Mahas Classics By Saira // Brief

'Mahas Classics By Saira' is an independent fashion brand that fuses traditional Indian dress, luxurious fabrics and detailed hand embellishments with contemporary western styling.
The client came to our studio asking for a complete branding solution including a logo, business card, letterhead and flyer that will be distributed at trade events.
The brand was described as 'Classic, sophisticated, individual, pret a porter, day meets night, womenswear for all occasions.'

As the logo is basically the face of the brand, it is important to portray the characteristics given by the client visually with the logo. I will carefully consider use of typography, color, and other graphic elements to produce 2 suitable logo options for the client

Once I have developed the logo, I will design a business card containing the clients contact information, and a brief description of their services.

I will then produce a flyer to be distributed at trade events, which will describe the clients services and have space for any promotional offers such as the reduced price on the 2012 Fashion Show Collection which is shown in the clients current flyer.

Finally I will create a letterhead which will fit the style of the business card and flyer.

The deadline for this project is Tuesday 30th so I will work on it in at college and in my spare time at home.

Seb Lester Talk & Presentation

Seb Lester is a type designer and calligrapher from East Sussex, who specializes in letterforms and typography. Today he came into Newcastle College to give a talk to the Creative Industries department.  I had already heard of Seb Lester before he came to the college as I had seen his calligraphic prints in a gallery called Electrik Sheep in Newcastle, and as typography is an area of design that greatly interests me I found his presentation very inspiring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4spmdX5DDcc&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

He showed us several videos, firstly something he created at University as an animation project which is a music video to Super Sharp Shooter by The Ganja Kru. I enjoyed this video as it's a drum and bass classic, and it was an interesting way of seeing music represented through use of animated typography.

While employed at Monotype Imaging, Seb developed typefaces for brands including Waitrose, British Airways, The Daily Telegraph and more. He has created typefaces such as Neo Sans, Soho and Soho Gothic, and has an extraordinary talent in the form of calligraphy. He has produced work for Apple, Nike, Penguin, Ministry of Sound, Maxim.

A saying that is used in one of his videos, and he also said in the talk is being a calligrapher makes him a better type designer, and being a type designer makes him a better calligrapher. This shows he is very passionate about letterforms and devotes a lot of time to experimenting with them. 

At the end of the talk I was very keen to start experimenting with calligraphy, but in the past I have been interested and not been able to find anywhere that supplies materials. So when Seb said he had a post on his tumblr for people wanting to get into calligraphy I had a look and now know what equipment is good for beginners so I will purchase some in the near future.

Sign Writing

While browsing through MountainDewie's flickr, I found this photograph of a hand painted sign in a barber shop window in San Fransico. With developments in computer aided design hand painted signs are becoming a dying art, which is a shame because they can add a lot of character to businesses store fronts, vehicles and menu boards etc. After seeing this picture I remembered seeing a sign (hand painted as a matter of fact) near the Sunderland General Hospital for a signwriters in the area, which led me to think if there was much opportunity for careers in this line of work in the North East so I looked online and found a few specialist companies who offer a traditional hand painted sign service. Two of those were Ron Carroll Signs in Sunderland, and Opus Signs in Newcastle both hand painted sign specialists. It seems that there are not many specialists left in this region and it looks like something I would be interested in doing. From here I might decide to contact one of these company's to see if there are any opportunities for work, but I will definitely be getting some wood to paint on, or look in charity shops for cheap mirrors or picture frames to paint.