Personal Development III//Freelance Recruitment

In light of my recent decision to move to London, along with being offered a temporary internship, I have started to consider the "long run" of living in the city, and, of course, the affordability.

Having met up with a friend in Shoreditch last week, who is a member of the (Advertising) design community, he recommended signing up with freelance recruitment agencies, which I felt was a great idea to ensure my presence is known and I have the potential to gain not only income, but further company contacts and networking credentials within the city.

So far, I have signed up to a few sites for profile building and job searches (see screenshot examples above and below), and will readily pursue this further within the next few weeks and months.

Personal Development III//Tumblr Edits

www.sophiewilsondesign.tumblr.com

I spent some time this morning working on refining my existing tumblr blog for personal work, to ensure consistency throughout my personal branding as I actively seek more freelance work and design opportunities upon graduating from University in just a few short weeks.

Not only does this new layout allow for a header/logo bar, but also increases the pixel width of my images, allowing for the highest level of detail to be seen in my work- perfect for mock ups and detailed design, such as my recent web design work for photographer, Jessie Leong (see image below).

Personal Development III//James Maxwell Business Cards

Yesterday morning,  I received the moo printed luxe business cards for James Maxwell through the post, and was able to go on to cut down the designs (with the corner trim).
I was really impressed with the duplex finish by moo (the cards seem to be getting better and better!), and I hope that James will be as pleased with the results too.

Personal Development III//James Maxwell Business Cards

Over the past couple of days, not having spoke in a working relationship context for some time (since the end of last year, when we briefly worked together to propose a range of branded stationary outcomes to help promote his personal and professional practice upon graduating from University in S / S 2013), James Maxwell got in contact to discuss printing and finishing business cards to be able to present at his graduation show.

Originally, creating a set of four cards which worked both as separate entities, and as a collective set (demonstrating James's multidisciplinary background), we decided to strip this back, both for practicality and financial reasons, James deciding to title his practice as 'Interior Architecture', and going for a monochromatic duplex print finish, which has been ordered through trusted printers, moo (www.moo.com).

Despite being happy with the quick changes made (to go on to cut and finish the cards when they arrive with me in around a weeks time, to then go on to be sent to James as a finalised design), coincidentally, down to James's design choices, the card is incredibly similar to that of Alex Warren, the Architectural Designer I am currently working with. Although James is okay with this, I will personally choose to not include it in a professional portfolio context, in order to show my own design portfolio variation, and to take away from any potential, and expected, comparisons.

Personal Development III//Jack Tyson

Over the past couple of weeks I've been very fortunate to work with global (but currently Leeds - based) make up artist, Jack Tyson, developing his own, unique face chart to use for make up and model sketch ups before commissions and shoots, as is common place within the industry.

Jack wanted a high end, and slightly androgynous look, with large, yet reasonably soft features to create a balance and neutrality that would suit a wide variety of models that he works with (both male and female).

The design was really stripped back, and after various developmental stages, and working from the hand rendered illustration into a vector based design, we're both really happy with the results, and look forward to hopefully continuing to work with him in the future. A very happy working relationship.

Personal Development III//Self Promotion & Portfolio Talk

www.nuconstruction.co.uk

This afternoon I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity, having been approached by the FE to HE department, to go down to the Art & Design Access Students at the Leeds College of Art college campus to talk about my portfolio and methods of self promotion to consider if pursuing a degree or career in Graphic Design. 

It was really flattering to have been asked to go along (and even better to have got paid for it...) to showcase my portfolio, discuss my work, and give advice to the Access group, as well as answering questions they had and talking about my work in general, and, overall, it felt like a really rewarding experience, and something to really enjoy.

This has also opened up the offer from the department to work on some of the printed materials for the promotion of FE to HE work and working with schools in the community to promote the college once I've left Uni which would be something really exciting to do, and a great asset to my commercial design portfolio.

Personal Development III//Design Submission to To Dry For.

www.todryfor.com

Really excited today to have been forwarded an email through from staff at the University (always a great privilege to get all the work done for you...!) for a design competition from tea towel producers, 'To Dry For', which sell unique and beautifully illustrated tea towel designs for contemporary homes.

During the end of the first year, whilst working on developing a nutritional design project, I used To Dry For as a contextual source of inspiration as I went on to develop my own tea towel designs, and have been a great fan of them ever since, selling work of designers I also really admire and first got me into designing, such as Julia Pott, Gemma Correll and Rob Ryan.

I've submitted with a sweet but simple typographic design (seen above), playing on the food themes that are quite consistent in their retail portfolio, as well as mixing up the colours to represent neopolitan ice cream for a fun splash of colour, but, again, keeping it quite simple to be easily, and commercially screenprinted.

Really pleased to submit, even if they just become familiar with my work and practice, which could potentially lead on to a working relationship at a later point in my freelance career.

Personal Development III//Re-joining LinkedIn

www.linkedin.com

After my PPD and tutorial crit last week, and a good discussion with tutor John about preparing for my future and employment, and decided to re-join LinkedIn.

At this crucial stage of my education, and as I go on to look for jobs, and developing my career, I feel it's important to build a network and connections with as many active members of the design industry as possible, as, of course, more often than not, it's about WHO you know. Also, I feel that developing a communication and conversation with members of the industry will only help in building my confidence when talking with others, particularly about design, and, hopefully, will put me in the best frame of mind when (hopefully!) I start having interviews and call backs for job applications.

Personal Development III//Behance Student Competition

www.behance.net/Competitions

This evening I was sent a direct email from the team at Behance to suggest that I submit work for the Talent Search: Student Edition, which, of course, I was really enthusiastic to enter (any opportunity to promote both my work and myself personally is really great at this crucial point in my degree). After reading the terms and conditions, I decided to enter my design work for this year's YCN and UK Greetings awards, feeling that it, at this stage, potentially has the most design development and consideration for branding, colour palette and typographic layout, as well as commercial strength.

There's some great projects submitted so far, and I feel very pleased to be one of them. Looking forward to hearing the results soon!

Professional Development III//Agent 18 Licensing Deal.

www.agent18.com

Over the past couple of days I have been in touch with US comapny, Agent 18. After initially being contacted through my Flickr account, we have developed a working relationship, and, very excitingly for me, I have set up a licensing agreement for some of my existing print and pattern work (from my 'Design a Day' archive) to be used and commercially printed for the company as iPhone covers. 

I'm really excited to see my work available to purchase online, particularly in such a unique and, to me, completely new way, and, hopefully a few freebies while I'm at it too!

 

Personal Development III//Website Developments.

sophiewilsondesign.com

Over the festive break I've been fortunate enough that I've been able to dedicated some time to finally re-designing and organising my website, something I've been meaning to do for around 6-12 months now. Along with working on a re-designed branding (although small changes, something that I feel is a little more "me" and the clean, minimal direction that I feel my work is taking, and hope to take it in), I have worked on custom CSS edits for a more unique and personalised browsing experience, as well as transferring my domain name to my Cargo account. This way, I can ensure that updates can be made quickly and easily, and, perhaps most importantly, cost effectively.

I feel really happy that I now finally have a site that I will feel proud to have on my business card and show to prospective employees as I seek more industry placements and employment upon graduation throughout the year.

Along with this, I have also gone on to develop a personalised email address, again, adding to the overall consistency and professionalism of my personal branding.

Definitely looking forward to completing more briefs that I can be proud of to add to my current working design portfolio. For design developments throughout this year, see my Final Major Project blog.

Professional Development III//Re-Branding My Personal & Professional Practice.

Initially started with the view of taking brand materials down to an interview at Praline (Design Studio) in London this week, that I sadly will no longer be able to attend for both personal and work-related reasons, I started to look at my branding and ways it could be improved, having recently, in particular, developed a more typographically-lead style (and outside the comfort zone of Helvetica...).

As I have been using it a great deal within recent client work through the Design Practice III module (see my Design Pratice blog for more details) I decided to use Avenir, and keep to a similar style of the multi-lingual business cards I already use, but this time breaking up words into phonetics and syllables with hyphenation- a concept driven by my love and the importance I place upon both minimalism and communication and constant interaction and learning in working relationships.

Despite not having the same direct usage and purpose, I hope to go on to widen the product range for this branding for my professional development module, starting to look at professional print for my stationary and portfolio range, as well as applying my branding through social media and digital design.

Professional Development III//Meeting at The Corn Exchange.

Whilst selling my retail work at the craft fair, Reetsweet, as run by Becky Drury, at The Corn Exchange in Leeds over the weekend (pictures soon to follow!), two men, KJ and Jimmy introduced themselves to me.

As designers themselves, KJ and Jimmy are looking to set up an agency/job site freelance tool/collective for freelance designers as a way to pool resources and through an agency format find work from industry and big clients to help gain regular work, and, consequently, be able to pay the bills  at the end of the month.

After a good deal of talking and a self-confessed "screening" process, Jimmy and KJ told me they'd be really interested in keeping in touch, and potentially taking me on board as a designer for their business. 


Definitely an interesting idea, and one I'm keen to hear more about... looking forward to potentially meeting up with the designers again in the New Year and explore the potentials or even employment that could lie ahead.