This is where most of my energy has been expended over the last week. This is assignment #2 for uni, which is due in 2 weeks, and it seems an extraordinary amount of work for the marks and time frame allowed… am I sounding grumpy? We have to produce an invite, catalogue and promotional gift for a showcase of some of Issey Miyake’s more elaborate clothes. We have 16 pieces we have to include in the catalogue and really up until today I’ve been solely focused on the invite. You can see my first and latest attempts above and if you can imagine it -  the whole invite is pleated (origami style) so an A4 page becomes about the size of a Penguin novel. I’m attempting to reproduce his art of pleating for which he’s so well known. The bottom image is two pages from the catalogue and I’ve had lots of fun creating repeating patterns (you know how I love them) and it’s even given me inspiration for my next screencast. Watch this space sometime after June 10 when my marketing exam is done and dusted.

It really doesn’t hurt that I’m a big fan of Issey Miyake and have been ever since I convinced my mother to make me this highly complicated shirt from one of his Vogue patterns circa 1984. Also this project is making me incredibly nostalgic for Japan and I even had to think back on my high school shodo (calligraphy) classed to write his name using Illustrator. It’s clearly written by a foreigner! So again friends if you have any insight to share in the form of constructive criticism I’ll be forever grateful.

This is what I’ve been toiling away at for the last month. My next Uni assignment which is due in a little over a week. It’s an 8 page magazine and the mock-ups to a 5 page website for a fictitious magazine called LOL – Life out Loud. Drawing on inspiration from magazines like Dumbo Feather and Cellar Door I really wanted the minimalist cover to work. I think I mentioned how much I wanted to use Kassia’s gorgeous photo which, to me, makes my first attempt sublime with very little effort on my part. I was, however, over-ruled and have been forced to find a photo of my own that is cover worthy. My second attempt uses a photo that I took of my beautiful friend Jess, owner and creator of Brown Paper Bunny. She agreed to become the subject of my interview and put up with me taking literally hundreds of photos of her one Sunday afternoon. My interview is included in this mag along with two others from my fellow students. If you would like to provide any feedback at all on my cover I would be oh so grateful.

I’m appealing to you for help with my next assignment… again. We have to design a small brochure for a restaurant opening and this is just the front cover. The assignment is quite prescriptive in terms of text content but the style of food that the restaurant serves is really up to us. I’m going for tappas style that’s fast and fresh. I know each of my designs are a variation on a theme but I’m really not sure which one to go for. Can you help?

I have a new toy.. it’s a free iPad app called Adobe Ideas. It’s become a nice little tool when researching colour which is what I’m doing at the moment for my next Uni assignment. We have to design a brochure for a new restaurant that serves North American West Coast cuisine… oh and by the way, if anyone can define that for me that would be so helpful. To start off I’ve been looking at restaurant interiors and using the top photo my little Adobe Ideas produces a 5 colour swatch that I then draw and colour with to create my swatches. I then put this into Photoshop to work out the Pantone equivalents to these colours. It’s a great time waster… I mean research tool.

Things have been a little quiet on my blog front… apologies. I’ve been settling back into normal work hours, fighting a cold and trying to make a start on my first Uni assignment which is due in a couple of weeks. This semester I’m doing Digital Publishing and Typography and part of my first assignment is to create faces out of fonts. We are not allowed to distort the characters but we can rotate, scale and reflect. Here’s two that I have come up with. My snobby man and my rich madam. The snobby man was my first attempt and I sat down to attempt a ‘pretty girl’ and he sort of evolved. My rich madam was my second attempt at a ‘pretty girl’. She may not be pretty but she doesn’t care because she’s incredibly rich! I’m not getting as much help from my fellow students this semester so I might appeal to you for a little feedback from time to time. I hope that’s OK. Feel free to comment on these two.

Cheers,