Placement Information: Leicester Print Workshop

All the details have now been worked out for my placement in September with Leicester Print Workshop. I'm really looking forward to going down there after meeting them, and it sounds like I will have a lot to do and learn about. They were kind enough to provide me with a list of my tasks for the two weeks I'll be there so I can be prepped in advance. I'm especially excited about helping with a print show they are putting on in Leicester because this is an area I really enjoy and want to explore more in my practice.

Print Club London

A couple of months ago I submitted to the Print Club London competition 'Blisters Sound Sessions', where I produced a print about one of my favourite songs, My Maudlin Career by Camera Obscura. 

Unfortunately a couple of weeks after submitting, I learnt I had not been successful and although disappointed I knew that the standard of work they put in their actual exhibitions is insanely high and there must be a lot of talented entrants, so I didn't let it damage my self esteem any more than usual. 

Strangely, today I received this email from them.

They're interested in selling the print in their online shop, which is incredibly flattering because I really admire a lot of work that they sell, and obviously it's nice to hear that someone likes my screen print design work. I emailed back to ask for the details and will hopefully be printing it out soon to send down to them, although it would be amazing to visit their set up in London. I'm definitely going to try and get down for the exhibition in September. 

Collaborating

Myself and Suzanne, as well as being friends, have often enjoyed working together and share similar design tastes, as well as life goals. We recently worked with Mike on the end of year show, as well as working collaboratively on the Art and Design yearbook. We intend to work on several more projects before the end of year, and we have been talking recently about actually making a go of working together once we have left uni, building up to creating a small multi disciplinary studio. We want to research and discuss this in more detail over the coming weeks. We have all agreed that we do not simply want to work for someone else for the rest of our lives, and Suzanne and Mike have friends who have already graduated and are not exactly satisfied in the design studios they work for. Whilst we understand that doing something like this is a massive risk and a mammoth task, we know that we would prefer to make the effort to put this into motion now as opposed to later in our lives when there will be more financial responsibilties (mortgages/dependent families etc). We also want to have a say in our work and we have each in the past discussed our ambitions and desires to work for ourselves.

Peter Mendelsund

As I become more and more interested in book cover design, I felt it was appropriate to document the work of one of my favourite designers in this area. Peter Mendelsund is an internationally celebrated talent in the publishing industry. He has created covers for some of the contemporary literary greats, including Stieg Larsson, Peter Carey, Martin Amis and Tom McCarthy. His work is always beautifully crafted, intelligent and original.

He is currently associate art director at Knopf and art director at Pantheon Books, and he features his work and discussions on the subject of design at jacketmechanical.blogspot.co.uk. 

Design Presence: Research

Design Presence: Logo Ideas

Initial Drawings


Digitised Type

The typeface I want to use is called Superior in Black/ Bold. I experimented with how my name would appear as a logo as I couldn't decide whether to use initials or my full name. After trying out different variations, I've decided to go with my full initials: EKT. I think it has a nicer ring to it and avoids the whole ET phone home conversation.

PPP Presentation

Book Cover Design

One of the main things from doing this course is how much I love book cover design and how badly I want to involve myself in this part of the industry when I graduate. This is a nice little video from the folks at Random House (including Peter Mendelsund - book cover God) about the process of creating a cover and the qualities that this sort of design should have and what it should say.

It's only 4 minutes long but it manages to say so much and it's given me a little bit of motivation to crack on.

Design Presence: Research