Published May 28, 2009 by

Food is fertiliser (and a logo)

I have just completed my Design & Business class (That’s one down, yay!) it was not what I had expected, not quite what I was hoping for and a certainly scored a group with some peculiar dynamics…

Our business plan wound around this idea of converting food scraps from restaurants into organic fertiliser: yes it can be done, our focus was on the service of waste removal and forging links between the food and farming industries. This is the logo I designed for Waste Organics… it was done quickly (it’s not quite even) and the idea to me still seems a little too cutesy or something that resonates with the word flabby – but it probably works for what it is. The kind of nice irony is that apparently ‘dandelions are a logo design trend for 2009‘ – I did not know this before today. There is also a secondary version with the forks growing – for the future projection with farming involvement.

I am truly glad to see the tail end of this class, it tried my patience no end and I did have to do a lot of the work, but all up it was a kind of pleasing outcome. Cheers and good riddance.

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Published November 11, 2008 by

The wormhole of the end of semester

tea-time_2sml_It is the end of semester. People are panicking around me and for once I have my homework under control. I have however just had the mandatory horrible day that comes near the end of each semester.

Defining this day would be the glorious mistake (which I’ve made before) to drive into the city instead of catching public transport. The driving is okay, it’s just the lack of parking and the lying GPS that got to me. I never found the place… I found Kinkos near uni instead and they turned out cheaper.

So then there’s the $103 on printing. And apparently I got a good price.

Plus the freaking huge small mistake of gluing the wrong edge of my book when I was binding. With $103 of printing, you don’t want to make that mistake. Mercifully it was fixable, not entirely 100% happiness but lets go with 80% happiness (inclusive of stress).

This binding video is good.

Now the book is bound, my group proposal is bound and the presentation is early tomorrow. My animation is complete if not a little corny, and my Visual Language posters are done – all I have to do it bulk out the VL research journal and it’s happy land and handing it all in for me.

Lets see, it’s taken me approximately 2 hours to wind down from being on edge for 4 hours + an extra 1 hour. That’s not too bad at all…

Friday I love you so much, you should come sooner.

image source, please check it out, it’s good.

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Published September 29, 2008 by

Ability Scrutiny

I am interested to hear on designers on this one – if any do read this. About pressure relating to ability in the realm of design. There is a lot of work showcased out there (leaning heavily towards illustration) and it sometimes get a little overwhelming because there are individuals out there with freakish talent.

As a design student who struggles with illustration specifically what are great ways to explore other mediums when your drawing hand isn’t so strong? AND what are great ways to explore illustration when you’re low on time.

I will, when time permits explore a class or short course in illustration because it is a skill I want and need to improve.

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Published September 23, 2008 by

Future thinking

The past two days of my so called ‘mid semester break’ have been taken up with a compulsory intensive subject aptly titled: Careers in the Curriculum. For the most part it was like being back at school (but worse)  the woman in charge would haven been better off teaching kiddies who don’t understand what it means to be patronised instead of adult university students, however there were some exceptional industry speakers.

The designer from BlueBoat was fantastic- by the way, they have a glorious website. A really interesting small firm with photography components, web etc.

One of BlueBoat’s specialties is school branding. I was hoping my heart out to find more school related branding online other than the one shown during the presentation. Alas, no luck. I shall continue to search for inspiration elsewhere… and hope that I can bring life to all the mini sketches that I am filling my train rides with.

I am 90% sold on a membership for the DIA (Design Institute of Australia) in order to have a professional organisation behind me once I finish up my course, it seems regardless whether I go to work in a design firm or later freelance, that it would be an incredibly useful backing. And a great standard for ethics and professional practice.

And I am really regretting that Swinburne didn’t take us through more of this stuff (not the resume writing, but future thinking) earlier. Personally, it gives life to assignments and intention for study. I need the bigger picture and it seems lately that I’m not always the best at chasing it for myself.

So, the take aways have me another assignment (Cover Letter/Resume etc), and the unmarked push to work out what exactly I’m really good at and what kind of designer I want to be. What’s my brand? I am inspired.

Realistically speaking, I am physically unprepared for Industry Placement (Work during 3rd year uni as part of your course) in regards to folio – as I was quite certain up until recently that I didn’t want an extra year at Tertiary level. However I have also discovered a post-3rd year means of doing honours in a more exciting way – there are 160 Communication Design students and only 10 places. It might just be time to get off my butt.

It now feels like I can get there*, even if I pick the less conventional path … I like picking the less conventional path.

*wherever, but for here lets say, ‘being a designer’.

Design Life Uni

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Published March 14, 2008 by

Oh come now

reviewtollbooth.jpgSo much as to state that I have been busy and have only just hit my Google Reader after an absence of days and days. This is what uni has is stock for me. Because like it or not (and sometimes it is not), I do actually like the thing. I like my friends, on the whole I like my tutors and lecturers, I like the quirky people there that make me laugh, I like running into people I haven’t seen since first semester of the first year and still being able to say hello, I like that it’s forcing me to do things I don’t always want to do and showing me things that intrigue me, making me having good ideas when there are none and generally filling my head with all kinds of absurdities.

In a few weeks time I have to submit an essay on how designers are moving towards designing for environmental sustainability. This is not exciting in that the three set texts (one of which I must use), are all on very long wait lists at our somewhat pathetic uni-library. The topic itself, however is, and the websites I am finding in my punitive research is even more exciting. Truly.

After hours and days and weeks of stress related to lack of ideas and poor communication on behalf of our fine tutor, I have finally come up with a package design idea that is satisfying the requirements and is profound enough (or something) to be acceptable. Now I have to research and research and research and pull off some clever theoretical engineering. Clues to what I’m getting up to might run along the lines of me needing to visit the Colgate website.

Web is presented by two slightly hilarious and highly decent communicators, I have to haul together some kind of plan in the form of a workbook to show what kind of website I’m making for myself, then make it. This should be relatively easy and fun. Gosh it helps to know CSS. It freaked me out the other day when they started taking us through table based layout. OLD SCHOOL. EXACTLY WHAT I WANT TO UNLEARN. Turns out next week we’re doing the ‘real deal’.

The amusing thing about table based layout is that in my early web-design experiments when I was about 12, I actually worked out the theory of it myself. I seriously wondered why the world wasn’t setting things up with ‘invisible’ tables and thought I was the only one out there doing so… later I worked out they already were. I was an intuitive genius.

Typography for Publication (see earlier layout duplication) turns out that we get an extra week for something I thought was due earlier. After, we launch into a fairly free form: design a 6 page/3-double spread publication with words and images of our own choice. Words taken from an article, images supplied by self, not by stock. Total freedom in assignments is good but also too lenient to allow for perpetual comfort.

image from the book The Phantom Tollbooth, which you should read because it’s fun. I haven’t read it in years.

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