Character Design - Jeremyville

Apparently 'Jeremyville' is a household name amongst graphic designers. To the shock of many of my fellow students I only found out about him two weeks ago.
I found about about him when doing research for the 5 examples of interactive design that we had to collect.
I was in the library and found the 'Jeremyville Sessions' book and it caught my attention, possibly because its got a very shiny cover and i'm a magpie.

I took the book out because he has done a lot of clothing, toys, skate decks etc. but I have found that the rest of his work relates a lot to what I plan to do for this current brief. I'm looking to create a character/s to communicate a series of narratives and I find his work very inspiriation especially when it comes to character design.

Heres a few examples of his work:


Various characters he has design for diffirent projects:

The book came with a DVD and it featured some live footage of him creating his characters, I've managed to find a couple on youtube:





Look who it is

Heres another:



When asked, 'What advice, tips or tricks do you have when creating your work?' - his answer was, "Look at what is out there, then forget all about it, and do it diffirently" - good advice... sort of. I think for me, I'm going to definetly try and create my own unique style but I don't think theres any harm in borrowing from 'what is out there' until you find your own voice.

Vectorfunk

At this stage I'm still quite stuck for ideas - taking a week off for my dads wedding in Cyprus has really taken its toll, most people already seem to be finalising their ideas and I've only just started mind-mapping, I better get a move on!

One of the ideas I've had is to create a deck of cards that could go in a 'freshers pack' and each card would have a tip on how to avoid being late, replacing the normal imagery. I was doing some research into how other designers have approached the design of playing cards and I came across this:


Its a nice approach, really simple vector artwork but the aesthetics are appealing. I think that if I go with the deck of cards idea I'll also use vector graphics but I think I'll include a lot more colour in my work.

After viewing that piece of work I decided to check out the rest of his website and I was really taken back. He has 2 main portfolio sections, one for 2007 and one for 2008 but the amount of work that is in each section is incredible! It makes my work ethic seem terrible in comparison.
Nonetheless theres some ace stuff on there and heres some of the things that got my attention:

He uses a technique which he calls the "vectorfunk" style. I'd attempt to put the description into words but thankfully he has already done that on his website... this is what he has to say, "I have worked in this style for years, constantly evolving and expanding my visual vocabulary. Shapes, textures, patterns, colors… The viewer’s eye will dance. Whether it is a realistic rendering of a car, a stylized portrait, or a psychedelic abstraction, I will deliver a unique illustration with just the right amount of "whoa" and “crazy"."

Mountain Dew bottle design to celebrate 4th of July (Independance day).

Manifesto - Reflection/Evaluatoin of myself as a designer

Who I used to be:

Someone who used to have a very closed-off approach to work practice. I would come up with an idea in my head and go down a very linear route and because I was such a control freak I wouldn’t pay much attention to input from others. My art teacher in 6th form would often tell me that I was a perfectionist and would spend way too much time doing exploring one idea in my sketchbook in every possible detail rather than making quick sketches from many ideas or trying out new methods then filtering them out and going with what was best.
I also think that because my 6th form was really limited in terms of resources and under-staffed, and my foundation gave much more attention to fashion/fine art students and not much to graphics I had not been able to explore all that is available bar what I could teach myself and I came into the course with a limit on the amount of ways to approach my work.
I was also very un-organised, this is something that’s always been a problem for me – I’ll freely admit that I’m not the most practical of people and often daydream, lost within my own thoughts and sometimes forget about what’s important and therefore don’t always have my priorities set.

Who I am now:

Someone who is a lot more open-minded. I tend to explore a larger range of options now before settling on one idea however I still think I have a long way to go – I think I’ve personally made an improvement but I still get a lump in my throat when I look at how much visual development others do. I think I sometimes throw away ideas that I have to easily sometimes and don’t document them like I should as others do, even though they might be irrelevant in the end, they may be something I’ll look back on and be inspired.
I feel as if I used this year to really explore a range of approaches to my work, being in an environment where there are so many talented designers working in their own unique methods has been such an inspiration to me and a driving force for me to develop my own unique practice.
I’ve tried my hand at print, crafting, video, stop motion, web design, photography (digital and chemical) and my software skills have improved greatly. I still kick myself for missing that book binding workshop though.
I feel that even though I’ve achieved this, I’ve gained a lot of skills in various approaches but haven’t developed any particular speciality approaches.
I feel I’m a lot more organised, I feel that the sheer amount of work we are given plus being away from home for the first time initially stressed me out incredibly and I really struggled to cope with it all, but I think it’s forced me to adapt and without realising I’ve become a lot more focused. On a more negative note, I think I’m a very introspective person and I feel as if I’ve lost touch with myself a bit as I hardly have any time to myself anymore.

Who I intend to be:

Someone who exhausts all their options is constantly looking various sources and artists for inspiration and is always evaluating and documenting their work. I aim to be a lot more visual with my development.
I want to continue exploring a wider range of approaches to my work, for instance I still want to better my screen-printing skills, explore more traditional methods such as letter-press and learn how to use Adobe After Effects. At the same time though, I want to develop a speciality style. I think a future employer will prefer someone who is a master at a specific style/skill than someone who is a jack of all trades but a master of none.
Somehow become more organised, I’ve tried to better this so many times and I think although I have made an improvement I still have a long way to go. Its something which I do not find easy at all but I do aim to manage my time in a way that I can set a routine get my work done without stressing too much and set aside specific times where I can have time to myself which I value.

Magazine Layouts

I've been doing some research into creative and interesting magazine layouts to inspire my Type-and-Grid work, these are a few of my top picks from my internet research.

I like how they headline is at the bottom of the page. Normally your eyes scan a page from the top-left to the bottom right.

Not the best example of the use of a grid, but the layout is really unique. From first glance I thought there were two seperate pages which made me look at the details... really eye catching!

I think the position of the columns in this layout is awesome - really good use of space and very aesthetically pleasing due to the uniqueness of it. It reminds me a bit of the Black Flag logo, if it had 3 bars instead of two.

Communication is a Virus

I really enjoyed this brief, I normally approach collabaritive work because I've been known to be quite a control freak in the past - but I think I managed to put that aside.
I was working with Ed, who was very motivated and driven, yet very laid back at the same time. It was good working with him for this reason as sometimes I get really stressed over work but because Ed is always so level-headed and pretty happy-go-lucky (no offence Ed, thats a compliment!) it really made me wonder why I get so worked up in the first place.

Anyway... we chose 'get people to try something new' as it was very open, we thought this was a good choice as any of the other categories would fit under it - so why choose any of the others and limit yourself?

I think we had a really good oppurtunity to do something fun and enjoy ourselves and I think we naturally went in the direction of choosing something that we both enjoyed and had in common, music.
Our first idea was to try and get people to try new types of music, but why? We needed a reason, so we researched into music corporations and how they scam the artists on their labels, so we went along the lines of promoting independent music in Leeds specifically because we could actually promote it then.
Ed did some great context research and went out to a couple of places, taking photos of potential places we could promote our music. This would target our audience of people involved in the 'indipendent music scene' who would pick up a demo CD containing tracks from indipendent artists and then pass it on to, or make a copy (due to the tracks having no copyright) for their friends who listen to mainstream music.

I e-mailed loads of indie bands asking if we could feature their music on our disc and got loads of positive replies.

After swapping briefs with Ollie, Liam and Emma they refined our brief to only electro music. This posed a bit of a problem as all of the replies I had received up till then were from indie bands... so I spent another couple of hours e-mailing electro groups in Leeds. Fun times!
They did give us a really cool name though, 'Hidden Tracks' which is edgy and also sums up the purpose of our work.

We both then worked ont he designs, I came up with these:

And Ed made a couple of variations along the lines of this:

We both preferred the look of Ed's - it had that really gritty cheaply-made design that most guerilla-style CD packaging had.

We worked on a few designs and here are the illustrator files that we used for our presentation boards to display how it works. (The colour is diffirent because when its printed on brown stock it darkens)

Front of CD

Back of CD

As you can tell there is in inlay, when you pull it out the side of the sleeve the track names are revelead through a hole cut out the back of it.

We needed a few images of it operating in context, so we went to the shops we had identified as potential distributors of the CD and asked them if we could take a few photos of the CD at points in the shop where similar material is displayed... most of them said yes.

Ed had gotten to know the manager of White Label Clothing and he said he would be willing to distribute our CD if it were an actual product - so if we wanted to, we could actually have a real crack at this and see if it would work!

One more thing, we also created a Myspace page to serve as a community where people can discuss independent electro music in Leeds and listen to tracks that would be featured on the disc (we got permission from the artists before uploading the tracks): heres the link:

http://www.myspace.com/hiddentracksleeds

Hidden Tracks

I was experimenting in Illustrator, trying to create a good image for the CD that Ed and I are producing for our partner work and I created this completely by accident.
After creating the cover and thinking how well the lines go with each other (I should be using this for the 'what is a line brief'!) and how they disguise the words 'hidden tracks' I decided to experiment more with lines for the back of the CD and created a really crazy optical illusion.

The first is a screenshot direct from illustrator (I do a lot of digital work and I don't think I post enough images of the process) and the second is cropped image showing just the cover and back in diffirent colours.

Finished Website

I think I've resolved the website as much as I can, heres the link for the final resolution:

http://timetriptothailand.tk/

I wanted the website to be in a standalone pop-up window with no browser toolbars, however it all seemed very complicated so I've settled for just using a center html tag to center the website.