What is a line?...

Lucinda Rogers

I really like Lucinda's style and visual interpretation of cityscapes, her style is very loose. She sketches the city roughly and then adds watercolour to bring it alive. I think the way in which she highlights particular parts with the stroke and dashes of colour, gives her a unique style, her work portrays the hustle and bustle of a city through soft colours and simple lines, she shows it in its opposite by what media she uses.

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Andrew Prokos

Prokos is a cityscape photographer, a lot of his work is of the New York skyline and cityscape, his style is something that i am aiming for, to then simplify through tracing. I want to take pictures of various cityscapes/ skylines then take them down to their simplist form, so you can tell its a big city (for example) by the shapes interupting the skyline, but u will not be able to see the big picture.

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Jessie Douglas

Jessie Douglas takes parts of a cityscape/ landscape and isolates it, she then uses a vector illustrating to create these simple sections of a much bigger picture. I like her simple style and how she picks a busy section, but when taken out of context and placed on a block background she makes it look a lot simpler.

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Flickr

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Reza Abedini

Poster for solo exhibition, 2006

This poster design is from a book i own called 'New poster Art', the style of this poster is the direction in which i am going to take my work, the designer has taken the human form but stripped it down to its simplest form of just an outline, giving an odd looking shape. These are then overlayed to create an entanglement of lines, its a really nice technique, it keeps it simple and interesting to look at.

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Michael Gericke

'Building the Empire State', The Skyscraper Museum, exhibition poster, 1998

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Tyson Roberts

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http://darkdarling38.blogspot.com/

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Stephen Wiltshire

http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/

Stephen Wiltshire's work is amazing. His only tool is a pencil, and he creates these brilliant large scale pencil drawings of big cities. There is an example above where you can see the huge scale he works too, which is all hand drawn, it's a panoramic view of London and The River Thames. I really like his sketchy, but accurate style, its more detailed than what i am wanting to do, but it shows me another way of interpreting the city.

Communication is a virus...Typeface research...

I used the website Dafont to find some typefaces that i thought would work well in my poster designs, i wanted some that were fairly simple and others that already had a hand drawn quality to them.

I chose to use circus because it looks fun and has a hand drawn element to it already, if i hand drew it myself it would add to that quality.

I think Pauls ransom note was appropriate to use because each letter looks like a different typeface and the way they look wonky in the boxes makes them look hand drawn again.

Monbijoux is a favourite because each letter is different, which makes it really fun and again has a hand drawn quality to it.

I have used this one a fair bit when i want to make a word stand out, because its so bold and it has a shadowed outline it just seems to stand out well. Again i like the uneven curves of the s,a and e, it gives it a hand rendered look.

This one looks like text book doodling type, i also like how the letters, when next to one another lean to different sides rather than just being straight and normal.

I really like this one because the counters of the letters have been blacked out and i like the round, bubbly shapes.

I didnt want all the typefaces that i used to be 'hand drawn', so i picked a few that looked more digitised such as nouvelle vague and Harabara, i figured if i used to many decorative fonts then my poster would look like it had too much going on.

www.dafont.com

Communication is a virus...research...

Anthony Burrill

It was suggested that as a group we looked at existing typographic poster designs to see what had been done and what worked well. One designer that we were advised to look at was Anthony Burrill, his posters were mainly type based and he focused on quotes about life and general things. The type faces he uses are fairly simple where as ours as a group are a mixture of simple and slightly more complex.

I really like his poster designs, the statements that he has on his designs are short and sweet, but really make you think, they are quite inspirational. The colours that he uses varies from bright colours to toned down neutral ones. His style may not help us with our designs but his content does and the way he portrays it.

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The keep calm collection has become widely popular and a lot of new designs have come about where people make up their own content but keep the style similar to the original. These posters are fun and sometimes quirky, the colours that are used are always eye catching and the small illustration used makes the content more understandable and clear. 

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With the posters below, i put in Google images 'motivational posters' and these came up. The design is very literal and i like the use of photography. They are inspirational but i dont feel they have the same great effect as the ones that use solid colour, although that may just be personal preference.

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Real advice from a real designer... Stuart Eaton

I work at Argos and saw a column in our staff magazine about the Argos Graphic Designer, so i did some research (which turned out to show i'm a tad rubbish at accurate research) and found a Stuart Eaton's email address and website.

I thought that it would be useful to email Stuart and find out about his job. I received an email back quite quickly, but soon found out i had mixed up the identities of two Stuart Eaton's. By coincidence and sheer luck the Stuart Eaton that i had found was also a Graphic Designer!

He very kindly offered me some advice about being a successful designer out in the big wide world and gave me an insight into his career.

The emails: :)

kirsty hardingham <hardykirst@msn.com> wrote: > Hello Stuart > > My names Kirsty Hardingham and i work at an Argos store in Leeds. I saw your column in the Argos post magazine on my lunch break. Im currently in my first year at Leeds college of Art studying Graphic Design and was wondering if you would be able to tell me a bit about your job. I would be very grateful and i can understand that your a very busy man. > > I really love my job at Argos and i am very passionate about Graphic Design, so it would be great to link these together on my course blog. > > Thank you for your time > > Yours sincerely Kirsty Hardingham :)

Hello Kirsty

I have not seen the Argos post magazine. Is there something on there
about our company or iPhone app? I would love to see that, is it too
much to ask I'd you could send me a scan / photo of the column?

What would you like to know about my work? Feel free to send me some
questions, I will do my best to answer them and give you some advice.

What course are you currently studying? What's the URL of the course blog.

Look forward to hearing from you

Stuart



Sent from my iPhone

On 22 Jan 2011, at 19:53, 

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Hi

I think this could be a case of mistaken identity! Although entirely
understandable.

I didn't remember giving any interview related to Argos, hence the
reason I asked for a scan of the article. So I Googled for my name +
design + argos and found an article from The Times
(http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/career_and_jobs/careers_in/article2914081.ece)
which quotes a designer for Argos who happens to be called Stuart
Eaton.

Coincidently I am also a graphic designer, English, roughly the same
age as this other Stuart Eaton!

I worked for a number of years as a designer for the BBC in Bristol. I
worked there as a interactive as well as motion graphics designer. I
then left the BBC and moved to Barcelona, Spain where I work as a
freelance designer. I have continued to work for the BBC as well as
The AA, Channel 4, John Downer Productions and more recently User
Interface design for Nokia.

I have recently started a new company with another two guys back in
the UK. Mothership Software Limited, we make iPhone apps.
http://wearemothersip.com/kinetic

Anyway, I suspect you want to talk to the other Stuart Eaton. But if I
can answer any questions then fire away!

Thanks
Good luck

Stuart

http://stuarteaton.com
http://wearemothersip.com
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Hi,
Feel free to post it to your blog.
I moved out to Spain because my partner is Spanish. I would say it really helps to know someone local. I think I would have found it much harder to move out here on my own. On a personal level i think my biggest piece of advice is to embrace and immerse yourself in the local culture and customs, don't try and fight it or go against it. Learn to ignore the odd quirks ( and there are plenty ) and small things that wind you up, you are not going to change how things are done here.
Do your research on which region of Spain you want to live in. Spain is hugely divers, northern Spain is very different from southern Spain. Catalunya is very much like an independent country, or at least that is how the Catalans see it.  We live just south of Barcelona, i love it here. We have a great beach and we are only 40 mins from Barcelona city.
You need to learn the language. I am still learning, i mainly work with English speaking clients whether they are in the UK or abroad. So it has been hard to learn Spanish. I would recommend doing some education here in Spanish, maybe a masters or something. You will learn very quick because you will have no choice!
As far as working in design. I think the principals are the same no matter what country you work in. You have to work hard, really hard and never give up. Always put in the extra hours and effort and always make sure you work is great. Your work is all you have to show, so make every piece count. When I first started i was pretty clueless, college does not really teach you about the real world. Get some work experience first, learn to deal and talk with real clients etc. Then set yourself some goals ie. I want to work for X company in 2 years. Then build up a portfolio and start to contact that company, let them know you exists. Find people who work there, you need a contact to get a foot in the door. Once you are in then set a new goal ....
I would only recommend going freelance if you have a few years of experience under your belt. Also by then you should be in a position where you can pinch a few clients! don't burn any bridges with potential clients. You never know when you need a quick stop-gap project.
Make sure you know your software. When we look to hire people we need people who can carry a project from start to finish without much hand holding. ( We wish it could sometimes be otherwise budgets rarely allow ) So do not specialize to soon, be flexible because you don't know what the next big thing is. Once you become a lead designer / director then you can start to offload some of the actually donkey work to others. But even then you need to be able to manage that and jump in if necessary.
One last thing. Don't copy other designers especially the rock star ones! You can't compete against designers with breathtaking raw talent. Be jealous for a few seconds then move on. Be inspired by them but do your own thing. 
Sorry, that was a bit of a babble! Some creative editing may be needed! 
I hope some of it helps. Good luck with your career, I really hope it works out for you. You have one-up on most already: you are going out of your way to learn and make contacts. So many don't even bother to do that.
Cheers
Stuart
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I would just like to thank Stuart for taking the time to offer me advice and inspire me to work hard and live out my dreams of becoming a successful Graphic Designer! :)