i have never won anything in my life...

For the first time ever i have won something. We got the Ian anderson marks from our presentation back and remarkably we won! we came top in the following categories:

or the most compelling pitch

and

4th for for ingenuity and quality of presentation

It was obvious to us we were never going to come top in the previous category, as we had used such a simple presentation approach. however our business style presentation worked which meant, as the following scores show, we came top overall!

overall averaged scores are:

1–BLUE 4.4

2–GREEN 4.1

3–RED 4.0

4–YELLOW 3.95

5–ORANGE 3.2

We worried for nothing, but clearly a little stressing can go along way and it can kick your "arse" into gear to get something done that's worth while! [although i will admit my stressing probably waste a lot more time than doing me any good!]

I think doing the Ian Anderson workshop gave me the mini boost i needed to feel that i can do work that's worthwhile and means something, for once i didn't feel like i had failed. If the workshop did this for me i consider it a great success! despite my initial apprehensions. Thank you Kat for the invitation and of course thank you Ian for the help and encouragement.

i'm feeling BLUE...

My Ian Anderson project was one of the most stressful project's i have ever done! what seemed simple was quickly becoming an extremely taxing project. as a group we were thinking of everything possible that we could do to get them to pick blue to represent the signage. we were thinking about what blue already represents about feelings, calm, the sea, the sky, different shades, eyes, primary colors, hyperlinks, power, integrity, denim and stability, among many other properties of blue.

But we were bogged down with the actual idea of the presentation and the design of it. should we make a book, a slideshow or a poster. by the time we were 24 hours down we still had nothing and were in major panic mode!! we had lost 2 members of our group to unforeseen circumstances and were now a group of 3 doing a group for 5's work. in the end we kept the presentation simple and literally thought about it in terms of a business presentation rather than an actual piece of design. We thought about what the company would want to use the actual color for and why blue would be perfect and literally kept it as simple as that:

legibility

cost of production

benefits etc...

we made a simple pie chart and and put basic sentences together, using the typeface used on motor-way signs to get our point across. i was worried that our presentation wasn't going to be enough, that it was too simple and that everyone else's complex and fancy presentations were going to crush ours into the ground. More importantly i was worried that i was going to be brandished as a failure. scary.

Ian Anderson...

Has got to be one of the most scariest people i have ever met... but i now don't know what i was even scared of. i think his blatant honesty was the thing i was scared of the most. As much as i appreciate criticism in the sense that it can help me improve my work, i am constantly scared that someone is going to turn around to me and say look you work is crap don't even bother you might as well just leave this course now, why did you even apply. to this day this thought scares me more than anything else. So when my friend Kat said that Ian wanted her to bring a friend along to one of his workshops and she asked me my initial instinct was NO he is going to tell me i'm crap i can't go, plus the plan was to do group work, an aspect that isn't my strongest point. But after consideration about how the work i do on Ian's workshop could help my thought process and the work in my portfolio and the future i thought it couldn't hurt to give it a go. The workshop lasted for 2 day's and we were split into groups of 5, me, Laura, Nia. Katrina and molly were put into a group together and given a brief:

The world is run by one corporation, each color within the world is owned by one company , e.g. one company owns orange, one company owns red etc...

the world corporation is looking for a new color to use for all the signage throughout the world and it is your job to sell your companies color and get the contract with the world corporation for the world's signage.

each group is then given a color. our color was BLUE. we had 48 hours to design a presentation that would get us that contract.

Tim Burton, another mastepiece awaits...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeWsZ2b_pK4&feature=fvst

What looks set to be the most amazing film I have yet to see. From the trailor i have just watched,Tim Burton looks to have created another aesthetically beautiful piece of work, one which i am dying to see... March 5TH 2010!!

12 things you learn in the first 12 months out of university...

A designer came to do a visiting lecture to tell us about his years as a designer and the things he has learnt that he thought would be useful for us to know before we enter the real world of design. Craig Oldham had been working in the design industry for the past 3 years ad has previously worked for the Chase and currently worked for Music. Instead of coming in and trying to fob us off with a bit of information here and there Craig was actually useful! the most inspiring and informative lecture i've heard so far into my university degree! his most useful information was to be honest with yourself, if your doing work you don't like you'll never get to where you want to be. Don't mess around stressing about creating websites and animations if you don't want to be a web designer or an animator. Which of course is true and is something that i haven't fully thought abut before in terms of the work i am creating, i have been picking briefs depending on wether or not they sound a bit interesting or if they are written by a company i like or simply because it is a compulsory brief. However when i have picked my personal brief i have tailored my choice towards my career goals, after Craig's advice.

Another important piece of information is that placements go along way, i have only done one placement so far and am eager to do more, i have been constantly applying but have either not received a reply or been told my portfolio isn't right for their placement. [which is probably why it is a good time to start tailoring my portfolio properly!] Another good point he made was that "life and work exist outside of London" i have been so focused on the fact that to get any work or placements i would have to go to london, when in fact i don't many closer towns and cities have great design agencies that i have been overlooking because my focus was on london. a definite objective of this year it to start branching out in the design agencies i look at and am applying to in relation to placements.

I think Craig's outlook on design is refreshing and extremely helpful, especially in the way he delivered his presentation, with most visiting lecturers i feel they have been talking at me or just informing me of what they do, whereas Craig delivered his presentation towards us, it was aimed at us to help and guide us, which i loved.

One of the most inspiring things he said was don't just completely focus yourself on your work, and don't ignore the things around you. "the more things your interested in the better your work will be." It is the things around us that inspire us most, i feel like i go so fast all the time when i'm walking around that i miss out on the great pieces of design and inspiration that are around me. i should take time to look around at what is going on and it should help me to create better more cutting edge work.

http://www.craigoldham.co.uk/

it's been a while...

Since i wrote anything on my blog. i have been thinking to myself "its ok i'll start everything tommorow" but obviously tomorrow never comes. i am about to go into complete hyperventilation mode about the amount of work i have to do and the extreme feeling i will never pass this degree!!

And so it is time to get started properly and to put some real effort in, because let's be honest i DO NOT WANT TO FAIL!! so my first step is to catch up with my blog...