Riitta Ikonen

Riitta Ikonen is an artist based in London she came to stockport college to talk about what she does..

She mixes costume and nature together, she came across as a very experimental person.

I think the work she showed was quite interesting and unique. It was good to see a designer talk about there work outside of my subject area, I think it always good to hear about what other designers approaches to design are. I found her line of work wasn't to my taste, that doesn't mean to say that she isn't a good designer.

Jonathan Barnbrook

Earlier this month Jonathan Barnbrook one of the most famous graphic designers came to Stockport college to give a talk. I really enjoyed his presentation, It wasn't boring he made it his own presentation. He discussed his work and his style and included projects that he was working on currently. This talk was perfect for me because he was very typography based.

Background

Barnbrook from ages 16-18 studied at a local school in Luton and he that was the best teaching he had. Then he went on to do a diploma for a year and after this he went on to do a degree.
After this he wanted to get a job but it was quite difficult so he then started doing freelancing. He has now been working for 20 years.

He talked at lot about his contact with David bowie which I thought was quite interesting. Barnbrook created many album covers for Bowie. He showed us one called 'Breathen'.
His interests are music and art Barnbrook said ' I think its beautiful how music and art come together. This was one of the reasons he became a designer.
He also did some work for adbusters the magazine. Adbusters has been around from 1989, the layouts that he showed us were cleverly done. He talked about the typefaces that he had done and was currently doing such as, prozac, mosley, drone and mason.

I found the talk very useful. He gave good really good advice on life after graduating e.g Its better to start off on your own, especially due to the current economic climate. He also said when it comes to showing our work to that we should have a portfolio that has really good work in it because if you take a portfolio that is 'ok' we will just be unhappy, so he was urging us to take risks.
I think the way he portrayed himself in the presentation was good he seems like he is quite a laid back person with a funny personality which is good because, some design talks that I have been to previously haven't been so entertaining.

123Buero

I have recently been on a visit to Berlin, and while I was out there I went to a design agency called 123Buero along with Ashley, Jules, Mike and Laura. We were greeted by Timo Grassener.. he gave us a quick tour of his studio, and gave us all (ginger tea) not a fan of I must say.
He told us a bit about his background.. he graduated 2002, he went freelance because when he graduated there weren't many jobs about. He felt that the good creative jobs, had rubbish pay, Then there was good paid jobs, but they lacked creativity.
He showed us and talked about his work, which involved prints and editorials, his main interest was typography. He showed us typefaces that he had created in a package called font lab. They were called Maison and Pretzel.
After looking at his work we all showed him our portfolios, I found his feedback quite critical and honest. The feedback he gave me was that I should explain my ideas better and that I should have a lot more work on my area of interest which is typography. He also said that its a good idea to work outside the 'box' because you gain experience of different things. He said that we were more advanced than he was at our ages but we should have a lot more work than we were showing him.
The first thing he did notice about our portfolios were that they were very similar, so they don't really show our individual personalities, I agree with him on this point. The visit ended with a presentation Timo did a few weeks back in Paris for a workshop, which included logo design, editorials, stationary etc.. before leaving he gave us all a business card for his agency so we would be able to contact him at any time for advice on future projects.

I found the visit was very useful, I liked his honesty because that is what you need to hear you don't need someone to telling you its a good piece of work when its blatantly not. This sort of advice tends to push you to do better. The work he showed me was done to a high standard and this is what I will be competing with which scared me a bit. It definitely made me think about the work I have in my portfolio and how I could change it for future portfolio visits. What I also took from the visit was to be more individual when it comes to presenting and discussing my work, especially in the way I explain my ideas, because I obviously know my own work but the agencies won't have seen me before and won't have a clue about any of my work. So this is what I need to improve on in the future.

Clinton Cahill from MMU talks about postgraduate study

Postponed until the New Year

HelloMe and Smack communication

Hello me

Last week I went on a residential to Berlin. Hellome was the first agency that I was due to visit. Myself and the rest of the group met up outside what we thought was Hellome design agency. We then found out that It was actually the apartment of Till Wideck (The designer of the agency). We were told this by flat mate, who very kindly rang Wideck and explain what had happened. What had actually happened was the address on the Hellome website was his apartment address not the agency address. To prevent this sort of thing from happening again, I think more research into the agencies should be done beforehand, so I go to the correct place,especially if your going to a country that your not familiar with. I would have liked to go on and find the actual agency from there but due to bad weather we went back to where we were staying in Berlin.

Smack communication

This was a design agency also in Berlin, I set this one up myself, I did some research and I was inspired by there work, especially an advertisement they did for t-mobile. I emailed the agency, and heard back from them within days. The visit was arranged for friday the 19th November (the day we were leaving to go back to manchester). I was really looking forward to the visit, but due to fact it was coming to the end of my stay in Berlin, I didn't have enough money to travel to the agency.
This has taught me to spend my money better and to be more organised and prepared ( plan ahead). For example If I didn't have much money left I should of allowed myself more to be able to walk there and back to my hostel.

Brand orienteering.. Journey planner

Owen stevens is a Branding consultant and his company is called Brand orienteering. He came into Stockport College and put on a half day branding workshop for me and the rest of the group. He did a little a presentation, mini games and a few exercises.

How will brand orienteering be useful to me?

Helps with research..
It will make me think more about branding...
Its an interesting way to discuss a brief....
Makes me ask questions about my own work.....

Three main types of Brands

Rainbow brands: Always chasing the pot of gold. Confused and confusing the harder they run faster they run themselves into the ground.

Pack brands: Follow my leader. One eye firmly fixed on the competition pack brands play it safe, never stray too far from the well-trodden path.

Sticky Brands: Pro-active not reactive sticky brands create opportunites at every turn. Not afraid to take the path less travelled they set the pace and run their own race.

Owen talked about celebrity brands, brand characteristics, brand personality, basicly all the things that make a brand what it is. We played a little game owen gave us a pack of cards and the cards were brand names of cars me and my partner had to pick out cars that we considered to be affordable and popular. When he revealed the list, I found that the cars that I thought would be top of the list weren't and the ones that I couldn't see the majority of the public buying were at the top.

I found the workshop very benificial, it certaintly made me think more about my work, I based the workshop around a brief I was working on around the time of the workshop which was a the body shop brief (packaging). It made me think that there is more to the Body Shop than its products. After the workshop I looked more into the history of Body Shop to get a better understanding about the company. This helped me push forward with my work.

Come design with me...

Come design with me took place on the 7th October at Stockport College. Past graduates came along to chat to us about life after graduation they gave us some useful advice, dos and don't etc.. The event was organised by 5 members of my class Lucy, Ashley, Laura, Jay and mike. They did really well in organising it all, they split the evening into two parts for the first hour or so was chatting to the graduates and the second part of the evening was looking at there work, eating and drinking!. One half of our group chatted to about 5 graduates and the same with the other group.
I found the event really useful, It was good to get advice from people who have been through the process I am going through now. They talked a lot about the industry and what effect it has had on them. Points brought up were that they couldn't get jobs straight away, they advised us to get as much experience as possible when finishing the degree and during it such as placements, entering, working on briefs. There is also one thing that got brought up that I which I had heard before and didn't know whether it was true or not. One of the ex graduates said that most graphic design jobs want you to have experience in web design.
This made me think if this is the case then why isn't web design a part of our degree.

Hesign

Hesign is a graphic design agency based in Berlin. I set this visit up many weeks before I arrived in Berlin, I felt really lucky to get a visit with the designer Jianping. Since I wasn't familiar with Berlin I invited Juliette Brooks and Edwina Sharp to come on the visit with me.

Hesign was established in Berlin, Germany in 2002. In 2005 the branch company in Shanghai was established, and the other branch in Hang Zhou was set up in 2008. In addition to graphic design , branding, art and design and book publishing they also organise art and cultural events activites.

Jianping talked about his way of working and showed some of his projects he had done and some he was working on. His personality really shined through when he was talking to us he told us how he overcame problems that he had in the past when producing work, for example he said that he was asked to produce a book, but he ran out of paper, but instead of panicking he solved the problem by producing the book with few full pages and the rest half pages he did this by cutting the some full pages in half. Which shows to me that he doesn't take himself to seriously and has a funny sense of humour.

After we talked we all showed him our work, he didn't give us that much feedback but he seemed to like what we showed him, he invited us back to his agency anytime we go back to Berlin which was nice of him he gave us a souvenir to take a way with us which was a catalogue of his work.

I had a positive view on this visit, I thought his work was incredible, and to own three branches is incredible. I feel as a designer you need to be able to be yourself and not what other expect you to be.