OUGD602 - Stefen sagmeister response

Hearing back from Stefan Sagmeister

After sending off my set in stone publication I did at the end of the second year, I got a response back from him after handing my module in. his response reads:

"stefansagmeister@con.makepeace writes: Im currently in my second year of my graphic design course at LCA. I've recently worked on a editorial project that had to focus on the craft of stone based lettering. The book cover itself is made of reclaimed slate.⠀
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my review: Even though I neither felt nor touched your original prototype, I envision it won't handle nicely with the 2-point binding likely too weak for the heavy stone. It feels like a student piece. While the usage of unusual materials on covers are of course possible (we just did one made out of copper and another one of plastic), this requires careful consideration as far as production, binding and usage. Would a publisher for a typography book shell out for a stone cover? For your next book project, I'd go into the opposite direction: Use the most pedestrian production means possible, say stapled thin paper without any cover, and try to design this as gorgeously as you can."

Hearing back from him was great and to it was a huge confidence boost as I didn't expect him to get back to me as he must get thousands of request for people to review his work.

His feedback was quite critical of the piece which isn't a bad thing. it was very interesting to hear his thoughts on the project and the suggestion he gave is something that I really want to try. Hopefully I have the opportunity to do so in extended practice and maybe I can get his thoughts on it again to see what he thinks of the response to his suggestion.

PPP evaluation

this year has been a bit of a roller-coaster for me, to get it straight before getting into the nitty gritty, ive really enjoyed this year and have felt like ive developed myself as a practitioner. Ive had some great success this year, to start with , my Set in Stone Book project has been one of the best pieces i have made as ive pushed myself into tackling something that i haven't done before and to push whats been done in the practice before. This saw me gain the best marks for a project ive ever gotten (although my design for screen dragged it down) and it set the tone for what i can achieve for the rest of the year. That was the goal but i found myself hitting a bit of a roadblock after Christmas. I found myself feeling really burnt out and at some points even felling really low about myself and the work i was creating and even the stuff happening outside of uni. the few months i was in this situation had a really big effect on my work and what i was doing to enhance my practice. Looking back i should have spoke to more tutors about ways to combat this but i just sort of tried to tackle it myself (I dont mean for this to be a sob story so bare with). one of the main aspects that brought me out of this rut was having someone contact me saying they liked my work and wanted me to create something for them within the transformers brief i under took. this small act was enough to kick start me back into my old self and i found myself pushing myself again.

in terms of what i could have done more of this year was pushing myself to visit more studios as visiting the likes of lord Whitney really inspire me and boosts myself as a creative to make these bonds. to combat this, ive made plans to get myself out there after all my modules are handed in to prepare myself for next year.

the key points of this year that i feel like ive developed are

- Communication skills within talking and presenting my work
- Pushing boundaries within myself and my practice
- My design process as a whole
- Furthering my online presence
- my collaboration skills when working within 

for next year i have 3 points i want to work on

- Work more within the creative industry by taking more live briefs
- Work more collectively with the likes of illustration
- continue pushing myself in new sectors of graphics and to develop existing skills
(:bonus:) network more and become more involved 

lifes a pitch - Sensorama

For our group, i was asked to create a logo that captured the essence of retro to incorporate the theme of the original Virtual Reality machine (senosorama) for our presentation. the presentation itself went really well and we got a really good amount of feedback to help us further our plan to showcase our work.

OG text on a slant is grabbing me

Also can you try a parallelogram that is tighter to the text, rather than a big triangle?

Presentation

Life is a pitch

We were briefed on Studio Brief 3 earlier this week, Life's a Pitch. For this brief we have been tasked with creating a collective with up to six of our colleagues, and propose how we could promote our work as a group. 

This could be in the form of a website, social media campaign, exhibition, publication, installation, etc. We don't have to produce any more work for this, it is simply a case of showing our existing work collectively and pitching it. I need to find a group to work with, but I think I want to work with illustrators for this. Hopefully I can get something arranged pretty quickly as I'd quite like to get started on it asap. 

Screen Printing

Following on from the feedback i got from the ideas i came up wit, i began creating some mock ups within illustrator.

From the start i new i wanted to keep the posters simple so not to take too much away from the interview. Each poster contains the colour scheme of each of the professionals brand that ive interviewed. As ive only heard back from Corridor digital i was going to focus more on them and if i hear back from the others then i will work on them more even if its after the hand in of the module. having the layout of the poster incorporating both the logo and the interview was too simple for me so to add to this i considered adding more to the posters to further the screen print process and make them look more aesthetically pleasing. After talking to peers about my concept they suggested maybe using a half tone image of the people who are part of the studio, similar to that of my OUGD505 studio brief 1. agreeing with their suggestion i went ahead and got images of each of the main people from the studio and edited them within Photoshop. as i want the posters to be cheap and easy to produce, I decided to make it so that the amount of paint needed would be as low as possible so the frequency of the halftone was set to 24 which was the lowest option for me as it still retained the image within it.

screen printing came out much better than expected (bar a few smudges her and there) as i was a bit sceptical in terms how the half tone was going to come across from screen to print and how the ink would look on coloured card. working it out in terms of cost, a £1.00 tub of black paint can make 20 posters if everything included the text was to be screen printed so it works out to each poster costing 5p. now if i was to print a A3 sheet with the text on that and add it to the poster, it brings the overall price is lowered by a penny (as you can print 2 A4's onto it for 2p) its not much but if this was to be mass produced alongside each different interview then every penny counts

Live at leeds

While it isn't a graphics orientated event, Its been a bit of an eye opener for me. With in my practice i rarely ever design work for music events or bands. But seeing all the different styles of each band and the merchandise / way finding at each venue has really inspired me to work with in this field in the possible future if the opportunity should come up. we actually got to speak to some of the bands we went to watch. The smaller of the bunch, Chinah, who were really chilled to talk to, we spoke to them about their music and i asked about who did their graphic design and they told us that it was made up by them but they would be looking for in the future. after speaking to them for a while i gave my email over and they said they would be in touch in the future which is really exciting!!

Finaly a reply

finally a reply!!! Beginning to worry about ever hearing from someone:

Hi Connell!

Sorry its took us such a long time to reply. been super busy over here. thanks for your interest man, We'd love to help you out

Collaboration is a big part of the creative industry. When you're looking to collaborate with somebody, what would you look for in terms of quality, skills or even personality?

We collaborate all the time, with the location we're at its perfect to do this as there are a bunch of similar minded creatives who are always looking to work with each other. For us though, we will work with anyone of a similar mindset and have a passion for what they do. Skill isnt always everything as long as the ideas that are 

Everybody has a different way of tackling a project, what would you say is your typical design process when creating your content is?

Our process for tackling our videos are always the same which go something like:

Coming up with ideas, spitballing until we are happy with what we have

Creating a time plan for finding a site / getting what we need in terms of special effects, props, costumes ect / shooting / editing / sound / special effects and everything in between

Review what we have, add any changes we want on it

This is a rough plan but it changes to fit each project we undertake as time frames are always different for each one. So we might end up changing what we want mid shoot

How do you measure success within your projects?

For us its always in how much we enjoyed working on the video (or in some case how little sleep we had). Having our videos on the likes of YouTube allows us to see what everyone likes as well as hearing the feedback from our viewers which is always a bonus

If you could tell your younger self who was just starting out a piece of advice you from what you know now what would it be?

Keep doing what your doing and don't give up when it gets tough cause it will always pay off. Also, don't listen to the people saying there is no future for you going into this as they just don't fully understand how wrong they are.

Finally, If your feeling a bit down, whats your go to video that will always cheer you back up?

The SPACEX : Launch and First Stage Landing of SpaceX Falcon 9 / Iridium launch video on youtube alwasy brings us back to feeling great as the whole video has such an awe inspiring effect on us and whats to come in the future

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7RcGfxsIbE

Hope this helps man and we'd love to hear back from you!!

instagram / Behance / social media

a main factor that i identified was a weakness of last year was the lack of a online precense within my practice. I can safety say that ive tackled the problem this year and its made me more confident within my practice.

Ive seen the most success on Instagram as ive had more people contacting me saying what they think on my work. even though its realities low compared to others on my course, having reached 100 followers pretty quickly has been really inspiring for me to create more work which has helped me out of felling so burnt out since Christmas. once all the hand ins are out of the way then i will focus on making my other pieces of online presence as successful (hopefully)

PPP presentation slides with Feedback

feedback

"Very confident about what you where talking about"
"excatly 7 minutes which is a really good sign"
"if film and media is a sector your really intrested in then focus on your practice next year"

Getting contacted

A photograph student contacted me as they've seen my work on the set in stone brief and wanted me to design their photo book. This has been really exciting as some one wants me to create something for them is such a great experiance. I excepted (even though the project wont be finished until after the ppp hand in) and began to work on it keeping in constant communication with her. after creating some mock ups i sent them over (i was too ill to go in to talk in person) to get some feedback from her: (blue is me)

hey! im super sorry, was ill last night and didnt come into uni today. i do have the moc ups here so if you want to look at them and see which ones you like or if you want some thing different. so there are variations of the double page spreads , portraits and how to do the culture sections. let me know what you think and what needs changing.

Oh no! Hope you feel better soon thanks for this, I will

Ok! so i have had a look. i think they are all very good layouts

this one works very well in a sense that it's not full bleed, because and i quite like that bit of text on the side (will need to figure out what to put in there )

this spread, love the black and white - i think the image on (left) needs to be cropped differently, its at a weird crop i will look further into this and try resolve this

other than that, it looks really good, love that but of text on the right.

this image, works extremely well in full bleed so its a keeper for sure

i feel that this one draws my attention more, i think its nice how it has a little border around it, making it more spacious and not so full on. however, is there any particular reason why you have placed her on the left hand side of the book rather than the right?

Brill, if there train ones you like then I'll follow up with them. In terms of the image on the left, I was trying to lead the eye of the reader so they can get a better view of the person in question. If you want the text on the left hand side then I can do that for you

interesting, ok! um, with this particular image, the woman said that i could take her image, but she did not want to make any other comment about the questions, so maybe it would be best to place her image on the right, and would it be professional to have a complete blank page along with her portrait or should we put something there?

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this has been very interesting as ive developed a more professional way of talking to her as a client which was easier as ive never met her before.

Practical thoughts

as ive tried to get in contact with a few creatives, i want to create something that would incorporate all of them at once. To help come up with what path i can follow for this project i brainstormed ideas of what i could possibly push

- a publication containing all of the responses
- small flyers i can send to each of the creatives
- a cheap booklet for students to see what the creative world look like
- a series of posters to showcase each creative and their interview
- a student handbook to inspre them with the journey of creatives
- a short motion graphic to bring all of the answers together (to relate it to the 
  creatives ive asked)
- an online piece to be able to send out to students and professionals alike

after talking with peers i knew i wanted to create something to be able to be used by us students more than being sent off to the professionals its more beneficial for people at uni as it gives in insight for what where going into and what to expect. As there are many students in graphics this project needs to have a few must haves such as:

- being cheap to make
- easily produced
- make it desirable so people will want to use it

to combat this i think that creating a set of posters would be a better option as it adds a certain collectorbility to the project while also having the option to be a cheap production method. while talking to my peers in a crit session, the overall feedback was the same suggesting to go with the series of posters to showcase each creative and their interview concept. they aslo suggested that if i wanted to keep the cost low and the production high then screen printing would be a good option for the project. For me in PPP last year i told myself that wanted to use screen printing more as it was a medium that i really wanted to get better at and i can see it being a perfect link between my developing practice to allow me to incorporate this print method within my project.

Not heard back from any studios, still holding out on faith

not heard back from any of the people ive contacted, Its still early days so i shouldn't worry too much but as a safety measure, i'm going to start looking more into the practical so it will be easier to bring everything together when i do get a reply (If anyone gets back to me)

Responsive Hasbro brief reflection

I took this project at the start of responsive as it was one of the brief that nobody else was doing so that's why i took it as i thought it would be a fun challenge. Throughout the project though I was loosing the creativity i had at the start as there was other responsive briefs that i was properly enjoying. the more i worked on this one the more I felt burnt out. I cant put my finger on what was wrong with me with this brief but the more i worked on it the harder i found to work on it as the same level as the what i was putting into other projects.

Don't get me wrong, i loved trying to come up with a new game but i found that taking over the actual graphic design i wanted to do for it. I think that this brief has gave me the kick i needed to fully plan out what i want out of my projects and to get more feedback to keep me on track. I enjoyed problem solving for a non graphic design isuue, defiantly something i want to continue in the future as it reminds me of my stone book project from before Christmas. 

I think this might have been my weakest project ive worked on just because I couldn't get the traction to get fully invested in to the brief. I think it might have something to do with how ive been feeling in this second semester, i dont know but one thing i do know is that the rest of this module im happy with!

stefan sagmeister

With how much ive enjoyed my stone book project i wanted to included it within my end of year presentation. After talking to a few people about it they were telling me to send it off to Stefan Sagmeister as he reviews work that are sent to him on Instagram. hearing people tell me that they think my work was good enough to send to Stefan him self was such a confidence booster and i went about just doing that.

Email:

Hi 

Im currently in my second year of my graphic design course at LCA. Ive recently worked on a editorial project that had to focus on an aspect or field of typography and i would love to get your thoughts on it.

For my project, it aimed showcase the craft of stone based lettering, mainly focused on engraving. The book cover itself is made of reclaimed slate with the title of the project engraved into the front of it as a taste of the craft

I look forward to hearing from you

Thanks

Connell Makepeace

instagram: @con.makepeace

Nest Launch

the nest launch was really interesting, it was a great night. Unfortunately, we got there for the start and for the time we were there there was just peers from our class there. Turns out after we left the professionals started showing up after we left which sucked as i was looking forward to talk to some. It was good however to see how to launch your own magazines for possible future projects

Studio Visit

Lord Whitney

me and a friend form illustration decided to visit lord Whitney as they was a studio that we both had a large interest in. with our responsive done, we decided to go during a Thursdays studio development as it gave us a chance more time there.

The studio had a real cool and quirky feel to it as it had trinkets of past projects scattered around the space along side trinkets that had been collected over the years. Both Amy Lord and Rebekah Whitney started to chat with us about them selfs. The told us that they started up Lord Whitney together in the last week of their last year when both their tutors asked if they wanted to work together for a project as they had similar views. They where both very friendly and energetic in answering our questions.

They talked with us about the journey they've taken to get to where they are today was really intriguing as they told us that it wasn't always easy but the over arching theme was that they had a passion for what they do and that passion was always stronger than any feeling of doubt in them self's. They showed us their past projects they've worked on and it was really interesting to me to see graphic designers turned set piece design as its an area I've always been fond of, that and movie props. One project that stood out to me the most was the lore of the north which looked into all of the folklore and myths of the north, some thing that really fascinates me. 

PPP presentation

To help prepare us for the Final presentation we've had many opportunities to develop are presenting skills. I've attended all that where available to me to help me presenting as last year i wasn't to confident of a speaker. Here are all the activities/opportunities ive taken upon myself:

Becoming one of the Student Reps.

While it isn't exactly preforming presentations to anyone, Becoming a student rep has really helped me in my confidence of public speaking. Being able to get feedback from talking to our year and to communicate it to our course leaders and above has made it easier to talk to an audience and has boosted my confidence as a whole (or atleast i think it has which is all that matters)

Simon's practice presentations

Both of these practice presentations have been a huge help in terms of helping my overall confidence in public speaking. Which shows as the feedback from both of these sessions show that ive developed in my overall style and aproach to presenting. just need to make sure i dont have a cold for my final presentation

movie presentation (The warriors)

Creative presentation (pablo lobato)

Professional actor presentation talk

To help improve our presentation skills, we had a one hour talk/workshop with professional actor and trainer Rick Ferguson. He went over the basics of delivering a presentation, talked about pitfalls to avoid, how to engage the audience to keep everyone intrigued. Throughout the workshop, Rick broke down the various parts of delivering a presentation and talked about each in detail, here's a quick outline:

Behavior

• Volume, pitch and speed. Use them all to your advantage.
• Avoid using crutch words, use pauses instead.
• Maintain eye contact with your audience, but don't be too fixated on any one or group of people.
• Be wary of your hand and body language.

Structure

• Use bookending: Start and end your presentation with similar content, tie them together.
• Use the 'power of three' to add power, humour or personality to the presentation.

Content

• Head: The where, what and how.
• Heart: The why, who and who else.

This whole workshop has been a huge help to me and im sure to everyone else taken part. Rick's enthusiasm for presenting really rubbed off on everyone as it got us all to interact and to break our common fears of talking in presentations. There was a chance to make a presentation about ourselfs and preform it infront of him but it would be after our ppp presentation which sort of sucks as i would have liked to have done this in preparation before hand. Im still going to attend as i feel it will be a huge help for me for third year