Personal Development III//BAGD Studio Promo.

My new promotional branding design for the LCA BAGD Studio, just in time for the visiting professionals and portfolio review week, to keep in balance with my existing branding and to ensure consistency throughout the projects, also reflecting my ambitions to travel with my work, along with a friendly and more personalised approach to business that I always aspire to maintain.

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.

Personal Development III//Re-designed Branding.

Over the Festive break I've been fortunate enough to have been able to dedicate some time to working on re-branding design for more personal branding and brand stationary, which is something I have been wanting to do for a little while.

Whilst I believed my existing branding to be fine, I wasn't entirely enamoured with it, and didn't feel as though it very effectively reflected me and my design practice, and with Helvetica type, didn't feel as though it looked very original, and could be easily lost in a crowd of brand design. 

I decided to work on something, again, quite simple,  in a monochromatic type- driven design which reflects my more clean and minimal design direction, using hyphens to define syllables in my name, and conveying the importance of speech, language and communication within my design and, specifically, branding design practice.

I have translated this brand design over a range of print and web- based deliverables, including branding for social networking, receipts, letterheads, compliment slips and other branded stationary, all of which has been sent to professional print through both moo.com and Genie Print in Brighton, of whom I had previously worked with for the Jessie Leong Photography branding outcomes.

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.

Personal & Professional Development III//Contacting Duke Studios.

duke-studios.com

This evening, I contacted Duke Studios in Leeds re a potential studio visit, primarily on behalf of myself, but after discussing the idea of visiting with a few of my peers on the course, we felt it would be a good idea to all potentially go down as a group.

I first found out about Duke Studios after they initially followed me on Twitter and we started talking with one another, leading me to find out a little bit more about them, including discovering that two of the graduates from the course last year also have gone on to hire a studio there for their new business. It would definitely be interesting to visit for a potential studio space, if the idea to set up my own design studio were ever to become a realised one, and, all in all, to get an overall sense of the studio and the-day-to-day working environment.

Really anticipating a reply and hoping we can organise something for the near future.

Industry//Creativatree NYC Job Offer.

www.creativatree.com

A couple of weeks ago, entirely out of the blue, and a little unusual, though, of course, very flatteringly, I was sent an email via my Behance portfolio account from a recruiter at the New York City based advertising agency, Creativatree, with a potential job offer, to work for one of their clients as a designer.

Of course, as aforementioned, although out of the blue, the offer was, naturally, really appreciated, and although I know I'm very lucky, it just isn't appropriate for where I'm currently at in terms of my design education, and I don't feel prepared enough, or that I have enough experience at this time.

However, it's certainly given me optimism for the future, and something potentially to aim for after graduation. Replying to the recruiter, I have asked to keep in touch, so hopefully they'll be a connection there for me to hold on to, and hopefully benefit from in my future prospects.