External Positioning

Ricky ByfieldExternal Positioning

EGRD3013

RSA Projects: Postage Stamps. Brief B - World with a Future.

When I first read the brief about a world with a future and that it consisted of creating a set of stamps to change the way we act I was very excited to get started. Global Warming has been something I have follwed for a while and try to do all I can (around the house) to help do my bit.

I had various ideas in my head as soon as I knew what the task was which were all simple information graphic stamps which would include facts about global warming and try to get across the point that global warming really is happening. I started to research previous entries into this brief and had realised that most of my ideas had already been covered in the past, it was slightly dissapointing however the ideas were simple, ideas such as illustrations of wind turbines, green house effect, light bulbs and stand by on house appliances.

These are some of the previous entries for this task which I found very interesting and thought worked really well as stamps. They are all very similar in that they all use illustrations that represent different sources of power that we use that effects the environment. For example a couple of different sets of stamps both include light bulbs and wind turbines. A lot of the entries were all based on similar ideas and I did not want to follow on with the same idea, I wanted to aim for a set of stamps that had not been cre-ated for this brief before.


I was given this book of collectable stamps by my grandad when he moved house and never thought it would come in handy until this brief, the book contains pages for stamps from all over the world and some were very interesting and inspirational for giving me ideas.

I took notice of all the colours used and which colours were most popular in all of the stamps to give me colour ideas for my stamps. The colour that occured the most in all of the stamps in this book was Red, followed by Blue and then Black and White.

I thought that the Black and White stamps looked most interesting in this book and I have always been fond of the way black and white imagery works well together. This then inspired me to create a set of stamps in greyscale.


I always like to start by creating a quick spider diagram of my favourite ideas so that I can narrow down my final ideas and start to experiment. From the diagram I was keen to experiment with:- Photography- Image Manipulation- Information Graphics


A skill of mine which I have liked to experiment with in a lot of my practice is Image Manipulation. The idea was to create a set of stamps that changed what the world would look like in years to come if we do not help change the environment.

I started looking at the effects of global warming and found some images that I feel are very strong in communicating what could happen if we do not help. I feel that if someone can be shocked about an image then it can have a lasting effect on them to possibly help and do more.

My idea was to take well known famous land marks and attractions and manipulate them so that if we do not help change the enviornment this is what will happen. I was taking the approach of he shock factor, for example manipulating the Eifel Tower so that it was sinking or taking the water out of the thames.

I felt that landmarks would make perfect shock factor stamps as most people recognise them for being what they are and some viewers may have been to the attractions. I felt that by changing them for the worst would make people look and realise that this really is what could happen if we do not do something to help.

Here are some sketches of some of the landmarks I had chosen to manipulate to look like they do not have a future as a landmark if we do not act. The landmarks I had picked to manipulate were:- Eifel Tower- River Thames- Pyamids (Egypt)- Statue of Liberty- Opera House (Sydney)


London is the UK’s Capital City and is very well known across the globe, I figured that if any stamp would contain an element of shock then it would be this. I took London Bridge, Big Ben and The Millenium Wheel and carefully cut them out from their locations around London and placed them in a desert which was conveying the River Thames.

Once I was happy with the way my stamp looked I used various filters and effects to get a Black and White finished stamp. I really like the way this came out, I think that the shades of grey really work well together and do feel that it can convey a shock element if sold to the public.


I manipulated the Eifel Tower to look like it was sinking, I made the Egyptian Pyamids look like they were in the middle of a thunder storm, Put animals such as Polar Bears and Penguins at the Opera House in Sydney where it is normally hot all year round and took the water away that surrounds the Statue of Liberty. I then used the same filters and effects I used on the London stamp so that when the stamps were put together as a set they all worked together.

I am really happy with the end result of this set of stamps and feel that they could help change our mindsets on Global Warming. If I was to change these stamps in any way I think I would include some small facts about Global Warming so that people can not only look but interact with the stamp.


Another idea I had was to photograph house hold objects or appliances that we use on a ragular basis. When researching how we can help prevent Global Warming there was many things we could do around the house to help, for example not leaving appliances on stand by, turning off your lights and only boiling the right amount of water from your kettle.

Here are six ways we can help prevent Global Warming by doing little things around the house. In a lot of the previous entries there was a lot of illustrations being drawn however not many people used photography to get their message across.

I still wanted to go with the Black and White theme however this set of stamps did not look very attractive in Black and White and didnt look appealing. I used alternate Black and White lines running throughout the stamps to help link them together as a set and put a pale tint on all of the stamps to help them stand out.

This set of stamps is still a working progress as I intend to include some statistics on how much electricity an average household burns however I really like the way these stamps have come out and really like the use of colours, as a set of stamps I think that they can be seen as finished and the viewer can guess this is about how to save at home however if you take one stamp away it can be hard for someone to know what the stamp was meant to be trying to convey. I think that once I include some statistics this set of stamps will look great either as a set or individually.


My favourite idea was to create a set of stamps that would come together to read the word Global however individually look like the globe was melting with facts about Global Warming at the bottom of each stamp.

I used toothpaste to try and get a melting effect however I do not think it worked very well and I was finding it hard to get it to resemble the globe melting. I thought this method would work a lot better than it did so was not impressed with the outcome of this test.


I then used Photoshop to make it appear like the globe was melting, I used the Liquify filter to drag out my letters to try and make it look like the globe was melting, I liquified the letters multiple times to get a more realistic melting effect and then added an overlay of the globe so that it looked like it was melting. I was a lot more happier with this experiment then I was with the tooth paste tiral and was really happy with the end reult.

This was a set of stamps that I found in the book my Grandad gave me, The image is the same however the colour of the stamp changes and the stamps consist of a glow coming from the centre of the stamp, I thought this was a really nice effect and used it for inspiration when I come to put my stamps together.

This is my final set of stamps that I created and believe thet they have come out very well, as a set they read the word global and individually they represent the globe melting with a fact about Global Warming at the bottom of each stamp.

I am very happy with the way these come out however still feel there is room for improvement and want to include some extra details to the stamps to fill in some of the empty space.


I decided to print the stamps out to see if they looked just as good on an envelope as if they was going to be posted and sent around the country. I think that they look really good and are visually clear in what they are representing. I am overall happy with the way this set of stamps has come out.

Penguin Design Awards: Adult Prize.

I decided on choosing the Penguin Design Awards as a project to do as it contained no limits and the options available were limitless. I do not see myself as just an illustrater or someone who just has one skill or speciality, I like to be broad and open in what I do and I felt I was able to use various skills in creating a book cover.

I had never read the book however had seen the film staring Jack Nicholson so read up on the plot of the book and what happens in the book to comapre with the film. Once I had done this I put everything that I felt was key in a spider diagram so that I could create a book cover based on something that happens in the story.


I found this book in the Library on the past 50 years of penguin, after looking at past book covers I could not find a continuous design strategy that Penguin used in their design so I figured my style in creating my book cover could be anything I wanted.

One thing I did pick up on was the use of simple colours or just greyscale book covers. As said before I like the way Black and White work together and decided on creating a dull book cover that conveyed mystery and darkness. I felt that it would work well in response to the book as he is taken to a mental home under the eyes of nurse who is not very kind or friendly.

These are some of the Black and White book covers I picked out from the 50 Years of Penguin book that I thought worked really well. The book titled ‘The Colditz Story’ gave me the inspiration to include some sort of building which could be seen as a mental home in my book cover.


I did some sketches of some of the ideas I had as book covers to see how they looked on paper and not just in my head. By putting my pen to paper I was generating more ideas and came up with the idea of being driven to a mental home and having a scary looking building in the background with a drive way leading to the home. As an experiment I then put together this book in Photoshop as a template. I liked the idea however I wanted to use my own sources and knew that it would be very hard to try and photograph an old looking bus or vehicle of transport.


I wanted to show a picture of the nurse on the book cover and also the guy going to the mental home however did not just want a picture of anyone, I tried to get photographs so that the nurse looked like she was very strict and the guy looked innocent. I knew that if the nurse was folding her arms with a straight face it would give the impression of a boss and someone powerful.

After getting inspiration from the 50 Years of Penguin book I went out around Surrey looking for what I thought could be seen as a mental home. I took various photos at different angles of St Helier Hospital to create my book cover. Here are some of my personal favourite shots.

I also took Photos of a nearby basketball court as I know this was a game they played in the hospital and took pictures from behind a football cage to give the impression of being locked in a mental home. I was really happy with some of the photos and knew that I could use this building as a mental home.



I am really pleased with how the hospital can be seen as a mental home and feel that the use of Black and White makes the hospital come across as a miserable place to be. I am pleased with the way I approached this and feel that the book covers all fit in nicely with the title of the book.

Handmade & Bound: Screen Printing.

When I first saw the post about Handmade and Bound it did not appeal to me one little bit and I thought it would get in the way of my Independent work that I was working on at the time. my Independent work at the time was looking at simple shape forms, I created this shape form above limiting myself to only using the line tool. In a meeting with Luke he said that this would look good as a screen print which was a process I was not very keen on at the time however thought I would give it ago and about three days before the Handmade and Bound show I had asked if it was too late to submit and I was still lucky enough to be able to submit this shape form on a screen print.

I printed the image on various colours of card experimenting with different coloured paint. I then organised my prints into postcard size prints and put them in little wallets to sell with my name and contact details on to help my name get into the industry. I took five sets of three and sold all of them apart from one set. I was extremely happy that someone had actually been interested in my work and it gave me a massive confidence boost in my work. Im so glad I was able to submit for this as it was something I was not keen on at the start. As soon as I hear of something similar I will be submitting work straight away.

Freelance Work: The Test Station

The Test Station is where I work part time as a mechanic and have designed their Ads for local directories and a magazine called Mechanix, I Designed discount leaflets for returning customers and designed the business card. It is something I have not been paid for however something I wanted to do for the company as it makes me feel good about myself knowing it is my work being seen on a busy road in South London.

Logo Design and Branding is something I have always been fond of and would like to be involved with designing a lot more in the future as either freelance work or in industry. I would love to be able to say I designed a logo that is seen across the whole of the UK or even the World. It would be such an achievement for me and would give me so much more confidence in my work.

I designed these three banners for The Test Station for my boss to pick his favourite so that it could be put outside the workshop to help advertise the company. I did not think nothing of it when I created it however when it was sent to the printers the file was way to small to be printed large scale so I had to create the file with pixel size 7087 x 2551 so that it could be blown up and printed without being pixelated.

Freelance Work: SJB Recovery.

SJB Recovery is a company based around the corner from The Test Station who do a lot of work with each other and somehow someone had told them I was studying Graphic Design at University. I was then asked if I wanted to take over their website however web design is something I have never been keen on doing so unfortunately I turned down the opportunity however was able to edit some images for the company for their website. I was given a disc with some pictures of recovery trucks on and was just asked to get rid of the background and make it white. When I returned the images to the company a few days later I was not expecting any money or anything however was grateful for a small wage and felt good about my work.

These pictures can be seen on the SJB Recovery Website

Click Hereto visit site

http://www.sjbr.co.uk/recovery.html

http://www.sjbr.co.uk/recovery.html

Freelance Work: SJB Recovery.

I was then asked if I could make a truck look like it was flashing its lights in a sequence for a Christmas Card the company was sending out via email. I thought it would be something difficult to accomplish putting in an email however when I was creating the flash animation I realised all it consisted of was three images. I took the image into Photoshop and used the Lens Flare effect to make it look like the lights were flashing, I then took all three images into Flash and set all three images on different keyframes and looped it so that it looked like the lights were constantly flashing on and off, I then exported it as a GIF file so that they were able to send the image via email.

Freelance Work: South London Trailer Centre (SLTC)

I was so excited when I got the job of creating a logo for a brand new company. It was by luck that a guy had become a dealer for a big trailer company and needed to brand his company. He works on the same industrial estate as me so he knew I was studying graphic design and asked if I wanted to be involved and I jumped at the oppotunity to brand a brand new company.

I wanted to do everything properly so we had a chat over lunch about two months ago now and he had said that he wanted his logo to include orange and black and wanted the logo to represent some sort of trailer. Other than that there was no limits so I was able to create something from scratch. Im glad there I was able to do what I wanted as I do not like working with limitations on projects.

I started by looking at other trailer company logos to see what the competition was like and how good or bad logos were. I found that some logos did not represent trailers at all and some represented trailers quite well with the use of towbars and wheels.


I put together two designs, both rough and just as experiments to see if the client liked either of them, He did not like the top one as he said it was a bit to simple however really liked the second design but did not like the font.

My idea behind it was to look like the text was being towed on the back of a car trasnporter trailer and he really liked the idea. I then started to look on dafonts for a nice font for the design so that I could make it look as professional as possible and not just use a plain and boring font. I found a font called Kelvinized which caught my attention and knew straight away it would work really well with the car trailer.


I used the pen tool to create the bed of the trailer and the circle tool to create the two wheels.

I created the basic shape of the towbar using the shape tool to get something that looked something similar to the image above the design. I was using this as a guide.

Once I was happy with the shape of the towbar I selected the shape with the magic wand tool and inversed the selection.

I then used the smooth effect by 10 pixels to smooth the selected pixels, once I had done this I could rub out the sharpe edges of the tow bar and then fill in the smooth bits to give it a nice rounded shape.

As you can see there is no more sharpe edges and the towbar no longer just looks like rectangles over laying each other.

This was the font I was attracted to and I think it works really well, it has a slight lean to it so it looks like the word is actually moving with the trailer.


I created two versions as I could not pick which one was better, the top design just contains a stroke on the text however the bottom design contains two layers of the font slightly off set to give a 3D effect with the stroke on the underneath layer.The version that has been used on the website is the bottom design with the 3D effect on the text. I am so pleased with the way this logo has come out and the client was really chuffed aswell. He has said he will let people know about me just wanting to get my name in the industry and doing a bit of work just to get my name out there.


I also created a simple but effective flash animation for the intro of the South London Trailer Centre website. It had to include what the company sold, opening times, who the company was a dealer for and that it was all LEZ approved.

I changed the alpha of the text layers on the first keyframe to 0% and then on the keyframe I wanted it to stop changed to 100%. I then created a motion tween which gave all the text layers the fading in effect.

I made it look like the opening times were flying in on the screen by creating the first key frame off screen and then the last keyframe on the screen, then when I created the motion tween it looked like the opening times were flying across the screen to position. Its simple but effective.

This animation can be seen on the SLTC website

Click Hereto visit site

http://www.sltc.co.uk/

http://www.sltc.co.uk/

So in a nut-shell, what do we do? • Corporate Branding & Identity • Graphic Design: Print & Web • Advertising Campaigns • Marketing Strategy & Delivery • Live Events (Branding, Design & Marketing)

Working with multi-national corporations, charities, small independents and the public sector on a great variety of projects, we pride ourselves on our versatility and concept-driven approach.

Our award-winning talent and understanding of traditional and new media channels help us to deliver outstanding creative solutions that not only meet our clients’ goals but surpass them.

We like to think differently to generate more leads through innovative marketing ideas and designs. What-ever your brief, we’ll get your message across in a fresh, exciting way. From websites, advertising, print, brochures or direct mail – you name it, there’s a good chance we’ve already thought about it, done it and bought the t-shirt. In fact, we probably designed and printed the t-shirt too!

We passionately believe that great design is an invest-ment and asset to every business. We turn ideas into highly visible results by understanding your needs and reaching out to engage a wider audience.

Future: Where can I see myself in Industry.

Over the past 25 years we have won over 40 IPA Effectiveness Awards on behalf of our clients.

We have worked with many of our clients for well over 40 years. These include Unilever, Kimberly-Clark, Nestle, Kellogg, Ford, Rolex, Pfizer/Johnson & Johnson, De Beers and Shell.

We have created populist campaigns founded on strong con-sumer understanding – Have a Break, Have a Kit Kat; Another Crunchy Nut for Kellogg; A Diamond is Forever for De Beers to name but a few.

Pentagram is the world’s largest independent design consultancy. The firm is owned and run by 16 part-ners, a group of friends who are all leaders in their individual creative fields.

We work in London, New York, Berlin and Austin. We design everything: architecture, interiors, products, identities, publications, posters, books, exhibitions, websites, and digital installations.

Each of our clients works directly with one or more of our partners. This reflects our conviction that great design cannot happen without passion, intelligence, and personal commitment, which is demonstrated by a portfolio of work that spans five decades.

Evaluation.

Looking at my past practice and where I am situated at the moment I feel that last year my work was mainly focused on the briefs I was working on at Uni and working on my independent work and was too busy to do much free lance stuff to get my name in the industry. I did not mind doing a lot of work last year as I was able to learn new programs and skills when I had to keep to limitations in briefs. This year I have worked a lot independently on my own and done a lot more freelance work than I did last year however still do not feel I am doing enought freelance work as I want to be doing as its all experience for me and I have not yet had much experience working free lance in the industry. In the future I hope to be doing less independent work, have a job somewhere in the design industry working at a multidisciplinary studio doing various things and on the side doing a lot of freelance work getting my name known out in the world.

I would really like to work in a multidisciplinary design studio as I feel that I have skills and knowledge across the whole board of graphic design and do not want to be doing the same thing each day. I like the thought of going to work and having a different project each week, the fact that you will never be doing the same thing attracts me and you will not get bored of working on the same project over and over again. I work really well in a team and am a confident person so feel I could be really successful in a big design studio.

I have really enjoyed this final year of my Degree, I have finally found myself as a designer and feel a lot more confident in where I want to go. I have forced myself to work indepen-dently throughout the year and tried to better myself from last year. Last year my time management was terrible, this year I have managed to overcome this and spread out the work load evenly.

Since creating the logo for the trailer company I have become so much more confident in myself as a designer and am excited to see if I can get any more freelance work lined up for the near future. Overall I have had fun experimenting this year and have learnt some more skills in programs such as Flash and Photoshop and have also become a lover of different print forms such as Screen Printing.

Bibliography.

http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/penguindesignaward/index.php

http://www.thersa.org/projects/design/student-design-awards/rsa-student-design-awards-201112/postage-stamps

http://www.royalmail.com/

http://www.logodesign.co.uk/logos.php?b=ie

http://www.dafont.com/

http://www.indespension.co.uk/

http://www.thelondonstudio.com/

http://www.breezedesign.co.uk/

http://www.jwt.co.uk/#/?page=Work

http://www.pentagram.com/work/#/all/all/newest/

50 Years of Penguin (Book)

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