Guten Morgen

Hi guys!

So yesterday afternoon I arrived in Munich, Germany. I’ve never been to Bavaria before so these upcoming months will surely be interesting!

My trip began with a heart attack at the airport, assuming I could just check in another bag I pack two (I had only booked one bag with my easyjet flight) at which the lady at the desk smiled and said okay, that’ll be £180 to check in that bag. It was classed as excess baggage hence the gigantic amount.  So I had to take only the most important things out of the second bag and shove them into my suitcase and hand carry.

The flight felt really long as I was really nervous, I’ve never moved away before. Living in london meant that I always commute into uni and have always been living at home. I was dropped off at work in a taxi thinking that I’d be greeted by someone to go through my contract and talk a few things over etc. but none of that happened, I was handed an envelope.

With at least 30kg in hand I used the underground to get to my new flat provided for me by the company. After getting lost for about an hour, and a conversation with the housing officer using a mish-mash of english and german I found my apartment and room. *SIGH*

SPRING!!!!

Hi again, long time i posted the last post.. I’ve finished today a very intense month of illustration freelance work for a exhibition centre called “The Crystal” that is being built at the moment at Royal Victoria Docs and should open to public during the Olympics. Here is a little recap what Crystal actually stands for..:

The Crystal is a sustainable cities initiative by Siemens which explores how we can create a better future for our cities.

It is home to the world’s largest exhibition focused on urban sustainability, bringing together city decision makers and the public. As a world-class centre for dialogue, discovery and learning, it reveals the challenges that cities face, and the ways we can reduce their environmental impact using sustainable technology.

I’ve finished today artworking a pretty large wall surface that is going to cover area called “safe and sound”. The illustration covers all sorts of things that throaten our lives in urban areas, from tsunamis to crime to drugs to accidents and so on. It will go on production (printers) within the next few days. I’m quite excited to see it up and standing and hope that i haven’t forgotten something as i was quite exhausted sitting front of my desk doodling. I got to meet lots of interesting people and the visit the Crystal building site, it all looks pretty overwhelming. I worked alongside a design studio called ACME,  really nice studio, recommend for an internship there! I think this was a big learning curve again. But I am looking forward to spend little time enjoying the summer after this and concentrate little for my own stuff for awhile I am also starting up a lookbook design for a friend who is graduating from LCF.

I haven’t really started planning rest of the dps any further as this project kept me busy, but hopefully it will take shape soon. My first project though is to turn my room entrance looking like a mouth. And then paint a sunrise on my housemate Nicks room.

Seems like everyones enjoying their time , its nice to read what everybodys been up to

beep beep

Netta

More internships, please!

I’m finished at DK now, the team were very willing to keep me on for another couple of weeks but I’m afraid I’m booked up until Easter, doing workshops with Artsadmin and the Ministry of Stories! (Although not at the same time…)

So, this last week I’ve been able to help out on design work including coming up with spread concepts, rearranging spreads and cutting out elements to use on spreads. Here is an exciting picture of me masking off an element in Photoshop:

I’m pretty keen to get some more interning in before the end of the year now. I’m hoping to get an internship at Provokateur at some point because I’d really like to be involved with their work. Also, I have an interview with Don’t Panic on Friday (which is the day after I have a couple of my teeth pulled out so that should be fun…) for their Graphic Design internship.

I’d better go spruce up my portfolio, tata for now!

March

March is flying by and with equinox soon approaching it’ll mean that there’s so little time left to the DPS year! My internship at londonprintstudio has officially ended, it was a great 6 months and I learnt an incredible amount, from networking, writing/delivering workshops, curating tricks etc!

Earlier this month, we had the opportunity to meet the publishers at Jonathan Cape. It felt so surreal but they conveyed how passionate they were about comics, despite publishing a range of books. It was a motivational experience, especially when you start to realise that being a comics artist is extremely difficult! You really have to work quickly and love what you do.

We got to show our presentations about the work we create at Laydeez Do comics, a monthly comics meet up event. Here we explained the themes we explore through our work, our inspirations and described our experience through the internship. It was quite nerve racking (especially as we didn’t realise Tom Gauld would be there…!!) but I am now a lot more confident in interviews, presentations and generally introducing myself! I believe this Laydeez Do comics event was featured in The Stylist Magazine? They are now arranging a pop up meet in New York which is exciting!

The day after, we were rushed for time as we were putting up and curating our comics exhibition, “Frames of Mind”, which will also be the book launch to our anthology “Parallel Lives”. Lisa was kind enough to help out as the star photographer for the night, snapping photos of the visitors who posed in the make shift photo installation I created. It was a great private view and a positive reception! The experienced John, who owned the studio was pleased as it didn’t look like a student show, it worked well together as a whole, taking advantage of all the space. I received a lot of lovely comments and feedback about my work and even got to speak to someone from Penguin Books.

During this time, I also kept in contact with DK, letting them know which days I am free to help them. I’ll officially be joining the interns on Monday to help prepare for the London Book Fair! I really cannot wait as it’s a different environment! I also had an interview at New Statesman and will be interning there in middle of April!
- Susan.

Fairies x2

Near the end of our book dummy making stint, our manager on the DK internship offered for us to stay on for another week to help out with design work. Not all of us could make it but Kristine and I are still there for now! It’s nice to have some say in what’s actually going into the books. I’m not entirely sure how much I’m allowed to say about DK’s upcoming titles but here’s some doodles I made today which are actually relevant:

In my spare time I’m still chugging away at my Grimms’ Fairy Tales book jacket design for the Penguin Design Awards. It’s looking dead good so far (in my modest opinion) so hopefully the finished outcome will be a contender!

Sneak peek.

Hello,

On my week off from DK, I was lucky enough to be contacted by a super late email from Ryan Todd last night asking if I’m free to help him out setting up the space for the upcoming Pick Me Up art fair at Somerset House.

I got a chance to help Many Hands to set up their space. Everyone are very friendly and I did enjoy talking to them, listening to their work experiences after graduated and see how they organized everything for the fair. Exciting stuffs as I walked around to check out most of the artists this year, and here is some sneak peek pictures. Looking forward to go to the official event!

Simon.

 

 

Love London Workshop

This gallery contains 7 photos.

Why we love London: what you do that helps to make it a city that other people love; what we have seen other people do that really makes you love our city more…

AGORA

Hey Guys!

Please see below the press release for AGORA. All the artists involved are designing posters. Me and my friend Elle are designing the publication for the exhibition. We will be involved in the events over the next 2 weeks.

AGORA.

Tooting Market 14th-24th March 2012
Laurence Price, Oscars Cass-Darweish, Matt Welch, Aoife Flynn, Elle Donlon, Stephanie Conboye, Lucy Lopez, Roseena Hussain, Josh Whitaker, Dan Auluk, Nita Walters, Maddy Dickerson, Martina Topia, Amy Pitt, Nat Carey, Oli Boulton- Fisher, Rosie Gibson, Will Slater, Marianne Forest, Maria Almena, Vlada Maria, Samantha Penn , Teri Bruno, Anna Reading, Alex Wilson, Henry Mackay-Bull, Marisha Green, Benn Webb, Lucinda-Ellen-Brain, Jess Hill, Emma Sywyj, Cluster Bomb
Collective, David Smith, Phil Tompson, Joshua Spring, Tomas Kemp, Laurence Ferguson, Chris Kazolides, Luchia Stamati.

AGORA is an organisation of over 40 Artists, Filmmakers, Curators, Graphic designers and Musicians holding a residency at The Brick Box, Tooting market. Over the course of 12 days, we will undertake a series of ventures prepared each day. Each project will respond to the physical space within the market; through our virtual spaces online and collated into our publication which will be developed on site and launched at Brick Box’sUnorthabox event on the 24th
of March.

We will collaborate each day to create a narrative in flux, documenting the process; a formation of a voice within the forum, visualising co-operation and discussion. Historically the Agora ( Ἀγορά, Agorá) was a central spot in ancient Greek city-states, a place that literally means “Gathering place” or “Assembly”. Based in an open plan fortuitous square in the market we will convene every morning for a gathering of ideas. We will set up our residency each day in the nature of the Agora, comprising of some chairs arranged into a circle, a printer, photocopier and scanner, we will stage each day as a conversation. We will supply the narrative of what occurs within this conversation, bringing a new
voice a new territory for ideas, a forum free from institutional usury. Working together with these simple tools of production we aim to compose collaborative yet diverse voices.
‘AGORA’ is being provided to explore the possibility of collectively within the ubiquitous globalised market of today. Collectivism is something when attained cannot be ignored, with voluntary human action, a narrative can be developed.Today we use social marketplaces and networking sites to project ourselves, within these environments, opinions and instant narrations within this format often can become made redundant and avoided. We become coerced into a controlled environment that makes up the recent documented history of a globalised society online. But more often than not, our opinions are treated as statistics. Local market halls are fast becoming considered as working museums, full of archaic selling practices nuances and languages. The face-to-face, buyer seller relationship is something missing from the corporate capitalist markets that subscribe the commodities we are sold, this prescribed fetishisation and insistence of want in our society has produced a wave of extremist human action, the riots of 2011 are an example of how far we will go
to get the products we cannot afford. In this period of austerity where community schools and libraries are being closed in a new wave of governmental reform, we must organise to vocalise. In an age where there are so many versions of one reality how do we make art that relates to our simulated response hyper-real? “It is possible, practical, and even profitable to entrepreneur large collections of
humanity from statist society to the agora. This is, in the deepest sense, true revolutionary activity”
New Libertarian Manifesto http://agora.tootingmarket.info/

My Experience in Burberry

So there has been 5 months and my internship in Burberry would be ending very soon.

Working in fashion industry, although not what I previously planned for my DPS year, I have learned unexpectedly lot and gained an very insightful understanding of this industry, which was quite different from what I used to think. Something are quite obvious as what the media depicts: big brand, luxury, runway, expensive clothes and accessories, celebrities, The Devil Wears Prada, etc. But there are so much behind a 30-minute runway show. From the design point of view, and what I have eye-witnessed, it is an integrated effort of different design teams who would spend hours and hours just in perfecting a small detail. And from the branding point of view, it is a matter of how different marketing strategies are executed, take Burberry for example, who in recent years invested a lot in digital marketing, has transformed its brand identity to a greater level by using social media, creative media and digital solutions such as the Art of Trench Project and the first ever real-time runway shopping experience.

In the past few months I have been working as a CAD intern for IT Solution Department, Women’s Wear Department and Men’s Wear Department. Although my work desk would be moved quite frequently from one department to another, it provided me quite varied working experience working with different teams. I have been working closely with the CAD team and assisted them in all dimensions, mainly focused on the graphic aspect, while getting involved with variety of projects. That includes fashion CAD drawings, product photography, image editing, image uploading, document set-up etc.

The work I really enjoyed the most is doing the CAD drawings. We created the vector images for every season’s fashion collections. We receive the sketches and the fitting images from the fashion design team then we will start sketching up the drawings in Illustrator according to them. Doing this work really boosted my Illustrator skills, and they taught me a lot of creative way to achieve a very nice drawing, like applying brushes, tweaking the curves, applying patterns etc. It was very overwhelming but inspiring to see how many design details in each season’s collection, like the colours they use, the patterns and textures on the fabric, leather, knit and fur, the different designs of the pockets, buttons, zips, epaulettes etc. As I am working with both Men’s wear and Women’s wear CAD team, although working long hours have been expected, it could be very stressful while meeting the super tight deadline before runway because there are so many designs and so much last-minute edit. So far I have helped with the drawings of Autumn 12 and Winter 12 collections and it was a very amazing feeling seeing some of the drawings I helped with actually turned out to be a real fashion piece being walked on the runway!

As somebody would be interested in the working environment, I was working in their global headquarter office located in Horseferry Road in south-west London and that building was newly built in 2009. Ground floor and lower ground floor is the showroom where they display the latest season’s collections and it is really a place of glamour. Upper floors are the spacious modern open-plan office and meeting rooms with each floor identically designed and equipped with the most advanced technology. And top floor is the central design department where all the great ideas are realised. Apart from the physical environment, what I feel very impressive is their company culture. They have impressive ways of working and they treasure every single staff in the company. Even though I am an intern, the day when I started they already have my desk set up with all the luxury the same as other designers – an iMac with a Wacom tablet. The people in my team are very helpful and treated me as a member of them, patiently teaching me loads of stuff even if it was busy time meeting deadlines. There is an employee review from time to time which they use to evaluate and improve your performance at work. And my manager has kept giving a lot of positive feedbacks and being helpful guiding me through the time during my internship which was very insightful and encouraging and gave me the most engaging internship experience ever. That made me feel I was important to them because they cultivate the positive attitude towards every employee and see their growth in the company important.

5 months seem like a long time but how time flies! This internship in Burberry really helps me defining my future career by giving me a new perspective as well as a new possibility. Having had experience working in small in-house studio as well as in a big company, I could see how contrasting the difference would be. But I am sure there is still so much for me to learn…

All the best

Evan.

Cutting, Sticking and Roller Derby

We’ve been at DK for a little over a week now, as well as more cutting and sticking (there really has been a lot of that) we’ve learned about industry practices with regards to colour correction and printing proofs. Also on Friday there wasn’t much work to do on the book dummies so we got to try out making pop-ups for a science book (it turns out it’s really hard to make a pop-up of a carbon atom).

On Tuesday night I did something just a teeny bit different… a life drawing session with Art Macabre where all our models were roller derby girls! The event was in celebration of International Women’s Day last Thursday which is why they chose to use tough femmes as our subject material. It was certainly a change to traditional life drawing sessions!