Vagabond - Self Summer brief

I decided to make a small brief for myself during the summer. Short and sweet I decided that, should one day I be lucky enough to run my own graphic design company, what would I call it. It is a question that had been knocking around in my head for a while, so for a bit of fun I sat down one day and came up with this:


It is hard to think of a name that encompasses all aspects of design and to call it simply James Roberts Design Studio would be a bit crap to say the least. I took the name "Vagabond" from a Bob Dylan track I was listening to on my i-pod whilst running. I came home and looked up the meaning of the word. It derives from the Latin word 'vagari' which means to wander. Also, "leading a carefree life" "having no settled home". I liked the sound of the word and also the meaning. It has derogatory connotations too, mostly western associations with tramps.

So, I decided to call my imaginary company "Vagabond". I wanted to make a fresh logo design, that was simple and using mainly typography. I chose the type face Myriad as I liked the way the V was so similar to an upside down A in shape and it also had a modern feel to it, essential for a modern design company! Just the type on it's own wasn't enough though, so I decided to knock the bar out from the cross section of the two A's which made them look even more like the V and V, A and N all looked a little like arrows pointing in different directions. I then reversed the N so that it appeared backwards to give it a quirkier feel but still kept its legibility.

I then put a grey gradient colour on it as I thought this would be easy to reproduce for letter heads, business cards etc and under the word Vagabond I wrote the words that I would like my company to transmit, "Fresh" "Design" and "Ideas" I chose to put this in orange to give some bright and fresh feel to the graphic, also the associations of orange are summer, sun and the fruit itself, with happy and fun being amongst its connotations.

To bring the design together, i drew a line underneath and another breaking eitherside of the three key words.

I am quite pleased how it turned out. It is exactly what I was looking for, although when I look at it now I see the design linked more closely to a surfing/clothing brand than a design company...maybe I'm in the wrong business! I realised shortly after completing it that there is a band by the same name currently on the play list of Radio 2, so now it looks like the most unoriginal name for a design company. I might as well have called it "Oasis Design"!

Print Room - Love It!

We were let loose on the Print room today and it was great! Last time was a bit of a rush but this time we had a good few hours to play and experiment with the wording, layout, fonts and colouring of our work.

I decided not to use the Kenyan Proverb from last time, as I much prefer the feeling of the quote from Mark Twain. I discussed with Kit whether I would have time to use the whole quote and she suggested I concentrate only on one part. I decided the most powerful part was at the end with the words, "Sail from the safe harbour, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

I then decided to work backwards and started making up the words, Explore, Dream and Discover. The 1st type that caught my eye was the extra large letters and I thought if I used one letter from each word and using the large font, then the remaining letters in smaller font with a mixture of lower case and capitols. Characters are in short supply and it's very much a case of getting in first to avoid having to wait til someone else has finished. I made my text up quickly and was really pleased, although not until I had printed did I realise that I had placed the "d" from "dream" the wrong way around to spell "bream"! I tried to pass it off as experimental and then changed it quickly and acted nonchalant.

I wanted to use vibrant colours for each of my words as they a represent strong meaning. I decided on blue and yellow for "dream" and "discover" respectively and decided to use black and white for "Explore" as I wanted to have an extra large black cross for the "X", as if to donate "X" marks the spot, just like on a map (map, explore, treasure)

I was pleased with the way all my print work came out, particularly the word "Explore" with the large X and the rest of the word written vertically down the side of the X and using the symbol "3" instead of a "e". Kit seemed to like it too as she asked if she could keep one of them :-)

I tried different techniques like printing the same text again after moving the paper slightly to the left and right which I was particularly please with, giving the words almost and echo. I also tried some off printing too but the results weren't so impressive, but you have to try these things!

I thoroughly enjoyed the letter press workshop and hope to get another opportunity again soon to finish my poem and also just to experiment. My favourite exercise of the course so far without doubt.

Photoshop

Clive gave us our first taster of this huge programme today. It was fairly easy techniques a lot of which I already knew - maybe I'm not as poor on photoshop as I thought! The handout, or should I say bible, that was given out though, will take some digesting!

He certainly knows his stuff and explains everything pretty clearly. He said you just have do dive in and have a go and I intend to use it more and more often, not just at work. I thought when he explained about saving work was good too, anyone can save a document but it doesn't look good in front of a client to have search through several folders before finding what you want. We've got another session tomorrow and I've just finished 3 hours on my evening graphic design course using Photoshop too, so I should be up to speed before long!