New blog layout.

Soo... I thought I'm gonna change my blog layout a bit, as I got fed up of the old one.

Nothing special either. If I have some time soon, I'll sort it out properly and design it a bit maybe.

You can look forward to some new posts soon though. =)

Bit now.

Changes to my room

I've recently made some changes to my room in order to get stuff in the right place - basically to get rid of the mess in my room.

So I went to IKEA™ - who would have thought - and ended up getting some really nice new furnitures.

I got an EXPEDIT sideboard with some files and boxes, an ALEX plan-chest drawer unit and a magnetic whiteboard for my wall!

(left wall) whiteboards, (underneath) ALEX, (at the back) EXPEDIT

Portfolio Surgery

After spending the last 2 hours in a lecture theatre at UWIC's Howard Gardens campus in Cardiff, listening to D&AD Senior Manager Rhiannon James and some design professionals a few of us signed up for the following portfolio clinic, where students get the opportunity to show their portfolio & work to professionals, either attempting an interview or just a scan through the portfolio to locate strengths and weaknesses.

We were initially located to see 2 designers, for some reason though (I think I was the only one) I got to see 4 different designers. Which was interesting yet stressful and it didn't allow me any time in-between two talks to get some notes written down.

In fact, I was pretty damn pleased that Phil, the last professional I was talking to, took some sticky notes for me and put it in my portfolio. Funny enough - seeing so many different designers I got confused by their opinions of my portfolio.

All of them seemed to be pleased with my Anti-Smoking campaign I did for my persuasion module in uni for AshWales.

Overall I got a 3:1 plus points for it though. But the one minus point didn't wanna leave my mind and I guess that's only a good thing - as designers we wouldn't be any good if we couldn't take criticism - I do believe it just makes us work, think, try harder.

Focus 2011 calls

You might remember my trip with a few friends up to IPEX in the NEC Birmingham, dedicated in this post. However, by surfing the web I found out about another fair in March 2011 and it's all about photography and cameras.

It's Focus2011 and will kick-off on Sunday 6th March 2011 until Wednesday 9th March. Opening times are 10am-6pm on the Sun,Mon & Tue and 10am-5pm on the last day.

I'll post a comment or another post once I've found out more about it or possible fees.

I hope it's gonna be free for students just like IPEX! That would be sick.

An interesting online article I came accross, 'Mobile Portfolios'

Quite a good design mag that is,

PAGE focuses on designer and those who want to become on.

In the latest issue i've found an interesting article about portfolios and how to present and promote yourself in situations like job interviws and what not.

Have a look, the article is approachable via this link and is in German, PAGE Online - Mobile Portfolios – PAGE 11.2010

D&AD Rep and Talk

Right, how am I gonna put this.

My tutor came up to me within the first week back in uni and asked me if I want to be the D&AD Rep for the 3rd year, again. I happened to be in the same position last year, being the 2nd year D&AD Rep.

After one year of being this Representative for the Design & Art Direction organization or if you want to, let's call it an educational charity, I'm still not quite sure what it means or what I'm supposed to do.

I've been invited to a couple D&AD events last year, but failed miserably to get involved - shame really. I did try hard a few times, but the events of interest weren't supposed to be for 2nd year reps. Gutted.

So this might change this year - when I'm actually allowed to attend some meetings.

Let's see how that goes.

Former, I guess I'm meant to keep my class informed about D&AD events, competitions and opportunities. That's what I understood after one of my tutors attempt to explain the reps job utterly failed.

-----

The second week back in uni, I think it was, D&AD came to our campus, Howard Gardens, for a D&AD Talk session under the motto 'tackling real life briefs and winning a student award'. That was really enjoyable - they explained how D&AD works, who they are and what sort of competitions and other opportunities they offer for students in the creative industry.

Alongside lots of professionals to talk to and learn from, they've invited i.e. Phil from See Corridor and Marcus from New Future Graphic, providing a portfolio clinic session after the talk.

See this post for the portfolio surgery.

Reflective Journal

What?

Yeh. - That's exactly my reaction to it.

We're meant to keep some sort of diary for our course, where we keep our module briefs and feedback sheets, ideas and inspiration. Well I thought I'm gonna use this blog as my reflective journal, to an extend.

So you can look forward to some more uni related posts, my ideas and projects we're challenged with and maybe some feedback as well. Keep looking.

PS: Blog updates relating to the reflective journal will be indicated by the 'reflection'-tag.

Back to School

Hi and welcome again. I know - it's been a while since I last posted - here's my apologies.

It's been quite a busy summer for me to say the least.

Anyway, I'm back in Cardiff and back in University. It's the scary, final 3rd year of my Graphic Communication studies - and it's doing my head in already.

So many things that jump around in my head, ...

I'll post about the first project we do in uni soon, don't you worry - will try to keep this blog up to date!

See ya.

Work-placement.

Sooo, back on the work front, it's been quite a while since I've had some work experience/ work in general.
Luckily I got myself a job over summer from 16th August - 15thSeptember in BOSCH's Marketing Department in their AE (AutomotiveElectronics) plant in Reutlingen, Germany.

Bosch is such a huge company, so I didn't really expect much from being put in AE/Rt NE4, their marketing department, as they obviously don't do much corporate design related work - they rather give it to outsourced agencies.

I had a really good time though and enjoyed working with their staff. It wasn't super-hard work I had to do, but it definitely was a challenge. All the stuff was mainly in English, which I was pretty happy about, being in Germany for over a months time and not speaking English - that went pretty well in the end though.

The most demanding part of my job was being correct and to know what I was doing, never really worked with super technical stuff before - I had to study a 200 slides power point presentation my very first day. I confronted myself through it slide by slide slowly but bravely - interspersed over a couple of days - and managed to get into the fields of sensors and semiconductors.
Anyway, I had a good time being back in good old Germany, and did get to design a couple of things for them as well, I've done PowerPoint presentations according to their CI, several booklets and CD covers for their further education promotion pack intended to reach university professors all over the world.

I'm afraid, I won't be able to post anything I've done online due to their copyright policy - but believe me it was nothing near a big deal anyway - considering their massive folder of corporate design, designers waste their time looking for design-freedom.

I shot the serif!

haha, that made me giggle quite a lot.

Thought it's worth a blog post!

Good ol' puns!