Design (just about) Digested
I began my year out away from my graphic design degree at LCC way back in June last year and it has been one of hell year in all honestly. I’ve learnt so much not only about what I want to do, but also about myself as a designer, met some amazing people along the way and been involved in some fantastic internships, freelance work, exhibitions, projects and everything else in-between. The highlights have included:
BRAG/Firehouse weekend in Brighton, YCN/Becks Fusion Live Studio, Print Club, ongoing involvement with UK Street Art, YCN Live: 250 Shoeboxes, 1 Superstar, Blyk/YCN Workshop, NOISE Festival 2008 short-listing, Not Actual Size, the BBC ‘Big Mic’ in Berlin, eBoy, A Delivery of Typography, Deutsche Kinemathek Alfred Hitchcock exhibition, Pentagram Berlin, ContainerPLUS, Cunning, THIS IS Studio, D&AD Student Awards, G20 music video, Type Tarts, Tunnel 228, the Ghibli Museum, breakfast with John Maeda, Trashed, Pecha Kucha Tokyo, Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo, Banksy vs. Bristol Museum exhibition, Don’t Panic, Little Music Break to Paris, Wieden+Kennedy London, London Design Festival, Adobe Creative Bursary nomination and ideAporting.
A massive thanks goes out to all the people this year who have helped me, discussed projects, taught me and lots more. Ron and Chuck from Firehouse along with Jamie, Rhys and everyone else at BRAG. Nick, Sarah and the rest of the YCN team. Fred from Print Club. The UK Street Art team, Mark and Tom. Dan, Simon and Stephen from Not Actual Size. Svend of eBoy. Anja and Barbara from the Buchstaben Museum. Justus, Uta, Josephine, Christiane and Nikola from Pentagram Berlin. Luise of ContainerPLUS. Aidan, Becca, Spencer, Olly and everyone else from Cunning. Barney, Dougal and Richard from THIS IS Studio. Vicky, Danielle, Richard and the rest of the KK Outlet team. John Maeda. Alan, Simone and Mark from Trashed. Mark and Tomoko from KleinDytham. Eric and the rest of the W+K Tokyo team. Joe from Don’t Panic. Sarah, Sandrine and Camille from We Are Social, Guy from W+K London and everyone else who I have met along the way.
I came into this year thinking I wanted to be an ideas person in either an agency or studio and I’ve come away knowing that I want to be and ideas based designer. My typography skills have improved greatly as well my computer software skills. I’ve developed a much greater appreciation for the finer details of design and I know that I will always work on projects that excite me. I’m now collaborating more and more with interesting people and believe it’s the only way to produce the best work. People know something you don’t and you know something they don’t. I’ve learnt and developed greatly this year and have had so much fun doing it. I start back at LCC today and I will take what I have learnt this year and use it to get the most out of my final year, as a graduate and beyond.
For the immediate and long term future, I am currently working on ideAporting, which you can sign up for here, working on my dissertation which is based on the theme of Digital vs. Print and carrying on with my final year self-initiated project (watch this space). During my final year, I am hoping to continue the experiences I have had whilst interning, by working at a studio for 1 day a week, so I’m currently designing some self promotion and sourcing studios for that. I am also involved with a newspaper publication about student and graduate experiences with written and visual contributions that is soon to be produced. The project is being run by fellow designers Alex and Charlie. I am continuing to work with Pecha Kucha here in London, Trashed, UK Street Art, Don’t Panic and finishing up projects with Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo. I’ve also recently completed the identity for web based activists Turnfront which can be seen here and then finally, I have more self-initiated projects in the pipeline, both online and offline.
I now have a Twitter account so you can follow me at http://twitter.com/pauljenk and www.theshavedhead.com is soon to re-launch with a new design and new projects so watch this space. You can also continue to follow me on Flickr as well here. It’s been a pleasure to keep everyone updated about the last 16 months or so and thanks to everyone who has commented and emailed me. I’ve had 125 posts on the blog, documenting every creative thing I have done and over 20,000+ blog hits. I’m currently designing an outcome to summarise this year out so check my website for that soon. If you want to get in touch, drop me a line at paul@theshavedhead.com or on +44(0)792 166 7913. Finally, I will starting up a new personal blog soon so keep your eyes peeled for that.
That’s all, cheers.
Paul
London Design Festival : D&AD 2009 Annual Launch
Bit of a late post here, but on tuesday evening I managed to book a place for the D&AD 2009 Annual Launch held at the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane. It was only a short evening but quite busy with lots of creatives in anticipation of the new annual designed by Peter Saville and graduate Luke Sanders on an ‘education based‘ collaboration. The current president of D&AD, Garrick Hamm as well as D&AD Chief Executive Tim O’Kennedy both spoke before introducing Peter Saville himself to discuss about the process of creating this year’s annual. Saville was one of the most down to earth speakers I have listened to which was great. The launch itself displayed the annual in giant D&AD yellow pencil display cases and also exhibited the winners from this year’s student awards. I also gave in my business card for a prize draw to win a limited edition D&AD 2009 annual!
Another positive leading up to the evening was for myself being nominated for the Adobe Future Creative Bursary award which comes from a new partnership between Adobe and D&AD. Eric from Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo nominated me for the award so a massive thanks go out to him and even though I wasn’t selected by D&AD on the evening as one of the winning 10 young creatives (only 50 were nominated in the first place), it’s still a great achievement for my year out. More information about the bursary award can be found here and more information about the annual can be found here.
Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo Review
I’ve now finished with Wieden+Kennedy and just about Tokyo as well, I head back to London on tuesday. I’m very very sad to be leaving the team, as I’ve had such a fantastic time, working really hard and learning lots from working closely with the creative director, Eric. The book I have been working on since I started, is now just about ready for printing with a final approval and paper choices to be made now. The web work is completed, and I will be finishing off the mobile project and T-shirt back in London which is great news. Eric has taught me a lot about refining work to make it look the best it can be, as well thinking conceptually throughout the design process. He has been there and done that, so it’s been a interesting learning experience by a great mentor.
The W+K Tokyo team are a fantastic bunch of people to work with, all from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines which makes up the Tokyo melting pot, full of energy, creativity and a hybrid mix. So a massive thanks goes out to Eric of course, and everyone else; Sumiko, Jose, Kumiko, Naoki, Shingo, Hiromi, Akio, Phil, Andrew, Kenji, Yoshi, Shun, Yuko, Yumiko, Trish, John, Yohei, Tomoko, Mae, Kuki, Yuko, Shig, Keiko, Shane, Genki, Takeshi, Mark, Dai, Jorta, Shuhei, Michiyo, Yoko, Ayumi, Kanako, Nagisa, Chucky, Emily, Mag, Shinji and the other interns Andrea, Erika and Bobby for making my time at W+K so enjoyable. Apologies for everyone else, I’m good with names, but not that good.
July itself started off very quickly as I helped out on an all nighter which was a good experience to go through, even though I wasn’t of much help, I did a few bits here and there. This was then followed by the CLASKA Flea Market which I posted about at the beginning of the month. July kept up it’s pace, with the last two weeks, being long work hours, but worth it. Other highlights of the month have included when GRAPH came in. GRAPH are a design and printing company who specialise in high end printing techniques and production and brought in some amazing examples of work they have designed, as well as printing methods examples. Everything from heat sensitive paper for hair styling products to a book embedded into a cardboard holder. GRAPH gave W+K as well as myself some inspiration for further projects and showed just how far you can push printing and finishing techniques.
Then on the thursday just gone, we had the W+K Tokyo Summer Party. The Tokyo based radio station, OUTTANET Radio broadcast live from the 4th floor as everyone hit the roof for beers and an amazing Japanese style BBQ; 8 beers later I headed back down to my desk to finish up some work! Check out the blog posts about the BBQ here and OUTTANET here.
So I’ve learnt loads being with W+K, and soaked up the culture of Tokyo as much as I could of since being here at the beginning of May. I will definitely be coming back in the near future and I wish everyone in the team the very best until I see them all again. Eric also gave me the W+K LAB Tokyo Ten and New Tokyo Life Style Think Zone books as a thank you and I left everyone a box of Yorkshire Tea and a book on how to be British (most of the time no one could understand what I was saying). You can see all of the photos I have taken since being in Tokyo on my Flickr page here.
Graphic Design in Japan 2009 Exhibition
Graphic Design in Japan is a yearbook that was first published in 1981 by the Japan Graphic Design Association. Ever since, the annual publication introduces a selection of work each year spanning from accessories, books, packaging, logos, posters, advertisements, websites, videos, spatial design and everything else in-between. This years exhibition was being held at the Midtown Design Hub in Roppongi, about five minutes away from W+K’s office so I popped over to take a look at lunch today and I’ve been looking forward to going to this exhibition since I arrived in Japan. I was definitely not disappointed.
Luckily, there was no assistant when I went today so I managed to photograph everything that caught my eye and it pretty much was nearly all of the exhibition. There were posters hanging from end to end of the room and books and other 3D design positioned just on one wall making it a really great exhibition to soak up.
The exhibition was a really interesting insight for myself as foreign designer in Japan, as I could see variations of styles, illustration and typography from the fast moving country that is Japan. All works were from a variety of backgrounds, from previous exhibitions to personal projects. The standard of work was extremely high and just like everything else seems to be in Tokyo, very professional, on the ball, cutting edge and challenging the norm. This is definitely one of the top exhibitions I have visited whilst here in Tokyo.
The pictures I’ve included here are my favourite bits and pieces that caught my eye, but be sure to check out the rest of the exhibition on my Flickr page starting from here. The exhibition’s online link can be found here.
Zine’s Mate – Tokyo Art Book Fair
On Wednesday evening I briefly helped to set up the first venue along with a few other W+K people of Zine’s Mate, the first book fair specializing in artist’s publications to be held in Tokyo. The fair consisted of two venuses, GYRE and VACANT, both in the Omotesando area of west central Tokyo. There was massive hype before the start of the fair which finished today and W+K have had involvement with the GYRE building so that’s how I found out about it.
GYRE held commerical and exisiting established publishers including NIEVES and Berlin based Motto, which I actually visited when I was there so a great reminder of their works. The opening night was packed and I mean packed, you could hardly move so it took me a while to get around to see everything. NIEVES created 100+ individual zines which had some great ones amongst them and likewise with Motto. The rest of the stores had some fantastic books and prints on display including one of the new releases by Rocket called ‘Tokyo Edit‘ which I really wish I got now and will do my best to track it down. It was a book studying the sub cultures and creative industries of Tokyo with interviews and in depth research into existing Tokyo designers and creatives.
The second venue of the fair at VACANT opened after GYRE did and we had inside knowledge before we got there, that there was about 200+ people waiting outside and the police had to be called as it was so busy, so we never made it down on the opening night. I did eventually manage to go yesterday afternoon, still very busy. This part of Zine’s Mate was independent and underground publishers and artists and again a fantastic look at Tokyo’s book scene. There was lots of things I wanted to get, but I just ended up getting the three wonderful mini publications shown in the picture below. You can see more about Zine’s Mate on the W+K blog here.
Digesting Design 
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