Mahas Classics By Saira // Final Visuals

Portfolio Building // Grenade Poster Revisited

As port of my current module 'Portfolio Building' I have been going back to pieces of work I have previously produced and tweaking/developing them to a higher standard so they can be used to create a professional level portfolio.
Here I have revisited the Alternative techniques module in which I created a promotional poster for a music event. When I was looking at my original design there was little blotches of colour that looked out of place and were really getting on my nerves so I was glad to get rid of them, by using the Clone Stamp tool in Photoshop I simply selected an area of colour I wanted to replicate and painted over the rogue patches of colour. I also darkened the corners of the background as I thought it would make the white type more prominent and more of a focal point. Finally I brightened up the green areas using the Levels histogram.

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.

Project Hand in // Digital Applications

Here are a few examples of the type of work I produced in the digital skills module. Before this module my knowledge of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign was not great but I had a good understanding of the purpose of each piece of software and most of the tools. The IT sessions were quite fast paced and I managed to take notes and keep on top of my work, which allowed more time to spend on compiling the notes into an InDesign document at the end.
We covered a wide range of skills and techniques including recolouring artwork, blending modes, typography manipulation, layer masks, 3D options, creating brushes and more. Overall I think my progress in this module was excellent and I am now equipped with more useful knowledge and a better skill set which will be benficial to myself and future employers.

Project brief // Digital Applications

In this module I will be creating a series of visuals for the purpose of advertisements using new skills and techniques in digital applications that are needed in the graphic design industry. These applications include Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. I will take notes during IT sessions and compile them into an InDesign document along with screenshots to evidence my learning of these new skills and techniques.