• Well, I said a while back that I would post about my new project for Identity, which I have almost finished and now just waiting to have everything printed this week, then work on setting up my exhibition and finalising the rationale. Before Christmas, I decided to continue with my old idea, additionally creating a logo for Kingsway and creating a new prospectus.  My other idea received some positive responses, although I did not want to get too tied up with doing the same idea, and I felt this would have been hardly a creative challenge and well, slightly boring.
    Instead I therefore decided to carry this idea forward as well as another, which was in response to my research, and then combine both ideas into one big final idea.

    Above is a few rubbish photographs of the invitation [mock up] Obviously this still needs work and printing onto nice quality paper... of course.
    “Following the independent cross-party review of higher education funding and student finance in England, which was decided in October 2010, tuition fees will change for new entrants in 2012.”
    Deciding whether or not to study at University is important and is never an easy decision. With the rise in tuition fees, this adds pressure to these decisions. Making a decision now is not as easy as just picking up a prospectus or browsing online for a specific course of interest. A lot of considerations are now put in place, including affordability, career prospects, and what University has to offer in terms of employability afterwards.
    In order to reach out and to encourage a wider audience about the faculty, my research led me to focus and also include those students who for what may be their reason, do not want to study an Arts or Media degree and to underline main key issues of why this may be. My aim is to demonstrate and educate young adults aged between 17-24 the positive reasons and possibilities of going to University to study a creative course, and what they are likely to achieve out of doing a degree.
    “I do not know what I want to do. I want to study Fine Art, although I will never get a job in this.” It is important that they understand career options and future prospects related to their chosen course of study and that they are specific to their own creative interest.  
    To evidence this, a list of careers; related to their chosen choice of study, whether it is Fine Art or Graphic Design will be allocated on the website.
    I want them to understand that their future is important and to encourage them to begin taking this seriously. The government and College's are currently not doing enough for those students who do not want to study at University, let alone the ones that actually do, and with the unemployment rate among young adults being significantly high, this is something that is an underlining problem.
    In order to solve this problem, I have used a range of media's including designing a website, invitations, posters and other promotional material to focus on the positives of studying an Arts or Media course at Kingsway. My main aim is to change their opinion and to lead them away from just focusing on the rise in tuition fees, and the current state of the economy. I have done this by demonstrating within the tone of voice that the University of Chester is understanding, and realistic and then used this to educate them about finance, creative career prospects and how they can step out into the industry and advertise the services that the University of Chester offers, which has allowed the University of Chester to gain a status for being the most employable in the North West. The concept of my Kingsway logo was to focus on my other idea, and with the use of individual colour co-ordination, each of these through the use of colour phycology reflects each of the seven different individual departments situated at the Kingsway buildings.
    This unique system encourages a playful involvement and shows Kingsway through its true individuality and creativity as well as reviving the site to create a young and more modern feel. The logo represents the courses piecing together to demonstrate what Kingsway Buildings is as a whole, creative, innovative, dynamic, challenging and at the same time this creates a sense of togetherness.

    I will probably post again with some more final pieces, and my final exhibition too (If it turns out any good)

  • This is the second set of mailers sent out to people in order to get them to communicate with me through the process of handwritten letters. I am still at the initial stages of this project and continuing with collecting research. I still have a lot to find out and feel as though I am not getting many answers at the moment... I am interviewing three people next week though, so hopefully this will help me towards heading in the right direction.


















  • All done and finished - After the big final presentation tomorrow this is of course.  A lot has happened over the 10 weeks that we have spent on this half of the module. For our business plan me and my group initially decided to go down the line of selling our designs on cards, but later we decided to expand this and we finally decided to become a design agency that sells everything from prints, cards, printed T-shirts, bags, tea towels online. This is my design contributions to the presentation tomorrow, and Laura has some of her awesome pattern design printed onto tea towels to show too.  I have enjoyed working on this – in the end. But needless to say, I am looking forward to getting it out of the way.








  • These are the handwritten letters sent to the first three people on my mailing list. (I am now aware that they have all received them) Inside the letter I had set each of them a little task and have got them each to respond back to me. It will be interesting to see what each of their responses will be and I am actually looking forward to them.

  • I graduate from University this year and time has gone that fast, I still feel as though I am a first year, and for that matter design like one too. Tonight I have done some serious thinking, and this is just my list of resolutions for my time in Universtity let alone actual resolutions. I would be here all night writing that list and I think I long decided to just keep those resolutions for next year? I am sure cutting down on eating lots of junk food (mainly cakes and too many sweets) can wait a year. This is much more imporant.

    Re-do my whole portfolio (8-12 pieces)
    I literally have no work at all that I am proud of and I only want recent work and my final year projects within my portfolio. I am not happy with any of the work I produced throughout the whole of last year either, and of course first year and college work within my portfolio is a definite no. So this has infact left me with no other choice anyway...

    I want to feel as though I have achieved something as well as a degree through my time at University. My main focus is to concentrate on my portfolio and to have something I can be proud of, and worth showing. This is what will get us a job after all.
     
    Try to be more positive about my work
    This is probably one of the hardest things on this list (world) I need to gain confidence within my work, experiment and take more risks.
     
    Create a Unique Identity
    I have been meaning to do this for far too long now.
     
    Graduate from University

    Get accepted onto the Masters (MA Design)
     
    Get a proper website up and running and become a Freelance Designer alongside work and my Masters

    Here is to a busy 2012...


  • I have discussed in previous posts that for one of our University project, we are re-branding our faculty of Arts and Media. I have decided to continue with my idea, but also work on another additional project alongside this and after bring these ideas both together to create something final. In order to set a theme for my next idea, I have begun looking at origami and experimented with creating something, and here I have created a University of Chester student graduate character. (Not really the best of photographs, but you get the idea) I want a handmade touch to my design and hopefully show something that will enhance Kingsway for its creativity. When I have something more and worth showing for my next idea, I will blog again describing my intentions fully, as it is quite a big and detailed project.

  •  
    My books arrived today, definitely still excited about this project. For one of my final major projects in University I have decided to look at the art of mail and begin a campaign where I would like to get people writing letters and sending mail again.
    With digital communication so prevalent in our daily lives, the art of handwritten letters and sending pieces of mail seems to have been forgotten about.  There is something more personal about receiving a handwritten letter, something an electronic message cannot compete with. I want to influence people to send mail, but also communicate a message about the environment and encourage them to use natural resources to do this.  I have so far researched into who still sends mail and other ways of communicating through mailing, other than handwritten letters, such as Postsecret.

    Something that had a major influence on my decisions was Craig Oldham’s Handwritten Letter Project, which I seen in an edition of Creative Review earlier in the summer. I want to send Craig a handwritten letter asking him about his project, and if possible get an interview with him.

    Including this project I am currently following Mary Kate McDevitt’s ‘Handwritten Letters’ project, where she has chosen 365 participants to write a letter every day to, she is currently on day 34. Check it out here www.365handwrittenletters.com
    I have so far looked at mailing the armed forces ‘An armed forces pen pal’ and what they use to communicate (presuming this was letters) which turned out to be emails, or over social networking sites. I then looked into Pen Pals, and whether this still happened, which again turned out to be over emails or a pen pal social networking site. I presumed either of these would be through handwritten letters, but to my surprise neither was. This led me to decide, this task was not going to be easy and to question whether my mission is to turn people completely away from emailing and social networking sites, and get them to send mail. Or to aim for something a little more realistic for this day and age and influence people to send mail as well as emailing and using social networking sites. Next, I intend to look at who uses social networking sites more, and question who my main target audience for my campaign is. I also want to look more into social and environmental issues. I still have a lot more to research, although to begin with I have just started off with the basics.

    I also intend to enter part of my project into the RSA awards ‘Social Mail’ for Royal Mail where they have asked for a set of stamp designs, with the intentions to influence someone to send a handwritten letter.  Therefore by this time, I will already have a set theme for these designs.