in full size or the size it would be if it were sitting on a shelf. I think it  does look a lot better on A2.

Project 21 - McStack

Buy ten burgers and stack them up. Sounds easy, but it's not exactly... 10 burgers do not actually sit on top of each other very well without wobbling and falling over! My large drink cup helped a bit and acted as a support for them, and eventually I got the photo and drawing done for this project. Despite the problems, I actually quite like my finished drawing.

 People give you strange looks when you stack burgers in Mcdonalds, I'm not sure if they thought I was greedy or just a bit insane.

Project 20 - I'm Game

I'm Game involved creating a game for graphic designers. I chose to make a card based game in which teams have to name a brand, with the help of a team mate attempting to describe it - but without saying certain words popularly associated with the brand. I designed the box, cards and score sheet.

Project 19 - Goalscorer

I planned out the next 30 years of my life for this project. I did it in stages such as by the year 2020 I want to have: .........
I chose to display it in an hourglass to represent times moving.

Project 18 - Holiday Havoc

This was my favourite project of the holidays so far because it gave me the push I needed to do something i've never done, but have always wanted to do. Without this project being set no way would I have done this during the christmas holidays! I've always made excuses - too scared, too busy etc etc... So I finally did it, I went and gave my first ever blood donation. Hopefully it wont be my last, there was a lady there who  had just given her 27th donation which I found really inspiring. I used to be terrified of needles, I guess i've overcome my fear as I lay there with one in my arm for 10 minutes and didn't freak out!

Project 17 - Jokeshop

For this project I created a short animation based on the following poem:

Rub a dub dub,
three men in a pub,
ten pints of lager
and onto a club.

Project 16 - The Haymakers

Edited photos, used for my book.

Some of my original photographs.

For The Haymakers, I had to wake up at the crack of dawn and create art work. Since I'm not usually up as the sun is rising, I thought it would be good opportunity to capture the sunrise through photography. I wanted to focus on the colours made in the sky, and change from dark to light. I think that the way the sun tints the sky different colours as it rises and sets is beautiful. I am pleased with the photos and managed to achieve what I wanted with this project.

Project 15 - TV sketchbook!

At first this project seemed like it could be quite fun, I like television like most people do so taking photos whilst watching it didn't seem too bad. However.... it took so long! About 3 days of taking and cropping the photos, and then getting them all layed out also took ages! I am more confident using Indesign now, I'd never used it before this project so I'm definately better at it now than I was. I tried to pick a selection of images, some are really random, some are from my favourite programmes or music videos of my favourite bands and artists.

Project 14 - Konigsberg's Ouevre

After watching 'Midnight in Paris' at the cinema we were put into groups in which to create a 1 minute remake of the film plot. It was challenging to cram an entire movie into a minute! we used a black and white effect to represent when the film's main character travels back in time and full colour for the modern scenes. Our idea was to summarise each scene in as short a sentence as possible, with some comic effect.

Project 13 - Farm to market

For farm to market we had to visit Hackney city farm and a market of our own choice, where we had to draw specific objects and animals. from our rough sketches we had to make 9 simplified logos. I've been practicing illustrator and this has helped me to get a little better at it.

Project 12 - Skate or die

I really enjoyed this project, it's probaby my favourite so far actually. I liked that there were four different themes for the skateboards, meaning that there was good opportunity to have a variety of ideas. I'll explain what each of them is about..

 This one was my favourite to do. It is the 'pro model for someone particular' board. I chose my boyfriend, as he likes skate culture and fashion so thought it was fitting, and I know pretty much everything about him and what he likes! The style of imagery is based on one of his favourite tattoo artists, who uses bold black outlines and lots of blue. He has a Tshirt designed by him which is really similar colours and features katy perry with loads of tattoos. I thought I could draw him and represent things about him using the tattoos, each one in the image has a meaning. For example the ship in an hour glass is a tattoo that I drew for him, he loves images of panthers, He likes pin up style images (she's meant to be sitting on a wheel because he is obsessed with motorbikes and cars, not sure if you can tell to well if it's a wheel though). Pretty much everything about this represents his identity, from the way it's drawn, to the 'cous' written on his arm ( his nickname).
The words on the T-shirt are his favourite song lyrics ( he also has them tattooed on his arm) and represent his love of music, which is a pretty major one so I made it a larger detail.

This is the 'conceptually lead' board. I am vegetarian, and wanted to pick a concept I actually believe in, so went for that. I wanted to do something gross and shocking, many of the famous skate deck designs we were shown in class were pretty controversial, so I wanted to do one like this to evoke the feeling of traditional designs. I chose bright colours to make it really cartoony and to make the images stand out. The burger is green because I wanted it to look mouldy and add the the revolting effect! I am not actually myself interested into converting everyone from eating meat, It's my choice not to and I don't like to force my way of living onto others. However it's something that I personally believe strongly in, so it was fun for once to take the role of 'radical vegetarian'!

This design is 'purely decorative' I chose a couple of my favourite things to doodle and incorporated them into a decorative image. I didn't use colours for this one because I wanted the attention to be on the lines and shapes used, plus adding colour to a silouette would really ruin the effect I feel.

This is the 'typographic' design. I chose a quote that I saw on my tumblr feed recently and loved. I chose retro pastel colouring to evoke the currently popular 'keep calm and carry on' style products available homewear etc, which I happen to really like.

Project 11- Think crime

For this project we had to think up the perfect crime, then display how it would be done. When thinking of ideas, I figured it would make sense to do something that I would gain from, if I was really going to break the law i'd want it to be for something worthwhile! Robbing Topshop made sense since I'm a bit addicted to clothes and it would be a good way of getting some new ones for free....

Project 10 - Graphic design cookbook

This project was challenging, but getting to eat the cake at the end made it somewhat easier to handle! We had to make a cake in the shape of a letter, then make a recipie book style page to accompany the photograph of it which is the 'final piece'.

Project 9 - Top Trumps

For this project we had to make ourselves into a Top Trump card. I used to love that game! I'm a complete newbie to all the design programmes used on the course, but this wasn't too bad as an introduction.

Project 8 - Wing of a bee

For this project we had to design a butterfly wing based on a concept. We could choose the concept ourselves, so I went for something I immediately think of as one of my favourite things - Tattoo. I used a fleshy toned background to give a 'skin' base for my design. I then added tattoo themed imagery and a tattoo gun to visually represent my theme.

Project 7 - Brick

100 drawings of possible uses of a brick. after a while it gets quite difficult, I ended up with some really strange ideas such as an  unmeltable bath melt and a brick burger.

Project 6 - Matchmaker

This was my favourite project so far. It was based on fashion and as soon as I knew this I was super excited to get started. It was also our first 'live brief' with opportunity to have our designs used in christmas window displays for Matches fashion. We were asked to create a design for 'wrapping paper' which could be used to adorn boxes for a Christmas display. The designs were not supposed to have too much stereotypical Christmas imagery as the large wrapped boxes would give a feeling of Christmas alone. We were also warned not to use too much red, as this can prokoke feeling that there is a sale on from shoppers! I wanted to create a feminine design that evoked the fun of the festive season. I came up with the idea of using a carousel horse as carousels and traditional rides and stalls are a feature of the holiday season, but are not too 'stereotypically Christmas'. I am very pleased to say that my design was chosen for the display! seeing this photo for the first time made me ridiculously happy! Its really amazing to see my design amongst all those gorgeous shoes and bags. Wouldn't mind getting any of those as a present!

Project 5 - Pay to play

For this Project we were told to bring in a pound coin. We were told to re-design it to represent today's global economic climate, and that who ever created the best design would win all of the money. I think we were all pretty motivated during this task! This is my design. The meaning behind it is that money seems to be more trouble than it's worth nowadays, and everyone's obsession with it is causing awful and disgusting things to happen. The diamond covered in blood represents that wealth ( or lack of it) can cause terrible things.

Project 4 - Meet me on the corner

Project four involved running all around London to find 40 different places. It was exhaustingggg! There were quite a few places that I didn't realise existed and will definately go back to, so it was well worth the effort! And we did treat ourselves with cake from Patisserie Valerie which if nothing else, made the day a success! I made a collage from all of the freebies we picked up along the way, and did some doodles of the things we saw, these helped to create my map for the second part of the task. I've included some of my favourite photos of the day. Definately couldn't resist putting the one of Niketown in this post, purely for memory of the response from the shop assistant when he was asked where we could find the adidas trainers. 'yeah we sell those on the third floor.' What a good sport he was.

Project 3 - Brand me up buttercup

For this piece, we were set the task of being paired up with a random student from the class, then conducting interviews to find out who they are as a person. We then had to 'brand' them using the information we'd got from talking by creating a logo which we felt represented them. I was paired with April, who has many interesting stories, likes and dislikes. This actually meant that making a logo to represent her was really difficult, because there were so many things that I could have done! What stood out to me most from what she said however, was that she loves nature, travelling, and in particular visiting Japan. I tried to combine these by using a stamp (travel), flower (nature) and japanese text (which goes without saying.... Japan). I like the piece, but think it could be simplified, so will probably have a go on illustrator and see if I can develop it a bit more...

This is my developed logo. I have taken two aspects of the original and transformed them into a bolder and simpler image. The japanese symbols spell 'harmony' and the flower represents nature. I remember asking April what her favourite thing about nature was, and she said 'all of it, in harmony together' So this logo represents her favourite place and nature in harmony - two of her favourite things.

Project 2 - Stairway to Helvetica

This project was challenging and a bit scary to say the least! Singing is not a great talent of mine, and neither is presenting in front of a large group of people. This included both. We had to create a song in groups based on a font which we were randomly given. We were presented with Zapf Dingbats, probably then strangest font ever since it doesn't actually make sense in any language, it's purely symbols. We had the idea of making a song literally from the symbols themselves, saying words in different tones and to a rythm. This was somewhat inspired by 'The potter puppet pals' from youtube, which a few people actually noticed ( I honestly didn't think they would!) Performing it was the horrible bit, making it up and doing the video was actually quite fun.

Project 1 - Hello my name is

This was my first taster of Graphic Design at UEL, being the first assignment set. This project was fast paced and had to be started and finished in studio, under instruction from the tutors. We had a few minutes for each drawing, so had to work really really quickly! Working under pressure like this can lead to pretty bad mental blocks, so definately not my best work! However it was a fun introduction to the course, and was probably set to get us used to working fast. Will be funny to look back at this and see what my 'favourite things' were when I started the course.