Monday 3 December 2012

BotanicalGardens/Experimentation/Photofun

 So last week, myself and Kita took a lovely stroll to the Botanical Gardens in Sheffield. Although I have been living in Sheffield for about a year now, this was the first time I had actually gone to visit the gardens and it was lovely.  I originally planned to head down down there to take some pictures of some wire words that I have been making for my current uni project but got very carried away with taking pictures of the plans around.











Although some people may not be a very interesting thing to photograph, I really enjoy taking nature photographs and messing around with them later to and creating something different with them.
This evening I've just been messing around with some of the pictures on photoshop and concentrating on the colour balance of them.

Sadly until I sort out some more space on my blog I am unable to upload any images which also means no more posts until I get it sorted. This is very frustrating, considering the fact I have a list in my notebook of ideas for up and coming posts. 







Friday 23 November 2012

NewSketchbook/ChristmasCards/Magazines

So last week I bought myself a couple new sketchbooks, One for a current university project and another to start working in. I've been coming up with a few mini projects to do over the next coming months or whenever I have the spare time and thought I'd get myself organised. I've already been noting down about four or five ideas and started sketching out and planning a few things. I've also recently gotten into doing illustrations, after using them in my last project I've wanted to continue doing it and try and make more of a habit of it. Its never really been anything that I'm particularly great at but I quite enjoy it and therefore have also been using this new sketchbook for that.


Carrying on with this and because I am of course a poor art student, I have decided to make my own christmas cards this year. I tell myself every year that I'm going to and never get round to making them so this evening I started and here are a few I've finished.


 



Lastly a couple of Art/Culture magazines I have picked up this month, two I would highly recommend. I look forward to getting stuck into these.  


Boring Postcards by Martin Parr

 So the other weekend me and a friend decided to take a wonder thought the charity shops along our road and I stumbled across this beauty, Boring Postcards by Martin Parr. If you don't know who Marin Parr is, he is a British photographer and photojournalist best known for this photographic projects that take a critical look at aspects of modern life, in particular suburban life in England. I remember doing a bit of work on Martin Parr back in college and was pleased to find these for only one english pound. At the moment I am debating whether to use this book for a project I've got in mind which includes defacing pages or to just keep it as it is. Although the book is simply filled with quite boring postcards, I find it interesting and actually quite beautiful as it is.  
A link to Martin Parr's website "Martin Parr Photographer"




Thursday 22 November 2012

Brief: Lost Art Of Conversation/The Big Tea Talk

So a few weeks ago I was working on my university project The Lost Art Of Conversation, The brief was to to promote conversation. We were asked to research into what good conversation was, the kinds of people that have them, what its for, the values of a good conversation, whether social media was an enabler or disabler and to explore the art of conversation and develop an idea from it.


I went along the lines of using tea, and people coming together over hot beverages as my idea. I won't go into too much detail about it but the general idea was to encourage people to perhaps invite over some friends or a family member for a brew and interact in some face to face conversation. I set up a twitter page under the name The Big Tea Talk where I gave out suggestions of topics for conversations and tried to encourage people to go out and start conversations by setting out missions. To accompany this I made a few posters and small postcards which would be placed in coffee shops, pubs etc.

I decided for my posters I was going to do some illustration which I worked up in photoshop and layout  out and set up in InDesign.
I think with more time I could of produced something a bit bigger and something that might have a larger impact but I was quite happy with the my logo and illustrations. I don't tend to do a lot of illustrative work and I'm glad I took a chance with this brief and used it. I think for the tone I was going for it worked out really well.



These are a couple of the outcomes, There not the most amazing things I've ever done but like I said, I'm positive with more time I could of created something a lot better.

 



Tuesday 20 November 2012


“Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure.They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.”

- David Lynch , Catching  the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. 

Friday 16 November 2012

Just a little something.



Life in pictures.

As you may or may not know I have a Instagram a lot of people these days and I thought I would share a few pictures from the past month or so of some cool art, gallery etc. If you have Instagram and wish to follow me then please do! @ejgreaves77 

Late night in the studio // Gallery Space // Martin O'Neill // Magazines // Work Space, New Project// Lampshades in the gallery // 



Messing around on photoshop // Pretty lights // Designing a friends tattoo // Street Art // Dada pub // Bath bomb // 



Things found around the studio // My Halloween // Sheffield at night // Studio // Pumpkins // Visited Lincoln, took a walk up steep hill and saw the cathedral // 



3D workshop // Sheffield Library // Work in the studio // Things in the Studio // Gallery // Gallery cafe window. 


My Interactive CV

So I haven't managed to figure out a way to upload my pdf so here are some screen shots of each of the pages. I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out and hopefully as I get more work done I can add it in and bulk it up. I would love to hear you thoughts about it like I've said before it really helps me develop as a designer.









There was also a contact page but I don't particularly want my details in the internet aha.  

It has been far too long!/Update/InteractiveCV


Apologies for the lack of posts lately but uni work/life has pretty much being taking up all of my time at the moment so I haven't really had the time to sit down and make some posts, But I'm here now and I have a few things to add. 

1. I finally finished my interactive CV, including my cover letter and portfolio. I'm still yet to receive the marks for the project but I was pretty happy with my final outcome. If I can I will try and upload a copy of it for you too have a look at if your interested. The whole thing was designed and layout in InDesign, this being a program that I have never really used before and didn't really know that much about I ended up really liking it. I did find it very frustrating at first which is completely understandable having not used it before but after attending some really useful InDesign session at uni I found it a really nice program to use.  For my Interactive CV and portfolio I had to construct a cover letter, explaining why I wanted said job and why I would be great for it, Taking pictures of piece of my work for my portfolio and write my CV out. 
Me and friend booked out a little studio room and took some piece of work in to photograph. It was a pretty simple task and we managed to get it done quite quickly and end up with some good images to use. This being a practice for a professional job application we had to take professional photos and think about the compositions. I took some photos of my zines for my portfolio and had to think about how I wanted to present them. We were quite lucky to have a photography technician with us who was able to give us a few pointers and help us use the equipment.    

These are a few examples of the different pictures I took and messed around with. 






(I'm really sorry if this doesn't make complete sense and isn't in much detail but you must forgive me, its been a few weeks since I did these). 

Monday 22 October 2012

Applying for the future // Cover Letter Header

So this evening I've been working on the header for my cover letter. I've been sitting in front of my laptop for hours, trying to put something together that looks professional and also shows a bit about what I am about.

I only tested out the type in a few select colours as I didn't want anything too in your face as thats just not really me.

The first three designs I kept quite simple and just used type and lines as I wanted to get a sort of basic idea first before I added anything extra to it.

After finding a type that I liked which is called DayangSenandung which I downloaded from dafont.com I added one of my designs to it, to use as a sort of logo for my name.
I was worried at first that it would make it too busy but it's actually added a little something to it. I think it makes it look more attractive and brings a more interesting element to it.
With the final design, I wasn't sure at first if adding two images to the type would be too busy and take attention away from the type or add to it and only did this design in black as adding colour to it, I feel would be slightly too much.







The next step is to put a final design in to InDesign and start constructing my pdf.
I'm really interested to hear what any of you think about the designs, which you prefer, what you don't like so much, how I could possibly improve...

At the moment, I am going with this design but this could all change, I would still love to hear some feedback as it helps me with my development.  


Sunday 21 October 2012

Applying for the future

As I'm now in the second year of university it come to the point where we need to start thinking about the possibly job opportunities and the future. As one of our first briefs we have been asked to produce a cover letter, a CV and portfolio to be saved as a pdf. This is to be like a practice run for applying for a job. At the beginning of the brief we were asked to fill out a self evaluation and find and company/job etc that we would like to apply for and hopefully work for in the future. I picked one of my favourite magazines, Hunger Magazine for my job spec.











If you don't already know what it is then there is a  click through link to the website, I also did a post about it a while back here

Although I sometimes get very stressed out doing it, layouts are one of my favourite things about design, wether is laying  something out in a sketchbook or uploading something online, It always find I become a bit of a perfectionist about it.

I thought as I was going to be making this mock application for Hunger, I would have a look through the magazines to try and inspire myself for my own layouts for my cover letter etc.
Other than getting ideas, I've just been trying to write up cover letter and drawing up wire frames.

Thursday 4 October 2012

Catch Up/ Update on life.

So seeing as I had the rest of the day off from uni I thought I would come home and do a little work before heading out later, sadly I still haven't found my motivation flow and thought what better time to update the ol'blog seeing as its been a while. Reasons for this would be the fact that I have finally moved back to Sheffield.
A new university year has started and bought a few new things along with it. One big change is my current home, I am gladly no longer in student accommodation and in a lovely three bedroom flat with a couple of guys. This also being a reason for lack of posts as we only got our internet installed on tuesday.

Another change would be the work, This week started my first real week back at uni and some new projects including sorting out a mock job application/CV and trying my hand at some 3D structure workshops. Although I'm a little apprehensive about certain aspects of the projects I'm looking forward to getting back into the flow of things and actually really looking forward to going to lectures. Saying this we had a guest lecturer on Monday, Paul Finn (his website Fitzroy & Finn) which is a design studio specialising in graphic design and typography and has worked with clients such as the BBC, ITV, Royal Opera House and many others. It was a really interesting and helpful lecture especially with the projects we are working on at the moment.
At the moment I haven't really got any of my own projects going on as I don't want it to get in the way of starting these new projects, though a few friends and myself are planning to book some screen printing time within the next couple of weeks to try out a few posters and prints so I've been working on a few designs when I've had some free time.
Asides from this I have just been settling back into the student life, seeing people I haven't seen all summer and enjoying my time back in Sheffield.
Here are a few instagram (yes I got sucked in) photos from the past 3 weeks of some cool things I've seen and been doing.

From left to right; 1. King Charles at The Leadmill, 2&3. A cute antique shop near my house, 4. A bench in the street, 5. Some graffiti near my house, 6. Graffiti around town, 7. Some pictures I've been messing around with. 

Monday 10 September 2012

Disposables

Just got a couple rolls of film developed today and had a few cool ones come out.











Charity Shop Bargains

I was very pleased this morning when I took a stroll into town and checked out the charity shops and found myself this Pentax for £3.99, I look forward to using this little babe. I also managed to find a couple copies of some old National Geographic's which I plan on using for some collages and got a couple rolls of film developed.