What do i want to be as a designer?

Who were you as a designer at the start of the course?
I think the main point to make here is that before this course i had never studied design, i had an A-level in Art and progressed onto a Foundation year where i expressed a love for photography and that was who i thought i was, a photographer, but after working on projects using type, 3D imagery and books i didn't know how i could fit all of that together with photography. it wasn't until i spoke with my tutor who opened my eyes to Graphic Design and how it can entail, everything. so when i started the Graphic Design course i was a photographer based designer who was starting to look at new areas of design.

Who are you as a designer right now?
At the moment i am still exploring into different approaches and things i can do, i am still a photography orientated designer but i am very interested in typography and 3D imagery. i work mostly with paper and love to use very tactile materials and work with big bold colours, i am also very interested in working with books and how this format can be manipulated. when solving problems i find i always tend to inform or give advice or solve a piratical solution, and tend not to go for bold instructive statements. i dint use shocking techniques or crude humour as i think there is enough of that around anyway.
However i have never been brilliant on computers, even though i have produced digital work, i dint feel this is my strongest approach to solving problems.

Who do you intend to be as a designer in the future?
1. i think the main aim for me is to work on the presentation of my work, i think i need to start producing work to a more professional standard. i take more advantage of the professional printers we have and use the techniques i have learned this year and perfect them, e.g. book binding, layouts and colour management.
2. i need to be more organised with my work and materials, some of my work has gone missing or been misplaced because of my untidiness, and therefore have no record of potentially great work. to be a professional designer you cant afford to have things go missing and therefore i will one way or another have all my work organised.
3. i want to be more confident in my work, i am happy to show my family and some friends but when it comes to showing other designers i really feel inadequate and sometimes feel like I'm blagging my way through. my grades so far have been brilliant and so this has given me a little confidence but my next year i want to be showing off, well sort of.

Pictograms

The Hush Sound - Lions Roar

The Hush Sound — Lions Roar from Mig Reyes on Vimeo.

I really like this video not just because its a great song but the video is all kinetic type, and even though this has been done a lot i think this works particualrly well!

Honeybear imagemaking

This is another book my Gretchen Nash. its called Honeybear Imagemaking its very simple but the ilustrations in this are beautiful, in this book i do class the typography as image on its own, the design into the lettering and how they are together was obviously a major factor.

Freak is the most common name calling

These images are from Dear Gretchen a book by Gretchen Nash. they reminded me of an exhibition at Leeds Gallery at the moment where they use cakes and the size of forks to show statistics like these ones, but i couldnt for the life of me find any images of them ones.
no-one really wants to look at graphs or pie charts but these are a fantastic way to get people reading and understanding what is normally quite a boaring subject by using bright colours and hand crafted shapes and they layout of them. i really think this is a brilliant idea, infomation and stasticics dosnt have to be a white piece of paper with numbers and lines on it and this is a PERFECT example of this.

In Case of a Vampire

as a HUGE fan on Buffy and The Lost Boys i can be slightly obsessed with Vampire things! but This is brilliant and very handy just in case!

Manchester Back Streets

Giant Stick men climbing up an office building!

This was in the universsity grounds so i dont know if its some sort of ambient art or just students with chalk and a lot of time, but i thought it was pretty clever.

This look more like something from Charlie and the Chocolate factory, or Series of unfortunate events, rather than down a back street in Manchester.

This realy did take me a while to figure out what it was, i knew there was a cow involved, but finally saw the kan kan skirt, HILARIOUS

Craft Centre

I simply loved these lights, it was just the angel i was standing at that they were just stairing at me, however my friend with the untrained eye had to be shown those big eyes and mouth!

Beautifully crafter flatpack paper clocks, these traditionally decorated clocks seemed very steady even though made of only paper and folds!

The Space Studio

These two signs for the studio i thought were some of the best work there, although not as relevant to the actual studio they, to me, are very aesthetically pleasing.

Old English Necklace, this drew in my attention immediately, it was quite big and very bold unlike some of the more subtle and simple designs there. Also having a love of all things type i like to see that it really isn't just a poster or a book you can successfully use type.

This is for all you Tuesday night Subculture fans, i cant walk past a moustache without thinking of 'know your moustache'.

Although these displays were exhibiting the feather pendants and earrings, i was much more take with the origami animals.

This is one of the studios in the Manchester craft and design centre, the space studio in particular exhibits work from students at Manchester University which is most of what is above.

Leeds Art Gallery

Victoria Kochiwski

Craft Mafia

Craft Mafia, these is an exhibition containing artsist who have rediscovered the art of knitting and crochet.

Kate Broughton is an illustrator and designer, she makes these quirky little broaches and has a gorgeous website that realy fits in with her style.

This is Madness of Many who have used sewing and textiles to make robots and guilt free taxidermy. well i would deffinantly hang this on my wall especially if the wall paper came with it.

Type Trash

i found these images on mo'type its good to see that someone is making use of all the plastic bags we throw away.

Andrew Brooks

Andrew Brooks is a Manchester based photographer and currently has an exhibition at the Urbis, firstly these photographs are amazing, these images don't do them justice, they are so vibrant and on a much bigger scale, so if you get a chance to go see it, you must.

This really is one of the most amazing exhibitions i have been to, the photographs are so powerful and unbelievably vibrant. i was amazed how he got the effect, at first i thought a pin hole camera or film processing, but i later looked on his website and his creative process often results in capturing hundreds of images to create a complete work. Then, a meticulously developed sequence of cut, paste and rebuilding, moulding a new scene from his own vividly re-imagined viewpoint that is consistent, yet also a parallel with that of the perceived reality it represents.

Emma Grover

This is another artist, Emma Grover, at the Leeds Design and Craft museum, the images are all etchings and collage and simply beautiful. they first reminded me of work by Sara Fanelli being quite childlike and playful. there is a lot of play on type aswell, being handwritten or stencils or letraset.