How to Build a Blog Workshop

6D2

Sarah Bates 

2 lives
- student/ personal life
- working professional
Need separation between these lives.

Target audience

Benefits to blogging

• Promote your self/work/business - no personal, focus on work
• Engage on a customer facing level - language and tone 
• Express yourself and share your passion 
• Make a difference
• Share your knowledge
• Possibility to make money online
• Build a professional network
• Earn more exposure - commissions, employment, projects
• Build an online portfolio
• Market your business

LinkedIn - benefits statement under image, not title. what can you do for them

Find blogs within industry to follow - help with content

eye magazine

adobe create

designweek 

Digital Arts

the dsgn blog

Shillington
creative review 

"Good" blogs

• Bold large text in an 'easy to read' font for title and copy - differing colours across titles and in bodies of text
• Plenty of high quality imagery - pictures 72dpi for fast loading (google > images > settings > large)
• Personality & influence
• Spacious - not loads of text nor over crowded imagery - narrow column widths
• Main blog home page to look inviting with key articles
• Easy navigation, have all pages at top of each page
• Links to social media
• Minimum 300 words per post - original words or google will not recognise

Glug #16 - glug-xibit (curation of creative collections)

6B2

This edition of Glug was about curation of creative collections and how these inspire these creatives in their work and every day practices. The talk was held at Duke Studios and we also got the opportunity to tour the studio space and see where glug and some of the other creatives were based.
Glug is a series of creative events run worldwide and is informal and fun - the founders and people who run the events see them as a positive network experience. 

Melanie Hough - Curator at Getty Images Hulton Archive

Melanie is the archive curator for Getty Images Hulton Archive, which currently holds 80 million images across various collections. She considers herself to be a curator without walls as Getty Images is primarily online. Melanie spoke about her love for the images within the archive, and how she enlivened the photos, which was by making connections. One of the images she showed which I found really interesting was an image from a glass plate taken of Bridal Veil Falls in Yosemite.

Taken by Carleton Watkins, Melanie told us that this image was the start of environmentalism as this photo was sent to Abraham Lincoln which prompted him to implement protection of the park.

Adam Allusch Boardman - Illustrator

Adam is an alumni of Leeds Arts University - he now works freelancing at Duke Studios. His ethos is that he draws what he enjoys, so draws a lot of sci fi. What he enjoys he quantifies as an image.

Something that Adam discovered during uni and freelance work was the importance of managing his files. He had no system to the files and was struggling to find what he needed.
One of Adam's biggest pieces of work was his illustration of Hyde Park picture house which he did for his final project in 3rd year. He visited the cinema and took hundreds of photos and then drew the cinema in detail, he even drew each floor within and animated these. 

Another piece of Adams work is an illustrated publication An Illustrated History of Filmmaking. 

During the process of designing the cover Adam learnt that it was ok to go back and revisit old ideas instead of constantly moving forward. He revisited an initial sketch and reworked that until he had a concept him and the publishers agreed on.

One of the most interesting things about Adams process is that during his project Home on Lagrange, he created a data bank of frequently drawn elements and characters as well as a bank of colours (Adam refined his colour palette from 100 colours down to 20 which he uses in all his work now). This data bank was on a secondary screen to his drawing screen and he used it for referencing when drawing.

Oli Bentley - Designer @ Split

Oli Bentley from Split is responsible for the These Northern Types exhibition. The exhibition and book is a product of 5 years of thinking about the project and 2 years of curating and making. These Northern Types book is a collection of typographic artworks accompanied by sections of writing by various authors and artists.
It is based on what it is meant to be "from" somewhere. As Oli is Northern he wanted to base the project on what it meant to be from the North and during the project he had to reverse engineer and design an identity for the North and its inhabitants.

One of the most interesting projects he did as part of the project was trying to brand the North from a fake studio in London. This generated a lot of feedback - mostly negative - by Northerners who couldn't believe that a southern studio would have the audacity to do such a thing.

One of the other most interesting parts of the project was the biggest letterpress in the world. The 'People Powered Press" presses the Graft Typeface - one named so because of all the work that went into laser cutting the letters and fixing the press when it broke during production.

What Oli learnt during the project is that Northern identity is a myth.
He also learnt things about himself - that the "grey" is important and he wanted to design around it more. He didn't care if things are technically "design" or not and and he is now less scared of putting himself and his work out there.

Laura Wellington - co founder of Duke Studios

Laura set up Duke Studios at Sheaf Street to allow creatives to have a space to work and be inspired. She is a self confessed print addict and has over 150 prints in her house alone. She ran out of wall space at her own home so moved some of her prints over to Duke Studios.

Laura told us some inventive ways to physically curate prints within a space, organising by colour, using bulldog clips, small frames and makeshift shelves - these all save money and look effective. Laura considers her collection to be a journey as she has a lot of prints from people she's met over the years.

The evening was really informative and fun, and it was interesting to see the different types of curation across all the creative practices that were there. My favourite talks were from Adam and Oli. Oli's project was eye opening and showed just how important it is to collaborate with people. It was also his passion project and so much work into creating and curating it, it was amazing to see it all finished and presented beautifully. 

Communication Strategies

6A2
6C2
6D2

communicating what you do confidently and clearly is an essential part of every creatives skillset

Communication - strategies and advice

Simon Sinek - how great leaders inspire action

PITCHING
- elevator pitch
networking
submissions

pitch a project on website
WHAT - core idea
HOW - does it work
WHY - it works. purpose, what does it solve

Pitching: Yung Tea

WHAT
Yung Tea is a tea aimed at younger people to get them interested in tea. Experimental flavours. Luxury

HOW
Use of colours to reflect the exotic flavours. modern tins to appeal to younger market. Luxury comes from the black and glossy label/mix of materials

WHY
The experimental styles and bold colours of flavours entice in younger, more open minded people by challenging their perceptions of tea and how it can be seen as a boring drink for older people to enjoy.

NETWORKING
hunter.io - look at structure of email address to formulate others
social media

Website

6C2
6D2

29.11.18 15:00
url in submission folder
Task: 2 weeks to get a website live

must haves

• consistent application of personal branding
• curated selection of your work 
• an engaging bio
• include contact details and relevant socials - custom site/url
• all outbound and inbound links must function
• give your projects context with some intriguing copy

templates
squarespace
persona.co
cargo 
adobe portfolio
readymag

Inspo
siteinspire.com
awwwards.com
goodweb.design
ready mags/explore

soren.works
syddharth
claire koster

My website for initial submission (formative feedback).

Mark: 62/100 

Feedback

• Apply consistent branding across my website and social media. This has still yet to be created.
• Inject more of my personality into the site. 
• Continue onwards with Squarespace - price reasonable for freelancing.
• Improve copy text - especially on my contact page
• Also include an about section to make the site more personal
• Create more professional images. Create digital mockups that present my projects in a professional light (use Yung Tea for example). Paper models look shabby. If I could recreate these in a digital mockup the project would look so much more put together. Leading on from this, creating other outputs across multiple projects would give the lead images as well as the project pages depth (pick out branding, colour, mockups, physical products, create videos/animation etc.) Try to vary the project as much as possible in terms of items for presentation. 
• Curation is good as it shows a range of projects and skills - this could be tailored when applying to different studios eg. for a branding studio you would lead with branding projects, packaging etc.
• Create more hands-on stuff like the beat gif as this shows fun and personality, and a different approach to creating things, as opposed to clean digital stuff.