company research and initial contacts

This part of practitioners should really have been my first post but after having my first meeting i dived right in and wrote about it without talking about how it was arranged and how i found out about the company so this post is to explain how that came about.

When first hearing that part of professional practice would be having to make contact with company and to arrange meetings with people in the companies and take my portfolio to be reviewed i was quite worried about whether i would be able too after how difficult i had found it too make contact with companies via email in the second year to ask about them and there work, so asking to come in and meet people seemed like even harder, but luckily i got a lucky break when talking to some friends about it and one of them mentioned that her dad ran a company in Manchester and would be able to help me out.

These are the first few emails in which i contacted Keith Hague, the owner of storm advertising&design, now with this being set up through a friend the emails were more relaxed and informal as he had already agreed to meet me and was just expecting me to contact him about the time and place.
After making this arrangement i did some further research into what work he had done and the company had done because with this being set up through a friend i hadn't initially researched into the company.

alcohol know your limits

Recently there have been two adverts on TV around binge drinking and about safe drinking one for men and one for women.
The adverts seem to be more aimed at younger people going out on nights out because the people in the advert are both young, the strap line for the adverts are "you wouldn't start a night this way why end it like this?" which i personally think works really well in relation to what you see, the idea is that the two people are going through there routines to get ready for a night out but are making themselves up to how they could look after a night of heavy drinking for example the girl smears her makeup, tears her tights and is seen putting sick in her hair as if its a hair product, and in the boys advert he tears his clothes, rips out an ear ring and then smashes himself in the face with a door.


I really like these adverts and think they work extremely well to put a message across because first they don't dive in with a message about destroying your liver they go for the things people my age will take more notice about like there appearance and the way they are shot, the music and people in the advert are all elements you can relate too, they don't look like a patronising view of someone from a different generation who thinks they know about "young people".

What i think works about the two adverts is that they each have a moment that really makes you take notice, and in these two advertise think that it is when the girl is sick and puts it in her hair because is is quite disgusting too see and when the boy rips out his ea ring because it just makes you cringe and almost feel it and from them points you get exactly what its about and take notice.

The only complaints i have seen about the adverts are people pointing out how the advert is stereotyping, with the girl only really going about her appearance and the boys consequences all seeing to be because of violence so some might complain that not all boys fight, girls fight, boys are just as vain etc. but i think that these can be justified because the majority of people will think that anyway of the particular sexes whether they are right or wrong.

finally the strap really ties the it up nicely because it asks you the perfect question " why would you end the night that way?" it isn't preachy or trying to scare you into not going out, it just simply puts the question there and i think does make it easier to think to yourself " why would i want to end up like that?" and this is why i think the advert really works.

Storm Advertising&Design portfolio crit

On Tuesday the 6th of January 2009 I met with Keith Hague who runs Storm advertising at there offices in Manchester.

The company's clients include Planters world famous nuts,Fosters and big D nuts. most notably they are the creators of the big D nuts campaign using cards that slowly revealed a model behind the packets of nuts.

The Company is quite new and had been started by Keith after working in the design industry for a number of years, on that particular day the office only consisted of myself, Keith and 2 other designers both working on separate websites, but it seemed to be a tight group of people. while i did speak to the other designers it was only briefly as they were quite busy but i found that one of them was only a couple of years out of education himself but already seemed very settled.

First i began by talking to Keith about the course i was on explaining how it was a course that enabled me to look at a lot of different areas of design like web, video animation ect.
I explained that i was mostly interested in graphic design but getting very into video and film.

I had brought quite a bit of work trying to show i variety of the kind of things i had done, and had even brought a paper portfolio with some work printed and mounted in it, but unfortunately i didn't get to show this work he was more interested in seeing what i had brought on my laptop,
i would have liked to show my paper portfolio because i think it has more impact when it comes to static work rather than seeing it on a computer and also thought it would be different for someone in not just a graphic industry to have, but i think the main reason i didn't show it is because i only had quite a large folder so it would have taken up allot of room, so i think in future i will buy a smaller folder to present.

I started of by showing earlier work that i had done on the course so i could explain how i had narrowed the types of work i had been doing down to what i liked, i started off with the first piece of 3d i had done to show what point i had started at, and then i showed my 3d kerrang ident and i explained how i had been coming back to it and tweaking it as time had gone on to what it originally was, he liked the 3d stuff as this was an area he had not had much experience in himself.

Next i showed a series of graphic style images i had done in concept studies, he liked the style of the work but specifically picked out a pieces that i had been discussing with Christinia in class when i was putting my portfolio together as the strongest of the set and we discussed all the points about it that made it strong, and this was good because it made me feel like i understood what people in the industry looked for in a piece of work that they pin pointed all the things we are helped to work at in college, the only downside of this part of the crit was that i didn't have the brief from that particular set so i couldn't quite explain what it was to represent so that is some thing i have to make sure i can explain perfectly in the future.

Finally i went on to my video work for my self directed project and I explained how i really got into this project and thought this is somewhere i might want to head into, he really liked the advert i had done for personal safety especially the strap line, he said that it word work even better if there were some more close up shots of the group of people at the start cutting between the people instead of just the one wide group shot, but that it had definite potential. I noticed that the comment about the opening shots is exactly what rick had said about the video so once again this showed that the course was really helping work to the fine points that will get my work noticed in these kinds of meetings.

After i had showed my work i asked to see some of his work and how things worked at the company as far as pitching and having problems went, he told me that allot of clients he has worked for before would come back on the strength of work he had done before, and he showed me a series of pieces that he had done for "Planters world famous nuts" he said that the brief was a very good one because the product was very good so it was easy to work with, but then the problem was they liked the idea so much they came back with another brief which he said was extremely difficult because the product wasn't good. so this was a problem they run across in the industry when a valued client comes with a bad product.

As part of research for my critical journal i asked what he felt about what is the limit for offending people in advertising and how do you approach something like that because i had been looking at violent road safety adverts, this started a little debate in the office with the other designers which was really interesting while the newer guys said that they would know what kind of line not to cross and they would make something they thought was at that line but then tone things down if the client asked too, Kieth said that that's not the way to do things he said that if you have an idea you do it and if you answer there brief perfectly and put the message across in the most effective way you have to stick to your guns and not give in to company trying to change a good piece of work, i thought this was a really good piece of advice too hear from someone who's worked successfully in the industry and that it was thinking like that what can get you were you want to go.

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