FLUX500

Several weeks ago I competed in MMU's inter-faculty Flux competition and was
selected to join a team to compete in the finals. I've just returned from the Flux500 Inter-University Business Competition in Nottingham. 33 Universities, 43 Industry experts, 1 Business challenge and.....about 30 hours.

I'm absolutely exhausted after a brilliant and intense three days in Nottingham. Our MMU team performed extremely well amongst strong competition. Where do I even start? The event is one of a kind and offers individuals the opportunity to develop key skills which overall build employability. These skills include communication, presentation, team work, creative problem solving, business plan development, negotiation, selling and leadership.

All 33 teams were handed the exact same business scenario, using an existing business and a current and relevant topic (developing training and working opportunities for the disabled.) At the end of the 30 hours each team pitched their entire business idea in a five minute pitch to an audience and several industry experts ('dragons'.)Followed by seven minutes of questions ('grilling'.)

The top four teams then went onto compete in and extended challenge, resulting in the winners taking the title of The FLUX500 National Champions of 2010, oh and also £3,000, cash. Most importantly for me it boosted my confidence and self-belief. It was a great experience and I gained valuable skills, met some great people and contacts and discovered things I didn't think I was capable of.

PANIC

My submission for the Noise Lab exhibition 'Panic' by Design & Art Direction third year students.

"Panic slowly encroaches upon us, getting more and more intense until we fully acknowledge the fear. The familiar sense of counting down the days, hours or minutes until an anticipated moment is something we all know a little too well."

Oswiecim

After my trip to Poland and Auschwitz back in February I decided to use some of the photographs I'd taken on the trip to produce a small personal photographic response of visiting there. I found it easy to arrange my images in a way that would emphasize their composition, however I found it really hard knowing what text if I wanted any at all should I place on the images. I felt it required some narrative/explanation/poetry but I felt I tainted the simple interpretative language of the images. In the end I combined some found poetry with words of my own and produced a few small concertina books. The book folds out and on the reverse is a really poignant juxtaposition of two images of the same scene. The focus shifts. I began to think of the psychology of prisoners and how they may view what is beyond the fences.

I printed one book onto newsprint and when I began to photograph the book using strong lighting I realized you could begin to see the image on the other side of the paper, I though this added a new layer in the communication of the piece, perhaps I could contrast some images?

Push.

A lovely lady called Marissa from Push print came in today, she brought with her a selection of (beautiful) examples of print work which Push has produced (mainly litho). With clients such as Adidas, Kurt Geiger, The V&A, Levi, COS, The Tate and a selection of High end property agencies and jewelers, Push can produce almost anything to meet your needs.
We talked about print specifications, relationships with designers and printers and with paper suppliers. Here is just a selection of the samples she brought...



We learnt a little more about terms such as Foiling, Flockage, Flood-colour, Die-cut, Flouro, Duplex and Pagination/imposition.

When writing a specification or approaching a printers for a quote, Marissa recommended that we:

- Title the project in an email
- specify the format
- specify the size
- specify the print process (e.g. 4col? 5col? dbl page printing?)
- specify the stock (or ask for a recommendation)
- Finishing
- Quantity to be produced

Finish with a deadline and specific dates, perhaps some examples of similar work, and follow it up with a phone call explaining how you are awaiting a quote.

The all-round clear favorite piece of the day was the...**magic book** wow was this a mystery, ok so imagine a beautiful glossy brochure for a new office build 'Wells & Moore' If you flicked through the brochure one way (e.g. front to back/left to right) it revealed all the information/details/type, however if you flicked the opposite way (e.g. back to front/right to left) you could see large scale photographs and images. The book is absoleley genius and my photographs do not do it justice. Pure magic? the trick is in the page sizes - as is revealed below.

The Surgery...

Ian Anderson Portfolio Surgery
On Thursday I had my first ever portfolio review with Ian Anderson
(of The Designers Republic)

Like everyone I was nervous and I didn't realize it would be feedback on our personal presentation, not really the portfolio work. I like to think I can take constructive criticism but we discussed in the studio how hard it is to have an emotional detachment to our work, so I did take it a little to heart. It took me until the evening to fully understand the feedback and to really take it all on-board.
I now realize its a really different language you have to use, I'm so used to presenting my work to tutors I'd mistakenly mentioned I'd worked with Rachael and Jenny (don't mention people you worked with, just mention once that you have collaborated to give the impression you can work with others.) I talked about "my most recent project"...or talking about projects in relation to time (this is not relevant.) Among other things...

- My portfolio was too small
- I didn't talk enough about each of the projects, I should have gone into more detail
- It had too much work, with too much variety

Despite my presentation being full of errors I did do one thing right and this was showing my rather large A2 day-glow Don't Panic poster which ticked the box of a 'memorable piece of work' to close my presentation with - thank god!

I feel I have such a variety of work (film, animation, branding, print, photography..) It's hard to show my best work and not look like I'm a 'Jack of all trades' I get that and I think its going to be hard to give the portfolio a 'style'.
I hate the fact that because I'm interested in a variety of disciplines it puts me at a disadvantage almost? It is quite hard to look at all the work you have done and think which ones are the best and which ones say something about me as a designer?

Ian Anderson gave us lots of advice about presenting to potential employers what they're looking for, and the most common mistakes people make. I'm really grateful we had this opportunity and having the feedback now is only going to help us improve.

Irish eyes are smilin...

We took advantage of St.Patricks day this year to fund raise for the degree show. Working with Rachael, Maria, Helen and Fredi we designed four tshirts for the day. The four designs were...

** Irish eyes are smilin **
** I heart the craic **
** I'm a drinker not a fighter **
** I heart my Paddy Irish man **



We decided to make 80 shirts and we hand screen-printed them all on tuesday. We got to Waxy's where Maria had ok'd it with the manager, because we were fundraising they let us sell inside...what no-one told us was that they were giving away free tshirts upstairs! so we had to convince everyone to buy a £6 shirt! well we definitely had our work cut out. It was a long night but we were determined to sell the lot! which we did and have managed to raise a grand total of....£202.43!

Right and now back to some work....

Mothers day card's

I get this rack of guilt if I don't contribute to any of the fundraising events going on! so I made up a few cards to contribute to the mothers day sale in the Holden Gallery. I loved the Russian doll logo for mothers day a perfect metaphor for a mum! Just bought one of the canvas bags - love it!

Review time...

This review couldn't have been more different to the reviews back in November. Five minutes to talk through 7 weeks work. My last review was like two and a half hours!
Has it really been 7 weeks! yikes I feel I've done twice as much work than last semester already!

I had my review with Sue and Clint, two tutors who I think haven't really seen any of my work since the beginning of second year. Unfortunately I missed my review slot with Hitch and I'm unsure if this has put me at a disadvantage.

It was really interesting to see what other people had been up to who weren't in my studio groups. Sue and Clint both reinforced the fact that every brief we choose we must really consider 'why am i choosing it?' and 'what do I want this work to say about me?'

...So which way do I want to go?

MMU Degree show pitch...

Rachael and I decided to work together and pitch for the Degree show identity. We both found ourselves being unusually inspired by Neil Grants pie charts.

I found it really inspirational working with Rachael we just took off one day into Manchester and photographed our surroundings. We were really excited bouncing ideas off of each other as we both felt like we were on the same wavelength. We were inspired by pie-charts, fans, wheels, cogs, factories, music, manufacturing and arrows.

We wanted to make use of all of the facilities MMU had to offer, considering letterpress, screenprint, laser-cutting, photograhy etc. We hopped into letterpress to get inspired.


We took the idea into a structure, ideally we wanted to create this large scale poster with all these mechanical elements to it and photograph it in the studio and produce that as the poster. The time constraint of three weeks really got us thinking outside of the box. We produced giant jigsaw like posters with movable parts. We created 3 looks, a neon one, a bright coloured on white and a re-cycled looking one.



Inspired by these windmill, pin-wheel structures we looked at their nets and tiles and began thinking along the lines of...



Towards the end of the project we did a little art directed photography around the buildings using textures within some square frames which we had made. I really enjoyed doing this, with each shot we considered the placement, distance and layout. We made a little concertina booklet and hope to make a poster of this little assignment.

Design Mark

On Thursday I represented the University as a student ambassador at a workshop at the Big Bang fair at the GMEX. The workshop was organized by The Design Council and Design Mark.

The Big Bang Fair is mainly a Science fair for primary and secondary schools with walking robots, chocolate structures and a Formula One stand! - I was quite jealous that I never got a chance to go to something like this.

Design Mark is an organization which awards specialist schools a Design Mark status. A school must demonstrate a high level of design teaching to obtain the award. During the day I worked with four girls from a Design Mark school.

Working in a group of four we were given the Design Councils 'Design against Crime' brief to tackle. The designer Andy Walmsley (Creative Director) from Wash design was there throughout the day to help the two groups towards finding a solution to the brief. It was really interesting to meet Andy, his design studio work on many different projects some in the field of architecture, animation, advertising and others. His websites pretty cool too.

I never really thought of teaching or working with children but I found it really inspiring. The girls in my group were really smart and came up with a great range of concepts in response to the brief. Keen product design students they really thought about our 'product' a solar powered roll-up mat which charges and backs up data for a variety of electronic devices (camera, USB, mobile.) The girls chose the name 'The Core' and here were some of their sketches.


and some of my logo ideas!


It was really strange performing this supportive role. I had to really stop myself from leading the ideas and being the designer. I had to really identify the moments where the girls had an idea and then encourage them to develop it, push it and question it. Andy gave me some great advice, being a Creative Director he is leading and pushing his team all the time, keep looking back at your ideas but always move forwards. I was quite proud of the work the girls did and they pitched it at the end of the day.

The design and idea process is really incredible and I felt reassured looking at the result of our conceptual development and the mess which we'd made that we'd really pushed our ideas.


A great opportunity which I enjoyed and I'm glad I said yes to.