“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!

Graduation Nearing…

I thought i’d update my blog with a little taster of one of my final projects, titled ‘Bring the colour back to London’, it was a self-initiated brief intended to do as it’s name suggests, to bring some colour back to the city in these times of economic crisis and with pretty much all news at the moment being bad news.

The campaign lives as 3 graphic icons, a smiley face, a love heart and a star. Each communicates different feelings, and represent different areas of the campaign, covering issues surfaced after 3 days spent talking to people in London, from many different backgrounds about their needs.

The smiley face represents the encouraging of interaction between citizens, and lives through badges that people can wear to encourage others to talk with them, kind of like a “I’m up for talking” sort of message, or even without the badge, the messages encourage others to communicate whilst about their business.

Above – one of the Underground posters.

Above – when close up, you can see that the colour comes from a grid of smiley faces (The icons doing the talking!)

The love heart exists as a stickering aspect, loving the city, with shops, museums and popular places being issued a poster where visitors can stick a little heart telling others if they loved it or not, the more stickers a place gets, the more popular it is, and the more likely it is that people will wish to visit.

…And finally, the star represents recognition for the cities workers. Given out as a reward for great work by employers in an informal fashion, it allows employers to be able to recognise the efforts of the work force, and make them feel appreciated, therefore improving morale, and generally cheering up employees.

Sorry for the quick post, but with just 2 weeks until the big hand-in, time is in very short demand. But just wanted to talk a little about the work, and to practice explaining how it all works. …Watch this space!!

Milton Glaser-Inspired Bollard. (1st session)

…end of night one. (about half an hours work?)

Milton Glaser-Inspired Bollard.

One item at our degree show fund-raising event ‘Blank Canvas’, stood out to me more than the others. It was a customised skateboard deck, hand illustrated by Milton Glaser himself…

Within the illustrations were small, hidden animals, and all manner of little things. And the design itself inspired me to customise something myself, just as a break from my other work when I wanted to get away from it all for a while and relax.

So I thought I struck gold when walking home to find a traffic bollard propped up at the side of the road near my house, without a crossing in sight, perhaps having been taken by some teenagers as a token of an adventurous night.

I figured i’d give it a go, and carried it the few minutes home, where I intend to start work on what I hope to become, as successful-a piece of design as Milton Glaser’s skateboard! …My final intention is to put a lamp inside, to make it feel at home once more!

…Watch this space for more updates on the progress.

My Inspirations…

With only weeks to go until graduation, our course have been arranging a series of events to promote our degree show. Last week was our extremely successful ‘Blank Canvas’ silent auction, featuring a number of customised items by top designers and illustrators, and coming up soon we have arranged to exhibit posters in the ‘Jaguar Shoes’ bar in Shoreditch, London.

The idea behind the posters is the topic of ‘inspirations’, giving an insight into how we as designers work, and again following the greater idea (and name of the degree show…) ‘Introductions’. Introducing us, and our work to potential employers.

This is my poster design. Many of my pieces of work tend to be produced by hand, featuring my own illustrations or photography, and here I wanted to combine the skills, and produce an eye-catching, completely original design to fit in with the quirky surroundings it will be placed in, also with the idea that the endless possibilities with a blank sheet of paper is one of my great inspirations in design – the thought that absolutely anything, from the sane to the completely ridiculous can be created.

Button Badge

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A Fox.

Another of my random ‘time-out’ sketches, just practising illustration styles and techniques in my spare time to try and strengthen my skills.

So much of my work is done on a computer for my graphic design work, that it makes it nice to escape for a while to pick up a pen and paper and relax every so often.

I used to love drawing as a child, so wherever possible, I love to return to the complete freedom of a blank page and draw out whatever my imagination thinks up.

…In this case, a smart, strong, but curious-looking fox;

Experimental Drawing Styles.

As I’m sure many people do, when I’m bored, I tend to pull out my sketchbook and some pens and randomly draw whatever pops into my imagination at that time.

In this case, I was sat gazing out of the window in Starbucks on my break, where outside there was a toddler, a little chubby-faced boy, with the roundest face I had ever seen, so mostly out of boredom I decided to have a go at trying to match his characteristics on paper.

All was going well, the roundness of the cheeks were in, the quite-vacant facial expression was captured, and then as the lines started to increase on the page, it started to deepen and grow darker and darker as more detail started to come in, shadowing on the skin, tones in the hair, the glint in the eyes, and after a while it was no longer a toddler, but a rather scary-looking character of a man, so to take him all the way to manhood and make the transformation complete, the obligatory mid-life-crisis styled beard was added.

Magpies.

For as long as I can remember, I have always, for some reason, been fascinated by magpies. Don’t ask me why, but there is something about the superstitions linked with the creatures that has always made me take note of them whenever I see one (or many!). Also, they have to be the most suave-looking of all the birds, like miniature James Bonds in their tux’s!!

For me, magpies generally seem to be lucky, be it just one, or many, the traditional superstition of;

“ONE FOR SORROW, TWO FOR JOY, THREE FOR A GIRL, FOUR FOR A BOY” etc

Hasn’t seemed to follow through to the book, but upon seeing a magpie, my life generally feels so much better. To most, this is probably sounding absolutely rediculous, but it makes my day to see one of the little guys hopping around the place or flying by, so today with a bit too much time on my hands, I sat down and drew up a little character after seeing one perched on a rooftop;

Seeing Sound (…Continued)

Frequent visitors to my blog would’ve noticed my entry titled ‘Seeing Sound’ a few months back, as a continuation of that project, I really felt there was more to be explored within the topic.

One morning whilst taking some time out to relax, I had my iPod plugged in and was listening to some music with my eyes closed, when an idea came to me. With my eyes closed, my imagination started creating images in my head, with the music flowing, swirling, overlapping like ribbons in time with the rhythm. Straight away it made me think about the project I had recently tucked away, and with the idea still in mind to allow those unable to hear sounds a chance to experience and explore music, I started to draw out the visuals my imagination had begun to create. Dipping in the low notes, peaking on the highs, flowing along with the music, it really started to resemble and give a feel for how music and its rhythm behaved, visualising something invisible.

Whilst this is only the start of an idea, when I have more time I would love to explore this further, but for now, here is the drawing that my imagination helped create, visualising music;

PIRATES!!!

After reading recently about the major global issue of piracy in the Guardian newspaper each day at work, it gave me the urge to start experimenting with sketching up some ideas for a more-modern, and factual take on pirates. Whilst playing on the idea of it being in the style of a child’s comic or book, it would give more of an insight into real-life pirates instead of those portrayed by Johnny Depp on the big screen. (But perhaps not actually published, might need to carry a rating!)

Anyway, just an idea (…Well the start of one!).

Here’s one of the little guys I whipped up on my break today, just a quick sketch;

Rox’s Tattoo

My girlfriend’s sister Rox asked me to design her a tattoo based on a big illustration I did for my girlfriend. She liked a part of the illustration where I had drawn butterflies flying, and so told me she’d like a tattoo of some similar butterflies for the bottom of her back.

Once the initial layout was down, hopefully suited to follow the shape of the lower back as best as possible, then I could work on the design further, and fill it out a little more, always being careful not to make it too intricate, to cause the least amount of pain as I can.

This is the last stage I photographed the progress at, with later stages involving colour, but I had passed the design on very soon after this for the appointment to be made, more photos will be up as soon as it is finished …exciting times!!

Work Offers

Over the past few weeks I have received a number of emails regarding work opportunities, and would like to thank those of you greatly for your offers.

I decided to write this short post to just allow you all to know of my availability etc, and how to contact me regarding possibilities.

I have just completed my 2nd year of a BA Hons Degree in Graphic Design, and will now be free for 12 weeks to work on any projects anybody may ask me to take part in. During this time I am hoping to work on a great deal of personal projects, and would love to work with anybody who expresses a desire to also do so.

If you would like me to do some work for you, if you would like to work with me on a project, or if you would just like some design advice, please drop me an email at s.r.fox@rave.ac.uk

I will reply to each and every one of you, and will then give out phone details etc, to allow for easier contact for further stages of discussions, just so I don’t start getting any Tom, Dick and Harry calling me out of the blue trying to sell me double glazing!

You can download a copy of my current C.V and covering letter here for further insight;

seanfox_cv

seanfox_coveringletter

Hope to speak to some of you soon,

Sean Fox

‘Seeing Sound’ Exhibition

Last Friday was the final hand-in for the Design for Spacial Systems brief, and I worked solidly through many nights to perfect and finally get my idea together. On Thursday night I got so involved in my work that I needed no sleep at all, and was able to produce these visuals, with no prior 3D design knowledge or experience.

The overall presentation went really well, you can download a copy of my submission here to see the full extent of my work, including the materials sourced, how the exhibition works, and the idea behind the exhibition design.

A Spot of Stencilling.

The other day I found an old stencil of mine in an old workbook, so dug it out and sprayed up a few sheets like the good old days.

Above – The Stencil

Above – Some examples of the experimentation.