CONSTANTLY THINKING OF WORK...IS THERE A CURE?

Yet again I've come to that point where late at night all I can think about is work...so yet again I have to do some!

I'm thinking about my proffessional project mainly just about timing and research, i feel like I need to keep researching having done a hell of a lot already...I'm sure I've done everything they have said about? It's hard... I just keep thinking about if I need to do more!

Things I've researched

• Illustrators- collage and fashion.
• Newspaper design
• Newspaper- everything about them.
• News stories
• Fashion disasters, worst fashions
• Fashion graveyard which links it to a news story.

Oh god it just doesn't seem enough! But I've researched each one in bulk, putting it all together it seems like I probably researched enough but in my mind its not resting!

I feel like I'm really ready for designing though and I've got all this research I think it's confusing me because I've done i and I like so much of it that I don't know what style of illustration I would like to follow it's collage but just I like a lot of the styles I've looked at...

Maybe 

the best thing to do is look at my research ..take a step back and write what I like about them, and pick bits out, I keep looking at illustrators on a daily basis, but I think I finally have to come to a stop! So I will look at them and then make a list, and then just start designing..which I'm really excited about!

I don't want to have to keep putting off designing, but I think this will help me!

I see the tears from binocualrs, third year tutor mops them up

Went to a BA Hons Graphic Design today this afternoon.

Honest scared the shit out of me......

He said about it being very much you, and your own thinking, 'we are the facilitators', and its student centered. He talked about that you are given the brief, and you just do it, for example last year they were given a brief with a title called 90 minutes and they had to think about how they could graphically represent this, they say come back in a week with some ideas/ research, I know this is like our course but they seem to really be quite strict about this.

Something about dates for tutorials and they don't give fuck about if you come or not, present research etc. Dates are there and thats it., and if you say what do I do next they go fuck off or dumbstruck.

They showed us live brief work that just looked so proffessional- I have to really make my fmp like this.  I feel that if I want to feel happy and achieve getting into the third year I really have to prove to myself that I can produce the level of standard they seem to be at.

A lot of the work is where you have to find your own problem and you just research etc. The major point he said was about research being very strong and is what leads us to our ideas. He was really emphasising this and seemed to be the main point of the talk. 

He also went through the outline of the course ...  which I'm not going to bore you with.

He said about the projects individually, about it just being 'very very very very self projected' ... this is what I want, I do but at the end it just made me think am I really good enough? Am I really at that level where I think that I can work like this, like they are?

Everything made sense, absoloutly everything! Its just there to build ourselves up for the future, for our career, a lot of it seemed to be written work , but the good thing he said was that at the last project you can either major or minor in the written aspect/ or major or minor in the practical side... sorted, handwritten work has never been my thing.. the work just looked really good. many people seem to be concerned about the fact as being branded as FDA people?  As I write this I'm writing this I'm trying to convince myself that I can... just thinking.........................

Have u seen..

the GOD AWFULNESS that is the crisis logo check it out crisis.org.uk

Finish the D&AD

Today we went to the photography department and asked if we could get some kind of special lens- don't really know ask Martin!

But they just said to grab a a photography student so we met Andes who took a a few shots for us, and then put them on a disk, when we got back to the studio we put it on the computer.. but... it got rejected so we tried like the 5/6 Martin had , but none of them worked so we tried it on another computer... and finally it worked! WOOP!

I swear every time me and Martin work together we get these stupid trip ups... which are so small, but we usually get quite tired from working on things and small things like this just seem silly! but anyways... we worked on this in Photoshop, and used the burn tool as the crisis logo didn't come out that much, but the red came out which is what we had problems on the last shoot, but the red wouldn't come out, but we got that done, came into indesign, used help support us at www.crisis.org.uk.

Got the logo in black though we did try red- but god it didn't work, created an opaque box around it and a semi circle for the crisis logo to be placed, we had to scale it down though several times as it just is so bold, we thought as the logo is just GOD AWFUL that it would have been good if we could have redesigned it but thats off the point.. but yeah then we organised where it should go on the page, we decided near the bottom but thats what we have to figure out...but we are so much happier with it than the one we did previously... it just works.

PPRD

Just to do in the morning

• Scan images- and organise-PDF it, and print.
• Write a bit more on the parts I said I had to do.
• Just tweak my CV.
• Print off the rest of my portfolio.

Hand in

More of organising time

This is just what I need to do for the rest of the week-organising what needs to be done and by when to keep on top of my work, ready for my hand in.

What I need to do to complete my blog, even though this is continuing after PPRD deadline we have to show evidence of writing about our work and organising our time etc.

what I need to do to make my blog work

By monday I have to.......

the question mark or the exclamation?!

D&AD.

This morning we worked on the actual key ring, after Neil suggesting that we use a plastic key ring instead of paper, we looked into this.

We knew that we wanted red type on a cream background. We looked at slanting our tag line, but I raised the fact that I wasn't completly happy with the question mark and thought instead of having an exclamation mark.

The this with this is that a question mark would make people consider whether or not it would be uncomfortable- so its more about the audience thinking, whereas an exclamation mark I think would put more to the audience that we know it would be uncomfortable- something that is more opinion based. When r around homelessness we saw that some people were fine with living on the streets, whereas others weren't. But in the end we decided to go with the question mark as more of an thought provoking thing, and then the audience could decide for themselves.

The only reason I thought about it was looking into how people would find it if they was a homeowner, and then were forced to live on the streets, that they would feel less comfortable, from house to street.

The final key ring tags........

And the final key and key ring........

The key ring and Neil...........

Neil said that he wasn't sure about the slant for the UNCOMFORTABLE? We did this because it was uncomfortable to read, neil said he gets what we mean but he prefered the other side as it looked like more of a 'key ring', to be honest I didn't really get that. He said about the more white space on the photography/poster side as orginally he thought it was to cramped on the page. Another comment he made was that the key looked too shopped, which I do agree with- I didn't neccessarily knew how he meant but then I just thought he meant the text, so we decided to put some texture on this.

Then we made the actual poster, with some simple text like a tag line and then the crisis logo.. we had some problems with this as the background kept coming up as white when we placed it into indesign, on their actual crisis website the logo comes up al pixilated, so we had to just go on the D&AD website in which they had a black one ....

A red one....

and some blank one.... maybe it was to be a white one?

but I just would have thought that crisis would have their own logo that wasn't pixelated.....

But finally with the help of D&AD website it worked and with the background being transparent.

After talking to Neil we had Daniel take another photograph with more white space............

Charlottes Library Session

Today Charlotte cam in from the library she taught us how to look for books/ reference material/ and how to go about this, first you need a subject area. topic to look at, and think about the keywords linked to this. You can use the library catalogue or other ones (which she gave us).

She gave us some exercises to do-

• One of them was look through DAA- this is on the arts institute webpage at www.aib.ac.uk/eresources
• Select Databases on the right hand menu
• An A-Z list of catalogues appear, select Design and applied arts index, (DAA).

You can use an advanced search too, and refine your search, look at research results, and show the full record of the book- which is also useful for bibliographies.

Two was Art Full text so you back to the a-z list click on art full text, this is more of an advanced search, type what you want and there are different types of results

• FULL TEXT-Read the whole article online
• FULL TEXT PDF--The whole article as it appears in the original journal with pcture.
• References to articles and journals. Checks the library have a copy. Click on the blue title link to get the source details.
  

She explained this very thoroughly- though this is brief, but the session really helped me understand how to use the databases and I thought it was really well organised, and if we got stuck she helped us, and she had the time to go to everyone, which isn't the case as always.

 

Workshops and Materials

For D&AD we looked into materials we could possibly use for our key- in the end we went with plastic. W went to a workshop within uni and asked if they could do us some keys- they said yes and talked about etching and cutting.

He showed us a few samples....

The etching showed up so clear on clear plastic and we loved this, the cutting was also so precise, absolutely perfection.

We then looked at other samples- using colour, as we wanted the key in red, but the only problem was that the etching didn't show up as well, if much, so we said about doing it in clear, and even though it wasn't the exact colour..it turned out to work exactly as we wanted.

According to my mac its 5;28 in the morning

But I've been up since just before 5..I'm so restless and the only thing I can think about is work..well my portfolio or what I need to do today..and I've only had four hours of sleep.

So I've decided to release my restlessness with blogging..I;m maybe a bit slower at typing but I have to do this so that just maybe I can fall back asleep and have things..like this off my mind!

PORTFOLIO;

What I want in it;

MAA- include screenshots of website, logo(one page A3). Experiments and powerpoint template.

D&AD- poster.

GREETINGS CARDS- definatly.

WEBSITE-screenshots need to be done.

FIRST EVER PROJECT- really enjoyed this and even shows my style now.

This is all I have at the moment I'm just trying to think what else I believe is 'portfolio standard', was thinking maybe the first ever project- I really enjoyed it and it even represets my 'style now'.

But what else I'm concerned about the lack of stuff I have, and just what else I can put in there- maybe thats enough for now, and it will have more after- PAL, and of course my proffesional project.

CV

How to present and design- My ideal job would be in editorial design, but then I would also like to do some of my collage-graphic illustrations, but my main passion although may not sem it is editorial design. So i was thinking of making my CV into a double page spread ( no bigger than A3). I was thinking of making it different as I don't want no A4 bog standard rubbish that no one wil be interested in and doesn't make anyone want to look at it, or show what I want to do/ have an interest in/ show me as a person.

and I think the last thing I'm worrying about is..organising my week/ just tomorrow?

TOMORROW I NEED TO;

• Got to uni
  
• Print off PAL stuff to edit- which I would like to take an hour as theres a lot of stuff to do through.
  
• Write my list of work to put into portfolio.
• Meet Jonathan  and see what we have edited- a comparison to see what we really need in the end product.
• Even calling Martin to tell him I want to see him tuesday for 2 hours tops so we can get the D&AD poster done is on my mind.
• The PORTFOLIO-organising everything ready to send to print for tuesday- hoping I can get this by wednesday.
• Paying for the portfolio.

Yeh.. I think this ..meeting with Anna - seems to ..dare I say it be my hinderance to be honest.

Maybe I can get to sleep now......

The day I wanted to do my list.. I managed to do all of it pretty much -except from buy my portfolio, which I will do tomorrow! I managed to plan my time really well, me and Martin said we would finish off the tags, print them and then tie it together, and then talk to Neil about the final piece tomorrow.

So things I need to do tomorrow are;

BUY THE PORTFOLIO

FINISH THE TAGS-hopefully done in the morning

JONATHAN DALY -look at the best British Editorial i said i would bring in, and also need to have some research on how to fold paper to make it more interactive.

PORTFOLIO- MAA things. Such as the website, the logo and the experiments.

-FIRST YEAR THINGS, the editorial illustration project.

BLOGGING- which I will mainly focus on in the evening, and also Anna's project- get my images I want to use sorted.

dAY TO DO THESE THINGS.... So much for doing this, I managed to pull my back in the early hours of the morning, and have been confined to my bed. So therefore I couldn't buy the portfolio, or present my MAA work. (so annoying)!

I guess the good thing is that I can spend the day writing on my blog, and almost end up finishing it, I managed to re-plan what I wanted t do.

So now I will be meeting Jonathan tomorrow- which had to be rescheduled due to his hand in tomorrow, and then monday I am going to meet Martin which does work out better, due to PPRD hand in.