Yearbook...It's Personal

Just thought I would state my reasons for doing this yearbook pitch. Not that I need to explain myself to anyone, but I have a couple of very specific reasons for going for the yearbook.

First off, at the end of last year before Christmas when Fred told us the yearbook pitch would be up for grabs, I initially thought of trying to find someone to do it with but decided against it, simply because in general I kinda shirk away from this kind of thing. It's a lot of pressure and effort and I generally prefer to do my own thing. But Adam came up to me and asked me (after I'd volunteered) if I'd join him and Luke in a group and on impulse I said yes.

Now thats not my reason. I volunteered because I knew it would provide useful experience and provide an insight into dealing with printers, clients etc. I started to pull out because I talked myself out of it. The reasons I kept with it were:

1) I need to stop being a coward and start doing this stuff, and

2) I know how I work. We'll get lots of time to complete many briefs, I'll mess around not getting anywhere for a while and when it comes to crunch time I'll churn the work out. Provided we win the yearbook with out pitch, I will, quite literally almost, be forced to do meaningful work from the outset. Which is what I need. Deadlines, pressure, time constraints. So for me, the only way to overcome one of my weaknesses in the way I work is to be forced to do it.

Which is a good thing.

Long Briefs

I've looked up a few more briefs and my list so far looks like this:

B1 - Meanwood Valley Urban Farm (dead, map&inforgraphics)
B2 - SEGA (competition, event&promotion)
B3 - SamplePhonics (live, logo&identity)
B4 - Finding Pluto (self, publication & infographics)
B5 - Yearbook (collaborative, publication)
B6 - Umbro (competition, promotion, type as image)
B7 - Fakery/context (comp/self, type as image, message)
B8 - Oxfam (competition, infoG, image, message)

Currently still writing them but will post the full details and briefs as soon as possible.

The main consideration now, i think, is how much time i expect to give over to each brief, which are long/short/medium, and where i can push the smaller ones into something more substantial. They all seem, to me at least, medium-large, with few small ones so maybe i should find myself a couple of single day briefs to crack out as well.

Year Book: First Meeting

Class is in session! Our dream team consists of myself, Luke Hallam and Adam Townend. Just started off discussing quick ideas, the main concept we're trying to get across and what needs to be included.

The concept was a tricky one. We spent a long time deliberating not just on what it should be but how we could effectivly communicate that across the layout and photography. Dunno if we've quite cracked it yet, but we want to show how much time and hard work have gone into the course, kinda following Fred's hours/minutes/seconds thread. 2 things we are sure on is first we want full bleed photos, not jst small boxes or cut outs but some nice full bleed stuff. Second, my GENIUS idea, is each student having a QR code on their page for those with mobile devices to scan and link them to the students own personal site or webspace. See, genius.

Action Plans

Tom Bucher

Oliver Tomas

New Work Magazine

Some really nice layouts for New Work Magazine. Now I'm not a massive fan of stuff like this, mainly because it is more about the layout design than the content (which in my mind is counter productive) and is a bit pretentious, however, as an example of a way to push the limits of what layout can be (within a standard frame ie. A4) it really works.

Neil Doshi

Not really pertinent to any of my briefs, but I'm interested in these t's because of the patterns and colours. It's difficult to design hand painted t-shirts and screen print them because in screen printing you use single colours, and without doing a 4 colour-way screen print (which would take FOREVER) it's nigh on impossible to get these results, meaning they're most likely digitally printed. In my opinion it's a lot more difficult to design for screen printed t's because of this, as you have to be aware of the limitations of the process and design specifically with that in mind.

Christina Couceiro

One of my main aims this module is to use photoshop more, not just because it's a useful skill to have, but because I think when used in conjunction with other skills and processes it can be a very useful tool for more rounded design. 

Also I'm a big fan of the way Couceiro uses geometric shapes full of colour to add impact to her work. I've used shapes a lot in the work I've done before and want to do more of it, so to use it in conjunction with more photo-image based layouts would be interesting to me, specifically when it comes to my general idea for my Finding Pluto brief, which would concentrate a lot on this kind of design.

Brandon Schaefer