floor graphics

hey guys,,,

heres a link to a company called "fingerprint" lots of you probably know it.

If we wanted to showcase work on the floor, hmmm put designs around the studios or on the stairwells, i dono . But loooks pretty interesting. should maybe give it some thought.
PDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDFPDF

Lucy

whats new

Ok, most of us have been too busy making the invites/posters to update the blog, we pulled a 13 hour day on thursday and an 8 hour day on friday, exhausting. The final output though is amazingly good.

What else have we been doing?

Well, on friday we also met with the tutors to discuss space, and thats all been sorted, well as much as we could do. Darren and Orlagh were really helpful and came up with some really cool ideas that look really nice. ::hint:: might include a shed ::hint::

Ill post all the information as soon as it gets finalized, which will most prob be Monday.

It looks like when people hand in their portfolios we will have access to go through them and 'pick' work to display in the exhibition, we've decided to curate the show too so that means we will be looking at work in a critical manor (more to come on this).

During that week from the 10-12th me and Tom will knock up the banners (yes were going for a whole banner forest thingy, kinda hard to explain but it will look good) and then we can start getting those printed as soon as they are ready.

Following the week of the assesment we'll start stripping and decorating the room, there isn't really much to do but it does involve a lot of painting and woodwork, nothing too technical.

I'll make another update when I have the news to spread, but until then i need to work on my PDF haha at the moment its non-existent.....

Big thanks to Tom, Emma, Lucy and Daisy for the work they put in on Thursday and Friday, and thanks to the many others that poped in to help us.

Luca

Anyone?

Hi, Leo here, again.

Sorry to bore everyone with updates but not many people seem to be keeping this ball rolling, so I thought I'd do a bit.

I've sorted out everyone's details in to the spreadsheet, we have 60 people signed up now, and more to come no doubt (what about our own team, hardly any of us have got postcards and some don't even have their details up). I love how about 50 people signed up yesterday, on the deadline ^_^

The Flickr is pretty much full now. I've used 98% of our monthly allowance so we'll either have to wait to put new stuff up, start another flickr, or upgrade the account (which would cost £15, but then we would get access to the original files - probably only useful to me). That or I could just stop updating the flickr - I think it looks quite nice now though.

I know I'm moaning about stuff... I'm in a bad mood.

More importantly, where the hell is everyone?

DRAMATIC LEO IS DRAMATIC.

Poster/Invite/Thing

Posters and space

Hi folks, Darren here...

hope those that were slaving away in the print studio had a fun & productive day.

Regarding the space - I met with Luca - hear are my initial responses/thoughts.

You'd made plans for using 4 projectors. We only have 2 working projectors - we cannot afford to buy more or fix these if the break/bulb goes - we need them for teaching next year. I'm going to have to say you can't have projectors I'm afraid. We do have 6 very shiny iMacs however. Fixing projectors securely in the space is very problematic too - we have to follow strict health & safety rules.

It sounded like you were bowing/giving in to pester power. Luca mentioned a 3d object space. I can count on one hand how many people have made 3d objects. Again I'm going to have to say 'No' - I'm concerned that the show will turn up into lots of piles of little 'bits and bobs' and this will not do at all. Any 3d work should be photographed. It'll look much better that way. There was the idea of personal boxes for people to put what they want in but you ditched that idea.

The space needs to be dramatic - it needs to have the 'wow' factor.

Me and the other tutors are worried about the development of the space. Me and Orlagh can meet with you tomorrow about this if you want.

Today

Ok, well today some of us started making the posters/invites, they look wicked, well done team.

Most of us put in a 12 hour day screen printing with only a short 20 min break at around 3, we didnt winge at all! apart from when it got to around 7:00 and we could no longer stand.

The posters are coming out really nice we managed to finish all of the photo images (black backgrounds), and then around 80 odd have 3 different colour triangles (green, magenta, violet) overlayed on the front, so a total of 7 screens we've been using throuhout the day.

Tomorrow me and Tom are planning on doing some work on the posters, get a couple finished with text and all so if you want to join us then thats no problem the help will be much appriaciated.

Space -

I spoke to Darren earlier today aswell about the space, and i think we made alot of progress, but at the moment im far too tired to explain everything, so in due-course ill make an update with what i hope will happen, i imagine it will be finalized by mid-next week.

Luca

Help plz.

Update: Just sent out a reminder email to everyone, and I'm also emailing everyone who's signed up who's yet to send us a postcard image. Mind-numbing. Don't shout at me if I get it wrong though.


I went to check on the print kids today, and they're doing pretty well. They kept yapping on about numbers and stuff, but it looked like they'd printed quite a lot by lunchtime. Good work guys and gals!

As a side note, can someone please add the photos being used for poster background images to our Flickr or just email them to me at leos.vick at gmail dot com?

Would be much appreciated, as you print kids all leave the rest of us out of the photo-sharing loop. Damn you print kids! DAMN YOU!

Leo.

quote for postcard printing

Hi everyone the printers have got back to me with a quote for the postcards. It's a lot of money but I think it's competitive with getting it done elsewher (will double check though) Also prices wont be quite as much as not all 80 students will be in the show
also drilling a hole puts the price up an extra £200 so we will have this discuss this

Daisy



Thank you for your email and as requested, please find below a range of prices/options to produce your postcards. I think the best stock would be a 310gsm Revive 50:50 uncoated board - it is recycled, has an FSC rating and the quality is excellent (samples available on request). We have already applied our discount and in its simplest form we managed to get the price down to £16.33 per student (for 200 copies), which we think is pretty good:

POSTCARD - PRINTING From files supplied, we are to proof (PDF) 80 different versions of a 2pp A6 postcard. On approval, we are then to print (Indigo) 200 copies of each, full colour (CMYK) one side, greyscale reverse onto 310gsm Revive 50:50. Finishing includes trimming to size, box by type and delivery to a single central London address: Proof, print 16,000 copies (in total) including finishing £1306.00 (£16.33 per student for 200 copies)

Alternative price if printed full colour (CMYK) both sides: Proof, print 16,000 copies (in total) including finishing £1422.00 (£17.78 per student for 200 copies)

POSTCARD – OPTIONAL FINISHING Extra cost to drill a 5mm hole in each £200.00 (£2.50 per student for 200 copies

interesting website

found this website today - it's very old and you've probably seen it before and think it's boring but there's something about it that's obviously very DIY and compelling.

http://www.noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/00025

sad about the cardboard boxes :( - completey agree though...

drn

postcard questions

I am drafting postcard questions and email now.
so far I have, in a kind of finish this sentence format

Design for...
Two years ago I was...
In two years I would like to be...
One thing I've learn't from the course is...
One thing I'd like to learn in the furture is...
I am inspired by...
My dream job is...
My favourite typface/typfaces is/are
My least favourite typface is
My approach to graphic design is...
My favourite process in graphic design is...
The medium I use the most is...
My favourite paperstock is...

Ok so only got 13 and wanted 20 so idead and suggestions PLEASE asap so we can send it out, want some ones specific to different fields e.g. print, illustration, moving image, website so people can pick the ones they're interested in. please give your ideas team! also should we say you dont have to do them if you dont want to or will that just mean no one bothers...
daisy

set in stone!

Ok, so we had a meeting today that went on for quite sometime. There was 5 of us me, Tom, Daisy, Lucy and Emma.

We discussed loads and settled on the following:

Poster design

Poster Back

Invites and how they work

Logistics of how to screen print them

Paper stock

How to fold the posters

Colours of the triangles

Photos for the Background images

Branding.

Posters and postcard layouts are done and dusted. Not much can/will be changed on them as Tom is finalizing and getting them printed tomorrow for Thursday.

Thursday were meeting to screen print, for those that want to come we are meeting at 8:30am at college so we can grab the presses and get going straight away. We cleaned the boards today, hopefully if everything runs smoothly we can get the posters smashed out (well most of them) by friday :)

We also talked about the space and have made some changes to how it will work, ill post more on this tonight or tomorrow.

Also are we sending another email out to everyone about the postcard deadline (friday), i guess ill leave that for Daisy to sort out.

We need to source the paper stock for Thursday too.

Update

Updated the Flickr with all the photos that've been sent to the FdA gmail.

Distinct lack of postcards. I think Rachel might be correct in saying that people are confused about the image that they're supposed to send us. I think it might be apt to send out another email saying we want the images JUST for the postcards so far, and they probably shouldn't worry too much about the content.

Either way, we've got f@ck all images and now I'm depressed. See you all tomorrow.

Leo.

projectors

those images are really good, brilliant idea about projecting images onto tilted surfaces. Nice find Daisy.

Also remember that were meeting tomorrow at 11:00am.

Light and space

Imagine if our show could look like this!

bright bright light boxes and interesting cabinets and shelf walls. The red create wall/shelves could contain out boxes.

From an exhibition by many stuff about the networks and the rate of information transfer. More images on http://www.flickr.com/photos/manystuff/sets/72157618575057222/

daisy

Posters

yea, i agree with the comments below. Though the posters's are still a working progress.

The background picture is going to change, we wont us pictures of the tower block, they were just being used to show how the type, triangle and image work together.

Deadline for the poster design is Tuesday the 26th May, so we really need to setlle on how the type will look and what type of pictures were going to use.

Also remember that there is a meeting at 11:00am on tuesday, to finalize all the work we've done since Thursday, so bring it all in. By Tuesday most people that want to exhibit in the show would of signed up, so we can start ordering materials and so on too. A list of Materails would be handy, the boxes can be ordered tomorrow if possible.

One thing...

This approach looks great - really strong/dynamic etc:



However - might people think we're on the 3rd floor of the towerblock? Not trying to throw a spanner in the works - just asking a question.

This may be a better background image to use:


Are there any interesting triangular based images of the design block or within the SGD area that could work?

Also - it's probably best to steer clear of pink triangles as they're already pretty much strongly associated with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_triangle

Text I've got so far from the WBL people who set briefs

Hi - I'm waiting on hearing back from Sarah Harris for the Promote Me project and Marit for the Drawing Room project but here's the rest - if I don't get their stuff soon I can cobble something up from the briefs and their emails to me...

-----

Project: I'm a design student get me out of here!
WBL Partner: Zoë Stanton of Uscreates

Aims:
I'm design student get me out of here aimed to bridge the gap between being a design student and a professional working in the design industry.

Zoë Stanton, Director of the social design consultancy Uscreates, drew on her own experience and difficulties moving from graduate to professional to try and give a taster of what it is like in the design industry.

Four weeks of practical challenges, real life examples, tips and advice culminated in a mock interview at the Uscreates offices where students had the opportunity to present themselves and their project outcomes to a panel.

Graphic outcomes:

- Personal Profile

- Graphic method of showcasing work

- Teaser or memento – keepsake, gift or souvenir to leave with prospective employers as a reminder of you, your skills and your uniqueness.

Skills:

- Presentation

- Sales

- Professionalism

- Insight into potential employers

Zoë’s feedback:
It was really great to see students consider their work slightly differently and think about what value they would bring to an organisation and how to communicate that.

The mock interviews were fantastic fun and some students really excelled at selling themselves and their work. I have since been contacted by some students who have told me that they have gone on to complete internships with potential employers as a result of the project. To me that is the best possible outcome and far more important and valuable in the world of work than any grade.

-----

Project: Royal Society of Chemists
WBL Partner: Steve Lloyd of ico design

My general aims were to try to be as much use as an industry partner as possible, In my mind that's giving the students an insight into how we work, so I set them a brief that we had just worked on and I thought they might appreciate. It was to design a new identity for The Royal Society of Chemistry Centre, which would involve lots of research into the subject and as the general public are one of the end users they would also be the target market.

The specific aims were to produce a research book, a final mark and also to show their work as if pitching to the actual client. (We set up a meeting room in offices near Euston so they had present in an unfamiliar dragons den style setup)

I suppose the starting point for everyone was, "What is Chemistry? and how do we best communicate this? It led to some interesting discussions and areas of exploration, from trying to agree on how many types of matter (and types of chemistry) there are, to looking at plasma creation by microwaving grapes (don't try this at home) Most students really applied themselves to thinking both about what the subject was, and what would be a clear way to communicate it. Some students went further, thinking about ways to make this communication really memorable with ambitious plans to integrate animation, generative identities and information systems.

The standard of the final outcomes was pretty good. (as this piece of text is going to accompany these outcomes, you should be able to look them over and judge for yourselves rather than take my word for it) What you won't see will be the personal presentations, the way each student chose to present, from slick onscreen to handmade books, each one a reflection of a personal approach.

Once this harrowing experience was over and all the grades and assessments made, I came back into college to show the work that ico had done and to present this work to them, hopefully this takes us back to the aims at the start, to give the students some insight into the industry (or at least my part in it) and the confidence to apply their skills, speak their minds and make and learn from their mistakes. In fact the mistakes were generally small and the enthusiasm large, so once again I think the work that accompanies this waffle should speak for itself.

Hope you all had as much fun doing the work as I had in working with you on it

-----

Project: Making Data Fun/Beautiful/Clear
WBL Partner: Ben Terrett & Dopplr

This project had 3 very clear aims:
1. Measure some data about yourself and your actions.
2. Display this data in a fun, beautiful and clear way.
3. Present your piece back to us.

I was very keen for this project to be a close to working in the industry as possible. It's always nice to work with a real brand when you're a student and it was great to have Matt from Dopplr help with the assessments.

It was interesting to see how students approached this project. Some got the data really quickly and immediately started working on solutions. Some students got hooked into the data part and lost valuable weeks collecting the stuff. Some students seemed unsure about where to go with the project, but these were the people who often ended up with the most interesting solutions.

The really good ones got a basic idea pretty quickly and then used the extra time to create something special.

The presentations were great with most people happy to talk about their work.

The standard of work was very high. If I'm being honest it was higher than I was expecting, but that probably says more about me than the students.

There's a little bit more here: http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2009/02/lcc-final-assesments.html

-----

Project: Experience/Exhibition Design
WBL Partners: Joe Coppard & Jimmy Morris of Pat&Trevor

The collaborative nature of the exhibition project was partly to promote dialogue between groups of students working towards a common goal (with an emphasis on meetings outside of college), and partly because exhibitions require a lot of planning and delegation. Why exhibit? Where exhibit? We wanted students to consider ambitious but equally realistic approaches to exhibiting (within the given time-frame).

An initial discussion as to what an exhibition is and what it means to have one (at this stage in their lives) was extended to a series of trips to various exhibition spaces around London.

There was a lot of variation - very refreshing - and a movement away from the white cube scenario. For some, the project became a sort of summing up of their FdA experiences. For others it became the first of many (hopefully) collaborative projects together. On the whole, students responded very well to the brief and enjoyed working together. As anticipated, some groups found it more difficult than others - a short-term collaborative project as such demands compromise - and when the stakes are high and the chips are down there are often problems.

boxes

those pizza boxes are real nice, we could spray paint our design on to them real easy or even screen print. 

But i wouldn't order them till we have semi-acurate numbers, were onto around 30 now, maybe hold off until Monday just to wait and see what everyone does. So far i think those boxes have been the best that have been found, space saving, good size and easily decoratable.

Paper stock too, we know where to buy the paper we need (at Uni or a shop near CSM faulkners or soemthing), maybe we can sort that out on tuesday since the designs for the posters/invites will be done by then, ideally we need to start printing the broadsheet invites thursday monring, so preping screens on wednesday ready for coating and exposing the following monring.

One last thing, we also need to sort our the blurb on the backside of the braodsheet by wednesday latest, we did have an idea of using the briefs on the back so the visitors can see what we've been up to in advanced. Darren mentioned something about getting feedback from all the projects this year from the industry people that set the projects, which would be really cool, something inticing for for the visitors to read/see.

Luca

more/cheaper/boxes

Found these pizza style boxes today - scroll down to the ones that are 465mm x 315mm x 127 mm

http://www.cardboard-box.net/pizza_boxes.htm

You get A3 flat work in it nicely.

£8.99 per 10 - for around 80 it works out at around £72 in total = bargain.

Should I order them?

re: boxes

had something like that lying around at home for a while, thought it was ace; nice and sturdy but not too polished.
and yeah, would be excellent for printing on/general messing around with. plus they're nice in a sort of temporary but permanent way.
that doesn't really make sense. whatever. thumbs up from me.

tm

Flickr

As requested I have set up a Flickr account, not that im an expert in flickr attire. I hope that its what everyone wanted. I have put the photos already collected from the gmail account. I know its not really for the postcards but that way people can see what type of work people are exhibiting, I’ll keep loading them on.

The website is http://www.flickr.com/

then login -  fdadegreeshow09@yahoo.com 

 password - photos 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fdadegreeshow09/ If you type this in you can see what has been put on without having to login BUT you can’t upload images on that way. 

Should I put the images on private???? Will people not like their images being shown, yet me know on here or change it yourself. 

Happy loading.

Boxes for people to put work in

I've been searching for boxes that fit with the whole DIY theme that you can all put whatever you want in. I found this site:

http://www.bagnboxman.co.uk/catalogue/page27_corrugated-board-boxes.php

they make these to order at different sizes:



They'd be perfect to screen print or put stickers on.

What do you think? Should I put in an order for 80 of them at A3 size?

Darren

postcard printing

Hi guys, emailed mark from st Ives (print company not place) today, he has replyed saying he will get us quotes soon as so I will share them with you when I get them,
Progress is being made!!....
daisy

postcard backsides

I’ve been thinking about which questions should go on the back of the postcard. Main ideas so far are;

D-i-why?

why should some one be interested in your design work (self promoting kind of thing)

another is around the theme of 2, since our course is a 2 year one which is one of our unique features. Therefore all questions could be in a “two things you…” format

initial ides are 

“Two things you are inspired by

two things you have learn’t on the course

two things you want to do in the future

two things that make you happy

two typefaces you like to use”

more suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thought it could be cool of we don’t include the questions but just list the answers

e.g I quickly did what I could write on mine…

“sunday markets and M/M Paris 

an eye for typography and the manipulative nature of advertising

make my own magazine and move to New York

cupcakes and brown paper packages

lula decorated and futura light”

other ideas and suggestions PLEASE

daisy

p.s. we have to contact the printer tomorrow for a quote, is everyone down with uncoated stock approx. 300gsm. white and recycled is possible….?

An idea

Printastic

Here is a link to the Printers blog that there are lots of discussions going on so take a look.  

http://printkids.tumblr.com/ 

Falmouth

http://fromfalmouth.co.uk/

Posters...

Hello - Darren here.

I've been thinking. Whilst it's good the majority of you want to ensure any printed matter that supports the show is excellent etc. I do think it's time to stop dithering around with the 'sexy' bits and start thinking about the main thing which is the space itself and what and how you want people to experience the show. Renata and Saskay and myself walked round the whole space the other day and it is very big and much too much for just 2 people to deal with.

If you're not careful you'll end up having great stuff to entice people to the show and great stuff for them to take away and a showitself that makes them go, "Meh..."

Personally - I'm not feeling the test a couple of posts down - I can't see what it's got to do with graphic design or the FdA - it looks like an aesthetic style that you're trying to make fit - it doesn't say anything about DIY.

You really do need to think about the work that's available to show, the projects you've done in 2nd year and the best way to show and curate it. The Research Books and Outcomes - RSC - I'm a Designer Get Me Out of Here - Dopplr - Drawing Room - Experience/Exhibition Design - Promote Me and the various real projects you're all doing this term are all great projects that are unique to the FdA and there's some really great work done for them.

You need to think of a 'dramatic' and 'wow' way to use the space and show off the work.

Sorry if this is coming across heavy - I want your show to be great. At the moment it seems like a lot of time is being wasted choosing fonts and focusing on details rather than the most important aspect - the space itself.

EDIT: Posted this the same time as Darren posted his post, so now I feel like an idiot for concentrating on the promotion stuff.

EDIT 2: I only just checked the printkids blog, so now I'm an UBER idiot. You can pretty much ignore this blog, as I'll just copy whatever you guys/gals end up doing. Still, I'll leave this up for peace of mind.

Hello everyone, Leo here, just with a couple of thoughts/mockups.


This was the first mock-up I made for the website/print design (not using actual copy/title/bckgrd image).

I soon realised that what we'd been talking about meant that the readability of the text would be difficult to manage (it depends what's going on in the bckgrd image). It also kinda ruined the graphic elements of the design, especially from a distance. I used Clarendon by the way, which I think looks pretty good.

A possible fix for this would be to just use one-colour screen print for the whole poster:

But then I started to feel like it was missing colour. So I thought, what if we used coloured paper, and did a two-colour screenprint:

Tell me if this is possible, screenprint experts, but this is how I'd do it: blue paper, black colour print for the bckgrd texture, then white colour for the strip/type.

Anyway, I did most of this just to see what it would look like. So feel free to criticise, destroy or generally mock my graphic design skills. Or just generally walk around in a malaise as to why Leo spent a few hours designing stuff he said he didn't want to do.

sizeeo

ONE BIG QUESTION....

what size are the poster going to be.... A2. but depends where they are going...round uni? outside of uni.... A2? in other institutes (chelsea etc)... a3?

poster background image

first rough background photo idea

from our Paris trip but may still be to ambiguous

Great blog site.

http://www.allgraphicdesign.com/graphicsblog/2008/08/12/the-coolest-business-cards-beautiful-unique-business-card-designs-part-4/

Lincoln

http://www.show-online.co.uk/

Camberwell

http://camberwellgraphics09.com

Change is Good Website

"Best of..." nice idea for people too? www.changeisgood.fr