I am CERAZY about...

So yeah, houmous is basically da bestest! Had a really fun day watching everyones presentations and eating lots of cake/chocolate/intercontinental delicacies/stroking Saori's dog. HE SO CUTE. I made a presentation which was pretty funny but Saori deleted it before I could do my talk, mild anti-climax but it was fine, everyone enjoyed the houmous. I made some badges as well because I was thinking about the idea of HOUMOUS HABITS and how the way you eat your houmous can define your personality. I was trying to experiment with the idea of flow charts and all that but it was so mind boggling that I just bought loads of houmous, carrots, cucumber and provided badges and I think everyone was happy. Ill try and get some photos of the badges up cos they were pretty cute.

Did you know Houmous is Israels national food symbol? Not racist. 

Iconic Photo

One of our introductory briefs is to recreate an iconic photo from a certain time period in the photographic studios at Chelsea. I love photography and luckily have a massive book of photographs from the 21st century so I had plenty to choose from. The time period I was given was 'The Beginning of Time - 1929" so these are two of the page layout sheets I did for inspiration.

The image which I eventually used was by August Sander of two small children. I liked it because it evokes that vintage feel with the children's outfits and the background scene, and I DO love dressing up. 

Heres a snap of me in costume, hopefully more photos of the final result to come! (Me and Josh look cute but also mildly scary)

First Logo Project Ever for the Rest of my Life.

So Ive been given my first ever project to do with logos, I feel like this is the beginning of the rest of my life in graphic design! Our brief was basically to come up with our own personal Design Ethos which related directly to our work, and then come up with a logo which could represent this ethos. Our first task was to come up with 100 different logo designs and from that we were to refine our ideas down until we had only one left. But as always, it didn't work that way for me. Here were my the 100(ish) logos.

Only problem was Paul and Nigel didn't think any of these logos stood out as a good starting point for the rest of my project. A minor spanner in the works but we cool we cool. They told me to focus on the idea of Learning from Failure, as its an ideal that I really believe in in my work, having been told many times by my teachers at GCSE, A-Level and even Art Foundation that I wouldn't do as well as I eventually ended up doing. I think thats just how i learn, I have a kind of FUCK YOU mentality, and I always feel very smug when i prove them wrong.
So after brainstorming I came up with the concept of using a Dodo to embody my ethos - I wanted to convey the idea of ADAPTING and compromising. Dodos became extinct and therefore failed as a species because they didn't have the necessary qualities to enable them to keep up with nature. In the Design world you need to adapt to survive.

"If you don't keep up you'll get left behind."

The design below was one of my favourites, I really liked the similarity between the colouring and shading of the dodos and the intricate detail on the typeface. The font is actually the one I used for my header, I loved it that much. Although I like this as an image, my Nigel pointed out a valid point that fonts like this only work on a larger scale, for shop fronts or newspapers. Logos need to be flexible so that they can be used on a small and large scale, from ads to as letterheads. 

With the help of Nigel I finally settled on this design, simple but with a clear message, works on both a small and a large scale. Voila! Hopefully whenever the crit eventually happens (it got cancelled on Friday due to Nigels house being burgled - lame) it'll get some good feedback. Fun project though and a great introduction to logo design. 

Welcome to Vauxhall/Pimlico/Millbank

One of the first projects we were given on GDC was to study an area around the Chelsea campus and record as much as we could about it; random facts and pieces of information about the shops, food prices, pub prices, night life etc. We had no idea what this was all for until we were brought into a huge room on campus called 'The Banquet Hall', and told to make a massive map of the area out of pieces of white A4 paper...we must have used about 500 sheets but we finally finished it! Heres the finished result which was recorded on a camera taking photos every 20 seconds throughout the day.

1st Year!

So I'm now officially a Student, and yet I'm still only 20 minutes away from SW London where I've lived and grown up in for the past 19 years. Anticlimax much...
Anyway so far Chelsea's been great! And as our projects start rolling in as they are just beginning too I hope to have enough inner strength to keep this blog up to date. Haven't had much luck in the past, partially due to my laziness but also because I don't have a scanner. But times are a changing, and you never know!