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.
