3rd Year Essay, final version.

Here it is, the final version of my essay. Complete with images, references and bibliography. Far easier to read than the previous version I believe, plus the wording has been changed since then anyway.

Some of the page formatting has gone doolally in the process of changing Word files into PDF's into Indesign layouts and back into a PDF but you can get the picture.

Hope you enjoy

posters, books, talks and some other bits and bobs

Having finished the bulk of my work I had plenty of time to finish my essay and get it bound and handed in a few days early. 


Also, what with work finished I helped my zoologist friend Matthew make a book about butterflies. 75 pages, plus folded and letter pressed removable jacket. The spacing is far from perfect, which I'm quite annoyed about. even though it was only a quick job i should have put a bit more effort in. Guess I'm not used to working in Letterpress.

As for essays I'll be putting up a link to the final version soonish, just need to adjust some of the formatting of it so that it looks neater. Must say thank you to the random girl who taught me how to use the unibond binding machine, how I managed to get it wrong the first time is something I'll never quite comprehend. For those of you who haven't used it you simply put your essay into a pre glued binder, put the binder onto a heated strip and allow the glue to warm up and bind your essay together before allowing to cool. I managed to omit the 'place your essay into the pre glued binder' part and was absently minded watching it bind nothing before I was corrected....lesson learned. 


The plan for the day had been, walk to uni, bind essay, hand said essay in, walk home, watch films. What actually happened was I bumped into Oyunga, Arron and Adam who managed to persuade me to stay at uni and watch the second year show. The promise of free booze added to the attraction of seeing how the 2nd years were doing, so  passed a few hours in the Illustration studio before having a browse.


The show was of quite a high standard, some pieces a lot more stand out than others, one thing that was obvious was that there was little attention being payed to the smaller details like line weights, spacing, kerning and the like. I am by no means a master of these things but some of the work was really let down by poor attention to detail. Some of the animations and short films were pretty special and several free glasses of wine and and only a hand full of crisps for lunch left me just a tad drunk. Not the most professional of attitudes, but there were a few worse for wear 3rd years at my 2nd year show so I feel its only right that we carried on the tradition.


Somewhere inbetween the binding fiasco and taking liberties with the free drinks I managed to get an A3 print of the restriction poster I created in response to the Don't Panic brief set by D&AD.

The poster certainly hasn't been improved by carrying it around in my bag all day but I think it's pretty good looking, for something I knocked up in a morning I'm quite proud of it.

Still a little worse for wear Arron, Oyunga and I went over to a design talk being held by INC. Managed to get in for free due to being a student, had a nice selection of sandwiches and then a really good talk from Bryan Edmondson from SEA design. 

Bryan talked about his personal experiences working in the industry, with a particular focus on the growth of SEA design and some of his favourite clients. It was a really interesting talk, and I learned a few new names and places to check out. 

I wasn't overly keen on the poster Bryan had designed for the talk untill I had it explained and I realised the shape was the numbers '199' from a kebab shop style halogen light display Bryan had designed for the 1999 presidents lecture for D&AD. They are the only part left from the shoot, everything else having been broken either in the process or the years that followed. Plus there is a lovely bit of screen print on the poster so at £10 I snapped it up, got it signed and even got a nice big tube to keep it in on the way home. Sweet.

The next half of the meeting was less successful, we went from Bryan Edmondson's interesting, informative and funny talk about working with Rankin, Grafik and K2 screen printers to a rather annoying forum hosted by Bryan, Ralph Ardill, Nick Johnson and Liz.....Im not sure what Liz's last name was unfortunately.

Ralph, Bryan and Liz were quite good with their answers, but I think Nick was far too self absorbed. All his answers seemed to be based on how the question affects him directly rather than the design community. Plus his comment that he didn't want dyson air blade hand dryers was ridiculous. Stating that you don't like progression and development at a design conference? This detracted from what was, or could have been a very interesting end to the evening.

Im sure Nick is very good at what he does, and I would love to see him talk again and hopefully prove me wrong. After all 1st impressions shouldnt count for everything. 

All in a days work

So far today I have finished sourcing (and in some cases re-sourced) images for my essay, added them into the text and neatened up some of the copy so it's ready to print and hand in. Hopefully there won't need to be any changes to this version.

I have also made 2 tweaked versions of The access Project booklet, as usual links are in the issuu shelf above. Or click here to see it in green and here for a blue one with some extra amendments. Not sure about that front cover. Ill work on it some more in the morning.

I have also bitten the bullet and put some of my hard earned/borrowed from the government cash into getting some magazines so the Peter Saville and Beams T editions of Arkitip Magazine will be winging their way to me soon. When I get them I'll take a few pictures and might even show off the rest of my book/magazine/journal collection.

I managed to get 2 magazines and postage for about £65, when you consider that they would be $90 before postage directly from Arkitip I think I got a bargain, not sure my housemates will agree though.....I got them from fusshop.co.uk and suggest you do to.

3rd Year Essay

If you would like to have a read of my 3rd year essay so far then please click here


at the moment it has no images so that may put some of you of, but I think it's a decent read. There is also a link at the top of the page on my bookshelf thing so if you find yourself wanting to read it again and again you can find it up there rather than having to scroll down to this post. If the bookshelf doesn't appear to be working all you need to do is refresh the page and everything will appear like magic.


Enjoy, and I shall repost with a better version soon.