Screen Printing Fun

Something I have come to really enjoy is screen printing, this is a skill I learnt in level 4 and had no previous knowledge of. I decided that I would create some prints for christmas presents and cards. This way I could practice and have some fun with experimenting. I created a christmas card design that includes my dog and created to prints for members of my family. I did the whole screen printing process alone and did more mixing colours with ink. Overall I had fun doing so and I feel more confident that I could do screen printing within a module.

Glug Event

Last week I attended an Creative event called Glug Leeds. Located in Munro house leeds I saw 7 talks by creative people and found it vey inspiring, I wrote some notes for each talk, what I found interesting. Overall it was a great experience to be surrounded in an friendly environment by creative people.

Build

• Inspired by music
• The Graphic Language of Neville Brody
• You think that London is where you need to be, but that is changing
• It is liberating to buy a studio space and be able to live and work in a different place
• Doing a huge range of projects is both an advantage and a disadvantage
• We try to partner with people who are talented in their field like animation.

Studio 12

• Started at uni
• A place to be creative, experiment, have a space to learn.
• They change the course and facilities on what you advise us.
• We bring in mentors to work with people
• Writing Britain (Ma) The power of dreams
• We give people a platform into the industry
• Its always about solving a real life problem
• Do not limit your creativity to those around you, push recourses and boundaries
• Understand and respect others creativity and make it work with yours, you need patience.

Intern Magazine

• You are the only person that sets the boundaries in your career
• No one would give me a job so I thought I will make my own
• Young people are trapped in a cycle of unpaid work
• We believe that young people are the future
• Creative work has value
• The hardest thing is deciding what you want to do
• Challenge gender pay gap, fight for diversity
• Age is just a number
• Do not underplay your value
• If you follow the herd the view wont change

She does digital - Encourage Women in the creative industry 

• Epiphany
• Be a role model
• We develop digital talent in leeds
• Leeds Digital festival
• #Wheredidyoustart?

Creative Life - Matt Essam, Freelance 

• Studied new media at leeds
• Started freelance with a friend on his course
• I would take on any job, problem, you attact nightmare clients who don't pay much money
• The 4 hour work week Timothy Ferris
• Alan Watts, what would you do talks
• Our values are the things that are important in our lives
• Authentic Creativity, Creativity is driven by passion, purpose and values
• The portfolio lifestyle
• Identify what you really want
• why do you want these things?
• Find ways to put values in your life.

Only Studio

• 5 lessons
• Be nice to people
• Maximise every opportunity
• Share your passion
• Be brave
• Do good work

Chris Kenworthy

• Freelance
• What do you stand for?
• What do you believe in?
• Have a vision of what you want
• Fear- get rid of it
• It can be lonely and hard
• Business is based on trust
• You get highs and lows, however there are more highs
• Free thinking, independent people, who motivate themselves and are well organised and adaptable. 
• Do friendly favours
• Know your limits, know yourself
• Relax, something always turns up
• There is no such thing as the right price
• Theres no shame in small
• No one really knows what there doing !
• The human freelancer - book

Age of the Zeal

Hollie Clarke who does Fine art at the college put on a exhibition night that is for her art work. It included live acts and art, photography and sculptures. Going to this event was like nothing I had seen before and got me talking to people on other courses within the college. Overall It was a good event and I will be keeping an eye out for other students events in the future.

Final Labels

I gave my final Labels to the school and they put them up in the correct places. They were really happy with the final outcome. I found the project challenging but rewarding as I got to see my final outcomes being used. I found it difficult to work to the short timescale I was given but I managed to finish it onetime. When I saw how they put up my work I thought that the ribbon choose looked a little bit messy in certain areas. I shared this opinion and they are going to rearrange the ribbon to look neater but overall it was a success and unlike any project that I have done before. Hopefully there will be more projects I can do for them soon.

Banana Magnet

It is important to be able to work in a group and be a valuable member of a team. For PPP we had a large task that I really enjoyed participating in.
The day started off by being put with somebody you dint know from a different course.
I got Dana, we had to create an object using the first letters of our names. We came up on many but ended up picking Dog Knickers as it was the funniest. We then pitched our idea to a larger group and won, however after finding out some other team had dog related object I suggested we change idea and go with GooseKettle. Once we confirmed what we were doing our larger group gave out roles. I helped with branding and presentation.
I identified that I do not enjoy presenting and that is something I need to do more of. Therefore I volunteered to get up with two other group members to present.
The group that won was Dog Latex. We were then in a very large group. my job within this group was to go out in a smaller group to hyde park to take videos of dogs that could be used on the commercial and also look at videos I already had of my dog. Overall by the end of the day, our group had created a 30 second long commercial that won! I really enjoy the task and although I was nervous at the start of the day to collaborate with new people by the end we were all talking and working together on the same project and it went very well.

Creating the labels

Starting to create the Labels I made a template on Illustrator which I could type the quotes into. I picked the font KG Primary Italics because It is the font that match the school hand writing code and it easy to read. Mr Robson also agreed. 

Using the schools budget for the project I bought some gold paint, washi tape, glitter and paper to use. I then hand painted over 50 quotes and put the tape and glitter on them. This was a very long process but was agreed the best way to get the effect that they wanted. Doing this part of the project I only had 5 days to complete it and this was not a lot of time. I had to spend hours a day doing this. This helped me with my time management and working with a budget. I had to take my time as if I went out of the lines with the gold paint I would have to start over which would waste the materials.

New Designers London

I went to an event in London at the New Designers Exhibition at the Business Design Centre. The Exhibition showcased design from individuals from many universities in the UK. I was inspired looking at the students work. Most of the work was by design students who had just graduated and I got to speak to them about there work. The exhibition was great at promoting there work and they got offers from large companies. This made me want to think about applying my work for many exhibitions in the future and how it is important for emerging designers to put themselves out there in the public eye.

Label Project for school

Southwick Primary schools new headteacher wanted to create something that he could display in the school to mark a new change. I had a meeting with him and he had the idea to create labels. He wanted labels that had quotes on that he could hang from a string throughout the school. He showed me where in the school he wanted the quotes to go and I noted that It would start at the beginning where the infants are all the way past the classrooms and out through the main reception.

I also noted that childrens work would be on the walls therefore the labels would need to stand out against the bright colours without covering the work. With my information I took away I began idea ready for our next meeting.

Designing Branding for a Southwick

Over the summer I was asked to do some Jobs for Southwick Community Primary School in Sunderland. They have just gotten a new headteacher and they needed somethings updating because of that.
I designed a new letterhead including the new information and I also changed the design to include two of the logos. They liked the design and are now using them.

He also asked me to make compliments slips, I never heard of them so had to do a bit of research into what they usually look like. Then I created some versions that I thought were appropriate for a school.

This small project was interesting to do as I do not usually design branding that so structured and work with information given to me. However it went well and the client was happy.

What I found Challenging last year in PPP

Reflecting on PPP last year there were aspects I found challenging that I could improve on this year.

Last year we had to brand ourselves. I found this difficult as I had to look at myself as a designer and how to promote myself which I have never done before. I found it hard to come up with a idea that I loved and best represented me, but by the end of the year I had some notebooks created.

We also had to do a presentation on ourselves. I found this incredible daunting as I have a slight fear of public speaking. I found making the presentation okay and that I had plenty of things to talk about, but the actual speaking and getting the timing right frightened me. I spent a lot of timing practicing my presentation as I felt I would be less nervous. After my presentation I was very pleased with how it went and felt a lot more confident. However this year I want to carry on improving my public speaking skills so I do not get so nervous before hand.

I hope that this year I can really know what I want to focus on next year and what I want my next steps to be after I graduate.

Moving onto level 5

Moving on in level 5 I want to continue to push myself to use traditional printing methods and experiment more. I want to concentrate on Publication Design as it is something that I am most interested in and enjoy the most. I also want to look at branding as I had many independent briefs this year from people asking me to give them logos and identity. I also still like promotional design as it is important to many areas.

Final Outcome for self branding

For my final outcome for my self branding I printed my notebook designs onto all brightly coloured papers to show the various book genres that you can read and also so there was lots of choice for people to pick there favourite colours. I saddle bound my books as it is a new method I came across that I liked. I choose the font Bromello regular as it is a type that I like as I like the Calligraphy Style. On the back of the books it reads Kate Higgins Designs in the century schoolbook font, a font that is commonly used in literature. 

I also made some bookmarks with the same illustrations and messages as I love to read and believe it is an important way to get inspiration and gain knowledge.

Overall I am happy with my self branding however next year I wish to expand with my ideas and designs depending on my interests and extra knowledge I will gain.

A Presentation on Myself

Something that has never been a strong point for me is confidence and speaking in a crowd. I am a quieter person who usually thinks that everyone else's work is better than my own. This is something I wanted to work on this year, I have been working in groups and being forced to talk and voice my opinions to others. I really struggled to get my opinions herd when doing the first group task, however since then my confidence has grown and I have been working and talking with people more. Something that I had to do in PPP is do a 7 min presentation about myself. The days leading up to it were full of nerves. I was worried I would not be able to speak or that people would not understand what I was trying to say. However after doing the presentation I was very proud of myself as I was so interested and engaged with what I was talking about I was not so nervous and people said I was really easy to listen to and my voice was relaxing and understandable. Next year I wish to gain confidence and hopefully feel more confident when presenting.

I made a presentation that had mainly pictures but included a small line of words at the
top middle like where the title is on every page of a classic book. The presentation was
black and white like a book.

Learning Trust Logo

Recently I was contacted by a school in the area I live to create the logo for there learning trust. They needed the logo to be created over a few days and gave me the guidelines to include 'Better Together', North Sunderland Learning Trust on a banner and to have an image of children holding hands to show support. I illustrated a logo and made a few colour and font variations to show them, they were really happy with the outcome and are having a meeting next week to determine which logo is best suited.

Doing this task really helped my time management as I had many tasks I had to do at the same time and I still choose to do this task even with short notice. It is also getting my name as a designer out there and the client said they would ask me to do more design work for them soon.

Branding Someone Else

We were given the task to brief someone else in level 4 graphics on our self branding so that we could see other peoples ideas and so we could experience being a client. I asked Harrison Wheatley to come up with some sketches for a logo for my self branding. 

He created a logo for me that was in his style of sharp shapes and using my initials. This task was good for me to see how someone with another style will represent me. 

I was also asked to create some logo ideas for Josh Storey. I talked to him and made some notes on some of the things he said about himself. I then created some Sketches and digitalised the ideas I liked the best. I also gave an business card idea. When I sent it to him he said he liked my ideas.

My favourite Briefs

So far in level 4 I have done many briefs so I have enjoyed more than others. One of my favourite briefs was a competition brief for the guardian to create a book cover for a Agatha Christie Classic.

I enjoyed being given an random book so I could research it and get to know the story line to inform my cover design. I also like briefs that allow us to be most creative and have the least guide lines.
I also enjoyed design principles when we got to create our own publications and secret 7.

Creating my self branding

After thinking deeply about something I could create I knew I wanted to give people something they could use and benefit from and not just something they would through away. Something that I love is notebooks. I collect them and have a shelf full, so many that I do not write in them all. I love to make notes and do sketches. It is important to write down ideas when they come to you and write down new things you have learned. You can also use notebooks to write lists to keep yourself organised.

So I decided to create notebooks as my self branding so that people can use them to benefit themselves. I decided to break down key things I use notebooks for and create 3 book styles for them. I decided to create them in a similar style to Coralie Bickford-Smith who's design I love.

I created Butterflies as they grow and develop from caterpillars. Light bulbs as gaining knowledge and puzzle pieces to represent different people coming together to create a full picture.