StormAdvertising&Design Portfolio review

Portfolio Review

I arranged my portfolio review through a friend who's dad runs a advertising and design company in manchester called storm.

I contacted him and asked if it would be possible to arrange a meeting to show some of my work and also get some information about the industry from someone working as a professional designer.

The person i would be meeting was mr keith Hague, this is his email agreeing to meet me and to arrange a time and date.

After this time was arranged there were some problems with that particuler time, and on arranging a new time due to his s

chedule around this time of year we have had to arrange the meeting for a later date, he emailed me about changing the date too which i agreed and said i would work around his schedule. this is the last email arranging the new date of when i will meet him for my portfolio review.

the meeting is now arranged for the 6th of january 2009.

tal rosner

Tal Rosner is a bafta award winning film maker and designer.

After first studying for a BA in graphic design working mainly in composition based work for pieces like posters and magazines, he then went on to do a MA in London on a moving image course after having interest in rhythm and movement.
he started too look as he wanted to translate the graphic design he had been doing for posters and magazines into moving image, to translate the flow of how a newspaper reads into a similar flow in animation.

His first film was doppelganger, he shot the film form the front off a train as it was an easy way to film allot off different areas without leaving one spot so he would have long continuous shots with changing scenery and also its something he could do by himself as he prefers to be able to work by himself, the film itself is edited to a music track working the imagery to match beats and changes in the music, the film starts off with simple edits using pauses and small rewinds and progressively gets more complex as the music does he starts to mirror the images and flip areas off the image so he now has 4 of the same video playing on one screen all in a different position giving an almost kaleidoscope he also linked parts off the scenery together by flipping around the 4 images so certain areas matched up for example a lamp post rotated in all 4 screens linking together to make a diamond shape and these are the more simple edits of the piece as areas can still be clearly made out as tracks,train or buildings.

As the video goes on the imagery gets more abstract beginning to look less like shapes and actual footage and more like patterns as the journey continuous because the buildings and surroundings changed and become more industrial from the simple trees and tracks from the start of the journey to factories and smoke towards the end which give a completely different look using the same editing technique he used before.

One thing i noticed about his work is the progression he talked about in his work over the years, the point of his lecture is that he wanted to show how he had changed over a period of four years

in his working method and also techniques as learning new methods and programs as he talked about how technology dependent his work is.
The second piece he showed was 2 different videos a for french pianist's who had seen his doppelganger video and wanted something similar to accompany there music for a DVD/CD, this soundtrack to this was extremely full on as there was two piece of music was played by 2 pianos at the same time and the idea of the piece was to have a split screen with 1 screen representing 1 of the pianos and to match the imagery up with the music of that piano so the two screens would be the same piece of video but edited completely differently, over the piece has evolved quite allot from doppelganger the basis of the piece has stayed the same, shot from a train and ranges from very obvious images to extremely abstract from editing, ways in which his editing has changed is that he started layering images so that they would build up whole new patters that would not be possible by only reflecting and rotating images, he also began inverting the images and playing with the colour and contrasts and this helps change the focal point of images.

In the second video he takes the editing even further by layering multiple images and then altering colours to make areas stand out and become more vibrant too certain parts
of the music, he also starts cutting into the actual clips and masking areas to create his own small animations in the actual videos them self after always relying on the natural animations of the scenery and just cutting the video too it, so he now has the ability too cut more closely to the music and have things perfectly in sync, these were much more interesting to watch but i felt that in same places the videos had too much going on and with the music that was extremely full on was quite overpowering but this also fits in with his talk about how his work has changed and in his next video it seems like his work has become less experimental and is much more of a developed style and had come up with techniques that feature in his work.

The piece that he won the bafta for was the opening titles for channel 4's show "skins" he was brought in for the skins job on the strength of his work for the piano pieces, the skins job was on a very low budget so actually worked out very well and the peice used his technique of layering multiple clips and using mirroring ad rotating along with cutting the pieces of video and showing them on a single screen similar to the split screen piano pieceone issue with brief was that he was given clips from the tv show of the actors to mix in with the video that he shot for the titles and working the peices together.

The title sequence for scrubs is one of the best around and i think his style works perfectly for showing all aspects of what the show is about, with his technique of layering images showing all aspects of life that the show covers and also his technique with so much going on had the chance to put in images that might not be allowed if they were prominent in the video, for example at a point in one corner there is a pill shown which is too highlight the topic of drugs that is in the show, the ending to each title sequence is different and prominently features a character from the show that the particular episode is about, but this was not the original idea at first he wanted every title sequence to be different but in a long running show this would be too much work so the idea had to be cut back and this shows the way a designers idea will have to change to meet a brief and work with a company, this is something he talked about in his lecture about how he prefers to work alone.
he talked about how after coming out of his courses he got what he thought was the ideal job working for a large company in London earning good money and working on large projects with huge budgets, but realized that he didn't like working where he didn't have control over a project and so he decided to go back to working for himself and this is something i think is very important when trying to figure out how you want to work because if he had not left the larger companies he might not have carried on his experimentation in work that lead to developing his own unique style.

Gillian Blease lecture

Gillian Blease is a Artist/illustrator from Manchester who does allot of editorial and work for newspapers most notably the Guardian and also illustrations for books, she began working towards a career as an artist studying fine art in Newcastle and working at the Whitworth gallery, after moving too London to work as an artist but after a year came back to Manchester after finding working in London wasn't working as planned.
After returning too Manchester she took a typing course at stockport college and a foundation course at Manchester and this is where her career in illustration began when she realized that as the courses went on found herself using less art based techniques like drawing, which is something i can relate too as i noticed the same after always working for in a fine art based environment in school and college and then moving away from this during a foundation course and after starting on my multimedia course working for the most part on computers and not really doing much traditional art which is something that i try too do more off now.
She says her work is influenced by japan and Japanese culture after taking a trip there, space is something very important in her work and is something that attracts her to pieces as she says that space creates tension in a piece and this is something i find to be true in a composition because placing images in a certain way on a peice effect its balance and overall impact and the feeling it gives off.
Her work is very simple, it has a collage look too it and is built up of simple shapes too create images in a simple form, also composition is very important in her peices and is clearly thought about to have the most impact when placing such simple images on a page, colour is also simple using limited colours but overall it has a great look and shows how well the ideas are thought out for her work too give the message with minimal images.
one thing i founf intersting about her is a method she used to make early peices when not working for a client she would cut newspaper articles and create images to go with the storys, so giving herself practice briefs, which i think is a good idea because it develops a way to work so you wont be overwhelmed when starting too work for clients. and this has clearly worked very well for her as it developed a style that worked well for the jobs she has had for example making images for a cooking column she would use the recipies to create the images too go with the text and these columns would require 150 images a year so her technique worked well with these jobs that required multiple images over short periods.
The thing i found too be the most usefull about her lecture was about her approach to work and working with clients as some off the issues raised were things i had not thought about, one of the things she mentioned was getting her dream job for a company she always wanted to work for and took it above other jobs and it tunred out to be a bad project that had already been completely planned out and she had very little input into the final peice and so had missed out on other projects that had been more rewarding, so this shows to not just choose a job because of the company and too do some research into available work if you have choices. also other aspects towards work are too not be to precious about work because off time given on a brief and how many briefs you may have at one time and also she talked about having finished pieces that she was very pleased with only too have companys reject them for the fact that viewers may not understand them so you have to take into consideration wether your target audience will understand your message.

Miles Donovan

Miles Donovan is a illustrator from london, he is part of the group peepshow collective who are a group that range from illustrators to graphic designers, he has worked for companies such as the new york times,GQ and Toyota too just name a few, his work is mainly stylized portraits of cultural icons his work although digital has the style too make it look like graffitti stencil paintings using vibrant colours that give it a pop art feel and resemble such artists as Andy Warhol, and he has been referred too as a modern day Andy Warhol.

He has been one of my biggest influences for a while now and i have tried to recreate his style of digital work in my own time as this kind of stle is something i used to do with spray paint, what i like about his work is the simplicity of the images how he gets so much detail by just picking out the defining features from his subjects using light and shadow, the way he also makes composition with the background patterns using spray paint style brushes too bring an image together but still keeping images simple and not looking too busy.

His website: www.milesdonovan.co.uk

Justin Maller

Came across this graphic designer after doing a tutorial in computer arts magazine, he is a freelance graphic artist from Melbourne Australia his work is mostly 2d work its a really interesting mix of photo manipulation and illustration.

what i like about his work is how the compositions are really quite busy but also nicely balanced so they don't look over the top, and the way he builds around an area of a photo and in some it looks like there are areas of 3D put into the pieces. the use of colour also is very bold and really draws your eye into the pieces and the compositions which in some are quite strange and are not something you might associate with other elements in the photo they all just work together.

his personal website:
http://www.superlover.com.au/

a tutorial by him from computer arts magazine too have ago at recreating his work:
http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/2d__and__photoshop/expressive_lighting_effects

you can download the tutorial and support files off the page.

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