“Graphic Designers Are The Most Powerful People In The World.”

For one of my final projects at Ravensbourne, we had to create our own pieces of self-promotion, and my idea was to team my own personal morals about design with examples of my work, to show ‘what it is’ about my work over ‘what I have done’.

I feel that designers should put more thought into their work, or perhaps more-so the repercussions of their work, choosing not to contribute to the downfall of society, instead making it a better place.

The small piece of self-promotion was designed in a way to make it look authoritative, despite it’s size (A3 folded down to A6), and was printed onto a 60gsm bible paper to give it an extra special look and feel, with the text glistening when it catches the light for a really nice quality feel to the small publication.

More photos to be uploaded soon.

Milton Glaser-Inspired Bollard. (2nd session)

Ahhhh… My degree is over! Feels like such a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, I can’t remember a time when I’ve felt so care-free and relaxed!

So much so, that I was able to spend some time on the bollard again, this time spending around 20 minutes transforming the large yellow side-panel into a section of tree (well that was the idea anyway!), a place for my ‘SF + EJ’ ‘engraving’ to live. Also playing around the idea of street furniture being the 21st century tree in a way, people now grafitti-ing on lampposts, street signs, advertising hoardings, and not so much engraving messages into trees like sweet mementos.

Keep watching this space!

Above – The overall view.

Above – Close-up with marker-drawn wood grain effect.

Wim Crouwel lecture @ Ravensbourne College.

This morning we had the absolute pleasure of graphic design legend Wim Crouwel’s presence at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication.

He spoke for around an hour on his inspirations in design, and his career to date, showing some of the pieces of work that have long-since established him as one of the all-time greats in graphic design.

Above – Wim Crouwel talking through one of his famous designs.

Still full of life and highly energetic, his presentation kept the packed lecture theatre gripped with some of his fantastic quotes (some raising the theatre into roars of laughter!);

On his Success-

“You need to have some luck”

“It was the right moment to meet the right people”

On his work-

“I always try to translate the typography with the style of the artist”

“I took the idea from the Da Vinci painting (the Vitruvian Man), but I left the man out!”

“This is the most unreadable poster I ever did!”

“When you grow old, all your identities get replaced by modern ones!”

On technology-

“I cannot work with the mice!”

Wim also answered my question in a brilliant way too I thought…

Me – “Most of your work is highly functional, but a lot of it also pushes the boundaries of legibility. How do you tend to deal with both legibility and the visual aesthetic at the same time? Do you have to hold your hands up sometimes and accept compromising one for the other?”

Wim – “I always work with a system that dictates what I can and cannot do. The grid is like a football pitch, it can be a beautiful play sometimes, but other times it can be dull and grey, I usually realise afterwards that a grey design could have been beautiful if i’d have done this or this, but by then it has been done!”

Wim Crouwel is a fantastic speaker, and will tomorrow be holding a talk for I.S.T.D – sure to be a full house!