Wim Crouwel exhibition

Found the exhibition pretty inspiring, although I was equally impressed with the architecture in the area between the Design Museum and Tate Modern. Highly recommend walking along this stretch of the Thames. The Borough Market was a real highlight and it was also great to see the Shard under construction.

I was inspired to create my own poster for the Crouwel exhibition...

Poster Design Breakthrough

I had to design a poster as part of Professional Contexts about one of the companies I researched. I opted for Music, the Manchester-based studio most famous for their work for Man City FC *cough* arseholes *cough*

Anyway, I designed a bunch of crap before coming up with this:

When I think of Manchester, I immediately think of football and music, so I was chuffed to come up with the visual pun of a floodlight/record player. I think it works rather well. The Hacienda reference is kind of subtle but really adds something.

Introducing... The Pygmy Goats

For our Photoshop tutorials, we had to come up with a band name and then create suitable CD artwork. I've always loved the cover of The Pixies' Doolittle, so I thought I would try to create something in the 4AD style.

It's not finished but it's getting there:

Thanks but no thanks. But thanks!

I got an email from design behemoth Pentagram yesterday, just to say that they were unable to answer my questions on design ethics:

Unfortunately I am unable to help with your request.  As you can understand Pentagram is an extremely busy company and all the designers rarely have spare time to help out with student enquiries.

Pentagram is inundated with student requests and rather than reply to some we have a policy that the designers are not given questionnaires or surveys to complete at any time.

To be perfectly honest I expected this kind of response from most of the companies I contacted but this was in fact the only one. The email did however end on a positive note:

I am sorry if this is of no use to you. However, if you e-mail me your address then I will send you some promotional material if this will be of some help with your studies.

Naturally I supplied my address and this morning I got a lovely package of three little books in the post:

Not bad, eh? Thanks Pentagram!

ISO50

I love Scott Hansen's work, it is quite the opposite of shit. I really dig the faded retro palette and the fact he uses some interesting typefaces. I will try not to borrow too heavily from him in the second year, and that's a promise.

There's always loads of great inspiring stuff on his blog too: http://blog.iso50.com/

Pump Collective

I'm really looking forward to seeing the latest work from Pump Collective when I get back to uni. They are doing a private view of their newest piece a couple of weeks after we go back.

http://pumpcollective.blogspot.com/

Exciting stuff!