Captains Log #10: Eau De Jaque…
Forgive the title — you will not be required to smell Eau De Jaque, or Fermented Sea Dog, or any other such thing! This is simply a small and modest collection of the design work I have completed over the previous 3 months, some of which I am quite happy with.
I feel my skills have certainly developed over the recent months, but I am aware I have a long way to go before I feel adequately confident in myself as an industry level designer. However, as is common, we are often our worst critics, so you be the judge!
Lets kick things off in a rather different tone to the rest of my ramblings, with actual photography! The following images were taken specifically for their use in design projects:
These various shots of my close friend, Lee Leyland, were all taken with the intention of using them within my film poster ‘rehearsals’, which were attempts to grasp the fundamentals of basic film poster design. The poses are fairly mundane, but I was shooting for something that could easily be cut out, moulded and placed elsewhere, without too much finicky nonsense to deal with in the process.
These shots came about for the same reason as the others, only with more of a horror focus. Only a modest shoot with basic makeup elements used, it gave a good insight into the possibly difficulty of shooting like this in the future, with either much more time being needed to allow makeup to be reapplied after more physical shots, or simply a professional makeup artist.
These are all rather irrelevant, but considering my time has been rather heavily focused on design for quite a while, it has been even more of a treat to return to my photographic roots when given the chance. These are a selection of images taken on my course trip to Lisbon, Portugal. A beautiful city filled with vibrant colour, rich history, persistent food sellers and plenty of fish.
These nifty little titles (and the one heading this post) were simple little additions that enabled me to regularly exercise my Photoshop skills, exploring various different tools and techniques previously unused or unheard of to me. Given that I find this topic and area of art so fun, I have absolutely no qualms with setting myself more and more work!
I created all of these pieces in my role as Graphic Designer for my local Students Union, and I can already say I’m fed up of working with the colour green… These were all relatively simple and easy to make, and probably don’t show much progression. Hopefully as time goes on, I will be entrusted with more complicated and possibly more important design tasks.
These are just a few extra pieces I’ve managed to stow under my belt this semester as well, though all these have been for external clients or friends. It really has been a confidence boost, and I might even say and ego boost, when people started coming to me for design solutions. People know me as photographer, now let me know me as a designer!
Here we finally see the little practise projects I set myself recently. These tasks certainly did wonders in helping me understand the most efficient but effective way to build a ‘standard’ movie poster. With these three I have more or less stayed within the ‘ensemble’ style poster, so in the coming months I certainly plan to expand upon that and delve into other styles and genres as well.
To finish off, here are some prototype creative CV’s I drummed up, with a little inspirational help from a few online tutorials. I have no particular preference here, as the one on the right displays my skills with creativity and composition, whilst the other on the left simply conveys more helpful (but perhaps unnecessary) details. The one on the right is a little over saturated, but when printed it looks wonderful. Perhaps I should make some more…
I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed walking through this little digital exhibition. 3 months is a long time in which to improve, and whilst I can see and feel myself getting better at this or that, I still feel I need to kick myself up the butt a little more. But I fear not. I am young, I am beautiful, I will succeed.
Captain Jakk.
