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
Blyk/YCN Workshop
On Monday and Tuesday this week, I took part in a workshop for mobile phone company Blyk, hosted by YCN at their new HQ at Rivington Street. The two day workshop was a great range of activities, with talks from Blyk’s rep Marvin, the creative director of Blyk’s design agency Contra and LCC graduate Elin Svensson, Blyk’s designer/illustrator.
Monday consisted of the talks from all of the above and a small task to visually represent ‘Free’. Some say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but I thought otherwise.
On Tuesday, we equipped ourselves with iFlip cameras and got snap happy around London taking in some adverts, media, spaces and freebies in action. I managed to catch JR’s new work all over Foyles bookshop on Charing X road so check it out. Back to the YCN HQ in the afternoon for a quick presentation of our findings.
A nice few couple of days out from my busy schedule working on ideas for Blyk. See all the photos of the workshop on my Flickr page here. And the YCN blog post here.
Print Club Internship
I have just started with fellow designer Kayleigh Thompson, at the water based screen printers in Dalston, Print Club. We will be both helping out weekly with workshops run by Fred, one of the creators of Print Club. We were in this week showing the creative promotion team of MTV how to screen print! Cleaning the studio, sorting through prints, cleaning and exposing screens, setting up print beds and the best bit, PRINTING.
We are now also members of the club and with 24/7 access, this will be an invaluable resource. As I am wanting to get back into screen printing this year, this has provided me with a great opportunity.
I <3 Flashing
Bit of a late post, but I was in LCC all week a couple of weeks ago doing a Flash animation bolt-on course. Knowing absolutely nothing about the program, it has been great learning new software and I managed to a create a total of 4 animations during the week.
– Pong (click screen then use the up and down arrow keys)
Enjoy!
BRAG/Firehouse – Exhibition + Workshop
Well, I’ve had a pretty amazing weekend in Brighton with hosts BRAG and Firehouse. I headed on down to The Basement in Brighton for the private view of the Rock Poster Explosion Tour. The screen printed posters of BRAG and Firehouse were incredible pieces of work and the crowds were elbowing each other just to get a piece of the action.
I met up with poster legends Ron Donovan and Chuck Sperry, who were a great inspiration to talk to about their work. Hi-5ing, saying “Rad” and going up to people doing “Rock-Lock” – great Americans. We ended up in the wee hours of the morning in nearby BDI screen printing studio with beers in hand, talking about anything and everything.
The sunday got even better as I took part in the screen printing workshop hosted by Ron and Chuck. They were printing some gig posters for their event at Notting Hill Arts Club last night. Some great advice from the two guys from San Francisco and amazing to watch and learn. BRAG members were on hand to also help out. Ron and Chuck told us about what they like to call “eye fry”, when pure print blue and red are printed directly next to each other causing retinal eye burn, amongst other fascinating facts and stories about their careers.
A big BIG thank you to Jamie (Mongsterr), Rhys and Ben (Screen Prince) and the rest of BRAG for the invite down to Brighton, and to Ron and Chuck for their amazing posters, keep it ‘West Coast Offensive’.
Check out the full set of photos from both the exhibition and the workshop at my Flickr page.
Digesting Design 
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