Freelance Work - Whispering Bell Book Cover

During December last year, Catherine put me in contact with her father, Brian; who is in need of a book cover design for his Anglo Saxon fiction novel; 'The Whispering Bell'. After getting into contact with Brian, and accepting the project, we had a run-down of ideas for designs/images to be included on the front cover. Brian seemed very fond on the idea of including swans, because of their ancient associations with fidelity - because the central protagonist characters of the Whispering Bell are a pair of lovers, who would endure all sorts of hardship. Brian was very flexible with any ideas I could contribute, but I found it difficult to sway from the idea of the swans because it seemed a perfect image to represent timeless love. My other ideas were going to be too hard to achieve as they would have needed Anglo-Saxon imagery and inventory which I could not get access to. I went to Orchardleigh in search of some swans and managed to get plenty of good shots on my SLR. I sent the best images to Brian and he looked at each of them and picked out #079, saying it was his favourite:

He felt that the overhanging trees framed the shot nicely and he liked the glassy, clean coldness of the shot, it spoke eloquently of the struggle and harshness of the protagonists’ lives but also of the simplicity and purity of their love. Since Brian was happy to continue, I got to work on the cover and resulted in a layout, Brian would then suggest improvements and I would continue to correct until he was happy. I finished the cover on the 16th of February and sent Brian the formal sign-off documents. He was very pleased with the results:

 I was a "great pleasure to work with" and he appreciated my "helpful and positive attitude" to the project. He even said that he would mention me to anyone he knew who needed design work at every chance he got which was also good to hear!

End of January Review

My main objective this month was to obtain a two week internship at a design institution of some sort, but I have been struggling to find any. I have contacted most of the design businesses in Frome but most of them have been unable to have me because of insurance reasons. I'm gonna have to do some more searching and make some more calls in February and hope that I can get a placement. I sent an e-mail to Rob Taylor (who was the final guest lecturer that came to see us) asking if he could help me with finding a work placement, he said that he could not provide anything at present but he was able to swing me a day's work experience on the Xbox World 360, I'll get to hang with the art team and they'll talk to me about the art/design side of things, give you career advice and the like. I have also spoken to Catherine about freelance work, and she informed me that her father needed a book cover done for his fiction novel; The Whispering Bell. I will need to get my DSLR out and take some appropriate 7th Century anglo-saxon imagery! I've also learned that a fellow colleague of mine is working on a website for a client and has asked if I would like to get involved. I accepted his offer and we will be brainstorming some ideas for the possible outcome next week sometime. I have also done some thinking into the next module of this Professional Studies course, which requires me to write a proposal for a big project I am to start.

Learning about the Industry - Rob Taylor

Earlier today we met Rob Taylor, who is a freelance Computer Games Journalist. I have always been interested in the possibility of following a career in the video games industry but have never been one hundred percent about it, so I was instantly intrigued once I learned of Rob's profession. Rob has a PhD in Computer Games Study and landed a job in the journalistic side of the games industry, he spends a lot of his time looking at the various new releases in computer games and writing about them in magazines, I think he has had regular input in the reviews in Future Publishing's game magazines, while not working for them directly. Rob has done TV spots and a lot of work on the media side of the video game world and doesnt know much at all on the technical side of the games. His job requires him to visit the various game companies headquarters and their institutions in order to procure information on the hottest new releases. Last year he went to the headquarters of the game company, 'Bungie', who pioneered the Halo franchise of games (one of the most popular series of games in the world and exclusive to Microsoft's 'Xbox' games console series.) He's also been to the 'Ubisoft'  (who created the hugely popular Assassin's Creed games.) headquarters in Montreal, Canada. He's also been to the 'Epic Games' hq (creaters of the Gears of War series) in Carolina as well as the Electronic Arts (EA) campus in San Francisco. Rob had a lot of enjoyment going to these places as they were often full of playful and quirky features, including slides, basketball courts, expansive cafeterias and video game lending libraries. Rob is a part of the UK game scene, and Britain's game industry is rated 3rd in the whole world. Video Games are very popular and a lucrative medium, in 2010 we had the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops, which is the highest grossing console game ever (even outselling the highest grossing blockbuster movie; Avatar). The internet is very big part of the games industry, epitomised by Xbox Live (Microsoft's gaming community) but the internet is home to many popular games, there are many role-playing games like Runescape, and even basic Facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars are extremely popular (Farmville had a recorded 80 million users last year!). Video games have come a long way from their roots and have become increasingly popular and lucrative over time. Britain is a large contributor to that industry and there is a lot of potential working with the big game companies like Lionhead, Rare or Rockstar North. Rob didn't want to excite us too much, and warned us that the games industry is very competitive and it's not the most profitable profession. But it can be a very enjoyable job and you get to travel all over the world, making and playing video games, it certainly souns good to me!

Self Directed Proposal - Brendan Reid

I just found some notes from our last lesson of Professional Studies in Dec 2010 (prior to breaking up from the Christmas holidays) and in this lesson we discussed the next part of our brief, which requires us to look into the certain career field we want to follow (design related) and find a specific topic to talk about, the best way is the find a question that relates to the topic and then proceed to answer it, having something physical to show for it in the end. Now I've been struggling for a while to come up with a suitable topic to cover as I have not defined myself as a designer into a specific field, my main reasons for going on this broad-ranged design course was to help me find that out. Brendan Reid came in to help us with our proposals and talk us through our ideas. Brendan is a lecturer at UWE and teaches MA Graphic Arts there. He gave us a basic run-through of the proposal and other factors of design and the industry. He taught us the value of creativity saying that "Technical ability is important, but it is useless if you don't have any ideas". When he spoke to me about my proposal, he asked me what my interests were (regarding design), I replied with "making covers for things, visual media, print or web-based still images/adverts" after narrowing it down to magazines, I came up with a question to possibly cover. "In this digital world, why do we still have a need for magazines?". We studied the question and looked at the pros and cons of the answer. With computers, we have Kindles, eBooks and iPads which many would say are much better than magazines yet there are an equal number of people who would much prefer something physical which they can keep, the touch and feel of a magazine is superior to anything a LED screen could try to copy. I think this question has some potential, but I'll need to make something to show for what I've done, this is probably the more tricky part of the assignment. We discussed the possibility of working with Future Publishing (who produce hundreds of magazines) to create a magazine of sorts, but as for what the content or point of it could be, lies undecided. Brendan gave us all his email if we had any questions, I think I should see what he thinks.

Happy 2011!

It's been a while since my last post, and I'll be honest here, I didn't get much of anything done over the Christmas holidays! It's time I get myself back on track and get all the remaining tasks done in this project. I've been trying to get some work placement (or internship) from a couple of companies in my home town of Frome, but I'm not sure if I'll get very far. I'm gonna have to broaden my spectrum a bit I think. I hope everyone had a nice Christmas and new year! :)

Learning about the Industry - Bella Gingell

I haven’t had chance to update the blog until today! Anyway! Last Wednesday, we met Bella, who is a businesswoman who came to talk to us about the financial side of the industry and the factors to take into care when setting up your own business. 18 years ago, Bella set up her own business renting out self-catering holiday cottages in Bath and Wiltshire and the Somerset Border with her company Farleigh Wood (www.farleighwood.co.uk). She came to speak to us about the more financial side of running a business, offering advice on how to go about things like Tax, VAT and other costs. She couldn't stress the importance of keeping receipts of items you purchased while on the job as they are fundamental proof of purchases and can help back up overall costs. Keep all the receipts for food, parking tickets, even your mileage if you have to travel in your own vehicle (works out as an average of 40p a mile on petrol) these are all things that you have to buy yourself to keep you working and thus come into the equation of the final invoice. Sick of doing it yourself? Or have too many eggs in one basket? A lot of bigger companies will hire accountants and bookkeepers to deal with all the financial side of things. Keep on the good side of the taxman and VAT people, being prompt and reliable with payments will stop you from having to liquidate your business! Small businesses or freelancers that deal with cash in hand are not a problem when concerning the taxman, but once your business gets to a certain size and starts earning a lot more money, things can become tricky. With big electronic payments, cheques etc, it makes it a lot more noticeable to the taxmen and they will likely come calling asking for a percentage of your income. To avoid such troubles, speak to the VAT companies and ask about setting up a tax billing service. After visiting Bella's website on her cottage rental business, we noticed how it had been designed by Craig Gill of Gill Design, who had previously been on the same course of us and had been set up this website opportunity by our lecturer, Catherine! 

Bath in Time Exhibition

Today I went along to Dan Brown's exhibition which was relevant to his Bath in Time project which we learned a bit about last week. The exhibition was situated on the first floor of the Poseidon shopping centre, above Waitrose in Bath and it consisted of a number of makeshift walls where photos of Bath could be seen dotted all around the room it was in. Dan Brown himself was there as well and we had a little chat with him before going on to view the various photos on display. It was interesting to see what the city looked like in the past and I could recognize the modern equivalents a lot of the time. There were also a few modern pictures of the city and the people that populate it. It was an interesting event and definitely worth the visit. I didnt have my camera on me at the time, so here are some images that we saw from the Bath in Time website (www.bathintime.co.uk):