pretty picture

Pretty picture is my new blog which consists of pretty pictures. Does what its says on the tin really. Check it out.

http://prettypicture.tumblr.com/

hey fatty bum bum want another donut?!

(the post title was said to me by the 4 year old child i babysit . it seemed very apt for this photo!)

this nearly made me cry laughing. in the library of all places!

AWWWWW

simple minds!

"i'm not cool i'm cool's inspiration"

as said by Rev Run possibly the coolest guy ever!

"We think you're really boring..."

"...prove us wrong"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

My first day back at uni and already my head is chocker! my first brief is to prove i'm not boring?!

my head hurts.

Paris envy!

Woman in a garden

beautiful

Grey day

I decided to treat my blog by giving it a bit of a revamp! I will probably get bored of it and will have changed it again by the end of the week...

a new take on fashion typography!

wonder if the trend will catch on?!

alphacountry?

rather impressive i think!

Long time no blog!

So i haven't blogged for a while apoligies! Since i finished i have been doing anything and everything to not think about graphic design (bad i know) only because i was so worried about my results! I'm pleased and highly relieved to say i have indeed passed 2nd year so i can relax now (ish).

I started my summer projects already (get me!) so they don't end up being crap. One is to design my own alphabet so here are some inspirations for me:

Hunrgy anyone?

Well it has to be said this is a dream come true! A 250kg chocolate sofa which adorned in minstrels and dark chocolate decoration is completely edible. WOW.

In Victoria Embankment Gardens to launch Galaxy Irresistible Reads campaign to give away on million books.

buongiorno

A four day city break turned into two weeks.

Due to the volcano cloud our flights got cancelled so i've missed the past week of uni :/ (and then ofcourse it was the easter holidays before so i apoligise for not blogging for a while).

It was truly a nightmare trying to find a route home, in the end we got the train from Florence (which is absolutely beautiful in a shabby chic way) to Nice (which took 7 hours) then we stayed two nights in Nice (which is also beautiful but in a more perfected way) and then had THE longest car journey of my life! My dads good friend picked us up from Nice then it was 15 hours from there to Calais then 6 hours from Calais to home.

After this trip i never want to eat pizza or pasta or get in a car for more than 2 hours EVER AGAIN!


















The view from Piazza della Michaelangelo :)

and the stress is over!

Last week was rather hectic for us Hello Sailor's to say the least! Me and Rochelle went to book a table at the SU to sell our jewellery and discovered that the only day available before easter was friday (which was the NEXT day)! Panicking we quickly made more jewellery and then took a trip to Asda to buy the cakes and icing. We also picked up some little hair clips which Rochelle later stuck bows to. I don't think either of us realised how much planning actually goes in to the event. I don't think we did quite enough advertising and as we were in a rush and it was just two of us, our products were not up to a high standard and i think this affected our sales on the day. We forgot to bring a tablecloth so the table just looked quite bare as our things were dainty and the table was huge! On the day of the sale it was me, Rochelle, Stephen and Heather. Olivia never turned up although we had sent her numerous messages. We managed to sell most of our stuff making £18 (mostly thanks to my good friends kirsty anne and Rachel!) altogether although we had spent £24 so we did make a loss. Looking back i think we needed much more planning and probably more input from the rest of the group although i realise circumstances (Heather in particular) made this difficult. I think with more input our jewellery could have been made much nicer.

Le Tour Eiffel

Researching Pecha Kucha presentation still and came across and interesting fact: that the Eiffel Tower one of the world's most recognised structures was originally designed for Barcelona! Their government thought it was too expensive and ugly, and didn't fit with the style of the city so Gustave Eiffel took the idea to Paris and voila, the most visited paid monument in the world (although was considered an eyesore at first!). Looks like Barca missed out on that one! At least they had Gaudi!

Paris!

Researching the city of love for my pecha kucha presentation on monday! Feeling quite nervous as i have found most of my images but i don't know what to say about them! Seeing all the pictures actually makes me want to book a flight there right now! Someone take me there please! pretty please?

Productiveness!

Today in our workshop we finally got some jewellery made! These are just some of the items we hope to sell next week. While me and Rochelle made the jewellery, Stephen created a facebook event to invite people to come to our stall. As soon as we know the times and confirm the location we can add these to the posters we have designed and stick them around campus, maybe even hand out some flyers to people to encourage them to buy our jewellery and cakes. So far we have spent £20 most of our jewellery will be sold for a £1 or slightly more depending on what item it is so hopefully if we sell all of our products we can make a profit!

thought i typed in custard powder

strange i know but this is one of the things that came up when i was researching custard powder for my packaging brief!

Alexa Meade

"Alexa Meade is an installation artist who has an innovative use of paint on the three dimensional surfaces of found objects, live models, and architectural spaces. Her style has been incorporated into a series of installations that create a perceptual shift in how we experience and interpret spatial relationships. She paints with acrylic onto human skin and clothing."

taken from thedisciplesofdesign.co.uk

Paints on to human skin? Live models? Weird yet kind of cool?

J'adore

I'll be honest i had no idea what this meant until we got our brief last week.
Pecha Kucha is a fast and furious Japanese import that has taken London by storm since its introduction in the summer of 2005. It was concieved by Klein Dytham, an architect in Tokyo.
The format is simple- each speaker must present 20 images which are projected on screen for only 20 seconds each (we are only being asked to do 10 images-phew!). This style of presentation encourages the speaker to edit their ideas, inspirations, frustations and aspirations into a rapid-fire time slot forcing you to articulate your message clearly. sounds scary!

I've decided to my presentation on Paris! I first fell in love with the city when i was just 6 years old. I remember standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower looking across the city and it literally took my breath away. I always imagine i'll end up as a stylish old lady living in a townhouse on the left bank eating baguettes and reading poetry or something. The fashion, the food, the language (i got an A at gsce yay), the art, the ambience! I love it all! It's such a beautiful and inspiring city i think it would be perfect to do my presentation on! Only problem is how to put my love across in 20 seconds per picture haha!
Au Revoir! xxx

What a lovely package! (ahem)

I came across this while researching for our packaging brief. Incredibly simple and incredibly cute.

Today's Lesson- or lack of

Unfortunately today we didn't have either our lecture or workshop due to other circumstances which puts us behind slightly as we were hoping to properly get started on our jewellery making today. Heather is still off with her broken wrist so me and Rochelle have been purchasing the trinkets to make our jewellery and organising the actual event of selling our jewellery and cupcakes. Our major priority is to ask the atrium or SU if we can set up stall for a few hours. Once we know if we can and times etc, then we can add these times to our posters, make some flyers and set up a facebook event. We need to do as much advertising as possible as we don't want to make a loss.

Thirsty anyone?

These Yoav Kotik's rings, bracelets, necklaces and pendents are all made from metalbottle caps. WOW. I wish i was this cool.

All things nautical

These are the pretty little buttons and ribbons i purchased. I particulary like the skull and cross bone buttons as i think they add a harder edge to our otherwise "cute" pieces.

Rochelle has managed to find these amazing bargains on Ebay:

She is bidding for four wheels, fifteen anchor pendants and 10 brooch locking pins all adding to around £8 which brings our total spends up to £21 so far (if she manages to win the bid obviously).

Workshop

Finally posting some pictures of our work we've been doing! Sorry they're so late!

i have already posted about all off this but these are the pictures to show what we have been doing!

These mindmaps and swot analysis were done in our very first workshop as a group to help us think of ideas for our business. This is how we came up with our idea to sell our nautical themed accessories and cupcakes under our group name Hello Sailor!

Next we did our questionnaires to find out how much people would pay for their acessories etc.

We managed to fill out 50 questionnaires asking a variety of students around campus. The results from our questionnaire showed that most students spend their lunch time in the atrium and that the majority would spend around £5-£10 on accessories. We decided tuesday would be the best day to sell our products as most people are in uni that day and also the atrium gets busy around 12 and gets fairly quiet by 3 so we need to take this into account when selling our products! First though we need to make sure we can actually set up a stall in the atrium!

More Logos

Hello Sailor! Logo!

Today we learnt about finances in our lecture. I found it all quite interesting although i hope our business makes a profit rather than a loss! We have all done plenty of market research so i doubt we will have any problems! Fingers crossed!

Our seminar caused us a bit of trouble today as it was just me and Rochelle who attended at first due to Olivia being unwell and Heather breaking her wrist last week! Stephen turned up eventually and we all agreed our time would be best spent designing our logo properly and our posters and flyers.

Here are some of our logo designs:

Obsession

This took an entire YEAR to complete. It kind of freaks me out. But i'm rather impressed at the same time?

Aye Aye

This week we started to get to work on our designs! We assigned jobs to each other about who was going to get what. I purchased some navy, gold and red ribbon, a white twisted crepe (which looks like rope!), and lots of pretty buttons, some red some blue some gold with anchors in various sizes some gold with skull and cross bones in various sizes. We need to buy acrylic aswell and do our designs for that. It's all getting very excitinggg :)

Zine inspiration

Zine rework

I've been working on my zine, i want it to be all collage like photographs mixed with drawings and handdrawn letters. I can see it in my head but can't quite get it down on paper yet. Keep trying.

lack of inspiration/motivation!

I haven't blogged in a while as i have been trying to rework some of my pieces from the first semester as the hand in date is drawing nearer. Scarily nearer! Can't believe i'm so close to finishing my second year! I feel like i have soooo much work to do and at the moment i'm living eating and breathing graphic design! Our creative buisness elective was cancelled this week as we had some students from a uni in Greece visit us so i haven't even had our Hello Sailor! progresses to blog about either! Hopefully i can keep my head down these next few weeks and put my heart and soul into my work... or i could just go the pub. Hmmmm.


kidding :D i will work promise

amazing

Puddle Art:















this was created by cars going past and driving through the puddle. they look like deer? anyone else see that? no just me....

Gimmick or groundbreaking chance for change?

There’s always a fair amount of debate over the size and shapes of the models at any fashion week, but in stark contrast to the super-skinny girls Victoria Beckham chose to model her latest dress collection, designer Mark Fast picked size 12 and 14 girls to model in his weekend LFW show. Is this a groundbreaking chance for change or just a gimmick for a fairly unheard of designer to gain more publicity? (taken from heatworld.com)

Although i agree that they should use models who are a normal size on the catwalk, why put these girls in clothes that are ill-fitting? The hair and make-up does nothing for them either. It feels like a half-hearted attempt, almost a ploy to make using normal sized girls look bad so everyone continues using starving size zeros! I find it sad that sizes 12-14 are considered plus sizes these days, i mean what kind of message is this sending out!

Rarr raarr aah ah aahhh

Siberian tigers sit up gesturing to visitors during a show at a zoo on the second day of the Lunar New Year in Fuzhou, China.

I realise i haven't posted a blog this week and although this has nothing to do with what i'm doing i did find it rather funny :)

Daisy Garland

I've chosen to design a logo for The Daisy Garland charity for our new brief. The charity was set up by the parents of Daisy Garland who at just five and a half months old was diagnosed with a rare and complex form of epilepsy. Tragically Daisy died at the age of 6 as a result of SUDEP- sudden and unexpected death in epilepsy patients. Her parents set up the charity as they felt they had no other option "but to turn such a hugely devastating tragedy into something positive to help other children like Daisy."
Epilepsy affects 300,000 people in the UK. At the moment there is no cure, although around 70% of people with epilepsy have medication to completely control their seizures.
I chose this charity as i found it completely heartbreaking, and aswell i know someone who was affected by epilepsy and tragically she also died just a month before her 16th birthday.
I think its amazing the strength of Daisy's parents to want to help other children who suffer from epilepsy, i also find their website very helpful on learning more about the condition.
xxx

Pepsi

Okay last one then i'll stop posting about brand evolution! I just find it so interesting how the famous logos we see today started off!














One of the world's biggest soft drinks company Pepsi, was started in the 1890's (wow!) by Caleb Bradham. Initally named as Brad's drink the company quickly changed it's name to Pepsi Cola and used the first logo which was designed in 1898. In 1903 the name was trademarked and hasn't been changed to this date! Brad made custom logos until 1933 when the company was bought by Loft, Inc. The company changed the bottle size from 6 to 12 oz. and came up with the ‘Refreshing and Healthful’ logo.
However, the major breakthrough in the Pepsi logo design came in 1940’s. Walter Mack, the CEO of Pepsi came up with the idea of a new bottle design, with a crown having the Pepsi logo. The ‘Pepsi Globe’ emerged when USA was in WWII, and to support the country’s war efforts, Pepsi had a blue, red and white logo.
In 1950 and 1962, this bottle cap with the swirling blue and red became prominent in the company logo. During the 1960’s when it became even more popular, the script was changed from the curly red, and the main attraction was on the bottle cap in the logo.
We see the first appearance of the Pepsi Globe instead of the bottle cap in 1973. The typeface was made smaller so as to fit in the globe. The Pepsi Globe was “boxed in”, with a red bar coming in from the left and a light-blue bar coming in from the right.
In 1991, the typeface was moved from inside the globe. The red bar was lengthened and the typeface came on the top of the globe. In 1998, the white background in the logo was replaced by the blue color, which also resulted in dropping the red horizontal band. The globe now had 3D graphic and larger than earlier versions. It might be that since, Pepsi and the globe touch each other for the first time in the logo, the name ‘the Pepsi Globe’ was given to the logo.
After 1998, it seems that Pepsi had decided to give the globe more prominence than the script itself. So, the globe came on top of the script in 2003, and in their current logo they have done away with the script altogether.

Nikeeeeees

Nike got the best deal when Caroline Davidson designed its logo for a mere $35 in 1971!! It took them seven years to realise that the text overlapping the swoosh didn't look right (well thats what ya get for $35!). As they gained brand recognition, Nike dropped their name from the logo,
which made it more simple and memorable.

Evolution

For our new brief we have to design a logo for a charity of our choice. Obviously i started researching other logos and came across a website that shows the evolution of some world famous logos. Did you know the Apple logo started like this:

When Apple first started their logo was a complicated design of Isaac Newton sat under a tree, which had been designed by Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne (2 of the 3 founders of Apple) with the inscription: “Newton … A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought … Alone.” Frankly, I don’t think it was just a coincidence that Apple had slow sales during this period. Steve Jobs then hired Rob Janoff to simplify the logo. Rob created the rainbow apple which was the logo for the company until 1998.
There are many rumors as to why Rob had chosen to create such a logo. One of them says that the Apple was a tribute to Newton (discovery of gravity from an Apple), and since the USP (Unique Selling Point) for Apple at that time was colored graphics, it had the rainbow colors. Another explanation exists that the bitten apple pays homage to the Mathematician Alan Turing, who committed suicide by eating an apple he had laced with cyanide! Turing is regarded as the father of computers. The rainbow colors of the logo are rumored to be a reference to the rainbow flag, as homage to Turing’s homosexuality.
Now it is more the shape that identifies the company more than the colour, as it is one of the most recognised symbols in the world! Wow interesting history!