Printing Workshop

 

As some of you might be aware, I am slowly building a business as a creative coach.

Because of this I was looking for some inspirational posters to be hand printing for me by someone local.

Asking at my local Arts and Craft Society I was pointed in the direction of Type Tom.

 

Looking on his website, I very much liked his style of work so asked if he could print me some posters.  But he said no, would you like to print them youself?

If you know me at all, that is not the sort of offer I could turn down.

 

So this weekend I went down to Bognor to his workshop and spent the morning printing a set of 4 different posters in my brand colours!

He's also made me a logo block so we could emboss the corner of each poster to show it was mine. 

 

It was great to learn a bit about letterpress printing, before selecting the type from a wonderful selection of wooden type sets, laying it all out and printing it.  It was really hands on, so how I came away with only one smudge of green on me I have no idea! 

And I ended up with a box of posters ready to use as I see fit.

 

I'm sort of hoping I use them up quickly so I can go back and have another go! 

A new address

I’m a bit of a traditionalist so knowing that we would be moving soon I started thinking about how to let everyone know our new address.  I think it’s a shame now that often you just get a text or email with a new address - I like something a little more physical.

We’d been hoping to move before Christmas, so my thinking was to send something out with the Christmas cards.  And then we got pushed back to January, but after thinking about it for a bit I decided this plan would still work.

Having worked as a UX Designer for the past year, and working closely with UI Designers at the same time, I’ve learnt that it is totally ok to look at what other people are doing before starting design.  I’m not talking about copying, but competitor analysis and idea generation.  

So I started by looking at the Noun Project to see how people draw houses and what house and home mean to others.

Having done some research I started sketching out ideas for illustrations to show the idea of moving house.  I had a few I really liked, but when I spoke to ‘im outdoors we narrowed it down to one.

Now I had to decide.  Did I draw it by hand and scan it in or should I try using Adobe Illustrator?  Because I only wanted something very simple, line drawings really I thought I’d try with the software first.

Watching how my colleagues do things in Illustrator must have paid off as I managed to create my little houses.  And where I got a bit stuck Google helped me out.

And there we have it, moving from the flat on a hill to a house backing onto a woodland.

I love little projects like this.  A bit different from what I do day to day but with a real purpose behind it.

Business Cards

After all the work on UXDI to learn about UX design, now I have to go and show potential employers why they should employ me rather than any of the other guys from my course.
First things first - I need a business card!

They arrived today and I'm really excited.  I've never had business cards before and these rather fetching 'green' cards from Moo have come out just how I wanted. 

I designed myself a logo after week 6 - visual design week, but wasn't sure what it would look like in print.  I shouldn't have worried, they came out perfectly.

And I might have got a little excited and bought some stickers too, but they are very excellent.  At least you'll know if I've been around if you find these stuck all over the place.

UXDI - Week 6

Week 6 was all about Visual Design and after the last 5 weeks it was a nice change.  There was still much to learn, but it was a little less intense.
Andrew was taking a back seat this week as Tricia was running the class.  She’s from America and has run the UXDI course in New York and London so knew exactly what she was doing.
The aim of the week was to take our app designs from Week 1 and make them look nice.  To do this we used a programme called Sketch (although some people stuck with things like Photoshop if that’s what they were used to).
Not only could we make our old designs look nice but we could fix the problems which were now obvious to us after 5 weeks of intensive UX training.

Dan's app Dare, allows you to dare your friends to do activities

 I was sitting next to Dan this week and was intrigued to watch him create his rocket icon for his app.  I’m new to visual design and Sketch so I’ve been learning as I go along, but I’ve learnt lots from just watching what he’s been doing and asking for help when needed from the guys who have visual design backgrounds - particularly Dan and Stratis.  Thanks guys.  The TA’s Tom and Mollie were also invaluable resources. 

Moodboard for my app

We also had a field trip out to the Design Museum to look at the Design of the Year nominations.  The range was amazing, but I did find myself drawn to the designs which aimed to improve life by filtering city air, removing plastic from the sea, or responsive street furniture which helps disabled people, amongst others.  It was nice to see Monument Valley (see week 2) nominated! 

Style Tile - helps me to keep my design focused

And as we aren’t going to present any projects in the next couple of weeks, we were asked to do flash talks (2 a day) - 5 minutes on a subject we’re interested in.  I had the privilege of going first on Monday afternoon, so put together some slides on making paper (what else?!).  The photos from this blog came in very handy.  I made sure to take some samples with me too which everyone loved!

Before: How my app looked by the end of week 1

After: How my app looked by the end of week 6

 So all in all a very satisfying week.  It was amazing to see the metamorphosis of my grey design of week 1 into a beautiful colourful butterfly.  It’s hard to even recognise it.  I’m still no visual design expert but maybe with a little practice I can do this.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on UXDI.

Toxic Paper Factory

Lola seems to have given me back my creativity.  I'm full of projects now, although I still don't have the time to do them.  While looking round the internet for something completely different I stumbled across the Toxic Paper Factory.  This amazing site is full of paper models which you can download, print out and bring to life. If you have never made anything out of paper before you might find them a little hard as they don't really come with instructions, but if you know how to fold, cut and glue paper you won't have any trouble with these models.  The cats above are just the first of many.  What I love about the cats is they took me about half an hour to put together so I had a finished product very quickly.  I can't wait to make more.

Fantasmagorical Machines

Yesterday I drove all the way to Oxford for the first Lola day school.  I managed to see a little more of Oxford than I was expecting but the day went really well.  Just a shame that there were only 2 people from my tutor group in attendance – 3 tutors and their groups made up the session so we had the chance to work on three very different sides of design – photography, problem solving and my favourite; the making of Fantasmagorical Machines.

We were given a choice of machine to make, things like a machine to make a mountain out of a mole hill, or a machine for weighing up your options or, in my groups case, a machine to help you find cloud cuckoo land.  Of course with only an hour to work on it no one was expecting a fully working machine, but I was impressed with all the prototypes that were produced.

We ended up creating a compass which would take your thumb print and then calibrate to find your very own version of cloud cuckoo land.  We added a light to help with navigation and a button on the lid which would fold everything away when we were finished with it so it would travel in a pocket or bag.  If I’d been working on my own it probably would have been a little more minimalist, but these are all part of the challenges of design.

I can’t wait to see what they get us doing at the next day school.

An ecological business card

Life has been a little crazy these past few weeks, what with a restructure at work, the last double length TMA to write and a car crash which wrote my car off and left me with stitches to the back of my head.

That last one really does put your life into perspective and remind you of the good things in your life right now.  But it has also made it hard to get going with the essay when you can’t help but think how little importance it has compared other things.

Now I’m recovering from the shock and things are getting back to normal I wanted to share this amazing idea for an ecological business card.  It’s basically a stamp which you can use on any found material so maybe a napkin from that business lunch, or my favourite an empty envelope.  I love that this makes me think.  Why does a business card have to be a rectangle of card?

Canoscan Lite 200

I can’t decide if my computer doesn’t like working Sundays or if it just gets so used to not working through out the week, when I get all the computer time I can stand at work so I don’t turn it on, that when I do turn it on on Sunday its forgotten what to do.

The picture above might not look like much but it’s my first scan and photoshop work that I’ve done at home (it’s a scan of one of my beady necklaces). That’s right I’ve finally bought a scanner – a tiny Canoscan Lite 200, and although I tried yesterday I couldn’t get it to work. This evening it can’t be more helpful.

I’m looking forward to playing a lot more, but it’s already cut into my A364 ECA – end of course assessment, writing time so I should probably get back to that now. The deadline is after all looming.

Tasty Suite

I’ve been shopping on Etsy again. What better excuse than I’ve a flat to make beautiful. The finishing touch I think is putting artwork up – something that we’re still working on.
In the mean time I’ve visited Tasty Suite who produce vinyl stickers for any surface. I love their designs so deciding on just one was impossible! In the end I got 3 designs (1 was part of a promotion they were running). They were so easy to put up; the hardest part was deciding where to place them. I’m very please and think they give the flat something a little special. And the best thing? Although they are designed by Tasty Suite, you can do what you will with them, giving them a personal feel.

Illustrator

I spent another day at South Hill Park yesterday. This time mostly drawing apples – I was on the Illustrator course.
I better start with explaining that Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator all work very closely together. Photoshop is for photos, Illustrator is for drawing and InDesign is for putting it all together is a newsletter or poster. Quite a lot of the tools are the same on the 3 programmes which means once you understand one programme the others are easier to pick up.

I think the key tool is the pen tool. This lets you make any shape you can think of, whether it’s the round of an apple or the creases in someone’s shirt.

Illustrator also lets you play with type, so you could make words in illustrator to paste on to a photo in Photoshop.
I really enjoyed the day and think I learnt lots. Our teacher, Rose, was very knowledgeable and was very happy to spent time with anyone who was having problems. Now I’ve got the basics of the 3 programmes I should be able to do some of the things I’ve been dieing to try but not had the skills. Shame I’m really busy for the next couple of weeks!

Moo

I’ve just come across a brilliant web site called Moo.com. Those of you who know me will understand that just the name its self is enough to make me think this is a great site.
But the fact that they are a printing company who will actually let you print your photos directly from flickr makes them even better.
I love the fact that I could order 100 double sided business cards from them and have a different photo on every one. I don’t think I’ve even got 100 photos on flickr yet!
They have a great selection of products, from business cards, to greeting cards to postcards and sticker books, all of which can have your own photos on or a design from their very own collection of designers and illustrators.
And as if that’s not enough they have a page of ideas and inspirations too.
And I love their website.
So when I said I’d design and print my own business cards, maybe I’ll just design them and leave the printing to Moo.

Adobe InDesign

Yesterday I spent the day at South Hill Park (again). I’m sure you remember that last November I spent every Monday evening there, learning how to use Photoshop properly. It was there that I learnt about Indesign and found a course to go on.
It’s a really great piece of software if you need to put together anything with photos and text. For example business cards, a news letter or maybe a catalog.
But it's not just about the positioning of the text round a photo, I mean you can do that in Word. There are lots of effects that you can use to make your news letter even more exciting. I’d love to show you what I did, but none of it was very good, and I don’t have InDesign on my machine yet (give me time) so can’t even start fresh today. But watch this space. There are many things I want to do (see my 43 things below) which InDesign will make very easy for me.

The Mslexia Cover Competition

I don’t know if you’ve had snow where you are, but we have, and lots of it. So much in fact that they closed the University! I’d booked Monday off anyway but Tuesday was a bonus. And a welcome one. I’ve got several projects that I wanted to work on, but haven’t had the time.

One of these is to create an entry for the Mslexia magazine cover competition. Now I’m sure I’ve told you all about Mslexia already – a magazine for women who write. To celebrate their 10th anniversary they are running a competition to design the cover of their Apr/May/Jun issue and artwork should be inspired by or reflect the mag. I love the magazine and can think of nothing more amazing than to have my artwork on the cover.

I’ve had some ideas for a while, so when I knew I wouldn’t have to go in to work, I got stuck in. Above are some of my favorites, although which ever one I choose will need a little work before I send it off.

What do you think?