Research: TwelveTen

I mentioned TwelveTen during my Design Context presentation. They are a design agency based in Nottingham, who frequently produce technical illustration and information design for various clients. I even went to the trouble of buying an A1GP race programme off ebay which they had designed in order to analyse it better. Following this I contacted them about their work, and I had my email completely ignored (how rude!). Either way, here are some of the photos I have taken as examples of their work.

Research: Karel Martens

Karel Martens is a Dutch designer and teacher. After training at the school of art in Arnhem, he has worked as a freelance graphic designer, specializing in typography. Alongside this, he has always made free (non-commissioned) graphic and three-dimensional work. His design work ranges widely, from postage stamps, to books, to signs on buildings. All this work is documented and celebrated in the books Karel Martens: drukwerk / printed matter and Karel Martens: counterprint.

With regards to my own design practice, I find his his use of mechanical parts to generate imagery most interesting. In a way it is similar to Elliman, however here it is used not to create type but to strengthen and highlight it.

Design Context Presentation

Just a quick follow up post on the first FMP presentation. Although it generally went fine, I definitely focused too much on the design practice, and the time I spent talking about the work I have been producing should have really been spent on expanding the design context. The design context that I did talk about however was starting to get there, in terms of identifying agencies and designers that produce work of the sort that interests me. I talked of my concerns in limiting myself too much, that really I would like to get some branding/logo design into my portfolio, which mainly came from my conversation with Lee from Propaganda. Fred however pointed out that it is because of the nature of the agency he worked for that lead him to suggest producing logo based work, although if I wanted to pursue it there is the option of combining it with somehow with my technical illustration/information design interests.

Couple of key slides from my presentation, the first over which I talked about the importance of terminology with regards to technical illustration, and the second was simply some of the key perspectives and views that are frequently used.

Research: Paul Elliman

Paul Elliman is an artist and writer based in London. His work, which draws on a range of resources from found typographies to professional voice-overs, explores the mutual interests of technology and language.

He is well known for his use of printing mechanical parts to generate typography (examples shown below). While I would never attempt to copy his style (and really, it looks dated somewhat - this kind of typography could be vectored in a few minutes with today's technology), I feel that I could use more intricate components (circuitboards etc) to produce typographic resolutions digitally.

Research: Blanka

Suprised I haven't made a post about this site yet. Does what it says on the tin, "showcasing the best graphic design talent, past and present, our permanent archive is constantly expanding to include historic prints and work from carefully selected designers and design studios." Essentially they sell graphic design posters. Typically they have chosen the clean, Swiss style graphics from studios like Build and Experimental Jetset. There is too much stuff on here to go into much detail, but the website is a good resource for quick inspiration for a simple type-based project.

http://www.blanka.co.uk/Design


I am a really big fan of the minimilist approach to graphics, and much of the work here expresses this. There are also art and photography sections, although the art section should be labelled illustration really.

Scale, again.

I messed up on the instructional net diagrams. Today I calculated the actual ratio and for those reduced to fit on the A2 document (which I originally put as 1:15) it is in fact 1:6.6, and because I feel that they work better at A3 the ratio is now 1:9. The reason I had 1:15 was because I scaled it down to 15% of the size, however this does not mean it is 15 times smaller! Duh... I don't know how I managed to make a goof like that, considering I'm into technical illustration. Even though this is something of a moot point, considering I'm taking a break from this work following the crit, it is important for me to be accurate in this kind of design. Here are the isometric and regular A3 layouts with the correct ratios:

Crit on Research Brief

The overall response I got from today's crit is: "I don't understand what you're doing?"
Fair enough. Looks like I need to rethink what it is I am doing. I think it is one of those scenarios where it makes more sense while you are doing it, and when you try to convey what its being produced to other people there is a dramatic realisation on both sides that not enough thought has been put into it.

Here are the points I took:
Research informs content - It is clear now that I need to do more active research into the subject of instructional design in order to backup and assist in generating visuals.

Interviews - Research that will help inform and generate the content.

The work produced could still form something on 'the design of instructions'.

The research does not NEED to be a book. I was a little confused from an earlier briefing and thought that this was intergral to the research brief.

So where do I go now... essentially I have a Skype brief to begin visually working on, however for the moment I would like to do a quick brief, just something to get back into my working practice after the dissertation. Justin discussed with me the idea of doing book cover designs for a sci-fi book, I have re-newed interest in this idea after the last crit, it just sounds like something I can be creative with and enjoy doing. Something like a de-construction of a space ship, an alien... etc. Perhaps this would actually prove harder to do than an actual physical object in existence, we'll just have to see how it goes.

Mini Tutorial with Justin

Justin was nice enough to give me another quick tutorial today. It was good to get two perspectives on the same work from active freelance graphic designers. Justin gave me some advice on the YCN Skype brief I am working on, as I stated I wanted some brochure/leaflet type work he suggesting doing the advertisement in this way.
Some other key points to get down while they are still in my head;

- Do some spreads, ie. Book cover design is a good one, perhaps using the 'how things work' theme to apply to fiction?
- Logo design for a company, as I stated in another post, I really need to get some logo design into my folio, so he gave the idea of rebranding a company such as Airfix. Their logo is terrible, so I may well do this one.
- Experiment a bit more, with stock and colour, as the work I am doing at the moment is quite sterile, it would be useful to produce some more organic, perhaps hand-rendered work to show I can still do this, whilst also producing the very accurate, technical stuff.

That's all for today. More updates soon.

Tutorial with Joe Gilmore

Had my tutorial with Joe today, basically discussing my ideas for the final major project and how I wanted to enter in the industry in general. Seeing my interest in technical illustration, he was interested to know whether the work I was producing was part of the kind of 'style' of work I wanted to produce or whether I wanted to go into technically illustration fully, as a instruction manual designer for a company or doing it freelance. This was a difficult question for me to answer, at that point I hadn't even considered the idea that I could produce work of this kind as part of a creative/experimental type of practice. One of the resulting ideas was to take the work I had been producing for my research/exhibit brief and make a book based on these instruction manuals literally being works of art that need to be documented, exhibited and preserved. This fit in with some of the stuff I was doing anyway, so I may pursue this idea. He also commented that I should scan my manuals rather than photograph them, as the detail in the line drawings are not that clear on the photographs I have taken (with perhaps a few smaller supplementary photographs thrown in).
Although he was unsure of the fact, he suggested that perhaps technical illustration was part of another line of education rather than graphic design, and that it is possible that the work produced in manuals are produced by either someone working at the company with a design background or an in-house graphic designer. Personally I prefer the latter, however I did my career research (on Connexions of all places) and came up with this:

"Technical illustrators need:
excellent drawing and IT skills
an eye for detail and design
precise, accurate and clear presentation skills
a strong interest in, and an understanding of, science and technology.
Most technical illustrators have an HND or degree in an art and design subject, although it is possible to become a technical illustrator without any specific qualifications. For general information about becoming an illustrator, see Illustrator."

This is good news for me : ) A follow up tutorial with Joe is in 2 weeks.

Scale

Taking all of the measurements from my research and putting them into Illustrator, reducing the scale to 15% of the original. Sounds like a simple task but while doing this I realised I made a several mistakes in my original measurements! So I had to go back to my research and re-do many measurements, what's the point doing it if you aren't going for complete accuracy eh? What's the purpose of this, you might ask? Well there are two ideas. Right now I have the concept of doing exhibition graphics for an imaginary exhibition based on instruction manuals being works of art in themselves. The idea could also be applied to my book of research however, or could even encompass both.

Portfolio Review with Lee Bennett (Propaganda)

I contacted Lee, the guy from Propaganda in Leeds who came to give a talk a while ago. I sent a PDF with some bits from my portfolio, asking for some feedback, so he invited me down to meet him at the agency to get face-to-face feedback.
Unfortunately the day we agreed on (yesterday/Monday) snowed like f***! I ended up being late as I was unable to get a taxi and was quite difficult for me to find it in the middle of nowhere Garforth.
It was kind of strange being there as it was very corporate looking, all of the managers and directors with their own offices, and all the designers' desks seemingly crammed into a corner of the building. It was kind of what I expected however.
The actual review was really useful, he knew his stuff as far as portfolio aesthetics go. Some of the key areas I need to focus on are;

- Colour, this was lacking somewhat in my work, lots of black and white/duotone. Some full colour works should even things up, perhaps in logo designs, which leads me to...

- Logo Boards, agencies like Propaganda look for strong logo designs in portfolios. I decided not to include any during this review, so I definitely will be introducing some into my 'folio soon.

- "Need to see the detail in line drawings", the images provided to detail my technical illustration or line drawing work were not giving much insight as far as the actual detail is concerned, so some closeups are really necessary to make this clearer.

- Get some handouts in! Particularly brochure/leaflet designs, it's nice to see some physical print examples of work isn't it.

Despite these issues, there were some pieces in my work that were good, and rather unexpectedly for me, apparently my type work is quite strong. I honestly didn't expect to hear that, but for me it's a positive sign that I am becoming a more well rounded designer. Perhaps I'll be teaching the type buffs on the course a thing or two soon haha. He also gave me some tips for the research brief in my final major project. I was grateful for him fitting me in, as he seemed really busy, not sure if I can talk about what he was working on but it looked to me like it was coming along very nicely. Hopefully he will be able to find time to give me feedback and advice on future work.