Final Major Project

LCC design student Monopoly

The very first games that came to my mind when I started looking at the theme ‘The city’ was Monopoly (and sim city, but we shall not speak of it.) I decided to do something fun where instead of city streets, we buy the skills and/or benefits that we university provides us with.

I’ve been at London’s University of the Arts for almost a full year now, and tried to keep you all updated about my progress and our work (we really do work!) with this blog.  I guess it’s time for a quick look back at how the year has been for me and reflect on some of the key things I have done and learnt.

Term 1

The year started with the tutors bringing us all up-to-date on the basics of design and graphic communication with a few workshops about thinking in type, colour and shapes while learning to visualise our ideas. Even though we did tackle design staples like typography, photography, and illustration, the workshops that I had the most fun with were the ones where we got to make physical stuff.

The Image and Text workshop by Paul Bailey really helped me understand concepts like semiotics and the cognitive and denotive meanings that images can represent. Another really helpful and fun layout workshop was run by Jo Spencer and had us create a physical magazine layout with the help of sticky tape and newspaper and magazine cut outs (none of that InDesign stuff!). Seeing a layout on a table instead of a computer screen really helps you understand the concepts of hierarchy, grid, type and negative space. The cropping workshop run by Karl Foster covered the tools and techniques of cropping, and it was really helpful in understanding how cropping an image can alter the viewer’s perception. If we had done the same exercises on our computers, I don’t think they would have been quite as productive.

The term ended (rather quickly!) with us doing a 20 page PDF showcasing our design process. This was one of the major steps in strengthening our basics as every good designer needs a strong design process. Thanks to this project, I was able to make my design process a lot more compact and thorough, concentrating on stages like the brief, the client, the target audience, research and analysis, idea generation and experimenting and prototyping. It was a great end to the term and I managed to achieve a distinction on my first ever project.

Term 2

With our basics done, we concentrated on the important subject of using our skills in the real (and actually not so scary) world. Projects like the ‘One Week Project’ aimed to increase our understanding of presentations as well as the time constraints that many designers face. This project also taught me about graphic design history, table top presentations, as well as research and analysis in general.  I feel like I could’ve done better on the resulting presentation and that’s what the feedback said too - we weren’t prepared enough. I took this to heart and made improving my planning and presentation skills a priority for the Industry Set Project later in the term.

The Mapping Project offered me a wealth of information about branding and identity, especially for locations. It was also a great way for me to learn about designing and laying out larger prints, including making effective use of typography, textures and colours. Along the way I picked up a few new techniques and tricks for Photoshop and Illustrator too.

The Industry Set Project that followed is undoubtedly the most fun and rewarding project I’ve ever done. Not only did it offer an inside look at LBi, one of the best creative agencies in the world, it also provided me with a substantial amount of experience in several key areas: Networking, creative planning, marketing, designing and creating apps, personal and professional presentation, idea generation, and the role of anthropology.

Term 2 culminated with an epic, 50-page PDF detailing the three projects we tackled.

I’ve now almost finished my third term, and am currently working hard on our final major project.

VCT and PPD

The Visual and Cultural Theory (VCT) module, which, much like Personal and Professional development (PPD), runs alongside our major modules, really helped me understand design in respect to our society. The essay on Curating was an eye-opener and I realised how the curator has gone from being the person responsible for permanent collections in a museum to the exhibition maker who makes aesthetic decisions about content and takes artistic responsibility for one-off exhibitions, installations, and entire exhibition programmes. It was my first time doing such a module, and I was pleasantly surprised when I got a distinction on this project.  

Our VCT article was very effective in making me think about the current design debates and delve deeper into the government’s aggressive reform in the education sector and the effects that has on design students.

I feel like the PPD module has really helped me prepare my online presence, and made me realise the importance of that in the creative world. With social media being a huge part of many people’s lives, it is very important to keep with it and create an online network. One of the primary assignments for achieving that is maintaining a blog to provide insight into our personality, work, and education, which could be used to strengthen applications for jobs and internships. Incidentally, you’re reading it right now (hello!).

The other extremely important part of having an online presence is having a digital portfolio. While creating my portfolio, I concentrated on aspects like personal branding, layout and design and, most importantly, the organization of my content. I received some really good and helpful feedback on this project and have definitely tried to make the necessary improvements.

Other Stuff

Throughout my first year, I was lucky enough to attend some really amazing workshops for screen printing, letterpress, photography and informative talks from the likes of D&AD. The best thing about being at university is the numerous networking opportunities you get, and I was chuffed to bits to visit and network with studios like Mother, YCN, Hato Press and Ico.

I have also been active in our university’s LGBTQ society as their media manager and got to represent our university at the NUS LGBT conference. It was a truly eye-opening experience, and something I would never have been able to experience without being at university. Since then, I have been active within the community and learnt not only about the LGBT issues but also about the issues facing the black LGBT community.

In conclusion, this has been one of the most productive nine months of my life and it’s not only given me a much better understanding of the creative industry, but also my own skills and interests. I can’t wait to find out what comes next!

We’ve come a long way since Geocities and, thanks to the myriad of tools and web-based apps available out there, are now able to build stunning websites with ease. Keeping track of them isn’t always easy, but thankfully, we’ve now got a bit of help.

The Toolbox is an absolutely fantastic resource for anyone in the business of building websites. It’s a hugely varied collection of all kinds of useful tools, widgets, and apps, ranging from background pattern generators and CSS snippets (ribbons without any images? No problem!) to things like CSS code minifiers and regular expression tools. 

Bookmarking highly recommended!

First Major Project

Initial attempts at Logo design, London

London represents different things for different people, and this logo tries to convey that feel, while the tagline ‘London is what you make of it’ encompasses this feel.

Depending on who you are and how you look at it, this logo can mean different things to different people, just like the city.

It can be viewed as- the Big ben representing the political aspect of London; the London-Eye representing its tourism; a compass representing London as a location; a watch representing time; the center showing the economic and political strength of the country.

When branding a city, it is more important to concentrate on the feel that you get from the city rather than the aesthetics or architecture.

First Major Project

Initial attempts at Logo design, Berlin

Berlin, the capital city of Germany, stands for its  economic and political strength. This logo tries to convey that strong feel through its strong structural feel , heavy grid based layout and a shoulder to shoulder typeface.

The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany, and helps strengthen the identity of this logo