5 Pieces of Design that have Influenced me

El Lissitzky's famous "Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge".

This quintessential piece of Graphic Design should be a staple for all designers, in terms of composition and layout, it's still sited and manipulated today, and will go on to be for years to come. Also, on a personal level, I love the colour scheme; when creating a piece of work in greyscale the first colour I will experiment with is red. I suppose I see at as a mid-point between black and white.

Just about all of David Carson's work...

With Carson's impact throughout the 80's and 90's on the Graphic Design scene it's hard to ignore him, but I'll be honest. I'm not a fan of his work. For me everything just seems too random, and I don't particularly like the 'grunge Typography' style. I'm the kind of person who likes 90 degree baselines, equal margins in grid systems, clean cut swiss style Typography, and his work just doesn't fit.

The unused Ford logo by Paul Rand.

It's no doubt the late logo designer was one of the most talented artists of all time, what with his contributions to numerous corporate logo's including next, IBM, abc, ups and so on. But I actually really like the logo he designed for Ford that was never used, it's a real shame. When I think about it now, it makes me realise how Rand was so ahead of his time, and it pains me to know that right now in corporate branding design that this kind of flat 2D simplistic logo is what a lot of big time firms are going for.

Akzidenz Grotesk by Günter Gerhard Lange for the Berthold Type Foundry in 1896.

It's difficult for me to pick a favourite Typeface, but I wanted to include one with this post. I often go through phases of favouring a particular one, but they generally all follow a similar theme. A go to one for myself is Akzidenz Grotesk, believed to be one of the main inspirations for Helvetica. For me this Typeface defines what classic Swiss-style Graphic Design is all about. I mean, how could you not like it?

The V&A logo by Alan Fletcher

It's absolute genius. The way the arm of the '&' forms the crossbar of the A is brilliant. I always wonder if this idea was in there from the start, or if it came to Fletcher through meticulous idea's generation processes, if that's the case I can't imagine what that moment must have been like. It's got class, sophistication. It's minimal, adaptable, stylish. One of the best logos out there in my view. 

Presentation of Introductory Brief

Here you can see the final product of our weeks work on the student employment campaign. Overall I'm happy with the result, especially the content; there was a lot of research went into this piece, and I feel it's paid off, I really do believe that's it's not that far away from being a genuine informative product. In terms of design, I think there's room for improvement. For me it's still not quite slick enough, but it does the job.

I had the idea to design and print some posters, 5 in total, with an inspirational quote about employment on each. They turned out pretty well I think, especially considering they only took about 20 minutes to design and print; they really added to the fuller body of work.

Again above you can see how our body of work has evolved through design changes, crit recommendations, and group decisions. In terms of our actual presentation I think it went well, I always end up over thinking these things, but generally calm down once they get going. I'm proud of us all as a group, we've overcame differences of opinion to find a mutual design solution that fits what we set out to do.

This is a little random, but I ended up transforming one of my fortune teller prototypes into a snake, and I think he's really cool. I had the idea that perhaps if we were to give these paper fortune tellers out, and it was a legitimate campaign, then I could design a little piece to go inside that gives the user directions on how to recycle their fortune teller into a snake like mine. It's kind of gimmicky, but it's fun, and it compliments the interactive theme we set out to achieve. If we were given more time on this project, I think I'd probably take it in that direction.