Alex's Blog - Professional Studies: 2011

Thursday, 26 May 2011

Referencing of Tasks Completed - Blog Glossary

(Links to all the completed objectives.)

Interview with Mentor/Industry Professional
John Strike (Future Publishing) - http://alexparkerblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/interview-with-john-strike.html

Work Placement Report
COBC Work Experience - http://alexparkerblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/work-placement.html
COBC Placement Report - http://alexparkerblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/work-placement-placement-report.html
Future Publishing - http://alexparkerblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/days-work-at-future-publishing.html

Placement Provider Feedback
COBC Placement Report - http://alexparkerblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/work-placement-placement-report.html

Freelance Portfolio
Paul Parker Music Business - http://alexparkerblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/dads-music-company.html
Brian Sellars Book Cover - http://alexparkerblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/freelance-work-whispering-bell-book.html

Evaluation of Freelance Work
Paul Parker Music Business - http://alexparkerblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/dads-music-company.html
Brian Sellars Book Cover - http://alexparkerblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/freelance-work-whispering-bell-book.html

Career Launch Show (Contribution to Exhibition)
End of Year Exhibition - http://alexparkerblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/end-of-year-exhibition.html

Career Strategy
Career Strategy - http://alexparkerblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/career-strategy.html

Career Strategy

I’ve always said that I will try and learn as much as I can about graphic design and industry around it. In my A-Levels at secondary school, I focussed on studying Media Studies, Graphic Products, and ICT to prepare me for that exact goal. I’ve always been interested in design and creative expression because it’s something that I enjoy. I’ve never really found a certain field inside design and digital applications that I’ve wanted to specialise in exclusively. In the past I have set my mind to exclusive practices, but I had never managed to stick with it, usually getting tired of doing the same thing over again. ‘Design’ as a whole covers a massive area of the creative industry and there are many fields within it that specialise in specific applications, such as web design, branding, advertising. But I always got a buzz from working with many applications, it keeps me stimulated creatively and allows for more diverse outcomes and gives me more freedom in how I work. I joined the 2 year Digital Design foundation degree to get a good qualification and hopefully gain a foothold in the industry, the course covered a broad spectrum of topics and I had hoped upon completion that I would have a better idea of what I would want to specialise in, and I do have a better idea but at this stage it still feels to me like I want to continue to work in all fields of design, a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ per say, I feel as if this occupation would be the most satisfying for myself as someone who is creatively driven.

With the FdA course behind me, I had hoped to continue studying the Graphic Communication top-up year at the Bath Spa campus but was unsuccessful in getting accepted. I was really counting on getting into university this year and was pretty confident that I had a strong chance of being accepted at Bath Spa, in my blind judgement, I had been left without an alternative university to study as a back-up choice. I’ve made contact with a Careers Adviser at NextStep who has assisted me in helping to look into other alternatives (both academically and occupationally). Upon expressing interest in completing a top-up design degree at a university this year (despite it being 4 months late for applying – for many courses) I was instructed to look into the possibilities of applying this year at the universities that support my request (despite it being late). I’ve contacted a number of universities regarding top-up courses and the possibilities of studying later this year also enquiring into being considered as a potential candidate in clearing. I’m hopeful that it is possible to be accepted this year as the fees go up next year and I’m just not entirely certain if waiting to do the top-year then is worth the debt. I’ve looked into possible job opportunities as well that could support me should I fail to get into university this year. I have plans to contact all the major design institutions, product design companies and any other careers in the field looking for potential jobs. I’ve looked into the concept of applying for junior positions and apprenticeships within companies as well because the experience from these will be invaluable and the work will also be paid. I’ve signed up to apprenticeships.org and applied for one already, which is a job as a Design Support Apprentice at Globe IQ; a product design company based in Bath. I hope to get into this sort of work, whether it’s working full time in a design institution or working in junior positions or as an apprentice. At the moment I am creating my own brand image as a freelance designer where I hope to build up my portfolio and get work via my internet site, networking, making calls etc. On the side I would maintain a job of some description, if for whatever reason I can’t get involved in the design industry, I will have to settle for something less permanent to get a steady income while I look into other opportunities in the design field. If it seems I cannot get a decent job in the industry with my current qualifications, I may look into studying that final third year top-up degree at Bath, UWE, Hereford or anywhere else that supports it. It will be expensive, but I’ll have to do it, otherwise I may not stand a chance of acquiring a position within a design institution. The future is always an uncertainty, but I’m on the look-out for new possibilities in both academic and career goals and that’s all I can really do if I want to achieve my goal of being involved with the design industry.

In five years I would like to see myself working as part of a design institution performing creative tasks for a living, meeting loads of passionate people along the way. I hope to be living in a place of my own, or perhaps sharing a flat with some friends either in my hometown of Frome or in Bath, or another city if my work required it but ideally I suppose I'd be stationed locally so that I could keep in contact with my family and friends. I would hope to have an improved knowledge in the field of design and have an increased familiarity and proficiency with the software and skills required to perform in it. I would hope to have a successful side-business in freelance graphic design with a strong client-base and an excellent quality portfolio. I would hope to be happy and contented in my field of work. I know there are many people that despise their careers or the choices they'd made in their lives, and if I'm in the percentage that is happy and satisfied in there scenario, then that could only mean I’ve succeeded in completing my original goal.

End of Year Exhibition

Twenty Exhibition -
"Showcasing design work from twenty photographers and
designers from Bath Spa University."

From the19th to the 21st of May 2011 we held our end-of-course exhibition at Milsom Place, Bath. Everyone on the course prepared work to show in a number of various ways, there were two rooms where our work was being exhibited. The larger room held the majority of the banners which we had got specially printed from ColourWorks, it also held some of the photo framed work, this room was somewhat dedicated to the Photography lot on our course. The smaller room held the rest of the photography work and much of the Interactive lot work. My own self-directed work was displayed in this room in banner form and other portfolio work was displayed on a Mac on an internet portal which had been made specifically for the Interactive members of the group. The opening night was a huge success, an excellent turn-out and an all-round enjoyable night! You can find a more in-depth summary of the event and the exhibition as a whole on my self-directed Digital Art project blog which follows the production of my work for the exhibition more intimately.

Business Card & Brand Identity

Business Card Design

Website Design


My business card collection.

Over the last few weeks, I have been developing my own brand identity as a freelance designer, which I plan to put into action over the coming months. Throughout the Digital Design course I have been collecting business cards to inspire me with desiging my own and here is a sneak preview of what I have so far!

Work Placement - Placement Report

Upon completion of our work experience doing promotional Fda videos for the City of Bath College. We had a work placement evaluation report filled out by ourselves and our client. Karen Frazer overlooked the report and signed her acceptance of our disembarking from the project to hand over to another student (Zelah Hart).

Wednesday, 23 March 2011

Work Placement

About a month ago, the college set us up with Helen Foley, of the Bath College union, where we were given an opportunity to do some work with the college, arranging and composing a series of promotional videos displaying the various FdA courses available to undergraduates, including our own course in Digital Design. The placement requires us to interview 8 of the foundation course leaders and display them in a positive light with supporting footage and imagery of the college. We will also have to do all the editing, create an overlay, and find music to get it ready on a customized Youtube channel. I had initially paired up with some fellow colleagues on my course; Will Southward, Alex Stevenson and Max Lynn but it has just been reduced to myself and Alex S now, as Will has left the course and Max has found preferable work experience.
Over the weeks thus far, we've planned out and interviewed 7 of the course leaders with a HD Sony Z5 camera and captured the footage onto one of the macs in H201. Tomorrow we will be filming Fhiona McKie (Fashion) who is the last lecturer needed. Below is a list of lecturers/students filmed thus far.

Lecturers:
Matt Atkinson - Principal of City of Bath College
Mark Smithers - Music
John Curry - IT & Computing
Neil Davies - Sports
Katrina Diamond - Heritage Management
Wayne Austin - Business Management
Catherine Sellars - Digital Design
Students:
Jen - Business Management
Rebecca 'Dizzy' - Music

Self Directed Proposal

Here's a link to my Digital Art blog. Where I am showing work done for my Self-Directed assignment.

http://www.alexparkerdigitalart.blogspot.com/

"Throughout my life I have had a passion for drawing. As a young boy I was renowned for my doodles and sketches, teachers and classmates marveled at the characters and scenes I produced and eventually I was set on becoming an artist. Things seemed so simple back then. Today I am doing a course in Digital Design. I spend my time composing digital adverts, logos, motion videos, websites and I work with clients, helping them with their design needs. All of this is to help further my knowledge of the design industry for which I am now aspiring to become a part of. So you can imagine how working digitally involves a lot of work on computers, I spent many years learning the different skills and software of the digital world and in the process I neglected some of my core drawing skills. I would like to use this opportunity to brush up on some old skills and techniques and then incorporate these skills into my digital medium. I think these skills will prove valuable to me as a creative designer and not just as an artist. Another part of this project, will involve me looking into the influence that digital design and computers has over contemporary designers and artists, I want to see the benefits and the disadvantages this medium has brought into the industry."

Friday, 18 March 2011

Dad's Music Company

For a number of years, my dad has been in the music business, initially starting out as a singer/songwriter, nowadays he creates a lot of stock music, mostly instrumental tracks. And now he's hoping to expand his horizons by making his music accesible on the internet. We had a little chat about how to approach the design and the messages to be conveyed, and we both agreed on using an old bakelite radio to represent the music, which would be floating around in space in a sort of mysterious and quirky scenario. So I got to work, creating the bakelite radio from scratch on Photoshop. I also created a logo for the business "Paul Parker Music" incorporating the use of a chevron, a symbol often associated to vintage radios:

Something Vintage yet Stylish.

I overlayed the logo onto a grill/amp-like texture as a central focus on the bakelite radio. The radio itself uses textures from samples of bakelite and I have used a number of layer styling methods to make it as realistic and as edgy as possible. I have also added a little green light and buttons which the user could interact with. This whole composition is designed as a sort of "home page" on a website, with buttons linking you to the specific pages that make it up. I won't be actually composing the website for the company, just creating a brand image and constructing the space and objects associated with it. The main one in this instance, being the radio:


Click for a bigger image!

With the radio, my dad wanted me to try and get a good balance between retro, classic and sleak design and yet also make it appeal to people under forty! I can't really put my finger on it, but I think that it does have somewhat of a modern charm. The space background scenery also bolsters this I think:

What's this vintage machine doing in space?

My dad is very pleased and impressed with what I have done. He rewarded my efforts with 8 bottles of Kopparberg Pear Cider! He's asked me if I can create some album covers for him as well, and I'll be having a go at them at some point. Stay tuned for the results!

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

Interview with John Strike

During my time at Future Publishing, I managed to arrange an interview with John Strike, who is the Deputy Art Editor of Xbox World 360 magazine. I felt like it would be a good opportunity to learn a bit about the magazines industry as well as furthering my own knowledge of the industry and the skills/equipment associated with it. It also meant ticking off another task for the Professional Studies module.

3rd of March 2011 - 10:15 - 11:00

Name: John Strike
Occupation: Deputy Art Editor - Xbox World 360 magazine

How did you find yourself working for Future?
"I started out doing a 3 year degree in Graphic Design at the Cumbria institute of Arts. At the end of the course, we had an exhibition/gallery type thing to display work we had done. The work was seen by a contact from Future Publishing, who then recommended me to the Bath branch."

As a Deputy Art Editor, what sort of work do you do?
"I work in a team of designers and editors on the Xbox World 360 magazine, which is roughly 132 pages long. We aim to visually represent the content using assets and stories, liasing ideas with eachother and sending each page through a number of processes to be analyised by a number of different people. The Production editor runs through the content to make sure everything is relevant and that there are no spelling mistakes, accidents etc. A lot of the images in the magazines we use are supplied to us by the individual game companies for our usage. We can then tweak them and edit them so that they can be added appropriately in their respective positions in the magazine. The Xbox World 360 magazine is an unofficial magazine – which basically means that it holds a lot more personalised elements rather then the formal and by-the-book ways of the official magazines, like with Imagine Publishing, who are probably our biggest rivals at present. Each of our magazines has its own budget, and each magazine divides the budget out into the art and template side of things and the written work, editorial side of things. It takes us roughly 16-18 working days to create each issue of XBW 360 with teams of six working on them."

What skills are required to work in this sector of the industry?
"In this particular sector of the design world, it is important to have a good grip on the software InDesign, as it is the software we currently use to arrange the magazine page templates. It is also good to have proficiency with PhotoShop as we occasionally need to edit and manipulate certain aspects of an image or the design of the magazine. It’s nice to think that “experience counts for more than a degree” but in reality, you are more likely to be chosen if you have a degree. When I first became involved with Future, I only had knowledge with PhotoShop and Illustrator but the company trained me to use InDesign and it was a sort of baptism of fire when I first started out."

Do you enjoy working at Future? What are the positives and negatives?
"It’s great working with Future, they teach you the skills you need and they train you up for the workload. It’s not the most taxing of professions and you get to work in a very relaxed environment, meeting people from all over the world. The downside I suppose, for me, was that I had to move a long way from my home up north in order to work at the Bath branch. Often with this sort of work and many others in the design sector, there can be a lot of travelling involved, especially in the journalism side of things. Often you will be shipped off to review a certain event taking place on the other side of the country. The actual workload can get a bit frustrating after a while, as well. The templating system we use on the magazines is rather restricting in the way it can stop us being as creative as we’d like to be. Overall though, I don’t regret my being here and hope to keep my job for the meantime anyway."

A Day’s Work at Future Publishing

Future Publishing, Bath, BA1 2BW

When Video Games journalist, Rob Taylor had come in to talk to us, I was interested in speaking to him about possible work placement, which the course requires that I find. He wasn’t able to provide me with two weeks but he managed to score me a single day’s work experience working on the Xbox World 360 Magazine with the Deputy Art Editor; John Strike. I was instructed to get to the Future Publishing HQ at Quay House, Bath for 10.00am. One of the amazing things about this placement was its location. The Future Quay House building has multiple floors dedicated to all the magazines that they work on. My bus stop was literally across the road from the building which meant I could get there in good time. Upon entering the building and waiting in reception, I met John Strike and Rob Taylor (for the second time) and they showed me around the Future building; the cafeteria (with free coffee vending machines and a wide selection of tasty treats!) and upstairs I was led into the South Wing, where John and Rob are based with the Xbox World 360 magazine team, as well as the PSN team and PCGamer team. It was a fantastic place to work, and had a really nice relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Everywhere you looked; there were magazine and video game equipment and memorabilia…truly it was Heaven on Earth! I had asked John in an e-mail whether it was possible to interview him regarding his background and life at Future and he had agreed. And we went down to the cafeteria and had a nice long chat about a number of topics (which I will expand upon in my next post). John was a very down-to-earth guy and had a lot of information for me, which was fascinating and very helpful, and I was even given a free copy of the latest XBW360 magazine! After the chat and interview, we went back into the South Wing and I was put to work on one of the freelance iMacs. John had provided me with some in-game screenshots of the upcoming game ‘Rage’ for me to spruce up using PhotoShop.

id Software's 'Rage' Due for release in Sep 2011


Sandbox style action and shooting at it's best!

I was then taught how to add them into the InDesign magazine template page, It was a lot of fun and I learned some core skills on PhotoShop and InDesign. After my work with the ‘Rage’ news page, I learned that it would actually be used in the upcoming series of XBW360 magazines and that I would be credited for the work done which was an exciting prospect! For lunch I went down to the cafeteria and then when I got back I noticed that one of the journalists working on one of the other magazines was heading off to London for some Pokémon related event. It just shows how busy and demanding this career can be. The same team had also managed to get hold of one of the new Nintendo 3DS hand-held consoles and Roy (presumably a journalist or reviewer of some sort) was playing around with it on the ‘Monkey Ball‘ game. Judging from his frequent outbursts of profanity, I expected that the game was pretty difficult! After I had finished manipulating and adding the pictures into the ‘Rage’ double spread, I was given another page to work on, adding the pictures into the news article regarding a new ‘Sherlock Holmes’ game. The work done is likely to be featured in the next few editions of the XBW360 magazines (104 & 105) so I will have to look out for those in the local newsagents when they get released! I had a lot of fun from my time at Future and felt a lot more experienced and skilled with the software and industry at the end of the day. I was very thankful for the opportunity John and Rob had given me and would love to go there again in the future perhaps one day!


I added the pictures!

Pictures and Background on here too!