Guest talk - Liv Siddall

By her own admission, Liv Siddall did not get very good grades at university. Her story of not knowing what the hell she was doing at any time at all on the 3 years of her course at Kingston University sounded all too familiar. However during this time she discovered that she loved looking at and talking about other people's work more than actually creating work of her own. As a result her tutor managed to organise an internship at It's Nice That. Despite Liv not knowing anything about the site, she took the internship. She progressed from intern, to assistant editor, eventually becoming features editor of the site. During this time the site grew from a few members of staff to over 40. As features editor Liv hosted events and podcasts and wrote over 1769 online articles (!).

Craig Oldham's In Loving Memory of Work
Yoni Lefevre's Illustrations to Costumes
The Pitchfork Review: Bjork issue

After writing this many articles, Liv began to get a bit fed up of the same routine. She decided to go freelance and wrote for a few big name magazines. However, when Rough Trade approached her on LinkedIn and asked her to create and edit a magazine for the shop, she couldn't resist as this was her dream job, being such a huge music lover.

As the magazine was new Liv was given free creative control, but had no idea how to design and create a magazine in the first place. Looking at magazines such as Clash, Wire and NME for inspiration, she decided that these were far too clean and didn't suit her personal style or the shops style at all. 

So instead she began to ask what if the magazine was a person? Looking instead at old gig posters and punk zines as well as the physical interior of the shop (scribbled on tills and toilet walls, boxes every where) the style started to form. Bruce Usher designed most of the magazine with Liv, and other artists/illustrators Liv had discovered while working for It's Nice That were brought in to do artwork.
As Liv had a limited budget per magazine, she had to compromise on some aspects. Getting bands that had been interviewed in the magazine to write some of the features such as horoscopes saved money and was an interesting way of getting new blood into the magazine. Bands also sent in photos they had taken themselves whilst on tour - this only cost the magazine the money for a disposable camera! At other times, when musicians were abroad etc, Liv had to source photographers living nearby to get photographs. 

One issue was guest edited by Mac Demarco, who did a fashion feature with photos taken himself, and the shoot only featured one T Shirt modelled by one person which fit the style of the magazine perfectly.

Liv credits the success of the magazine and the happiness with what she had created with these things;

• lack of budget/time. If you run out of money, do everything yourself
• complete creative freedom
• people
• fun

Other advice she gave was to ask yourself the questions;

• what are you really into?
• what do you really want?

I loved Liv's talk, she was really entertaining and down to earth. I identified strongly with her struggles with not feeling as if she was on the right path during university, as the worry of not succeeding in my chosen field is something I am struggling with at the moment. Her eventual happiness in a job she liked was uplifting and inspired me, especially to explore new artists/designers and write more about why I like their work. 

Her actual work and determination on the Rough Trade magazine is amazing to see, considering she started out with no idea how to create a magazine let alone over 15 issues. The magazines themselves are scruffy and show a real creative flair in both the designer Bruce as well as Liv. I am considering getting my hands on a copy! 

Mulling over her advice and questions to ask yourself, I think I have come up with some answers. 

What are you really into?

I am really into music, people and creative and original design solutions. 

What do you really want?
I want to be happy and successful in my chosen field. I want to be creating work and meeting new people, expanding my friendship groups and continually being inspired.

Art from non art collage workshop

The point of this workshop was to make art from non art - so take pieces with no existing artistic value and create something out of these pieces. This avoids plagiarism and can yield interesting results. For example you can't take a picture from vogue of a stylised shoot as the photo has artistic value. You can find pictures with no value in newspapers, magazines, books, old photos etc, and use them to create something interesting.

Beth Hoeckel

ill studio

louis reith

ellery james roberts

 eif podhajsky

mat maitland

richard prince stole work from peter carew (yes rasta photo series)

ventral is golden (tiny library)

john stezaker

exhibition 21st april brunswick

My finished piece

I collected a few magazines to see what I could create out of the workshop. I had a Vogue, a snowboarding magazine and a magazine about Leeds. I was drawn to the buildings in the Leeds magazine and the snowboarders in the air in the snow magazine. I decided to combine the two, using this picture of a building in place of a mountain, where I placed the snowboarders along the angles of the roof - as I thought this was the most interesting feature. To add interest to the bottom half I included a few snowboards - again playing with the linear appearance of the building, placing the snowboards upright.

I really enjoyed this workshop, creating this piece in just under an hour was really fun and a good way to keep myself fresh. I am inspired to create a series over the summer holiday - I think doing more exercises like these would really help to keep me active. 
I am really happy with my final piece, I think it is original and plays off a good concept.

self branding applications

For my applications I decided to create a business card - I based this on my original ideas about being able to spread information and inspiration - giving a unique business card to every individual. I left a line blank on the card for me to write down what had been inspiring me recently. I also wanted something attention grabbing so used a demanding statement in bold type in black and red to catch people's eye and peak their interest in discovering what I had written down.

For the back of the card I needed my information - so included my logo as the main feature and my information was placed below using my colour scheme of red and various oranges.

Another application for my brand was a website - similar to Pinterest, only a website that would display my details and portfolio too. I wanted to have a section on the website that would show what i was inspired by, that in theory I would update regularly and have as a personal inspiration page others could see. This linked in well with my concept, and as well as this I wanted to do something more than just a printed design - looking at website design was really interesting and something I hadn't really explored before.

MY last application is kind of a motivational poster. Using the same colours as my business card, I wanted to create something that could be used as inspiring/motivational material.

self branding logo creation

My logo designing started by sketching ideas, revolving mainly on playing with type as I ght a logotype would portray my brand best. I liked the appearance of the logos but i felt the idea had been over used, so instead drew my logo in the style of a sauce label from a ketchup bottle - however I thought this over complicated the logo somewhat, adding in the extra pieces didn't add anything, they just looked excessive.

I wanted to revise the concept Considering my name is sauce and is a playful concept I wanted a logo to reflect the concept. I wrote out the name in ketchup, in a few variations, however I thought the shape was too irregular and the letters were too thin, however I didn't want to alter the letters once I had drawn them otherwise they wouldn't have the playful look.

I decided to try and alter the writing in a different way. By smudging the sauce with kitchen roll I was able to get thicker letters without looking like the writing was too thought out. 

 

  

I finally reached a version I was happy with, after playing around with a few different ways of writing. I blotted the word with kitchen roll, and then lifted the roll off to reveal a smudged but legible word - some of the ketchup had been absorbed by the roll which left a cool effect, sort of a ripply effect in the word.

Live tracing my logo in Illustrator gave a gradient effect to the logo, which I wanted to keep as I thought it gave the logo depth. I also wanted to keep the red colour as I thought it was the best colour for 'sauce'. I used a few oranges for the smudged parts of the logo to keep that depth and gradient.

My logo turned out better than I thought it would when I started the project so overall I am really happy with it. I loved experimenting with a different way of creating the logo as I am very digital based and the experimentation stage allowed me to push myself and explore a different route. I think my logo is quite successful as it keeps the playful concept obvious but is less generic than my original sketches.

OUGD402 - Introduction (20/10/16)

5 reasons why I wanted to study Graphic Design at Leeds College of Art

- creative bustling city
- good reputation
- amazing graduate success stories
- heard through a person I know on social media about the uni, who raved about the course and also others about the general university
- the work was the style I wanted to pursue

5 things I want to learn on the course

- how to make the most of my skills
- how to manage my time effectively
- I want to learn more about myself, and my strengths and skills
- how to network and interact with professionals
- learn how to collaborate with people in a group project as up til now my projects have been entirely individual and I have worked solo

skills I see as strengths

- people skills, creating a network of people easily
- being able to form an original, individual concept
- drawing on my own individual research and inspiration in the design world to influence my  own designs 
- having a positive outlook on life and see the best of situations

5 things to improve on as a designer

- creating a schedule and sticking to it
- pushing my boundaries and going out of my comfort zone when doing projects
- building a wealth of research so my projects can be more informed
- trying something I would never normally attempt
- collaborate more with others

5 methods I could use to evaluate/ document my progress

- I often ask my friends to evaluate my work, or we discuss each others and give feedback
- keep a well updated blog so I can look back on it and see how far I have progressed in a few months time
- ask for feedback from other designers (for example on twitter or on the designers league group on Facebook)
- every so often go back and view my work - write about how I have changed and how I would like to progress further
- create a personal piece every month in the style I am liking at the time

questions you would like an answer to

- who killed Charlotte on Pretty Little Liars?

5 things that inspire me

- music. I go to a lot of gigs and festivals and enjoy every genre of music
- big cities
- successful people/ designers who have built themselves a big company/following/reputation - e.g Kate Moross
- my peers, their different styles of design always influence me and their advice especially in crits
- travel bloggers, their freedom and the way they have been able to do something they love

identify 5 examples of design that illustrate and have meaning to my field of creative interest as of now.

Quaderns Journal by Two Points studio

After visiting the studio in Barcelona I was inspired by these journals to look more into editorial work as I hadn't been interested before now. 

Kitty Callaghan 

Aaron Draplin

Supermundane

Fickle Friends' album artwork

design strategy presentation

I have learnt a lot this first year of the course. Doing the workshops and inductions was a new thing for me and I enjoyed learning and doing more hands on work for example the book binding workshop and screen printing as I had never gotten the opportunity to do them before. I also learnt more in the Adobe software so now I am quicker and more proficient. Lastly in the way finding brief one of the study tasks we were set was intended for us to learn how to produce a high turnover of a large amount of work and while I didn't enjoy this too much I did learn how to be quicker in producing work.

One of my aims is to learn to take better photos. At various points during this year I have needed photos for projects but the ones I have taken in my opinion could be better. I would love how to learn to get to grips with a DSLR properly, as well as expand to a film camera as I love the look of photos taken by them.

Mistakes I've made this year are not presenting my work in the best way I could - for example in the wayfinidng brief my final mock ups could've been executed better to give a better presentation. This is something I definitely need to work on. 

Also time management is a thing I have made mistakes with and improved on considerably in my opinion. While still falling behind sometimes it is definitely and improvement to my foundation year and even the first module hand in, whereas in the second hand in I was more organised and not stressed when it came to hand in. I think I've clearly improved as my grade went from 53% which is a 2:2 to 70% which is a first so I was very happy with that.

These were some of my personal strengths, I thought adding some humour into my presentation would go down well.

My serious strengths included formulating and original idea/concept and being able to back that up for example my way finding brief was based on the industrial revolution in Leeds and the concept was fairly abstract when I came to execute the way finding system - which ended up working really well. Similar to this, my object project final piece ended up being something a lot of people would find useful and helpful - or so my crit feedback said.

My other strength would be by writing. John Maeda said that writing is a unicorn skill and so vital in the world of design. I have always been good at English throughout school so I was able to list that as a strength.

My biggest weakness for sure is sleeping. I need a lot of sleep and sometimes my sleeping pattern gets a bit out of kilter and I end up not being able to do work when I need to. I really need to adjust this by being more strict on myself.

I have enjoyed the design principles module the most this year - normally I like projects with longer timescales as I can build a well informed project, however the smaller timescales have pushed me to create pieces I am really proud of.

Other than that I have really enjoyed the trip to Barcelona as it was great to get out of the country, explore a different city, do some fun things and relax. Two Points studio was amazing and eye opening in particular. Also in Leeds, there is a massive music scene which I am heavily involved in so I have really enjoyed going out to gigs and drum n bass events.

I wasn't expecting this year to enjoy the hands on work so much, as I have always been a digital person. The collage workshop with DR ME was definitely eye opening and now I want to explore with more analog processes.

I have disliked the fact that we have so many deadlines running along side each other this year, with so many modules it has been hard to juggle each project and deadline. However I need to get used to it as this is what it will be like as a career.

My ambitions for this year have sky rocketed, after seeing what I am capable of and seeing the level of work produced by everyone in the class I am so motivated to continue and ready for the next year where I want to push myself out of my comfort zone and do more experimental work.

This whole year has been amazing minus a few little downs but overall I've had so much fun. I've made a solid group of friends who I am so happy with and I think my bank account shows how much fun I've had.

Overall my presentation got positive feedback, Penny said it was obvious how much I had gained from the year and it was a well rounded presentation that gave a detailed look into the year/course. I should've spoken more about my personal strengths as it would've given more of a personal edge but apart from that it was clear to see where I'd improved and how much I was looking forward to level 5.