D&AD - Development

This is a draft of one of the A3 pieces I'll be submitting as part of my entry - the writing needs to be in black pen and the highlighting in yellow - this was just to work out how the layout of all my criticisms is going to work. Turns out I ask a lot of questions, who knew..

I may have stumbled across quite a hurdle, disappointingly. I had an idea to use the Don't Panic logo but crossing out the word 'Panic' and hand writing 'wast your time on this' beside it (so that it reads 'don't waste your time on this' for those who were slow on the uptake there). But this little cretin may be out to ruin me:

D&AD RULES

2.5.3 - Entrants must not denigrate sponsors or sponsor branding, subject sponsor branding to derogatory treatment or otherwise bring the sponsor or its branding into disrepute.

For fuck's sake man. My current position still involves entering at risk of disqualification. RESISTANCE TO THE RULES FTW.

D&AD - Research

This is best part of the research I've done so far for the D&AD resistance brief - it's an illustration brief but as you can pretty much gather from my scans there will be little to no illustrating involved in my entry.

I've can submit up to 4 boards so I've got room to play around with it. One of them will definitely be a copy of the brief pdf file crammed with my annotations, the others are up for grabs at the minute. I'm toying with the idea of manipulating situationist quotes in some way, maybe into the shape of the D&AD logo? Don't hold me to that, it's a work in pregress.

Shaz Madani

Dear god I want to be this person. The work is incredible, end of.

http://smadani.com/portfolio.htm

I ACTUALLY DID SOME WORK THAT I LIKE?!

Ahhhhh this feels pretty good! The first person to point out the complete and utter irrelevance of this will 100% have each of their limbs snapped in two - do not test me.

I said I wanted to start drawing again, so I did. Logic tells me that the perfect time would be when I'm sat watching tv and my hands are rendered otherwise useless. There I was just drawing this and that from this month's Vogue, then I drew a picture or Riley Keough and just didn't stop.. I don't know why I love it so much, I just do. I like to recreate things with pencil - not an overly useful talent in the design world but I think I'm pretty good at it - this was all done by eye, no tracing involved. Here's the scan of my drawing and the original page, they're not exactly the same because the pages of my sketchbook are proportioned differently but I tried to make as few changes as possible - also, in real life you can actually read the text in the boxes. Ahhh yey.

Wonderland Typography

I made a start on my typography idea for the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland book design competition. This is in no way what my final idea will look like, I'm simply playing around with the use of powder and stencils. It looked really good in real life but the photographs don't seem to work in it's favor. Definitely a work in progress.

35mm SLR

In an attempt to do something productive I went into town to try get a battery for my 35mm SLR so I could start to dabble in a bit of photography. Battery purchased, still no joys with this camera, highly inconvenient. I need to find some sort of expert or technician to see if it actually works, WHY ISN'T COLLEGE OPEN MANNNN!?

Visual Language

Right, I seriously need to stop wallowing in my own self pity and man the fuck up. For the past week (more like two if I'm honest) I've been cowering away from work because I have so much to do and I'm constantly stuck and I don't think I'm doing well and everyone else's work is amazing and it goes on and on and on.. boo fucking hoo Gauntley, no one gives a shit.

No one's going to do this degree for me so the finger is out and I'm slapping myself round the face a bit.

Seriously like what have I actually done for this brief???

• Started D&AD Illustration brief then put that on hold...
• Dabbled in a bit of graphic design for the Don't Panic poster design
• Screen printed my illustration for the Viscom Exhibition
• Painted two canvases
• Came up with a concept for the Alice in Wonderland Penguin Book Design competition but don't actually have the courage to start doing it incase it's shit.. (very nice Gauntley, the best competitions are won with verbal explanations of work that could have been..)
• Started coming up with ideas for the Faversham Valentines design competition (which in fairness I can't really continue with until the woman emails me back with the details and logos - it's been over a week now, I think email number two is in order)

In summary, not a fucking lot. I have barely touched on the idea of my visual language because I can't even bring myself to finish one fucking brief. And as for the book element of this module, well that's open to suggestions at the minute because I don't fucking have any. Initially it was meant to be my work from this module compiled in a small design book but we have a few problems there as I HAVE NO WORK WORTHY OF A BOOK. And also Paul has jumped on this bandwagon and I refuse to compete with that boy, I'm not suicidal.

So this begs the question, what the hell am I going to do? This is what I've got so far, it's only short term but this is my current plan of attack:

• Finish the briefs that I've started (D&AD and Penguin Book Awards)
• Try and get the 35mm SLR that I was given fixed and do a short photography brief - I mean super short - I need to find out when dark room drop in is open
• Do more drawing, not necessarily illustration, I miss drawing and this may give me some sort of inspiration