London Time Capsule

The Notting Hill Gate tube station, that was closed at the end of the 1950's has been opened again to reveal a selection of incredible advertisments that are still up. This fascinates me greatly, to be able to see first hand where people used to walk and what companies were doing to tempt the customer in the 50's. The typography and imagery used is in the posters is so effective. The blocky colours is what strikes me and grabs my attention most.

Examples of posters restored:

Final Tutorial

Final Tutorial on Business Identity brief today. Got some helpful feedback about the choice of colour palet used and layout of type. Here are my changes that I will present at my critique tomorrow. Changing the colour palet down to just 2 colours, with a number of various different tones of the same colour. And in regards to changes of type, I have skewed the text so that it is following the lines of the business card. Should have thought to do that.

Updated Compliments slip

Recently changed the layout of my compliments slip through researching what companies do wit regards to document size. This document size of 210x80 looks more formal and executive, and with the faded image/watermark of Jamerson in the background, it adds a exclusive feel to it.

Business Identity: James Jamerson

Business Card Front

Business Card Back

Compliments Card

Letterhead

These are my most recent, and hopefully final pieces for the business identity brief. 

Clipping Masks

Clipping masks, Clipping masks, Clipping masks.. I'm happy about how sharp my Illustrator skills are getting because of the work for Aquascutum. I must do some university work however, now I know how long I have for the freelance work, I can balance accurately.

Example of work completed today:

Mattblack Systems Freelance

I was presented with a chance to do some freelance work last week by my tutors, a live brief had been sent to them and they asked if I would be interested. After meeting the client I agreed to take it on as work outside of my studies. The job is from a company called Aquascutum and they are a luxury clothing company. For there seasonal catalogue, portraying all the new seasons stock, there are vector images of all of the clothing in all the different colour styles. My job is to follow sketches that I have been given and turn them into vector images via Illustrator.


Below: Examples of my work

Early thoughts about this project are positive, but I have a feeling this work has a chance of clashing with my university work. This will be good practice for me, juggling more than one job at a time. There is 53 different styles of merchandise, all of them in various colours. It is paid work and my employer wants me to  get as much as I can out of this experience so he has asked me to work out a price myself and then negotiate with him at the end of the project. I feel very driven to do this as my work will be in the final catalogue for the Aquascutum Autumn collection 2011.

Tutorial Feedback

My most recent tutorial on my work was helpful and I discovered areas that I had not thought to research yet. This project has really made me think and helped my process of turning information and research into visuals.

Brand Identity: James Jamerson

The brand identity brief asked us to come up with a business card, letterhead and compliments card for our chosen client. All the clients that were given out are deceased and are known for various accomplishments. I chose James Jamerson and these are early final visuals that I took to my critique with me. He was a bass player for 95% of all Motown tracks and was influential in the field of bass guitar playing, being the first artist to take a double bass and flip it horizontally and play it like a guitar. He was very talented but hardly anyone knew about him. He took on the label as an 'unsung hero' as all the attention would have been on the stars such as the Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. I wanted to portray this in my work by making the image of him intentionally hard to see. Similar situation with the thought behind the typeface. The 4 bars running through the image represent the 4 strings on a bass guitar that are all different thicknesses that, in some ways, Jamerson was hiding behind throughout his career as a musician, whether it was intentional or not.

Motion Graphics.

Participant Media - Pledge To See This Film

I think this is a great example of info graphics as well as motion graphics. The messages that are portrayed are very serious and need to be considered in a serious manner. The idea of having visuals to coincide with the voice over is incredibly affective and is a powerful way of maintaing the viewers attention. And for cases such as the future of the worlds children (in this case american children), this skill is vital.

Honesty, the best policy?

Found this on the post secrets blog and made me smile. I wonder how many people from my uni, or indeed from any university would own up to this also.

Paper Cuttings

Found some old paper cuttings that I had taken and put in an old scrap book. The first cutting named 'SANDBANSKY' was found in the centre of London, made by a sculpturer called Zara Gaze. She created this masterpiece in the middle of the night, saying that "there are a lot of miserable commuters, its nice to make them smile for a minute"

The second cutting focuses on the incredible intricate work of Dalton Ghetti, with the main picture showing his mini Elvis carved into the tip of a pencil. He has a collection of over 100 pencils, claiming that he never uses a magnifying glass and prefers to give them away rather than selling them. I personally have enormous respect and am in ore of this guys work.

The third, headlined 'hun, drawn and cornered' is a remarkable story about the war hero Len Smith. Armed only with pencils and a sketchbook, it was his job to draw detailed sketches of enemy lines, equipment and positions, risking his life, sketching from dangerous positions in some cases. In one of his most daring missions, Len crept within yards of a German HQ and drew a bomb damaged tree so accurately British experts made a hollow steel replica. The real 15ft tree was cut down under the cover of darkness and replaced by the fake which became a listening post with a soldier spying from inside.

Myspace Logo.

Myspace have launched a new logo this week and with a company that has very much fallen in popularity since the rise of facebook, I feel this was a smart move. my first reaction was that I didnt like the fact that the brand name was only partly shown, but after assesing the possibilites that are now available in regards to advertising, I think it has every opportunity to be successful.

By portraying a blank space that makes you feel like it should be filled, they may be in danger of people relating it to the apple branding, where apple show the 'i' infront of all their products and software.

Small Car. Big Ideas

This is the new ad campaign launched by Audi. the advertisements involve a series of vector graphics outlining various references that are related to driving or the road. The emphasis is on the fact that this new range of cars are the smallest audi have ever produced. This made me wonder whether people subconsciously think that the fact it is a smaller car would have direct links to how economically friendly the vehicle is. The cleanliness of the advertising campaign would certainly make you believe so.

New Gap Logo

 

Gap made a bold move last week when they changed their logo unannounced on their website, causing alot of debate.  The statement from Gap was: "We chose this design as it's more contemporary and current. It honors our heritage through the blue box while still taking it forward." Now it is understood that Gap will return to their original design. leaving Laird&Partners to take the fall for the unsuccessful design. They probably had a lot of different proposals to show to Gap, in which they chose this one and now the design agency are taking the fall for it.

I always try to find a meaning in design that has been deemed unsuccessful because at some point in the process, someone deemed it to be the best possible solution to their problem. So i tried to find positives in this radical change and came to the conclusion that maybe Gap want to be a more logo driven company, and it needed a dramatic change for this to happen. A lot of gap clothing is of a high quality but tends not to have anything to distinguish the fact it is from Gap. I imagined seeing the new logo, blown up on a white t-shirt, as a main graphic. After imagining this I began to look at the thought process behind it in a different light. I am still unsure on the topic but I think their idea to scrap the new logo altogether was wrong. People dont like change, and usually take a while to come round to it. Look at the London 2012 logo.

Effective Advertising

While researching the Morse Code as part of my new project i came across this image

 

Even though it doesnt say google, you still know it is google due to its strong colour scheme.

Clever.

Back

Back at Uni this week and instantly handed 3 briefs. lovely. feels good to use my brain again though. Our first task is to say thankyou to someone. It can be in any medium and can be ironic, serious, funny..anything. Very Broad. Probably just to get us thinking big again and getting the thought process rolling. So going to think about the people that I admire and look up to. But then again, this is not essential. First tutorial is today and we need 'scamps' of what we intend to do. The final crit is on thursday