Placement @ Exposed: Day 4

ILO: 6 A2
Demonstrate specific knowledge and specialist understanding of the professional and contextual location of their practice. (helping out with art direction)

ILO: 6 D2 
Use a range of appropriate communication methods to present themselves as a professional practitioner to a relevant audience. (identified what needed to be done in between shots)

Day 4

Dyson Photoshoot

I was asked to go help with the art direction team on a Shoot for Dyson Air purifier at this insane location in Slough, I walked up the drive to a million pound estate and was met by the lovely home owner who asked if I wanted to feed his baby lamb at 6am. I'd woken up around 5 am and got a company uber there, feeling very tired but boujee.

The lamb butted me in the leg for a bit before accepting his breakfast, great start to any day!

I was surprised as I thought I'd probably be running round making tea for everyone all day (but I think I was savvy and avoided that), I made sure I was as heavily involved as possible. It started off unloading vans and setting up equipment for hours. We had a catered breakfast break and I made sure I spoke to everyone. I found most of them were freelance for digital/ videography companies and worked a lot with Exposure. I made sure to introduce myself to the man in charge who I felt was my friend by the end of the day.

The concept for the shoot was having a motorbike ride through someone's living room, this idea that city pollution is all around however with the Dyson Air Purifier, all this pollution will be subtracted from your home environment.

In the morning prep I made two Ikea tables using powertools which I had no idea I was capable of so proved myself as a handygal if anything!

Once we'd got the set up planned according to their layout concept (I couldn't photograph this) I helped positioning the smaller details like these house plants and ceramic vases. The set up was very modern chic, minimal but homely.

I'd never been to a shoot with such an extensive set up, as the lights were going up it started pouring down with rain. This was an issue throughout the day, the technical team had to stand on ladders holding up sheets and lights at some points it was so torrential! It was almost comical how stressful and DIY the lighting department had to be upheld, yet they achieved the most professional artificial lighting, seeping through the windows on such a gloomy grey day. It gave me faith that behind the scenes doesn't have to be as perfect as the shot as I often worry I'm too messy and chaotic, but as long as I present my work in a professional clean way I won't need to worry.

The shot was short, it's for a social media ad so we had to work to specific framed dimensions which were set out with tape on the floor. I noticed inbetween shots as it was raining the bike going through the house left wet tire marks. I stepped in to wipe these down before a shoot and got shouted at as I didn't realise they had started rolling.. LUCKILY I had reason and explained as they all looked at me angrily that "we should wipe down the floor in between shots, you can't have these marks on the floor". I was pretty terrified at this point thinking I'd wasted their time but the director laughed and confirmed I was completely right and thanked me... Phew.

 

It was a really long day, we were there for 12 hours shooting something that lasted just 30 seconds. I got to meet the Dyson clients, actors, technical videographers and lighting equipment people and felt I held myself in a professional way, I was very inquisitive and I feel this did me well as the director came up to me at the end and shook my hand saying "I'll see you on more projects when you start working for Exposed!"

Placement @ Exposed: Day 3

ILO: 6 A2
Demonstrate specific knowledge and specialist understanding of the professional and contextual location of their practice. 

Day 3

Google Calligraphy

For their clients at Google, they provided a service enabling people to find specific job roles, using the theme of Sherlock Holmes' murder mystery. I overheard them discussing their need for calligraphy, so I stepped up explaining I used to hand ink my own business cards and was up for the challenge. I practiced for hours, ensuring they were happy with the outcome. Luckily they had a few spares so if they ink blotted I wouldn't have ruined their letters!

I experimented with the different quil thicknesses and practiced with spacing in mind, this was especially difficult with the salary part as they had to be a lot smaller and risked looking squished and illegible especially as it was all written in old English.

The letters were personalised to each client with amusing anecdotes. The calligraphy finalised this personalisation with a hand drawn salary figure, name and sign off by Holmes.

I then asked to borrow their camera and took some nicer shots... (this image they used on their end of week meeting 'show and tell!')

It was really great working on an brief that was more internal, and learning more about ways of thanking clients that stands out as opposed to easy flowers or chocolates. Was also rewarding getting hands on and being praised for my creative talent outside of basic graphic design, I've always loved this traditional method, it was very encouraging everyone stopping what they were doing in the office to come have a look.

Placement @ Exposed: Day 2

ILO: 6 A2
Demonstrate specific knowledge and specialist understanding of the professional and contextual location of their practice

Day 2

Instagram Deck

My main task I was set to complete over the next two weeks was to re-design their instagram account. I was set this by Connor their chief art director so definitely was spurred on by pressure to impress! I thought it was important to showcase emerging talent (our class of course) so included a lot of my peers work as examples which ironically showed a lot more thought out layouts than most bigger studios/ companies etc.

I feel I demonstrated my understanding of social media, layout and ability to research, presenting this in a format fit for a professional audience.

Placement @ Exposed: Day 1

ILO: 6 D2
Use a range of appropriate communication methods to present themselves as a professional practitioner to a relevant audience.

Day 1

I have a two week placement at Exposed, part of Exposure marketing agency in Oxford Circus, London. This is the digital side of the agency, who have won MMA best agency of the year. It made sense for me to apply to all London based agencies as I've been told by people in industry including those artists/ designers I spoke to during my creative report last year , that London just has more creative opportunities. I also love the buzz, the feeling of endless possibilities, however I can't forget I moved to Leeds to get away from it, commuting and standing like a sardine on the tube just gave me anxiety. And at the risk of being very deep right now I feel like I'm ready, uni has been very challenging, with a lot of tragedies, hard work and I really feel tougher then I ever have been.

Another family tragedy happened this week but I know what I need to do, put my heart and soul into what I do, and do it for them, and me! I'm really excited to have been given this opportunity and I can't waste it.

I'll be keeping a record of my experience here.

Run round the office recorded for social media...

Concept
For international women's day, their client Triumph wanted a short promotional video showing Triumph's support of women over the years in a creative way.

"Focusing on the designers desk,  camera will slowly pass along it (from a top down point of view) as it does we see photo's / posters from Triumph's heritage, leading up to images from present day events as well as films viewed on a tablet. Finally ending on the International Women's Day logo."

"Triumph's support of women over the years in a creative way. Focusing on a designers desk, a camera will slowly pass along it (from a top down point of view) as it does we see phot's/ posters from Triumph's heritage, leading up to images from present day events as well as in films viewed on a tablet. Finally ending on the international Women's Day logo."

My role was to steam the products and fabric as well as help with art direction. My sketch was also featured (shown above) as part of the designers desk concept. We originally had fabric stretching over the whole desk underneath the collage, the director came in and checked up on us and rightly said it didn't look natural enough, we stripped it back a little adding more technical elements like the pattern to make a bra which matched the heritage side to the left perfectly. As the camera pans right you see a progression to modern day, I chose which imagery they had out, they were all old photographs of Triumph products, I thought the images with multiple models in tied in with this strong feeling of championing women.

  

It took a couple of takes to get the perfect shot, Morella placed down images as Joe (videographer & editor) filmed, giving it a really natural feel. My tattooed hand was obviously not suitable to be used in this context! 

Joe will then add in tracking on the iPad with a video about International Women's day which will be zoomed in on 'in post' (my new fav phrase). Today was great I was really pleased they got me properly involved, and that it was something a bit different. Ideally I'd love to not be sitting at my desk all day for the rest of my life so this is potentially quite a diverse fun role, working in an agency. I got this impression from the people I worked with today as well.

Creative Convos: Eva Cremers

She studied International Business in the Netherlands, then changed to the Art Academy. She's currently over here living in London for a three month placement, practising 3d design. Her course at university required her to take a year out, she worked for Snask in Stockholm

She took the risk sending a box of celebratory props (pinyatta etc) saying how excited she was to be their new intern, it paid off and she worked there for five months.

Umbrella branding she was given the task of this as an intern all by herself!

Another project she was stuck on led her consider how can it stand out, hated animation so that wasn't an option so maybe how it physically moved / sounded? She ended up getting wooden mechanisms, but the motors in the end weren't strong enough so she had a nightmare twelve hours sorting this out. It was worth it in the end however:

There was a fan blowing the flag, things moving up & down, in & out ...

"You don't need the confidence you just need the courage. You can either feel safe and bored or challenged and scared. But you can't be safe and challenged."

Post graduation she grew her instagram, thought of fun projects to do, learn new skills 

Did a fun project with fried food, taking the piss out of current healthy eating / blogging trends.

Man Vs Machine messaged her asking for an internship

Created artwork for the New York Times, collaborated with Superfreak doing 3d design work.

• throw your work online
• use the positive side of instagram
• pinterest is training
• don't be afraid of 'big' designers
• being insecure about your work is normal
• not only your mum follows you on insta
• It's normal to have no idea what you're doing or what your plan is 

She's still unsure what she will do for perhaps the next five years of her life, it's okay to experiment as long as you're doing whatever you like.

(Have no shame in the maximum amount of Instagram tags!!) 

greyskillgorilla- youtube tutorial on Cinema 4D

Workshop 

In groups we were instructed to consider how we would lay out our exhibition as a team. The wilder the ideas the better...

Me and Monica presented and it went pretty smoothly, we had really engaged exciting feedback about the possibilities of creating an actual maze but say of people or hanging work or work as walls etc, thinking more realistically of course...

Creative Convos: Chris from Commission

Graphic design studio based in London that specialises in Branding, working with giant companies to small enterprises, working for brands in ; fashion, design, wellness, hospitality and technology.

Fashion informed as this is their main type of client.

• Clients include Rimowa a German high end luggage brand. Tactile and as interactive as possible. They brought the branding up to speed with the quality of the products with little touches like embossed invitations. 
• Espelma natural wax candles, silicon bubble stickers mimicking a wax spill on top of the packaging.
• Unfolded: German print festival, invite using micro-perforation 
• Franklin Till, a material and colour research agency who inform companies design approaches. Every business card is different, they get to choose from the given colour arrangements specific to each individual. 

After failing uni on a course where there was 7 people on it and no real graphic design tutors, he got offered a job at grafik where they told him:

"There's no point being a good graphic designer if you can't sell your work"

Documenting your work is one of the most important part of any graphic design project. Doing it well will lead you to the next project.

Social Enterprise in Peckham, Old Spike Coffee employ homeless people training them to be baristas, until they can then progress to work at Costa, Starbucks etc as they have enough on their CV. The coffee is such high quality it's sold to Michelen star restaurants. They got bored of seeing coffee branded with brown paper bags and an organic vibe...

They ended up with a broken rock significant of a free lodgings. On a budget they photographed using breeze-blocks chipped away adding texture, even photographed the stamp used on the bag, photographed nicely looks beautiful.

Revisiting this, with a larger budget they redid the photographs, using rocks more similar to those on the logo.

Haw Lin Services

Blog predating Tumblr where you put up mood images 

http://haw-lin.com/

Presenting work it's good to add little shadows just to make the work pop out from the page, as well as on a black background.

OK-RM (I tried to get a placement there!) 

Vivienne Westwood 

Disobedient Bodies JW Anderson Exhibition Catalogue 

Petronio Associates 

"Their lack of care is cool"

Workshop 

Create a moodboard, focusing on how you'd like to lay out a current project. I've chosen my research project, the Goddesses of Destruction Top Trump style cards.

Here I've considered a tacky myspace background for the layout, potentially extending the project creating each Goddesses myspace profile. Another concept would be to stick to the original design which would fit in with the retro feel. I really like the Football Stars edition's gold case and may try mock this up on mine. I'm currently unsure wether to actually 

The two middle on the bottom row:

@maxsiedentopf

Daniel David Freeman

I was originally thinking a black background would best present the cards as the animation would stand out more against the stark backdrop, it furthermore as a colour is symbolic of darkness/ negative connotations... in line with 'destruction'.

Looking at the case makes me realise it would look more professional also designing a front cover that will be the same for all the cards, entitled Goddesses of Destruction.

I'll continue this in my studio development blog as I need to design the front of the cards, but I aim to have three- six instagram posts depending on how long it takes me to generate the cards (but in basic terms at least one row on instagram that will blend well together thanks to the black backgrounds).