Food For Thought

My latest research project based around the social and experiential side of food.

Base 3

The majority of my time this week has been taken up by helping to organise an exhibition of 3rd year work. Held at 52 Princess Street in Manchester city centre, our little group designed, arranged and put up a large body of work over the two floors of gallery space. The preview was on Wednesday evening, and went really well, with a few well known faces putting in an appearance. The show's set to be up for a while so take a look if you find yourself in the city.

photos by Charlotte Wakefield

SEVN #2

The latest edition of SEVN Magazine. This month's theme is Play.

Have a flick through, it took us long enough :]

Tales To Change The World

The latest addition to my portfolio...a perspex book. My idea began primarily as a response to the great influx of digitised books. Being a great believer in the good old fashioned three dimensional book, i felt that this project should wave the flag for the physical book. 

With a brief that limited us to producing something predominantly typographic, i looked for ways to break those rules. I created images using perspex letters, and printed them on acetate and trapped them between my perspex pages. 

I wanted to re-excite the reader with an even more 3D book than ever. I hope it celebrates the text 'The Waitress' by Jack Zipes, and most importantly lets the reader use their own imagination, and create their own ideas from the imagery that Zipes describes. 

Excellent fun.

Holden Gallery Project: Two

Poster number two for the Holden Gallery. This time we had to advertise a vintage themed pop up shop. Everybody loves bunting right?

Holden Gallery Project: One

I am lucky enough to be one of three people chosen to help produce posters for exhibitions held at the gallery at Manchester Art School. This is our first one for illustrator Johnny Hannah. His work's pretty nice so pop down to the Holden Gallery next week for a gander.

Co-designed with Charlotte Wakefield & Chantelle King

And They're Off!

The first project of the year is just about done (minus a few tweaks). The brief set was 'BANG!', and we were pretty much given free reign on where we wanted to take it. I went down the route of investigating the home life of horse racing commentators (obviously..?) and produced this little spectators kit. It accompanies some audio i scripted which i may one day upload, should i work out how.

[a transcript of the audio]

The box that houses the items needs re-making, as everything's a bit of a snug fit at the mo (can't add up). But overall the general concept's there, i'm pretty happy with it.

Back to Catalunya

Is it slightly excessive to visit Barcelona twice in one year? 

Probably. 

Today i am lucky enough to be jetting off to my favourite European city for a whistle stop trip filled with excitement. It's my birthday on Sunday, so i plan to spend the day enjoying the last of the summer sun, whilst stuffing my face at the food market. 

On Monday and Tuesday i am attending the AGI 2011 conference, which has some fairly massive names in graphic design speaking. Very very excited. Hopefully i'll come back feeling hugely inspired and ready to launch straight back into project work.

Summer Salt

Forty days of food and drink, my response to the data collection summer brief we were given. Alarming how much one eats and drinks in that space of time. 

Alter Is Born (Almost)

An exciting endeavor a friend and i have been working on for some time. The final touches are being made, and then it's ready to go to print.

Summer Salt

A Personal Preservation Project
We are constantly evolving, every second, minute, hour, day, week, and month of every year. Observing, consuming, working, doing, wanting, waiting, interacting, desiring, developing and changing – and all of these complex interrelationships and many more affect our views, habits and behaviour, every decision that we make influences what happens next in our lives and has impact on others and the wider world around us.
As societies have evolved they have always made attempts to preserve and store their daily experiences by using various visual languages, methods and techniques, from chalk on walls, paint on canvas, words in books, musical scores, recording static and moving images.
How can we classify, quantify and measure the changes of these complex evolutions?
This is going to be a personal investigation in which you will be observing yourself in macro detail over the next few months and then making sense of the information by visualising the data collected.
Part 1 OUTLINE CRITERIA 
What are you going to collect and how are you going to do it?
Design a way to record your daily activities over the summer months; this could be in the form of a questionnaire, visual dashboard, diary, visual journal, series of charts, apps etc.
How can you reduce your daily activities into quantifiable information?
Is it through a series of tick boxes, segments, shorthand, scientific models, tallies, graphs, pictograms, charts, tables, a series of photographs, film or some other method?
What criteria should you include?
The information gathered could be physical, mental, emotional, subconscious activity, economic, relationship interactions, changes in geography, environment, the weather, what you consume, distance travelled, time elapsed, sensory factors, multitasking, sleep patterns, brands which you come into contact with, websites visited, tweets made, the music you listen to, even concurrent activities happening outside of your immediate environment which have impact on your day.
Part 2 OBSERVE / COLLECT 
Go about your daily business, work, eat, sleep, go on holiday, let your hair down and have a well-deserved rest. But at the end of every day record your daily activities onto your beautifully designed measuring apparatus.
Part 3 ANALYSE / ORGANISE / EVALUATE
Now you have to do something with all of this information which you have gathered about yourself and analyse, arrange, order and visualize it all into some kind of holistic narrative, find patterns, make sense of yourself and the activities you have encountered. What insights have you discovered? Create graphs and charts, map your movements, and design pictograms/icons that can represent you and your experiences. Think metaphorically; even relate what you have done to a wider cultural context. Based on these findings try to predict what will happen next. Its what you do with the data at this point, which will be the really interesting part of this project and will show how ambitious you really are.
Part 4 INTERPRET / PRESENT / PUBLISH 
What would be the best way to present this information? The format is up to you, it could be in the form of a wall chart, an annual report, fold out map, info graphic poster, newspaper, editorial, documentary, interactive media etc. Whatever way you decide to interpret this data, we would like you also to produce an A3 poster, which will present your findings as a signpost/teaser campaign to your body of output.




Time to get recording...

Project 2.5: Specification

**New Brief**

This brief is about book cover design; more specifically it's about branding a series of books as a visually coherent set. This brief is also intended to get you thinking about the expectations of target audiences and how to engage that audience without resorting to cliches. You are expected to develop a series of predominantly typographic approaches for the following set...

Brave New World: Aldous Huxley (1932)

Nineteen Eighty Four: George Orwell (1949)

Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury (1953)

A Clockwork Orange: Anthony Burgess (1962)

I am a Bucket & Spade...

For the past two days i've spent more time in the studio than anywhere else. Ian Anderson has been running a workshop for 14 of us and it's been pretty intense. Yesterday he asked us to create a self portrait of ourselves as graphic designers, without drawing ourselves, or using our name. The brief took me completely by surprise, i hadn't expected to have to think about myself. He was trying to highlight the importance of knowing who you are as a designer, which is something i feel like i haven't had time to think about at all lately. I decided to draw my self portrait as a bright orange bucket and spade. It represented how i feel as a designer at this moment in time, shovelling choice bits of what i'm learning into a mix to try and create a stand alone structure, or piece of work, whilst highlighting the importance of trial and error. 

Really demanding two days, but very rewarding. 

Renaming Mr Anderson

A while ago i posted about an optional brief we were given by the designer Ian Anderson. He was going to pick 14 of the submissions to work with over a series of workshop sessions. This was my response for an A1 poster that renames him:

I was lucky enough to get picked 

Project 2.4

**New YCN Brief**

Devise an integrated campaign for one of Ted Baker's product licence collections: eyewear, footwear, watches or fragrances.

Project 2.4: Careless Design Campaign

Just a few images from our current project. They're part of a viral campaign to encourage designers to check their work before going to print, and raising awareness about how much paper is wasted through careless design. 

Doesn't the ink look lovely on this paper? If you look really closely you can see the really small bleed lines from the letters.

Open Graphics

*New Brief*

In groups, Create a viral movement amongst designers that links Arjowiggins Creative Papers with creativity and the creative design process.

Set by D&AD.

Creative Bloc

My responses to the Topman brief we were given a couple of weeks ago. I made flyers, canvas bags, gift cards etc. Really quite enjoyed this one.

Interpretation Exhibition Opening

Last night was the grand opening of our 2nd year 'Interpretation' exhibition. It's up for a week, showing group work that we did just before Christmas. There's something nice about putting up exhibitions, i always find it fun, like it's an official marking point of a stint of time. I did spend longer than was comfortable in a hot, cramped cabinet stringing up posters whilst looking like a Damien Hurst formaldehyde exhibit gone wrong, but i think overall it went quite nicely.

 Good wine and nibbles.

Ian Anderson Workshop Brief

**New Brief**

An optional project, for those wishing to get onto a workshop with Ian Anderson. Only a small number will.

Brief: Internationally renowned designer and founder of The Designers Republic,
Ian Anderson wants to change his name. He's never liked his own. Names are
given to us, they reflect the past present and future from our parent perspectives,
not our own - they don't represent us, although sometimes we grow into them.

How would it be if our names represented something about us, if our names were

descriptive, however obliquely. If our names, like brands, described something of

how the consumer was supposed to react to the product.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to rename him and create a

promotional poster informing the public of the change and explaining the reason

behind the new name.