sixth day at plast-c

so today was my last day of placement. i have really enjoyed myself and i feel i have learned a lot from the experience. i built up a good relationship with Ged while i was there and he has said im welcome up pop in anytime which is a really useful point of contact for me as im starting to realise the importance of networking and building up contacts.

this placement has definitely influenced my personal approach to design. i really enjoyed the researching using books and i will definitely make more use of the library and also make some headway in expanding my own design library.

i acknowledged my weaknesses during this placement and with Ged's help i worked on some solutions to extend my knowledge to make these weaknesses less prominent.

fifth day at plast-c

today i got to see a major downside to the world of client based design. the client.

Ged has been designing the unity theatre brochure for years and currently it is the most picked up piece of pint in the city, an indication i think, thats its a nicely designed thing.

however unity have just hired a new marketing manager who has decided despite knowing nothing about design, that he is going to re brand the company.

Today Ged had a meeting with him where he listed all the changes he wanted to make to the brochure, so for most of the day i researched and worked on my own designs while Ged attended this meeting. When he came back, we discussed the ideas the new marketing manger had, and to be honest they completely destroyed the theme and idea behind the magazine. The new layout was ugly, it used space very badly, crammed so much onto the page that ir became unreadable information, and the size change meant that none of the hand drawn illustrations and photos taken for the issue fitted the grid anymore. All in all it was a disaster,

Ged was really annoyed and said that as a designer you have to fight for good design and that he wasn't going to let the design change unless he had some say in it.

this showed me that in industry sometimes its really tough to get your creativity and talent noticed and that you have to stick up for what you believe in and demonstrate your ideas in a way that your client can see what's best for them.

at the end of the day Ged went to meet with the unity people to try and talk some sense into them, i really hope they see his point of view, after all his design has made the brochure the most picked up print in the city, so surely they will be able to see he's doing something right!

fourth day at plast-c

today was a great insight into industry. Ged had lots of meetings and clients to speak to to finalise lots of bits of lots of designs. so today i used his research library to have a think about my current uni project and whenever he spoke to a client or received an email off them we would discuss the outcome and he would explain how the whole client/designer relationship works. this was so useful because of course that is something that until you get some clients of your own you don;t really understand, but it is really useful to have an idea of how the whole thing works so that its possible for you to cope better when you do have your first client.

i haven't really got that much to say about today, again i learned alot about the industry process and although i am not actually making a particular thing, moreover i am experiencing the atmosphere and work ethic of a small studio i think i am getting lots out the the experience.

third day at plast-c

after yesterdays typography battle i was kind of hoping i would get to do something different today, but Ged had other ideas. Since I admitted I had a kind of fear of typography AND a fear of illustrator Ged decided to make me spend the day using illustrator to create typography. great.

no actually thats not fair. i need this experimental time, i need an actual challenge to conquer or ill never get to grips with it so im really pleased Geds given me this task.

Paul, the other guy that works here is in a band called strawhouses that are releasing their first album next year. Paul is a great illustrator and creates all the images and stuff for the band, but Ged is working on this great font for them, all hand drawn in illustrator, and he wanted me to help

heres a few pictures of the type used on some posters and stuff for the band.\

what was really nice about talking this project through was that having just completed a typography project in uni, i had only just learned how to use fontlab, which Ged had never used before so it was great to give something back and show them what id learned in uni with ian and see how that helped to design process.

second day at plast-c

second day at placement.

yesterday i helped Ged research for his work on a press release, and i thought id just pick up from were i started off from that, but Ged had other ideas! he wanted me to get as many different experiences during my placement, which to be honest was something that i really didn't thin i was going to get but was really really up for it when he said it. The idea was as Ged had several projects going on at the same time, i would dip in and out of each and have a little talk and go at different bits of each one.

For me this was really really useful, although of course it means i'm not going to come away with a finished piece of design like some people will from their placements but i'm hoping that i will come away with a lot of ideas and tips and processes that i can apply to my personal design.

so today i had a look at the design work for aintree that Ged does. he does EVERYTHING for them, invites and flyers for their races and events, christmas cards that they send out to members, and the booklets that contain information about the races that you get on the day of the events. i thought his christmas card design was great, we looked at how to construct hand drawn style typography using illustrator which was really useful as its a program that baffles me at times but Ged made it look so easy and made me realise that its such a useful fun and creative program that can be used in so many more ways than i had previously thought, which made me feel much more confidant in using it.

after looking at all the aintree stuff i talked with Ged about how difficult and daunting i find illustrator, and in truth typography in general. Ged talked so knowingly about the fundamentals of typography and went into lots of detail about the technicalities and terminology of it all, but what really helped is when he explained that the whole idea behind letterform design is to have fun with it and create something that sells your message whatever that may be. after absorbing all this info, Ged let me lose on the macs to have a play with creating letterforms using illustrator, and along the way giving me hints and tips on both how to use the software and also ways approach design. I cant explain how useful this was and will always be for my own design needs.

i have learned so much in this second day and even though i've done no real designing this experience so far has been really really useful.

first day at plast-c

I started plast-c design today, first day of a week placement.

i found this placement through a friend of mine who now works for Ged (the freelance designer who works under the company name plast-c)

having emailed Ged and taken a portfolio down he said it was fine for me to come into the studio for a weeks placement.

although i met Ged a few weeks ago i was still really nervous about my placement, having never ben in a working studio before i was apprehensive about what to expect.

i learned so much on my first day. the studio was designing a press release for local singer/ songwriter Ragz. we started looking at typography and logo design, something that i worked alot with in my last university project so i felt confident that i could contribute to the project in some way. research was a major part of the first day. mountains and mountains of books lined the walls of the studio. i found the process of research in this way really useful as having a computer sat in front of you all the time i'm tempted to just use the internet to do initial research, and you'd think you'd find far more information on the net but spending just an hour looking through the books in the studio taught me more than a whole day sat on the internet so i will definitely take that away with me!

i basically spent my first day settling in, i got my own little desk space and use of one of the super duper mac pros!! after having a talk about the press release idea we spent the rest of the day immersed in books, books and more books. i'm really looking forward to the rest of my time here after a really good start.