Personal Pods

I was recently asked to design some posters for my friend and nieces bedrooms with a unique, personal feel to them. They required a poster what explained there passion and love for music and to also highlight there personality. I decided to take some pictures with my digital camera and place them in Illustrator and see what I could come up with. I feel the final results answer the brief as each poster will have a different look and feel as the body type is unique.

Mara Graphics

I was recently advised to create a logo for myself as I have been freelancing more often now leaving university. This is the first stage of my design and hope to improve on this. Future designs will be made in the next few weeks.

Polo Advertising Campaign

I recently noticed some work by the Partners and CHI for Pole's. The copy writing and design is fantastic. I very much like how they have used the product within the idea. Involving the audience is one massive positive within advertising and within this campaign, the idea of asking if your a sucker or a cruncher reflects to how you as an individual use the product.

Rick Klesewetter

A talk was held at the Truman Brewery from designer/comedian Rick Klesewetter. He was once a designer at McCann Erickson but left to be freelancer. When leaving, he created some fantastic stationary, which won him a number of awards. His talk was very funny but also inspiring. Rick is very high within the advertising industry and some of his work stands out a great deal. One piece was the Virgin interactive add, which targeted individuals who walked past the moving screen in Liverpool. Rick explained that involving humour within your ideas is always a positive tool to use. He explained that when your work is personal, it's different to most ideas what have already been done or is currently being designed. One particular message I was greatly impressed with was when he began to talk about beginning a project. He explained 'Don’t start from an empty page, start with an idea. Good design and advertising is about surprise/wit for me''. I have contacted Rick a few times with my work and he is very helpful and inspiring on advertising and design.

Creative Cherry

Another workshop I attended while at New Blood was visiting design agency Creative Cherry, which was held not to far from Brick Lane. Cherry was founded in 2006 and has been progressing greatly within the past four years. A number of graduates attended the talk and it was very insightful to hear what advice both the creative directors Mark and Tom of Cherry had to say. From contacting agencies to organising a portfolio for different interviews, having that information I feel is vital at this stage of my design career. They talked about their own experiences when dealing with print deadlines, clients and also art direction. Keeping up a good attitude and staying positive seemed to be a strong point with the pair. Being passionate about your work will always be a positive area to have as a designer and that will never go away.

Cogs Recruitment Agency

Also while being at New Blood, I arranged a workshop with Cogs Agency which specialise in recruiting within the design filed. I had a meeting with Liam Morgan who sat down and talked through my work. Liam was very helpful and advised me to think what area of design I want to be involved in. It was established in that meeting that I was more of a creative designer and more passionate about the idea and design basis. We talked about web developing and moving image in regards to advertising and Liam helped me with contacts and websites for great information. I feel the talk was greatly important to who I was as a designer and it has helped me focus on the area I wish to be involved in for the future.

JWT

While in London at D&AD's New Blood, I was lucky to spend some time at JWT, one of the biggest advertising agencies in the world. On the first night of the exhibition, only three members from each university was allowed to represent the work stand. The opening night was only for the creative industry and required a personal invite from D&AD themselves. I was lucky to show some of my work to a different range of designers and creative directors and JWT was impressed with my attitude and passion regarding my work. This led to me visiting the studio and I had a fantastic time. I gained a great deal of knowledge about the industry of advertising and was introduced to many creative people. While being at JWT, I attended brian storms with over twenty designers for a number of different briefs, had portfolio feedback and worked on some projects involving Nokia and Shell.

D&AD New Blood 2010

While on my internship at Manchester United, I also attended D&AD's New Blood exhibition in London this past June. The experience of talking through my work with the creative industry first hand was fantastic and I was lucky to meet a number of different designers and creative directors. Each university held a stand in different sizes across the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane with hundreds of graduates showing all different projects from re-brading companies to advertising campaigns. To stand out from the rest of the stands, as a group, myself and others from my university held a One Minute Brief session where anyone who wished to set a brief, a solution would need to made within 60 seconds. This was very successful and attracted many creative directors and designers.