Letterpress Printing!

Received an email today containing a link to a letterpress video (link). The video was originally posted on ministry of type. I'm loving the processes used here to make some sweet, authentic letter press posters.

I'm really considering using letter press and hopefully lino to create my final posters for my professional project. As well as it looking great, it goes with the theme of my brief/learning agreement. My aim is to create awareness of 1960's British films, and what better way to create the posters than one of the original methods from the 60's!

I'm going to look into having some lesson on letterpress at uni, or hopefully with a company somewhere round uni or London.

Amazing typography: typojar

Learning Agreement

Finally settled on a title for my learning agreement:

Create a set of typographic/illustrative based film posters to regenerate/promote British film from the 1960's to a modern day audience.

It's the first time I have made a learning agreement, and honestly it wasn't too bad. I new what I wanted to do for my professional project, so I think it was plain sailing from there really. I now just need to get stuck in and work hard on this unit, hopefully resulting in my best work yet.

Defriending is the new friending

Defriending is the new friending

Busy week!

Got loads to do this week! Really not looking forward to Anna's essay brief this afternoon! It's only a 2500 word essay, but writing has never been my strongest point. I'm just going to have to get on top of things and stay ahead with it.

• Anna's brief today at 1.30...
• The pair of final designs for Body Shop D&AD brief.
• Professional project- need to start heading in a specific direction
• Portfolio presentation on thursday
• Learning agreement is in for friday! (need to book a tutorial)

Professional project- presentation

Didn't have anything together for our presentations this morning. Not because I've been lazy, just really struggling to get something together. Our task is to plan and produce our own industry level brief and complete it to the highest professional standard.

I asked Sally for a short tutorial, to maybe help me find my own direction within this brief. I've mainly struggled to narrow down a specific discipline to target my brief in (i.e. illustration, typography, photography). As I enjoy most aspects within graphic design, I've been struggling. I eventually chose the path of advertising and illustration by looking at my stronger work and obviously the work I most enjoyed designing.

The final outcome of the tutorial was that I wanted to concentrate on types of film posters (very broad, but still at the initial stages) and this is the beginning of my statement of intent:

"Create a set of *something* film posters to promote *something* film festival/genre/period."

I then created a brief 3 minute presentation for 1:30. During the critique I was given feedback about possible directions in which I could take my brief. That maybe I should choose a specific film (my favorite?), look around the local area for old cinemas re-screening classic films.

Both are areas I had already discussed in the morning during the tutorial.

Well plenty of work to be getting on with:

• Small local cinemas (contact them?)
• Library- film section, have a browse.
• Concentrating on a genre.
• A Certain direction, so to finish my statement of intent.

Animal farm Illustration!

Just handed in my Animal farm illustration for the silent auction and exhibition! It's tomorrow from 1pm - 1am at sixty million postcards/ Bournemouth. All the money raised will be going to an end of year show in London (New Designers), in which all our work will be presented to existing top designers and companies.

Heres my final illustration (watercolour and fine line pen)

Animal Farm Website

Twitter!

Finally got my twitter account up and running! Have always been uncertain about whether is was just another facebook type website; it's really not. My sister who has her own wedding planning business and uses it constantly, has gained lots of great contacts (website).

Its all about following people, and trying to get people to follow you. A large amount of big design companies have twitter pages, as well as small free lance designers!

Starting to get into a bit more now as well. Have set the colour theme to match my website, have a direct link to my website. Going to try and sort an extra blog link!

twitter.com/ben_crane

Body Shop- Photo shoot

Had the photo shoot for one of our final ideas today. There was loads of equipment, was crazy, over £3000's worth! The amazing Nikon D80 (which is a beast), an amazing tripod which came in really handy and some blinding flash guns!

The set up took us quite a while to sort out. I don't really think there is a way to explain how we did it, and I took photos on my film Canon camera and haven't developed them yet,so here is a quick sketch:

...well, not the best sketch in the world but you know! This is what the set up looked like; the flash guns lit the giant piece of white paper to give a glow effect through the fruit (well thats what we planned anyway). The camera was about 1.5 meters above the glass window (which our fruit pattern was on).

All in all the shoot wasn't disastrous, but we had set I aims high, and we didn't manage to meet them. Some of the fruit we used (such as the avocado and bananas) was too thick and the light from the flash guns couldn't penetrate it.

We have managed to edit one of the images and have a rough mock up!

Body Shop tutorial

Went into see Neil today about what direction we had gone in since our last tutorial. Explained our new ideas our the meanings behind them.

We finally came to the conclusion of sticking with three ideas and put our efforts into them. They are linked images which create an unconventional brand campaign.

Me and Oli have agreed to get on with some mock ups tomorrow and prepare for a photo shoot some time this week hopefully. We really want this to come out well, as we are putting plenty of effort into this project.

Just as we were finishing the tutorial with Neil, Justin came over and gave us some advice on some photography techniques. The set up and possible positioning of our shoot.

Same again tomorrow- need to go back round Oli's to begin some mock ups and starting trying to expand on our slogans, as they are letting the campaign down a bit at the moment.

D&AD- Body Shop, Oli's

Started back with The Body Shop brief for the first time since before christmas today. This year is going so quickly is CRAZY! Constantly got work on the go. Am really enjoying it, getting a feel for industry!

Today we've just been looking over our original ideas and are pushing them into a new direction. We are struggling a bit with which idea to go for?! We have a dozen or so ideas and can't decide which one to shed light on.

We've been over the brief again, and are breaking down the initial sentence, so we can narrow down to three final concepts:

"Create an unconventional brand campaign for The Body Shop to reinstate its position as the original pioneer of ethical beauty."