OUGD502 - Studio Brief 01 - Saul Studio - Dan Pilgrim

Today we had Dan Saul Pilgrim, a Leeds freelance graphic designer come and give a talk in the studio.

Dan graduated from the University of Leeds a few years ago after studying graphic design. When working with a partner didn't go as planned Dan decided to go freelance, working from home.

In terms of how Dan presented his work he initially started by talking through what he wanted to cover in the presentation which was effective in engaging the class and gave the presentation structure.

Dan then spoke about what influenced him and his work which is very minimal with a lot of focus on typography. Once he graduated he went into film production with a company called Left Eye Blind who work with artists such as the Kaiser Chiefs, Haim and Charlie XCX.

He initially began by starting up a studio with his friend from university, they created a website, business cards and a publication called Yorkshire Boast which highlighted the great things about Yorkshire.

He left university thinking that work was going to come to him, which wasn't the case.
Dan began a personal project called Coffee Shop North, funded by the public and the owners if the coffee shops featured. The contents of the book focussed on the drinks, the people and the coffee shops themselves. It was nominated for awards such as BBD&PA. 

The typeface used within the design was Fugue Headline by Raadim Peško. He said he had chosen this typeface because of small details like the T looking like a tamper, which they use to press down coffee granules with.  Dan's presentation emphasized his passion for typography which was evident throughout his work.

VTF type foundry is another company that Dan suggested looking at.

He also stated that social media is a good way to make connections and find collaborations.

What I noticed when Dan was talking through his work was that every design decision he had made was very informed, which is important when it comes to explaining the output to clients.

He also completed some branding for a popular shop in Leeds,  Colours May Vary. The colours, shapes, and style are very suitable for representing the aesthetic and personality of the shop. However, personally, I think repositioning the writing slightly would have improved it's legibitliy as curently some may read it as 'may colours vary'. 

Another piece of work that interested me was the large scale infographic for Marmaduke's cafe in Sheffield. Some aspects such as the Espresso, Milk and Foamed Milk ratio where really interesting, shown below, and I can imagine customers would enjoy reading it while waiting in the queue or sitting alone enjoying a coffee. 

To complete the presentation Dan showed some quotes, shown below:

"Your attitude is important to make it work."

"Get yourself in the right position."

"Collect Graphic Design."

"Find your Niche."

"do/don't move to London."

I thought Dan's presentation had some really good points. He talked through the challenges faced with going freelance and gave us information on different ways of getting a budget to create our own projects such as using resources like crowd funding websites. After his talk, I have decided that going freelance after university is something I wouldn't want to do as I feel working as part of a design team in the industry would be more beneficial for getting a job I enjoy. 

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 02 - Interview Questions for Peter & Paul

• What is Peter & Paul's Motto? 
• How would you describe your approach to design?
• What type of brief or project do you enjoy working on the most and why?
• What are you currently fascinated by and how is it feeding into your work?
• What’s been your most satisfying project to date?
• Can you remember the first images or events that made you think about becoming a graphic designer?
• What opportunities do you think Sheffield presents to young designers? 
• Where is your favourite place in Sheffield to go for inspiration? 
• What do you hope for Sheffield as a city in the future?
• What do you know now that you wish you knew when you were starting out? 

Examples of Peter&Paul's work from their Portfolio: 

Campaign for Tramlines Festival

Crooked Man Record Labels

Chicken Town Branding

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 02 - Interview Questions for SidebySide Studio

• Please could you tell me briefly about the evolution of SidebySide? 
• How do your skills compliment or contrast with Oliver's/Daves?
• Have any projects changed your outlook on design?
• What’s been your most satisfying project to date?
• What’s SidebySide studio’s motto?
• If your studio had a mascot what would it be? 
• What sort of opportunities do you think Sheffield as a city has to offer young designers? 
• Where is your favourite place in Sheffield to go to get inspired? 
• What do you hope for Sheffield as a city in the future? 
• Looking back, is there a piece of advice that you would give to yourself as a young designer starting out?

Here are a few of my favourite projects they have completed from their portfolio:

Metal and Dust Branding, using embossing

Branding for Amrita nutrition

Logo sketches for Amrita Branding

Branding and custom typeface for Nova Interiors

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 02 - Interview Questions for Tonik

1) If you could describe your studio in three words, what would they be? 

2) How was the design studio Tonik conceived?

3) Where did the name "Tonik" come from?

4) What is the most rewarding part of being a designer at Tonik, and why? 

5) I see your studio is a multidisciplinary design studio, doing everything from typography to web design, what do you think are the benefits to working in this kind of environment, over one that specialises in a certain area?

6) Your portfolio showcases a range of styles, how do you and your team usually set about approaching a new project?

7) What things do you take inspiration from?

8) If you had to choose, what is your favorite area of Design?

9) What made you choose Sheffield as the place to set up Tonik?

10) Where is your favorite place in Sheffield to visit when you're feeling uninspired?

11) What do you hope for Sheffield as a city in the future?

12) Is there anything you’ve learned over the years as a designer that you would want to share with your younger self? 


Examples of Tonic's work from their portfolio:

Branding for Oisoi food market

Branding for Portland House

Branding for Foxwood

Branding for Chinampas

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 01 - FEMFEST

On the 10th of February I went to the exhibition Femfest at Hyde Park Book Club in Leeds. The event was a multi-arts festival celebrating women artists and musicians in Leeds. My housemate Elly was also one of the contributors so we all went along on the opening night to support her. 

The event was really cool and empowering to young female creatives in the Leeds area and provided a good networking opportunity to chat to fellow creatives and appreciate the talent Leeds gals have to offer! 

Supporting women in the creative industries is something I feel really strongly about and it was a great chance to go down and get a feel for the community spirit. 

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 02 - Inspiration for interview Questions

When preparing a set of interview questions to ask the 3 studios which I had contacted I looked for inspiration from a number of design websites and blogs which constantly interviewed creatives. 

Design boom ask a good variety of questions which would generate interesting material for a report. Here is one interview I took inspiration from.

Another website who often conduct websites with creatives is Cool Hunting. Here are a list of their best interviews from 2016. This quote from the sight highlights an important message when it comes to interviewing someone: 

'As a journalist, one immediately knows when an interview is going well. There is an understanding, or even connection, between the subject and an interviewer. One's goal is never to land a quote that makes a point but to have a substantial dialogue that yields new ideas and truths.' - Cool Hunting

I really want my interview to be more like a friendly conversation with a good flow of interesting questions. This will be important for building a relationship with the studios which I am interviewing which will hopefully be beneficial to me after I graduate, building a large network of contacts who I can keep in touch with. 

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 02 - Emailing Tonik

Email to Emily Cox, the creative director at Tonik: 

Response:

Conversation:

Despite sending over the list of questions via email, unfortunately Emily was very busy at the time and I never got a response. However I didn't let this deter me. A few weeks later I rang Tonik again to ask if I could come in for a chat. Again we couldn't organise a date that suited the both of us to meet up in the studio, so I never got a chance to look around Tonik's office space. 

Emily did however agree to conduct the interview with me over the phone. This meant that the tone of voice and length of the interview matched that of SideBySide's and Peter&Paul's, creating consistency over across the 3 with them all having the same conversational tone. 

I'm really glad that I didn't give up on getting the chance to speak to Emily as the interview was really informative and gave me lots to think about with loads of helpful advice. 

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 02 - Emailing Peter&Paul

Email to Peter&Paul:

Response: 

Email to Lee:

Response:

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 01 - Footprint Talk

Footprint are an ecological printing company based in Leeds that have a huge focus on being as environmentally friendly as possible. Footprint is a coopertive which means the business is jointly owned and run by the workers, making it a tight knit community where they can control what they print, their wages etc. creating equality between them. A couple of ways that the remain sustainable and ecological is by using only recycled stock and also sustainable inks and by only distributing within the UK they are keeping their carbon footprint to a minimum.

It's interesting to see a company that focuses so much on their ethics and environmental footprint, especially in an industry where paper printing is used on a mass scale by various companies on a daily basis.

The work they choose to do for clients is entirely chosen by them, if they feel it's an unethical topic, e.g. homophobic, racist etc. they'll refuse their work so it's nice to see a company with a set of values that they stick by. Something else they do is tour the UK to various printing festivals, taking their printing equipment so that they can collate work from lots of different people and print it all within a magazine which they refer to as a 'zine in a day'.

They also introduced us to risograph printing and brought in a really nice selection of zines and calendars etc. that had been printed using this method like the one below:

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 02 - Emailing SidebySide

Email to SidebySide: 

Response: 

OUGD502 - Studio Brief0 01 - YCN Talk

YCN (You can now) is a curated creative network based in Shoreditch, East London who visited our studio this morning to discuss themselves and to give us more of an insight into what they do and who they are. This was an interesting talk as I had only recently become familiar with YCN through their Student Awards which some of us chose to take on this year. 

They describe themselves as a curated creative network that do a range of things such as work alongside big brands but also source talent to help work with these brands and other clients that may need a specific kind of designer(s). Their aims are to nurture artists allowing them to develop their style, build trust, build networks, and help get client and contacts in touch with one another. 

YCN work with a broad spectrum of brands which allows insight and intelligence to be shared amongst designers, building a network between designers and clients looking to work with designers and collaborators, helping source talent eg. companies or illustrators. 

The Student awards began in 2001 and the deadline for this year's competition is midnight on the 23rd March. 

Their advice for young designers getting involved in the competition to:

- Get your thinking down on paper. 

- Do in-depth Market Research 

- Research competitive brands in the market 

- Make your findings broad, well displayed and succinct 

- Approach the campaign in whatever way you feel fit. Think outside the box. 

- go beyond what is asked, eg. create an app to go with it. Read the brief and look at what intended outcomes should be and could have the potential to become. 

- Add weight to concept. 

- Conduct Surveys. 

A helpful pointer they gave was advising us to try things that aren't typically suggested on the brief but that can be a nice addition to the work submitted. This was giving context to the work itself, one person who won in a previous year added a mosquito net to a bottle of Fever tree tonic water to show that it was for a malaria charity and did an app as well. Thinking outside the box and creating work that the individual feels is appropriate to the brief is something they also suggested, rather than sticking so strictly to the brief, having their work in extra and possibly more appropriate formats was also advised.

Aside from the content of the presentation, the way the presentation was structured itself and the way the speaker approached it was something I picked up on as being something I should incorporate into my talks and get into the habit of doing. The slides contained little to no information meaning it was purely visual, keeping me engaged whilst he spoke along side it. Also the slides gave a sneak peak as to what he was going to discuss which was helpful. 

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 01 - BUILD Talk

This week Nicky Place from Build came to give us a talk about his work which was very inspiring. 

He began by talking about his inspiration being mainly music and record sleeves, eg Motorhead and Iron Maiden etc.

When he first began designing he had to do work that was 'pre-computer' using processes and materials such as letraset and collage to create work, which I found really interesting.

He also talked about Neville Brady and recommended a book called "The Graphic Language of Kevin Brady".

One of his views on design was that "Pretty Graphic Design is boring". He liked graphic design that has meaning and a purpose.

He spoke of his career and how he decided to go to Newcastle Uni to do a Graphic Design which he did not enjoy and this was a bump in the road for his career. It was refreshing to hear that despite a somewhat unsuccessful start to his career as a designer, with determination and perseverance he has worked hard and is dong really well now. 

He went on talk about how "London isn't the only place for good Graphic Design" as he spent a few months interning for ID magazine in London and hated it.

Vaughn Oliver is someone else that inspired him and who was also inspired by music, this shows me that when looking into people who I would like to intern with etc, that finding people with similar interests is a bonus.

He also stated "I'm not a brilliant Graphic Designer I'm an interesting Graphic Designer."

One thing he suggested was to find something that you enjoy outside of design such as a fun hobby as other things should influence your work, not just current graphic design trends.

He quit his job for a year when he was younger to travel the world with his girlfriend as he felt like he had got himself in a rut in graphic design. He said that he would highly recommend this as he learnt to love graphic design again after having a break from it.

He suggested not to specialise in one certain area of graphic design, you should be able to do all areas as this would benefit you. He also stated that it is not essential to learn coding, as there are people that he gets to do this for him so that he can focus mainly on the design.

He finally stated that he enjoys working with rules when it comes to designing for a client, therefore he asks a lot of questions in the briefing so that he cant go wrong within the design. He also said that he really enjoys seeing the impact that design can have on small business', as he has worked for companies such as NIKE he could have said that he really enjoyed that but he definitely enjoyed benefiting smaller companies more.

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 02 - Contacting the Studios by Email

When contacting studios to get in touch with for the interview it is important to compose a personal email which will get their attention and fully explain my intentions for the interview. 

The initial email is very important when contacting professionals. They get constant emails all the time from students asking questions and asking for feedback so you need to make sure that your email is unique. A few tactics to try are:

• Make it personal by talking about a piece of their work that you like.
• (Butter them up)
• Detect their tone of voice by looking at the way the agency talk on their website, is it professional or relaxed?
• Tell them what you would gain from the interview and be full of fresh ideas.
• Give them a reason to reply to you.
• Make sure that all of your spelling and grammar is correct.
• Make the subject line of the email eye-catching. 

OUGD501 - Studio Brief 01 - Presentation Practice

To practice our presentation skills, we were told to put together a 90 second presentation on a film of our choice. To make sure that I was confident on what I was talking about, I chose my favourite film, Forrest Gump. I knew from previous presentations that having only visuals is a better way to keep the audience's attention rather than having writing on screen. 

I made all of the images on my presentation full bleed, keeping consistency throughout the presentation. I had also planned what I would say before I went up, this helped a lot because I do get quite nervous when I am in front of a large amount of people.

I knew that I wanted to include humour in the slides as making the audience laugh makes me feel less nervous so I added a meme halfway through the presentation to get a laugh from the audience. 

My technique basically went through the whole plot of the film, which in hindsight I wish I hadn't done as it was hard to cover everything that needed to be said that had happened in the film. It would have also definitely ruined the ending of the film for anyone who hadn't seen it. Instead, I wish I had just gone over the basics such as cast, general plot (without spoilers), directors, when it was set and when it was made etc. as I much preferred other people's presentations in my group who used that approach. 

It was also suggested that it is a good presenting technique if you have a beginning, middle and end, therefore, when you end your presentation people know that it is over rather than standing there. 

Another good tip was that the use of white space around an image draws the attention to it and away from you presenting, therefore for my real presentation I plan on getting rid of the full bleed images, instead opting for white space around the outside.

A lot of people used GIFs in their presentations which also worked really well. Projecting your voice is also extremely important and if something goes wrong you need to carry on. I was told that there was one downside to my presentation was that I could have looked more at the audience but as I had not practiced that much and I kept having to look at the screen to see what slide was next and talk about that part of the film.

This task has helped my presentation skills, I feel like I have more knowledge on how to lay out my slides and how to present in front of a group of people.

OUGD502 - Studio Brief 02 - Contacting the Studios by Phone

I have decided that the 3 Sheffield design studios I want to interview are Tonic, SideBySide and Peter&Paul. Each studio has a unique design element and a new perspective to add to the report. I'm hoping to make a report on the opportunities Sheffield has for graduate graphic designers. 

My game plan is to first ring each studio telling them:

• My Name
• Where and what I study
• My aims for the project
• How I'd like them to get involved 
• What they will receive if they agree to get involved

This way I can get an instant response on whether or not they would like to get involved in the project which I can then follow up with an email containing further information. Ringing rather than emailing as a first point of contact is a good way to ensure my message doesn't get lost in the mass of emails many designers are constantly receiving.

To ensure I don't get muddled up in my words I will write down everything I want to say and the bullet pointed list on a notepad to read off when I ring them as aI'm sure nerves could easily kick in at any moment. 

Practice dialogue:

'Hi there is that_______? (Oliver/Dave)

I'm ringing as I was wondering whether you would be interested in taking part in an interview for a publication I am making on the opportunities Sheffield has to offer young designers, focussing particularly on modern (up and coming), forward thinking design studios in Sheffield. 

I noticed you did a talk at Glug with a similar theme a few months back to encourage creative talent to stay up North and that it's not all about London. 

The project would include a physical outcome that you could have a copy of.'

UPDATE

After ringing all 3 studios, each one confirmed that they would be happy to do an interview. Therefore there is no need to contact any further studios at this current time.