Enterprise//Desk Photography Inspiration.

Blogging some resourced images from 'Google Images' of the desks of Graphic Designers- the main source of inspiration for our proposed 'Creative Review' advertisement which will will be shooting in a down-shot rostrum composition on Monday for Tuesday's hand in. Some great inspiration for lighting as well as utensils and stationary on the individual desks themselves.

http://www.markhowe.co.uk/

Love this desk on the homepage of Illustrator and Photographer Mark Howe's website- bright, colourful, and full of character. Perhaps a little too personally styled for our shoot- but great inspiration for potential future shoots- great mixture of materials, textures, scales, sizes and colours.

 http://assets.unclutterer.com/wp-content/uploads/090410-wow.jpg

Clean cut, crisp- this sort of minimal style would be well suited to our moncohrome branding and identity that is currently in progress of being designed by group members Matt and Chris- obviously all items would have to be in rostrum, two-dimensional format, of course.

http://www.garrybradley.co.uk/images/MyDesk.jpg

Great idea for a new item- GRAPHICS TABLET! I'll definitely be bringing mine in to potentially feature in the photoshoot on Monday. Also, great angle of lighting- the shadowing creates a drop-shadow like effect which makes all the different items appear as if they are "jumping off the page".

http://www.kanardo.com/V5/wp-content/uploads/desk_kanardo-1.jpg

Perhaps a little busy for our advertisement design- but, again, I love the character in this photo- so distinctive of a Graphic Design desk! Again, at a later date, we could make more promotional material- perhaps certain promotions with seperate items (such as "It's hip to be square- Buy one get one free on square format books and zines"- one idea I had!).

http://www-coochicoos-com.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/images/moodboard.jpg

LOVE the colour scheme in this design- really well styled and considered. For this advertisement, unfortunately, I don't think we'll be able to be this well organised in terms of prop colouring, and so on, but, again, a great consideration for potential future promotional designs (or even shop front window displays?).

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2007/june/a-month-in-the-life-of-a-graphic-designer

"Over the next month, Michael C Place of Build and Creative Review will be conducting a unique experiment. We are going to document one month in the life of a graphic designer.

Mr Place (whose desk is shown above) has agreed to record everything that he does during this period. Every piece of work. Every idea. Every presentation. Every meeting."

Found this on the 'Creative Review' website- amazing! Totally in sync. Their photograph by designer Michael C Place, featured above, is crisp, clean and makes great use of natural lighting. Top stuff.

Enterprise//Today's meeting.

Had a great group meeting today where we worked through a lot of ideas, and planning for creating our proposed advertisement for 'Creative Review' magazine. Below, a selection of written notes and 'To-Dos' before returning back to Uni after the weekend. I'm really excited about the development of the company (proposal)- and having a quick chat with tutor Amber today she was really supportive of our ideas, and felt there was a big gap in the market in Leeds for this sort of retail outlet.

The groups working well together, and sharing responsibility well- long may it last!

NOTES

- Matt's designed logos- working well, will try more experimentation over the week. Typeface used: Bebas- change name to 'Book Klub'- works better for the logo? 

- Name and slogan defined: "Book Club: The library of printed design".

- Look for retail space as well as an upstairs studio- in house print, design, and working office space.

- Develop in-house magazine to increase income- make connections with Universities to publish the work of students, they pay for advertising in the magazine, etc.

- Take 20% commission (original 30% may be too high for a new company- not long established)

- Ask woodwork to borrow wood on Monday morning for photos (tables at Uni not "up to scratch"- don't resemble a classic desk look)

- Photography and design to be completed on Monday evening

- Specialise in books, zines, and printed publications, but also sell printed work including t-shirts, prints, and totes, again, opening up the market, and increasing potential to generate income.

- Create stop motion screen based animation as a promotion for the company- inspired by this video:

http://s-wilson1013-ppd.blogspot.com/2012/01/enterprisestop-motion-inspiration.html

TO DO

- Search retail space in Leeds (Moorhouse Lane/Uni area?)

- Search zine designers for potential retail opportunities

- Blog 'Print club London'/'London book club'

- Book Mezzanine for Monday (now done)

- Buy issue of Creative Review

- Blog 'Leeds Print Festival' (organised by tutor Amber)

- Bring in items for photography (rostrum shot- listed below)

- Think about written content for magazine advertisement

- Blog Salford zine library

- ITEMS FOR PHOTOGRAPHY: (look for others also, just a basic list to get ideas going so far...)

* Coffee mug 

* Craft knife

* Crayon pack

* Metal ruler

* Creative review mag

* Compass

* Pens

* Eraser

* Sharpener

* Reel of film

* HB yellow pencil

Enterprise//Group Slogans.

I decided to re-write a list of slogans before the group meets up later on today to discuss both finalising our branding and "identity" as well as making an active direction towards the development of our press ad in 'Creative Review' (which will be handed in for Tuesday's workshop).

Hopefully, this will help us to have more of a feel for our brand identity, and as the only member of the group who seemed to enjoy the task of "slogan generating" (with a nerdish interest in writing), I was more than happy to jot a few ideas down- as shown below.

The slogans highlighted in bold, are ones, at the moment, that are my particular favourites- will discuss with the rest of the group tomorrow.

1. "Live by the press"

2. "The highest grade of printed design"

3. "The artisan print retailers"

4. "Print to impress"

5. "Printing is believing"

6. "The secret society of printed designers"

7. "Press, print, repeat"

8. "Eat, sleep, live, print"

9. "A passion for print"

10. "Home of the printing professional"

11. "We think in print"

12. "Print, fold, bind, repeat"

13. "The home of the artisan print"

14. "The place for print"

15. "Print is what we do"

16. "The library of printed design"

17. "The library for local deisgners"

18. "A different kind of stock"

19. "Print design with an artisan process"

20. "High class design from high class designers"

21. "The first in the printed word"

22. "Contemporary design for traditional print"

23. "The print professionals"

24. "The print people"

25. "The professional print practitioners"

OH MY.

I've just been asked to do some work in association with the British Film Institute.

Oh my.

So excited. 

My contacts have served me well.

Enterprise//Stop Motion Inspiration.

"After organizing our bookshelf almost a year ago (http://youtu.be/zhRT-PM7vpA), my wife and I (Sean Ohlenkamp) decided to take it to the next level. We spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto (883 Queen Street West, (416) 366-8973).

Everything you see here can be purchased at Type Books."

Today, I found this amazing stop motion video online and had a great moment of inspiration for our own proposed zine and book store. Here, the owners of Toronto-based bookstore 'Type' bought their books to life with high-impact visual imagery and and playful characters. Although, of course, time will be against us in regards to creating anything even half as elaborate as this stop motion video, I could really invisage working in this style- and it truly would make a great opening to the presentation later on in the year. Definitely one to be considering.

Enterprise//Creative Review Advertising.

Information sourced yesterday with thanks to fellow GD'er Sadie, the advertising rates for 'Creative Review' in which out ad will be proposed and designed for by our Enterprise group for next Tuesday. 

Although, ideally, more time could be spent making decisions regarding accounts, budgeting, etc, right now we don't have as much time as I would like to dedicate to the project, but I will ensure that I keep an active spreadsheet so we can work out costs of retail, stock, business expenses, etc.

Currently we're considering designing for the 125mmx125m DPS (the full square format measuring 250mmx250mm) for the design- will specify in the group meeting tomorrow.

Enterprise//Developing logos.

As soon as I got back from Uni, I started to consider and develop ideas for potential logos for our enterprise company 'BOOK CLUB'. I am the first to admit that logo development, branding and identity is by no means a strong point in my design practice, though I felt that I really wanted a go in developing some ideas, and, at very least, potentially contributing some new ideas to the group.
Before beginning my own designs, I looked at existing secondary sources for potential inspiration- images, links, and annotation can be found below.

http://roytorkington.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/2-roys-BS.jpg 

Great example of the primary stages of working with hand-rendered type (before editing in computer software to make vectored type, which is usual)- not perfectly crisp, of course, but a great consistency of weight of line and attention to detail with kerning and the descender(s) in particular is a great example of hand-rendered typographic design. 

http://www.joelcagedesign.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/S.I.Y_blue-760x1143.jpg 

Great application of textured background here- takes away any risk of the cursive script text being too formal/feminine for the band's (Kasabian) more "rock and roll" image.

http://friendsoftype.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/06_jealousy-950x950.jpg

Amazing weight of line and varying strokes using in this calligraphic design- a traditional typographic style which has been up to date with considered layout, leading and overlays for a very contemporary 

and sophisticated design.

http://www.doodlersanonymous.com/images/entries/da-ryan-03.jpg

An example of truly hand-rendered type here- with no post-production application through software- a great example of how good organic, hand-rendered type can be when it's done well. Also, a great example of how well combinations of various typefaces (and cases) work together- definitely a consideration 
for our own designs.

http://www.pressingletters.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/jhischebaby.jpg

Again, quite similar to some of the other styles I have blogged as a source of inspiration, this typeface has a beautifully light weight of line which visually communicates femininity and elegance- perhaps a little much so for our company, which we aspire to create a branding ethos of cool, contemporary, printed zine and bookmaking design- perhaps a little too traditional in this scenario.

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/alphabetsoup/metroscript/

Although, in the other examples on this post have shown a more calligraphic style, one style that we had discussed to develop in our short meeting was a "preppy 1950's America look"- playing on the book club/school theme- our target audience also students. This design reminded me of a combination of MGM 1950's title sequence colour plates and the hand-rendered texts found on 50's American baseball outfits. Brilliant stuff.

A few quick designs I have worked on in terms of logo development before- again, as previously mentioned, not a strong point at all, but as far as I can, I want to contribute in all aspects in this group, not just the ones that I feel are my "comfort zones". Talking with some of the other group members this evening, more logo and identity work has been produced, so, when we regroup on Friday, I will propose that we all print off the work we have generated so far, and then select a top three to then discuss and select for our final design, to then for our 'Creative Review' advertising proposal design in to be completed. 

* Originally started generating my own hand-rendered type (left hand corner) but began to go off this calligraphic idea quite quickly- I feel we need something far more minimal and contemporary to effectively communicate our brand and aspirations for business.