Shrimps & Scallops

Above is my selection of designers, who i sent emails to. All the designers/ design agencies are from Melbourne, this is I wanted to interview designers that i could interact with in person.

Of these designers that i sent emails to, several responded. This on it’s own was a surprise to me, I found it warming to see that people that I admire find time to educate new designers working to be a part of the industry. Of the 4 designers who responded, Nick Symeou, Amery Johnston, Brenton Osborn and Andrew Paoli, for a number of reasons I decided to interview Amery johnston. 

Amery is a young communication and graphic designer who graduated from Monash 3 years ago, I found it really cool that in those brief three years he had achieved so much. I wanted to interview someone that I could relate to on a personal level, and i think choosing someone who wasn’t an adult really helped us see us to eye. In addition, because of out small age gap, I felt as if Amery gave me really up to date advice of the contemporary design world. 

After exchanging 5 or so emails regarding where we would meet up and if it was ok for me to film, me and Amery met on Degraves st in the city. I bought him a coffee and I found that our conversation was really comfortable and easy flowing. While i expected him to be in a rush (and I'm sure he was) Amery spent almost two hours speaking to me about his experiences with the design industry and gave me endless amount of really cool tips and suggestions that I will hopefully manifest in my design practice. In a really positive way, I found that the interaction was less of an interview and more of a conversation on design.

Once the interview was done and i collected all the information i needed, including Amery’s written answers to my questions and footage of Amery working, I began to create the video. I had about 50 minutes of video footage, that i needed to deduce into a short film. I wanted the video to showcase Amery when she is working. I therefore, removed all the footage of me asking question and him answering them and focused on the time when he invited me to watch him do a project he has been working on. This was a really nice counterbalance from the questions, it allowed me to have a not only Amery’s answers to my questions but also see how those answers manifest in her work.

I then decided to generate a website, where I would display my interview in a blog format. I designed a simple template on Sqaurespace and bought a cheap URL off GoDaddy (www.ameryjohnston.info) and began to put together the sections of the interview. I intended to refine the website down to it’s simplest form, having a simple menu of the interview itself, Amerys work (through imagery) and his contact information. My design of the website layout was very much influenced on the blog ‘ItsNiceThat’ -  http://www.itsnicethat.com . Being simple, minimalist and easy to read. 

After completing the editing of the film, I utilised iMovie’s easy sharing tools to export my video onto Vimeo, which i then easily embedded onto my website. I then sent a link to Amery to confirm that he was ok with everything, this was really nice, because I got a super nice response form him and said that he really liked it!

Overall, I found the ‘ask me anything’ project to be really exciting, I loved engaging with professionals and taking a step into the not to distance future. It gave me a lot of confidence and inspiration and a drive to push myself so I can truly tackle the design industry once i finish studying. It also gave me a sense of direction, I now feel like I have a greater understanding of where i want to take my studies, and what a day in the life of a designer looks like. 

I also discovered the importance of networking, Amery spent a lot of time explaining to me how important it is to get your name out there, this to me meant that I should continue to engage with new people, be professionals or amateurs because a conversation is the beginning of a new pathway. 

Bellow is a link to my website:

‘The Face’ Magazine is a super cool label that was highly influential in the post modernist era. Nick Logan, gave birth to the company in the 1980′s. The Face broke the mainstream complacency by actively inventing or giving focus to entire movements that combined clothes, music and attitude. 

They tested the boundaries with design and typography and in turn ‘The Face’ was a media game-changer, and in many ways driving a new era of pop culture, through music, fashion and art. 

Today, i ventured to the NGV to experience the ‘Melbourne Art Book Fair 2016′. 

Featuring some of the world’s most creative emerging and established publishers, artists and writers, the 2016 Melbourne Art Book Fair was an amazing display of creative talent. 

The exhibition opened my eyes to the endless possibilities of print media. Be it the material used or the graphic treatment, there is so much freedom in the medium. 

Some graphic designers are fascinated with the golden ratio and use it to create various grids and page formats, entire books have been written on the subject. 

But what is the grid system?

Most of the information that i have found has been source to this book bellow.

Grids act as guides for the placement of elements in a design. No matter how simple or complex, grids share some common parts, each fulfilling a specific function. 

When speaking about grid systems it is important to define certain terms:

Format The format is the area in which the design sits. In a book or magazine the format is the page. On a website the format is the browser window.

Margins Margins are the negative space between the edge of the format and the outer edge of the content. The proportions of margin help to establish the overall tension (or lack of tension) in a composition. The smaller the margin the more tension is created.

Flowlines Flowlines are horizontal lines that break the space into horizontal bands. They can be used to help guide the eye across the page and can be used to impose areas for text and images to be aligned.

Modules Modules are individual units of space that are separated by regular intervals. Modules are the basic building blocks of grids. When repeated they create columns and rows.

So why is this relevant. 

Who is artist: Ralph Steadman?

Ralph Steadman was born on 15th May, 1936 in Wallesey, Liverpool.

A humanitarian at heart and always concerned for his fellow man and his rights he has donated countless images to charity and provided the art for may campaigns including Save the Children, The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture and the Campaign which eventually led to the freedom of the hostage John McCarthy.

Ralph’s outstanding use of ink inspired me to experiment with the medium. I used indian ink to create these intricate dark and scary characters. I found that it was the type of equipment that forced me to use my body when drawing, this was very instinctual. 

Today I was working on my Image and Identity Core Brief 2 (Composition). I was faced with the task of creating a typeface for my assignment. 

The assignment i have been working on surrounds itself with nudity and appreciation of the human body. Thus, I aimed to create a typeface that celebrated the human body. 

Above is a typeface created out of a vector icon i designed of a female nipple. 

My biggest challenge was using the least amount of icons to create accurate letterforms. For Example with the letter - W - I had to use three icons as there was really no way i could find to make the letter with only two nipples.