Day 45: Wooden Toy Magazine

Had a guest lecture from Timba, an ex-Shillingon grad from Oz today. He illustrates, designs and self publishes Wooden Toy magazine. He's pretty cool and it's definitely a labour of love. He kept it straight, gave us honest sound advice as well as being inspiring. Especially with my illustrator/designer hat on, it just made me determined to have something of mine in a future issue.

Also finished my last brief today. That makes 38 over the two and a half months. Very strange to look back and see how things have evolved from the start and where I am at now. Have to keep reminding myself I've only been doing this for such a short space of time and that I'll only keep improving.

Tomorrow it's just the one-2-one with a tutor to work out what I'd like to put into my portfolio and what should go in to make it great. Then what looks and feels like will be ten days of no sleep....

Day 44: Fashion, turn to the left..

It's Fashion brief time. It's been a full on tough two and a half months. Time's a ticking and I think we're all getting a little crazy. There's so much to do with what feels like so little time before we graduate on the 15th. I'm still loving the course, kinda sad it'll be finished in one respect, but looking forward to finding a design job. 

We all got a little kick up the arse ("be creative, it's fashion..") this morning and to be fair the reboot worked. I wandered around Brick Lane for inspiration while the sun shone then cut into Gotham Light, to create my Acolyte title and pulled this together.

Day 43: Lovely Bones book cover

Redesign a book cover. In a day, (over a weekend). Sorted.

Into the last five weeks of the course. I'm too tired to blink at the moment. We've spent the last week working on email marketing and website design. To come is a packaging brief, a branding project and everything but the kitchen sink.

The last two weeks is all about taking briefs that we have done over the last two months and re-working them into our portfolios.

Day 42: I am your Father

Here's the BFI Film Festival poster I've been working on the last few days. Vader needs a bit of tweaking but for the moment, I'm pretty happy with it.

Day 41 - Saul Bass

This weekend I'll mostly be working on a Science Fiction Festival poster (between cups of tea) but I saw this quote and thought it was spot on. There always has to be a good idea behind everything.

Trying to work a Saul Bass angle into the Sci Fi poster somehow. His work especially for Hitchcock and Kubrick was brilliant. I love the way he used shape, type, and colour. 

Olly Moss is also rather cool and nails it in a similar way. 

Day 41 - National Geographic

One of three double page advert spreads for a travel expedition company. The main brief here, a little like the earlier theatre briefs was to pull together a 'series' of adverts for the client. 

My other two, for Peru and Mongolia are complete apart from some minor amends to the maps. We had a day to do all three. Walking around class as part of the critique at the end, I think it's fair to say everyone hit the mark. 

Day 40 - Melbourne Parks Newsletter

I'm reasonable happy with things at the moment. Aesthetically I feel ok with the visual side of design. There's also a book cover brief next week which is pretty open so I'm planning to get some illustration into mine. 

Layouts and I have, however, been trying to work out what we like about each other. It's the bread and butter of being a designer and yet somedays it's a little of 'you push and I'll pull'. Then we play rock, paper, scissors to settle things.

Having said that I think I'm starting to get there. It just takes me a bit longer than I think it should or I'd like. Practice makes perfect.

Day 39 - Snowboarding Brief

It's been a little while since I posted anything I've been working on. Tomorrow is the end of week seven which means there's five left, then two weeks for pulling our portfolio together.

The briefs are flying in at the moment. As a rule we tend to be given four to five photos, article copy and client requests, demographics, art direction and hierarchy. 

Here's a three page spread (the first two are the double spread) that we were briefed on for Transworld magazine. 

Day 38 - Jagger Lips

Jagger lips in er, interesting places. Aceness.

Day 37: FA Cup - The Final

At last something to hold, though I've not actually managed to get my hands on it just yet. Next time I'm home maybe. For now though this feels like the start of something exciting. Let's be honest, it's about time. I've waited long enough.

Just a brilliant, wonderful, awesome, shout myself hoarse day spent with friends watching City win the cup.