UKFSEG Results

During the summer the UKFSEG panel (United Kingdom Forensic Science Education Group) selected my design as the winner of the UKFSEG live brief competition.

It was great news because I did a lot of work on the logo and can now add it to my portfolio and C.V. It also provided some valuable experience as I was required to package the identity for delivery to the client. I had to provide them with a variety of formats and also some usage guidelines. 

D&AD Annual 2011

I was also given an Amazon voucher by UKFSEG and have decided to spend it on the new D&AD annual which is out on 20th October. It features the best creative work from the year. The D&AD awards panel judges over 20,000 works from design studios, advertising agencies, branding consultancies, film production and photographic agencies, digital media pioneers and other creative firms from all over the globe.

Winners receive the legendary D&AD Yellow Pencil Award - or in case of exceptional and outstanding work, the rare Black Pencil Award.

Kerning

Found an interesting site this morning called Kerntype. Its a fun game for designers, where you can test your typography skills against professionals.

Your mission is simple: achieve pleasant and readable text by distributing the space between letters. Typographers call this activity kerning. Your solution will be compared to typographer's solution, and you will be given a score depending on how close you nailed it. Good luck!

I think I'm going to have to close the site because I've been playing it for a while now and should get back to work.

NSS Poster - Competition

On friday I submitted my design for the National Student Survey poster competition. I'm not quite sure its a finished design but I'm hoping they like the idea behind it. 

It's supposed to read as two sentences, one statement: "What is on your mind, is on our mind". I felt it portrayed the message the NSS wanted to get across in a thought provoking way. I'm still going to work on it because I think I'm onto an interesting idea and would like to get it right my portfolio.

Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design

Over the summer we were given a list of names, famous names not just for design but music, art, film, sport and even politics. We were told to look into the list, choose 40 and research who they were. I began to sort out the list, first by occupation and then how much I knew about them.

I ended up with 6 groups; Big names, New faces, Linked, Design Groups, New Designers and Graphic Designers. 'Big Names' was a list of famous people I should know more about. 'New Faces' were people I knew of but knew nothing about. Next was 'Linked', people from the list who were related or worked together and the final 20 were all about designers.

Later on I decided to type the first few from the list into google and found out it was the index from Michael Bierut's book; Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design.

I got the book from the library yesterday and so far it seems really interesting. It touches on how design is taught in higher education and the transition into the real design world.

NSS Poster - Research

I've been doing a bit of research into previous NSS posters and found some nice designs as well as some horrible ones. I like the two designs below, done buy Teesside University student designer Stephen Young. Nice ideas and done in a style which would appeal to the student audience.

'Better' brand agency created Northumbria University's campaign proposal. Further details can be found on their website, here.

I like this concept: the slogans appeal to the right audience, the colours are vibrant and attract the audience's eye and it portrays a clear message.