I Am Alive

30.12.13 — Halifax

Yikes.

I’ve been so busy (and lazy) recently that my blog seems to have been abandoned – but fear not, for I have returned to enlighten you as to what I’ve been up to over the past month. Standby for a super long post…

Firstly, I’m back home! It’s so lovely to be back in little old Worsthorne with my family once again, but it is strange not to wake up and see all my flatmates. It’s weird not to be having porridge with Helen, chatting with Em, listening to Kat’s cheesy festive jokes and lending Scott my wok.

I have, of course, settled straight back into my obnoxiously green room, and was immediately set to work with my annual task of directing the entire Christmas decoration operation, including the six (!) Christmas trees that my mother has amassed over the years…

My main challenge was the living room Christmas tree (bottom centre), which is a real tree and which my mum is super protective of. We had a savings tin out all year in which we had to contribute to in order to save up for the purchasing of this tree – my mum was super impressed that we’d surpassed our target by £3 this year. Anyway, it eventually got finished to mine (and my mother’s) exacting standards:

Of course, Christmas passed smoothly due to my mother’s super organisation and the liberal servings of a cauliflower soup made by one of our family friends, a dish which fast become a family favourite years ago as we are given a batch every Christmas. Of course, I very much enjoyed wearing our tacky paper hats, and got right into the Christmas spirit…

As you can see, I was looking rather festive.

In other news, I’ve also embarked on a new project at work, tasked with designing the imminent Burnley Youth Theatre to “Burnley Arts Centre” rebranding!

I shan’t be divulging any of the developed designs as yet, but it’s a design which has to fit in with the existing BYT branding. The new design will be imbued in a new website, brochure and signage, which I’ll be designing over the next few months and will be sure to share once they’re officially launched. Here’s a photo of the results of a few hours of drafting and a lot of printing…

I also spent a morning catching up with my bestie Danni around Burnley town centre – where I purchased this large bauble (as my sole festive adornment for my minimal bedroom, naturally), but which also provided an excellent selfie opportunity…

Lastly, I also went on a quick trip to Halifax (back to Yorkshire!) with my parents a few days back. After reading a marvellous article on The Verge about iPhone photography, and realising that I do in fact own an iPhone 5S which I should probably make good and proper use of, I set out to take a few nice photos on my travels through the old town. Here’s a few snaps from my visit:

All the Halifax photos were taken on an iPhone 5S using either the standard camera app (with AF lock and HDR enabled) or using Pro HDR and all post-processing was done just in VSCO Cam. I uploaded most of these to my Instagram (be sure to follow me) but I opted not to add any of Instagram’s filters as I’d already edited them all.

So that’s my Christmas break so far – but I’m not over yet. I’m currently designing and prepping Issue #4 of Culture On A Shoestring ready for print, and also putting the finishing touches to my website design. After loads of sketching, coding and lots and lots of discarding ideas, I’m finally piecing together a viable design.

For now, however, I must leave you (hopefully not for a whole month again), as this laptop is going to give me square eyes (according to my grandma anyway) – and I really, really ~~need~~ want to use my Lush bath bomb.

Boy, am I going to miss this bath later in January!

I’ve Returned From Art History

03.12.13 — Leeds

Hello there stranger, and I apologise for being so lax on the blog post front, but I’ve been super busy caught up in an Art History essay, which I entitled “From Romanticism to Postmodernism: The Identification and Classification of Artefacts from the 19th Century Onwards.” Sounds delightful, doesn’t it?

Over the past week or so I’ve been working on a new brief for my Graphic Design course, which was to set a given quote as a poster without the use of pre-existing typefaces. I chose a quote by Sylvia Plath, naturally:

The worst enemy of creativity is self doubt.
Sylvia Plath

Anyway, as far as more recent news goes, today I went out with my flatmates Kat and Helen to the Leeds Christmas Carol Concert in the great hall!

It was a lovely evening of festive music in a strikingly beautiful building, which was adorned with suitably festive decorations:

And then, to finish our evening, there was a room full free mince pies and mulled wine which we stayed in for a while to eat, drink and be merry!

Wandering & Writing

07.11.13 — Leeds

Yesterday was a particularly eventful day so I thought I’d bring you up to speed, especially since half a week has gone by…

First up, I’ve been working on some new designs for Burnley Youth Theatre, namely the new building promotional brochure. I’ve embedded a couple of photos below but you can also read the whole thing online here. I opted for some lovely typography and a striking colour choice to clash with the naturally toned hero building images.

But back from Burnley to Leeds, we’ve had some quite charming weather recently (interspaced with periods of deceivingly light showers which soak you to the skin)…

And of course, it was bonfire night on Tuesday! Gutted as I was that I couldn’t seem to track down any treacle toffee from anywhere, me and Danni managed to cook some delicious hot dogs and had a great time watching the fireworks in Hyde Park!

And now this weekend I’ll be off to the German Christmas Market down in Leeds city center – I wandered past it en route to the train station yesterday and it’s coming along at speed!

Brief Feedback Time

03.11.13 — Hebden Bridge

So here I am on a Sunday evening finalising some PDFs to print for a feedback session with my tutor tomorrow morning, in which I’ll get feedback on my (almost) final designs for our first two briefs:

Brief 1 – A personal monogram
Brief 2 – A poster promoting a font

The monograms haven’t really changed all that much since I last posted them on here, but I’ve got a couple of poster designs that I’ll be presenting for the first time.

The first is aimed at designers working in the fashion/clothing markets, and highlights Optima’s frequent and successful use in the marketing of ‘a la mode’ goods through the use of the ‘little black dress’ image (made entirely of brackets and other glyphs).

The second poster is aimed at a similar audience, but utilising a ‘scenario’ with which many fashion workers will be familiar – the queue lines to get into the Pandora stores. Once again, the graphics are all made of glyphs from the Optima font family, and the reddish colour is included to suggest luxury and high fashion (like a red carpet).

So far the main problem is the text alignment on both – they’re both very matching and conventional in their layout. I’m sure my tutor will drag me up on it tomorrow!

Anyway, here’s some little snaps I took on my way back into Leeds from Hebden Bridge, my favourite little town in Yorkshire. Their train station is so charming, and it flooded me with childhood memories, as my dad used to take me and my sister on a return train journey someplace (where we wouldn’t even leave the train – riding the train was an experience in itself!)

So I’ll be sure to write here again – so long as I don’t keel over and die of starvation – I really need to hurry on down to Morrison’s with Em and do some food shopping! I made Spanish omelette tonight which was crap. I’ll leave you on that jovial note.

Home Sweet Home

02.11.13 — Burnley

I’m now back home for this weekend after travelling over on Thursday evening and spending the night in my bed, upon which my mum has kindly piled a frivolous number of pillows and cushions. Spent last night with my sister making some photo frames that we designed together whilst we were on holiday earlier this year, and the finished products look quite nice!

During the day I went on a walk with my mum over the countryside in which my village sits. We followed a path we used to do almost every day over the summer, but the trees and fields are now looking decidedly more autumnal and cool.

We also went out shopping for some new fish, and I found the slow-mo setting on my new phone, a setting which I’m sure I’ll be having some cinematographic fun with in the near future. I also found that it was quite nice to use when trying to get photos of fast-moving objects like these clownfish in the pet shop.

I’ve also been taking the time to finally spend time in and appreciate my room. I’ve been shuffling a few things round and taking some stuff out (naturally) to make it even more simple. If you’ve read my post about designing my bedroom and my post about doing up my uni room then you’ll appreciate the two different extremes of my design vision – one totally cluttered and the other clinically sparse.

So as far as the past couple of days have gone, that’s all I’ve really been up to – well that is, apart from this monotonous art history essay that I’ve to get done over this weekend. But with regards to more exciting things, tonight I’m going out to my friends for a bonfire and a good ol’ brew and a catch up, and I might even take an hour or so out to go wandering over the moors again to take some classically autumn photos. I shall report back if I do so!