Personal Christmas Card

Decided to design our own personal Christmas card based on the Peskimo design seen earlier. Their piece had a loose Christmas feel to it that I wanted to develop and personalise. Their are also undertones of Airside in the lozenge-style character design. The whole idea was in part prompted by work on the Bren Project's Christmas card which is being printed by I Will Print in Telford. At £15 for 50 A5 cards, with envelopes, it was too good an offer to ignore.

I was pretty pleased with the results particularly when you see the nature of the printer's premises. It also gave me a first opportunity to deal directly with a printer on a brief over which I had complete control.

Glyndwr University Christmas Cards

I wanted this to be a minor short-term brief to run alongside the lengthier more demanding work that I've undertaken.

I knew from the beginning that due to the university's recent zesty re-branding, I wanted to try and incorporate it into the design. I brainstormed and researched the extent of Christmas symbolism and came up with a number of designs - probably 10 in total. I also reviewed images of the types of Christmas cards that appeal to me.

I wanted the cards to reflect the clean dynamism of the new brand and incorporate some of the style found in the products of Paperchase. I was also influenced by the work of illustrator/designer Laura Ljungkvist.

Where I could, I also decided to make a play on the stylised g of the Glyndwr logotype, using it to embellish seasonal phrases such as Season's Greetings and Glad Tidings.

I think the cards, while not particularly pushing any boundaries, hit the client's needs and objectives fairly square on. I'm sure that given more time I would have reworked the designs to offer them further depth but who knows, in doing that, I might have wrecked their simplicity. I know some people might say that as a degree level art student I should be playing with installations, light projections and barbed wire, but part of life as a design communications student is to respond to the needs of the client. It's a commercial skill worth developing. Besides I've yet to hear a coherent and logical argument that explains why the Christmas card is a lesser art form.

In submitting the designs for consideration I also presented the notion, originally suggested by Pauline, that the university might, in future, like to consider producing a series of designs for general sale aimed at generating funds for the university itself or for charity. I need to consider ways of developing extended strategies like this more spontaneously myself.

Sand Rose Project - Map & Directions

The Sand Rose Project commissioned me to produce a location map in two forms to use with clients and other interested parties. I produced a vector-based scaleable version that can be used by the charity in a variety of formats.

One version is aimed at beneficiaries about to use the facility, the other is more specifically targeted at those invited to public events organised by the charity.

Bren Project Christmas Card

I was commissioned by the charity that I am involved in to produce their corporate Christmas card for 2008. The organisation's logo features nine circles and all of the presented designs made a play on this. The image selected is reproduced below.

Bren Project Website

I recently undertook a redesign of the Bren website. The original site was created about 18 months ago long before the charity had really got off the ground. At the time my experience of building sites was zero and I had taken the opportunity to essentially teach myself Dreamweaver. My understanding is a little more advanced now and we have just taken the first photographs of the charity's projects in action.

Time was right then to move the charity's web presence on a bit. I'm quite pleased with the result. The new site is clean and positive and reflects the character of the charity more closely. One of the trustees described it as being 'more our own'. I think the handwritten type and personalised images help to create this effect along with the addition of new features such as case studies and opportunities to work with the charity.

Once the new site started to take shape, I found that I was much more capable of planning ahead and organising elements of each page. This makes everything much more time effective. I still don't know enough about the technical side of site building such as HTML and CSS. What I have learnt so far has been by feeling my way but it concerns me that I'm attempting to create things where there are huge gaps in my knowledge.

I also find it quite difficult to visualise designs on paper before building. I sketched out a rough layout in advance but much of the design was realised on the fly as a result of play. Maybe looking at and considering the structure of more websites might help in this respect.