Our Visual Expression tutors, Philippa and Barrie, kindly arranged for our work to be exhibited at the Greestone building for a week. Emma and I headed up the hill to have a look…

There was a variety of processes used, from embossing to spray painting and screen printing to letterpress. All of the posters looked great and you could really tell that people have enjoyed the project and put a lot of effort into their posters.

Lucy’s (left) and my posters (right)

It was really interesting to see everyone’s work as, with there being around 90 people on my course, I don’t get to see a lot of the work that is produced.

The exhibition is running until the end of the week (tomorrow – wow that came around quickly) at Greestone so if you’re in Lincoln and love printmaking then you should pop in!

Awww, isn’t he just the cutest? (He does have a hairy bum though!) We named him Caslon because it’s a typeface(of course) and also sounds like Aslan the lion from Narnia.

He’s the perfect pet for Graphic Designers – low maintenance and has creative hair (we’re thinking of cutting it into a mohawk). He gets loads of attention and is great for procrastination! Back to work now though…

It was a bit of a spontaneous trip, but a sensible decision. Amber, Emma, Lucy & I went to the big smoke on Wednesday to visit book shops and find inspiration. With both current projects being editorial and typography based, we decided it was a good idea to go and see what’s ‘out there’. Sometimes you just need to go and experience things in person, because the internet isn’t the be all and end all (may come as a surprise to some people).

I’m not sure why, but I always get really excited about going to London. I think it’s because it seems to have so much designy stuff going on – all the studios, agencies, museums and street art. Any excuse for a change of scenery is a good excuse if you ask me

I hate how slow tourists dawdle along… but I always feel a bit like one because I end up oogling over London things:

The gap in Tower Bridge….

… the city of London shield posters…

…. political graffiti…

… and The Design Museum. There’s a cool little shop here with lots of cool books but I’m glad that we held out for Magma.

That shop is actually amazing! It’s quite deceiving from the outside, but a design pantry inside with 5 shelves high of magazines, books, posters and other cool designery accessories.

I even saw some Type Trumps cards which I should make better use of really but I don’t want to ruin them (mine have been out of the packet once)!

Emma likes the shiny, varnished & pearlescent  cover of Slanted Magazine

Lucy likes the fold-out leaflet/ poster style of Rise and Fall, whilst I try to decide which of the magazines to buy…

Proudly showing our Magma purchases outside the Clerkenwell store. We then made our way to Artwords in Shoreditch..

…and also nipped into YCN across the street because after doing a YCN brief, it would be rude not to, right?

(I resisted the urge to get on the YCN bike outside)

Lucy & Amber look at how one of the city guides folds out

Emma spotted a few ex-Lincolners in the newest YCN annual (Taran Uppal & Ric Gravina off the top of my head)

I saw some appropriate/cool little cards too…

Read my blog… oh, you already are

After 5 hours of touching, reading and smelling books & magazines we decided it was time to re-fuel and so we treated ourselves to a meal at the Hard Rock Cafe!

Biggest & best tasting burger ever!!! I couldn’t even finish it all and I have quite a big appetite. We also toasted my blogging birthday ( 3 years old!) which I had forgotten about – oops!

Sometimes spontaneous is the best way, or so it seems. Had such a great day and saw lots of interesting sights & design inspiration. My mind is in overdrive but I’m absolutely knackered! I’m even more excited to go to Leeds Print Festival next weekend – I love doing Graphic Design things!

Just a thought to leave you with…. never say ‘Euston we have a problem’ on the underground between Euston and Kings Cross St Pancras. It’s just not clever…

I don’t know about other students, but for me, I think assessment time is probably more stressful than actually doing the work!? In preparation for VE, I had to decide on wether to trim or leave my Limited Edition posters. After a debate on twitter & facebook, I opted for a compromise …

…a 1cm border to frame the prints and also show the texture of the ink which was created when I was stencil printing them. I’m SO glad I didn’t trim them fully! I shot the beauty shot on wall tiles for a butcher shop feel. Very pleased with the end result

That was the last job really and then I packaged everything up, ready for the big presentations:

Matching labels & everything!

I’m quite a chatty person in general (if you couldn’t already tell) however I get really nervous when it comes to presenting my work for assessment. Last time, my GD presentation didn’t go as well as I hoped it would so I was disappointed and put a lot of pressure on myself to improve for this time. I was SO happy with how it went this time, so hope that I’m still happy when I get my grades back! Not sure why, but I always seem to be feel a bit more confident and enjoy presenting my VE work. I was actually really excited to present my limited edition posters because I was proud of them so that was slightly less nerve-wracking.

So that was last week… now onto the new projects! Both are competition briefs – istd and D&AD, for which I’m excited but also very anxious. I’ve been pretty vocal about my ambition to win a D&AD yellow pencil in the past couple of years and so at last, here’s my first opportunity! The brief I am undertaking is set by Domenic Lippa of Pentagram to create a supplement about the designers and typographers of The Typographic Circle. I’m preeeeeetty excited about this brief and I have lots of ideas but I know that getting it right is going to be the hardest part here.

The other brief is set by istd, the International Society of Typographic Designers. They are typography experts and my work will be scrutinised to every letter, so it’s a basically an exam. Eeeeek – no pressure! If your work is at the level they seek, you are accepted as a member into the istd and can put the letters after your name! I’ve chosen the ‘Tales to change the word’ brief which uses ‘The Waitress’ by Jack Zipes as the main content. It’s a story about Marie, a Parisian waitress with a talking chair attached to her back. It seems a bit bizarre, but like all good fairytales it has a good message underneath.
Last Thursday we had a visit from Fliss Gibbeson, an ex Lincoln student, who came in to discuss our ideas and give us some advice on the istd project. It was really great to be able to talk to someone who has been in our shoes and discuss different routes and approaches for the brief. Thanks to Fliss for coming to visit; it was lovely to meet her.

The only downside to competition briefs is that (like YCN) I’m not going to be blogging what I’m up to, so I might be a bit quiet again for a while but hoping to get busy with some J’adore posts instead…

[edit]

…. and that is what happens when you pre-schedule posts and forget about them!

I was in London with my girls when this was published and Emma got an email notification about it. We was tucking into some amazing food in the Hard Rock Cafe at Green Park at the time, so we toasted to my 3 years of blogging! Cheers!

So it’s the last day of 2011 and I’m looking forward to 2012 more than ever now. No, not because of the 2012 Olympics haha But this:

Yes, I’m excited for the Leeds Print Festival!  At Leeds Gallery from the 27^th to 31^st January 2012 and ‘celebrating traditional and contemporary print process through type and image’, the festival will exhibit artist’s and designer’s work from around the world as well as boasting an exciting talks line up! On Sunday 29th: Generation Press…

… Si Scott…

… and Anthony Burrill (whose work I looked at in my recent print project, Limited Edition)…

…will all be talking and I will be listening – can’t wait! All 3 for just £20 and did I mention a hand printed, personalised ticket – what a bargain! Get yours from here, sooner rather than later!

Aside from all of the great artists and designers attending, a fantastique reason to attend is this man. The reason I started to blog and the main source of my enthusiasm for Graphic Design, my tutor from college will be exhibiting and selling some of his own printed goodies. He’s a Yorkshire man, so pretty friendly and very excitable about all things letterpress!

So if you’re ‘up North’ (as they say) or can make it there, then I guarantee this will be a print-geek convention of good sorts! If you decide to go, let me know…

After 8 hours of light box tracing and scalpal-ing, I had templates for the 2nd (black), 3rd (blue) and 4th (grey) colours of my poster. I had to hand cut my stencils because I wasn’t able to silk screen print due to the massive volume of 2nd years printing…

… but I was able to use the suction table to help with the registration of my layers…

… not that it really helped me! My stencil got stuck to the plastic sheet and so I had to peel off all the components and re-arrange them in the same place! I was pretty stressed out at this point…

… and it didn’t help that when I had re-arranged all of the pieces again and printed, some things went a bit skew whiff

The ‘T’ in student and the outline of the ribbon on the right hand side both moved out of place. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so when I had realised they had moved I was disappointed. Cue the wise words of Jack… ‘that’s the beauty of printmaking’

By this point I had arranged my stencil, printed, failed, panicked, re-arranged my stencil, printed again and come to the end of my booked session! STRESS! Luckily, I was able to snap up Sunjay‘s place on Thursday to get the rest printed…

A first glimpse of the blue..

… and I’m happy with that! Thursday went a lot more smoothly.

The alignment is a bit off on some of them, but with 12 posters to choose my final 6 from, I’m not too worried. The final touch now…

… a light grey to outline the meat, add a crease to the ribbon and text to the star:

Just add experience… and I can do it!

Ta-dah! 1 of the final 12 prints (that I still need to trim)… and I promise I’m not a mannequin even though I’m in the same pose and area of the print room.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with the final outcome. I wish I’d been able to use silkscreen instead of a stencil because all my text would be in the right place but I think my poster still has the impact I wanted.

So, what do you think? Don’t be shy… I don’t have access to a cleaver, promise!

In total I’m printing 3 colours and I started with the background red…

Squelch

Oooooh…

Butcher’s stripes! I’m now very excited to print the black and blue on Tuesday and have the final posters! (Thanks to T-Bish for being my photographer) I love printmaking, but trying to remove my stencil from the screen was a bit of a pain though

Meanwhile, Sunjay couldn’t find his type…

Ash: Is it me you’re looking for?

It’s the wall of horrors – Capital letter city! It took me 3 hours to cut out all the capital letters from wallpaper samples (thanks B&Q) but it was definitely worth it!

Little E for Little Emma

Lucy demonstrates one of the reasons not to overuse capital letters: they’re shouty!

Filming on our glamourous set…. in the girls toilets

Amber in hair and make up

The dream team; Amber, Emma, Lucy and myself

… and after all that fun/hard work Amber worked her magic and edited 8 minutes of footage down to just over 1 minute. So, here it is…

What do you think? Did it make you laugh? It was good fun making it, even though it was a bit cringey watching it back when we presented it to the class! I love a bit of Crystal Castles (I find it really good to work to) and it fitted perfectly with the trippy-ness of our video.

And remember kids: large blocks of text set in capital letters is uncomfortable to read and capital letters in general are loud, shouty and intimidating.

The concept which I’m developing for the new i campaign is very… me. It was a long time ago, but my love for moustaches is still continuing since posting this back in October 2010! (I also just remember… it’s the last day of Movember!)

The problem with this brief is that it’s an open competition so I don’t want to post all my work up and have someone else steal it so that’s about all your getting right now, sorry! The deadline is the end of March 2012 so there’s a bit of a wait… hopefully it’ll be worth it!