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
Shelter House of Cards Exhibition
I haven’t been able to go to all of the London Design Festival events that I wanted to this week, there was just too many and not enough time, but the Shelter House of Cards exhibition launch is one non-London Design Festival event I have had on the ‘cards’ for a while now, so I was really looking forward to checking it out at the Haunch of Venison Gallery. In short, Shelter asked 53 designers and creatives (including a ‘joker’) to create a deck of cards inspired by Shelter’s recent House of Cards campaign and to be silently auctioned off to raise money for the work Shelter does. Participating artists included: Nick Park, Sir Terence Conran, Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, Damien Hirst, Amelia’s Magazine, NB Studio, Neville Brody, Jon Burgerman, D*Face, Henry Holland, Experimental Jetset and Mauricio Ortiz, who was the winner of a public competition that Shelter also ran as part of the campaign and exhibition.
My favourites were Ortiz’s 8 of clubs, Burgerman’s 9 of clubs, D*Face’s Queen of clubs, Ella Doran’s three of diamonds ‘cushion’, Experimental Jetset’s 9 of diamonds, Park’s 6 of spades, McQueen’s King of spades ‘sculpture‘, Amelia’s Magazine’s 2 of hearts, Amanda Levete Architects 3 of hearts, M/M Pari’s 4 of hearts, Polly Morgan’s 10 of hearts, Gerald Scarfe’s Jack of hearts, Antoni and Alison’s ace of clubs, NB Studio’s 2 of clubs and Lacey’s 5 of clubs. Check out a full set of exhibition photos on my Flickr page here.
www.shelterhouseofcards.org.uk
ideAporting | www.idea-porting.com
As I am soon to be heading back to LCC for the final year of my degree and my year out is drawing to a close, I am currently now working on ‘ideAporting’. I have been working on ideAporting for a while now and I’ve been sourcing information, content and research throughout the summer. ideAporting is the ongoing online and offline outcome for the research part of my first final year brief, ‘Import/Export‘, which was to look into ideas, services and innovations on a global context.
ideAporting is a collaborative online platform where users can share ideas, services and innovations that could be imported, exported or both between countries worldwide. For example, a recent article in The Independent newspaper reported that there is a new scheme for the city of Ghent in Belgium to go vegetarian one day a week. Would this work in the UK? How could it be promoted? Conversely, are there any innovative concepts from the UK that could be successfully implemented in another country? If so, what cultural issues would need to be taken into consideration? Are there local issues that would benefit from global discussion with international links and support networks as well?
Join ideAporting and contribute by submitting ideas, writing, images, videos, links, PDFs, podcasts, downloads and everything else in-between. Image sizes can be a maximum of 530px wide and please submit hi-res versions from your contributions where possible to paul@idea-porting.com to become part of a unique offline documentation of ideAporting. You can also comment on contributors’ posts and keep in with the conversation. Spread knowledge and start conversations with ideAporting.
Join ideAporting’s Facebook group here.
You can also follow ideAporting on Twitter here.
Join ideAporting here.
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.
London Design Festival : London Posters Exhibition
Yesterday I made the journey down to the V&A to go have a look at the London Posters exhibition. The exhibition was located in one of the corridors of the museum, which really didn’t benefit the designs, being shoved away near a cloakroom. The posters were created by 20 leading graphic designers and typographers celebrating London as the creative capital of the world. The exhibition draws on the idea that the poster is one of the oldest and still one of the most powerful communication mediums and challenged each designer to produce an effective poster celebrating design and the city, in only two colours, black and red.
Domenic Lippa of Pentagram along with Sir John Sorrell curated the exhibition and designers included; Angus Hyland, Jonathan Ellery, Henrik Kubel, Derek Birdsall, Tony Brook, Tom Hingston, Andy Altmann, Fernando Gutteriez, Morag Myerscough, Mike Dempsey, Alan Kitching, Frith Kerr, Alan Aboud, Damon Murray, Mason Wells, Michael Wolff, Quentin Newark and Jeremy Leslie.
Some of the posters were fantastic such as Jeremy Leslie’s with the shortened URL on where to find the best magazine shops in London, see here for the ‘proper’ version of the poster. The de-constructed tube map concept posters were also amongst my favourites along with Andy Altmann’s ‘Cor-Blimey Trousers‘ for the Evening Standard. Even though the posters are tucked away in the V&A, they are up until the 27th of September so go check them out. The London Design Festival event page can be found here.
Digesting Design 
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