I updated my website...

Now it has the whole of my final major project book on it, called 'The Uncooperative'.



Still no luck with jobs yet either, if any employers are looking at this (I don't expect so...) EMPLOY ME :D

My Final Major Project book is BACK...

I got it back from the printers today, so I'm very happy, but I've still got to make my box, which is very frustrating, and I've got to cut my jacket to fit, but apart from that, i should be all good right now :D

Some website lovin;;;'

So I just pretty much finished the website for our college show. We've yet to decide on a name for it, but I think that it'll be decided by the end of tomorrow, mainly because we're going to put them on the postcards. I have used all of the images of the deskspaces as the gallery, and used each individual desk space on each persons page. I have also created thumbnails of their portfolio work, and created a image preview application where a preview appears above the page with the larger versions of the images (this took me bloody ages to figure out), but they're looking good with everyones work (except for jasons whos image sizes I need to sort out)). So there we have it.

Block Foil Front Cover

Wow, second post in the same day.

I must say, that doesn't normally happen. So my book is nearly finished, it's been printed and is currently being bound. I've made a poster of the spreads from the book, which I like, for my exhibition. Here it is.

UPDATE: I changed it a little to look like a receipt, as I'm going to have it attached to the top coming off a roll of paper.

So we're not allowed to eat in the studio.

So what do you do when you get told this information?

You make a poster. Like this. Just in case a scalpel falls into your sandwich.

Some Typographic Transcipture.

A double page spread of a transcript I made from a set of conversations I recorded at a supermarket between a supermarket checkout operator and customer.

My 15th Post - iTunes Top Played Song

So I got an email along with the rest of the class from the lovely Lauren Baker of Graphic Media Year 3 at Colchester Institute: School of Art & Design (and Tiny Sketchbook blog) with the following brief:
"Most people have an ipod/mp3 player of some sort. If you don't, you get to make yours up ;) in your itunes/media player of choice there should be a 'top 25 most played'. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to illustrate your most played song (which is technically your favourite song, i suppose) ... a few people asked if they could make theirs up and of course there's no way of telling whether you do or not, but it makes it more fun if you don't lie and we all know if martyn's isn't a girls aloud song then he's definitely bending the truth a little (I'M KIDDING)."

I'm not going to say I was overly happy with the last bit, but I guess it's slightly true :P (but unfortunately, I didn't have Girls Aloud in my Top 5 :( (the highest was number 27 as a matter of fact).

So I had the idea for mine whilst in bed with manflu, I had a rough idea, but then adapted to be in a similar style to a designers work that I found online that I liked. I thought this would be a great opportunity to experiment with something a little different to what I've done before too. I wanted to make the songs look a bit like movie posters, with a line of the song as if it were a tagline, and a really simple three-colour colour scheme with only text and blocks or lines of colour as the image.

I have uploaded them in the order of my Top 5 on iTunes :)

A complete little part of my book

This is the first part of my book that I have designed. It is for my Final Major Project and is a piece that I will photograph within the supermarket. The idea is that all the offers are rubbish, but the overall look emulates the styles that are used. By copying this style, it will mean the reader may be initially unaware of the subtle changes, as I have focused of language that is normally used within this environment, such as Buy One Get One Free (Buy One Get None Free) and Two For The Price Of One (One For The Price Of Two). I've used darker colours as I don't want the offers to stand out, whereas normal supermarkets use bright primary colours to attract attention. And although the overall project idea is to hightlight crap things that go on in supermarkets, doing so in this subtle, dull coloured way reflects the complete opposite of what supermarkets stand for.

My Shiny New Website

I just redesigned my website www.martynhazell.co.uk.

End of Year Exhibition Promotion.

This is my deskspace. I used my Macbook Pro at the center of the image, because I feel that I couldn't do any work without it. I used books to the left and redesigned their covers with quotes that related to my studio practice (even thought you can hardly see them). I displayed my typeselecter as it shows my interest in typography, and having diet coke and a donut in the foreground, it showed my love of fizzy drinks and unhealthy food. I wanted my desk to have a slightly cluttered feel, but at the same time be quite organised, because that is the way I work. Displayed on my laptop is my website (www.martynhazell.co.uk), and the sheets in front of the books are my CV designs. Draped over the chair is my Harry Potter 'Gryffindor' scarf, with my Harry Potter book in display on the stack of books. Finally, I used two images on the wall, the photo of a group of us meeting the legendary Neville Brody and a quote that I find really relates well to my practice and my dissertation.

The idea behind the desk space photographs for promotion was when Neville Brody at a lecture in November 2009 said that many degree courses in design have limited class space, let alone an individual desk space... of which we have :). This, therefore, does not just reflect our own way of working, but the college as a whole.

Photograph taken by Laura Potter, you can view her brilliant work at: www.laura-potter.com, or visit her blog http://laurajpotter.blogspot.com/.

ISTD True Stories: True Geographies Finished :)

So I finished my ISTD brief, here are the final photos with added envelope. Im rather happy with them now. Ask me a few weeks ago, and I would have said different lol.

ISTD True Stories: True Geographies

Experimenting with the story of a night out has allowed me to incorporate many aspects of design, as opposed to creating a purely typographic solution. The nature of the project has given me the opportunity to use photography and my concept choice has meant I have been able to design different medias including the pub posters, as well as the final book.

I feel that my experimentation with the book format takes the reader on a journey and really makes the reader become a part of it through the twists and turns (literally) of the night.

In terms of readability, I realise that the overall design may be slightly overwhelming. Using white text on a black background reflects the night setting, and incorporated with the way the type size gradually increases to give it a drunk feel successfully shows the development of the night. Understandably, readability is slightly lost because of this choice, but I felt this was needed as it gave a great coherence with the imagery. It is because of this that I included design choices such as a graduated colour at the start of each new sentence, as well as a specific typeface to reflect each character. This attempt to increase readability meant that the reader can successfully identify where to read and adds an aesthetic quality the piece.

Different typographic choices for each venue allowed me to reflect my knowledge about the characteristics of typefaces, and how they can be used in accordance with other objects to reflect historical or social features. Choosing serif typefaces for traditional venues, and sans serif typefaces for modern venues and using them in multiple places within the book meant there would be a substantial coherence to the piece.

As I referred to before, I used a graduated colour to reflect the start of a new sentence within the block of text to increase readability. I experimented greatly with different ways to increase readability initially, but found that this solution worked most successfully because I had used the graduated style previously within the path of text that flowed between images on the reverse of the book. Using the idea of graduating the colour of the text leading up to the images meant that the abrupt halt of a newly introduced colour distracted the reader, hence by slowly and subtly blending the colour to match the pub name it allowed for the readers eye to flow a lot easier.

The overall book structure suggests that the nights out are always busy around the town. With different narratives flowing from one page to the next, it keeps the reader aware and having the text dividing itself at certain parts of the page, gives the reader the ability to move on of their own accord. By making the reader consider each different typographic narrative means that they have to work a little to understand the information they have been given.

The complete aesthetics of the piece are interesting and I feel that they successfully reflect the brief through the way the typography is used within media already found around the town, which is then merged with my own typographic narrative. I feel the conjunction between photographic and computer manipulated type work well together throughout the development of the books structure, with the conclusive paragraph bringing all aspects of the concept together.

"So what you have for instance, is 600 students on a Graphic Design course at London College of Communication who have no desks.

- Neville Brody.

Photographing our desk space for our group uni photographs. I made some book covers in the same style of the books I used, with quotes in relation to my own graphic design practice. I will use these as a part of the overall photograph, I'm still not sure what I'm putting on the rest of it though.