PPP this year my main focus has been WYS. It is a project that has allowed me to find my passion for graphic design, throughout the year all of my industry engagement has been pushed through WYS. Through pushing myself with WYS I have been able to recognise similar people within the industry that I use to draw inspiration from, these are people that I want to collaborate and work with as I feel that WYS gives me the power to get where I want to go with my ideas. It has helped to self-direct myself. Without WYS I would be a very different designer and therefore be in a very different position now, I am glad that it has shown me what I want to do in the future.
As well as WYS, PPP has helped me to identify how I should be networking with people properly. Being able to grab peoples attention in this industry is key and throughout the year I have picked up many tips and tricks to make this easier. Without engaging with PPP I don’t think I would have as much confidence in myself as a designer as I do now I think this is mainly down to being encouraged to do things I otherwise wouldn’t have done for example like building my own website. Through having my own site this gives me a place to display my work to any potential clients or collaborators.
From being encouraged to be as self-directed as possible this year I wouldn’t have got myself involved with things like business workshops at uni, if I had not gone to these workshops then I would not have found out about the Duke Studios opportunity that is open to graduates. Which I am now in the process of applying for with Rob and is helping us to make the transition from uni to the industry that little easier I hope.
Unfortunately, I have not done as much industry engagement as I would have liked, this may have been down to not being confident enough in the work that I had to at the start of the year but now I feel that I understand myself as a designer better enough to confidently engage with other creatives. I am now very keen to start meeting other new people in a completely new environment that isn’t education.
My work experience was very beneficial for me this year. I when I went to my placement at Time Freeze Productions I didn’t know what to expect and was unsure whether it would be for me. Luckily it showed me that are other opportunities out there for me besides the plans that I have already made. I am going to make sure that I keep my opinions open and always on the lookout for things.
This year one of the main things that have benefited my practice was also having guidance from Alec, he was always there to give advice or to help with something and I don’t think I would have confidence in my own practice without his support. I also learned how to be more professional in the workplace and online as well. I found that it was very important to be able to communicate well over email as well as by representing yourself even if it is only a simple website it helps a lot.
I now feel that I am ready to leave university with a confident mindset about being in the graphic design industry. I am now excited to put everything that I have learnt from the last three years into practice all by myself.
Sunday, May 13, 2018
Saturday, May 12, 2018
LIVE BRIEFS
Severn Cooper - Live Brief
Severn Cooper is a leather goods and accessories business based in London. As one of my extended practice briefs, I designed a brand new identity for the client. It consisted of a logo, business cards, social media content, packaging and visual guidelines. I found working to help develop my professional practice as I had to keep in contact with the client via email as well as conducting meetings about the progress of the project. For this brief, I also set the client up with printers so that they could get the outcomes professionally printed. Having now established this relationship with the client I will now be in charge of the developing design going forward with the opportunity to also design the website finial hand in.
Photography Yearbook
This year Rob and I put ourselves forward to produce the Photography Yearbook. This was a really good experience of collaborating with a large number of people there were many challenges that we had to overcome while working on the brief in order to get it right for the clients. One of the main reasons we choose to do this brief was because of being able to work with a budget which is something that we have never done before. We were given a £2000 budget to produce the book and it was interesting to see how it differs from working on personal projects as £2000 isn't as much as you think for 250 copy print run. Another benefit of working on this brief was having direct contact/meetings with Evolution Print this gave me a better understanding of what you have to do in order to get a book printed, it was a very valuable experience for us both as we will probably not see a budget like that for a book now for sometime.
Severn Cooper is a leather goods and accessories business based in London. As one of my extended practice briefs, I designed a brand new identity for the client. It consisted of a logo, business cards, social media content, packaging and visual guidelines. I found working to help develop my professional practice as I had to keep in contact with the client via email as well as conducting meetings about the progress of the project. For this brief, I also set the client up with printers so that they could get the outcomes professionally printed. Having now established this relationship with the client I will now be in charge of the developing design going forward with the opportunity to also design the website finial hand in.
This year Rob and I put ourselves forward to produce the Photography Yearbook. This was a really good experience of collaborating with a large number of people there were many challenges that we had to overcome while working on the brief in order to get it right for the clients. One of the main reasons we choose to do this brief was because of being able to work with a budget which is something that we have never done before. We were given a £2000 budget to produce the book and it was interesting to see how it differs from working on personal projects as £2000 isn't as much as you think for 250 copy print run. Another benefit of working on this brief was having direct contact/meetings with Evolution Print this gave me a better understanding of what you have to do in order to get a book printed, it was a very valuable experience for us both as we will probably not see a budget like that for a book now for sometime.
WYS - BOOK FAIRS
The main focus of WYS is books and print based design. It can be difficult to meet other people doing similar things as you if you do not go to the right industry events the indie publishing industry best networking event are book/print fairs. Throughout the year Rob and I have identified that it would be very beneficial for us to attend as many of these as possible so that we could find out what is out there which helps us to figure out new ideas and find new people to work with or be influenced by.
Artist Book Fair at The Tetley
It was a very small fair with variations of different styles of work some we liked other we didn't but it was interesting to see what happens at book fairs. It was also a great opportunity to talk to artists and self-publishers to get a better understand of why they do it and the difficulties they have as well. We luckily stumbled across a small collective called House That Heals The Soul which was started by Orlando one of our tutors. It was very interesting to talk to them about what they were doing at The Tetley as Artists in Residence, this is how we found about the RISO workshops. After finding out about the RISO workshops we hit up Orlando to ask if we could come down and learn how to use the Risograph. Even though it wasn't fully up our street it showed me the importance of attending these sorts of events as you never know who you're going to meet and what you might learn.
Artist Book Fair at The Tetley
It was a very small fair with variations of different styles of work some we liked other we didn't but it was interesting to see what happens at book fairs. It was also a great opportunity to talk to artists and self-publishers to get a better understand of why they do it and the difficulties they have as well. We luckily stumbled across a small collective called House That Heals The Soul which was started by Orlando one of our tutors. It was very interesting to talk to them about what they were doing at The Tetley as Artists in Residence, this is how we found about the RISO workshops. After finding out about the RISO workshops we hit up Orlando to ask if we could come down and learn how to use the Risograph. Even though it wasn't fully up our street it showed me the importance of attending these sorts of events as you never know who you're going to meet and what you might learn.
Offprint London May 2018
Offprint London returns for its fourth edition to Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, hosting 140 independent and experimental publishers in contemporary art, photography and graphic design, in collaboration with Tate Modern. Throughout the weekend, Tate and Offprint will facilitate a program of workshops and performances.
Later this month Rob and I will be attending Offprint for the weekend. We will be using this weekend as an opportunity to speak to other bookmakers, photographers and artists in the hope that it will help us the chance to talk to people about WYS. Here we will be able to hand out business cards and promotional packs to people that we are interested in. The workshops and talks will also be really useful for us to learn more about the industry we want to go into.
PERSONAL IDENTITY / WYS
As well as WYS I am also representing myself as a freelance designer. I designed a basic website for myself that would let people me see my separately from WYS this is so that I can keep my options open. This means that when I am sending my portfolio to design studios film productions or internships people can see who I am as a designer and what I do.
I have also designed a basic logotype for myself, I felt that I did not need a full personal identity as I mainly want to be seen through WYS but I still have the option to be seen away from that if I am want to break away for any reason. Being able to look for freelance work is something that I feel will help me develop as a designer as I will be forced to work alone which will help to challenge my practice and make me a better designer. Through my website, I wanted to advertise both my design work and my photography as I think this will help me to find a range of work not just graphic design based.
Website link - www.ben-cooper.co.uk
WYS - COLLABORATION
Sam Horton - Zine
- Photography student COP project
- Sam and I worked together to produce a small photographic zine that helped to support this dissertation.
- We worked very well together and this has lead to us wanting to work together again in the future on more projects and as well as expanding on the zine itself.
WYS - Artist Postcards
- Alec Aarons and Sam Horton are working with us as our first artists to collaborate with.
- We have designed a small edition of postcards that help as an introduction to WYS rather than designing a book of photographs.
- An ongoing project that will help to showcase their ongoing practice as we will now be producing regular editions of postcards of these guys work.
AV8 x WYS
- This year saw the birth of WYS and Av8 (Sam Hughes music platform) to celebrate this we decided to collaborate on a t-shirt design.
- We asked Sam if he could design us a back print for a t-shirt - we wanted to keep it very simple so Sam used funny drawings to represent the collaboration between us two.
- The "Elephant Man" t-shirt is an adaptation of a drawing that Rob did and we felt that this meant the most to all of us hence why we decided to put it on a t-shirt. The collaboration was more for us to remember this time in our lives as this is how we felt a lot of the time (lost and confused) but somehow we have managed to make it to the end better than we expected.
- Hand screen printed (limited numbers)
- We will be selling the t-shirt through the WYS webstore
RISO WORKSHOP
Having become more interested in books and zines this helped to bring my attention to Risograph printing it is very popular among the indie publishing and having not ever being taught about the process I wanted to find somewhere that would show me the process.
Footprint - Earlier in the year I send an email to Footprint RISO printers in Leeds asking if we would be able to come down and find out about the process so that I could start bringing the process more into my practice. Unfortenently it was very difficult to arrange something with them as they are very busy and workshops are not really something they have done before so Rib and I were unable to go do that.
More recently though I received after a long wait I got an email from them inviting us to come on a week in mid-June which we will be attending.
Footprint - Earlier in the year I send an email to Footprint RISO printers in Leeds asking if we would be able to come down and find out about the process so that I could start bringing the process more into my practice. Unfortenently it was very difficult to arrange something with them as they are very busy and workshops are not really something they have done before so Rib and I were unable to go do that.
More recently though I received after a long wait I got an email from them inviting us to come on a week in mid-June which we will be attending. 
The Tetley - During the time that I was waiting for Footprint to get back to us, we found out that Orlando was an artist in residence at The Tetley where he had been running RISO workshops for the public so we hit him up and asked him if we were able to come and learn about the printing process. This was a very fun afternoon, Orlando showed us the ins and outs of the RISO printer as well us telling lots of interesting facts about the history of the printer and why people use it etc. Learning about a new process is always very interesting and this has now made me want to do the process more and more but sadly we don't have direct access to a RISO. We were able to run through some of our own designs as well to see how the printing worked, sadly it was a very old RISO with some limitations but was still cool to see a new process.
FUTURE PLANS / PLAN OF ACTION
Action Plan for after uni
- WYS 24/7 - Using all my free time to work on ideas and project with Rob as we want to push ourselves as much as we can to see the idea become a reality.
- Business summer school - Attended the uni's business summer school to help us learn more about running our own business.
- Apply Duke Studios - Complete the Princess Trust business plan for the application and speak to Sharon about the interview process.
- Send CV and portfolio to film production and magazines - Put together a solid PDF of all my best work so that it can be sent out to as many people as possible so that I can either get more work experience in the areas that I want to work in (film, editorial or find freelance clients)
- Leeds? - Where to be based, is Leeds the best option for me if we are not going to pursue WYS or do I need to be elsewhere like London?
I feel that it is important that I stick to this plan because if I can see these through I will be in a lot better position by the end of the summer and I may have a better idea of what I want to do going forward from there.
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