DLKW Lowe - Evaluation and final day

As we walked in on our final day, there was definitely a feeling of sadness and nerves for Sadie and me. We'd really started feeling at home at this agency, recognising people, knowing people's names... being recognised and smiled at as we walked past. These are all things we normally take for granted, but the fact that these were all professionals we were trying to impress over such a short time was a good sign. 

We went around all the people we worked with over our time here and thanked them personally for the time we took up, also asking them for their e-mail addresses for future contact, and each and every one of them told us to keep in touch and that they would be more than happy to give us feedback on anything we send them.  This will be incredibly useful in my practice... and correspondence will help me with future placements, I am going to try and keep a constant flow of emails going, so they remember who I am. 

I was most sad when we went down to say goodbye to Richard and Remco, who had been so good to us in the first week, who took time out of their busy days to give us briefs, to catch up and give us feedback and to organise all sorts of meetings to get our ideas into reality. They seemed genuinely impressed with our progress over the two weeks saying "I hope you come back here, you're really cool and you've really got 'it'" and then telling us that our ideas will be going to the clients next week and they will let us know how it goes. 

For Natalie, the creative services director who organised the whole thing, we bought a huge orchid to put on her desk... we decided to do this rather than a bouquet as she can keep it... and subsequently remember us whenever she looks at it. She then told me that I could come back in the summer because we had done so well. THEY WANT ME BACK FOR THE SUMMER FOR A LONGER SPELL OF WORK EXPERIENCE!!!! We are going to organise this formally in the next week or so. She also said that she had received brilliant feedback from everyone who had worked with us and that they were all very impressed with us. 

Safe to say, we left with a glow. 

I am so happy I did this. I now have a much better idea of what kind of career I would like to pursue. I very much enjoyed the conceptual part of the placement. Coming up with ideas. And it seems I am actually rather good at it, this gave Natalie a much better idea of what I would like to do in the summer. 

I have also come out of this a much more rounded designer, with a lot more focus on what I want to achieve out of the course. There is a finish line and I am now so focused on getting there, that hard work is the answer. I was feeling a bit disenheartened in parts of last term... really not feeling any direction coming out of the work I was producing. A little lost you might say. I have not had one day on this 'break' where I haven't worked, both for the agency and for the course. I am genuinely happy with how much more focused and excited I am about it all now. I have the world ahead of me and this has been a brilliant boost. I have a completely new outlook. I really needed it. 

Typogateaux - DLKW Lowe style

So we were sitting at our desks getting on with our WHSmith brief... when Richard Holmes came upstairs to tell us that there is a royal wedding themed cake competition at 3.30 and we have to vote for his 3 tiered pork pie wedding cake wonder... with Wills and Kate formed out of pastry. 

We immediately name-dropped typogateaux and that they had stolen Amber's idea... that went down well. 

Slightly different vibes around this cake competition... lots of champagne. 

But there were some brilliant creations. And it was a really good opportunity to mingle and meet other creatives around the company. 

Some photos.

Not quite up to the standard of LCA, but a lovely afternoon nonetheless. 

The last day!!!

Today we are finishing up the WHSmith branding and advert layout brief. I've been here 25 minutes and I've already learnt things about type I didn't know. 

Guy really is a brilliant typographer. Everyone in the office keeps talking about the fact he is the best they have encountered in their time in the industry. I feel really privileged having him give us so much of his time to help explain things.

So we had a little progress crit where he gave his opinions on which one of my logos to use and what little things I could do to them to make them look better. 

So he chose the one which looked more sophisticated, but at the same time friendly. 

He taught me about spacing, and how, even though it may be right, the way it looks is deceiving and should override this. He also told me that it is easier to edit the spacing if the logo is upside down, as we don't read the letters... just see them as objects. 

My final design is the bottom one. Slight alterations have been made to make it perfect. 

I also learnt that certain letters have an ink well... little dents in the character which allows space for ink to spill out, making the curve better in print. 

The make the character look very strange close up. 

Now it is time to find the perfect type for the body of the advert. 

These are typefaces I like and am going to show Sadie for her opinion. 

This is my final advert.
We used a typeface called 'Corinthian' for the body type. It was one that we both chose due to both it's readability and because of it's respectable pound sign.
I think, for my first real piece of layout and branding - not too bad.
Guy said it was brilliant what we both came up with in our day and a half of working on it. He seemed genuinely impressed. Which left us with a very gratified buzz.

DLKW Lowe - Day 3 in the studio - WHSmith type & layout brief

So today we have been set a type and layout brief. To re-vamp WHSmith's magazine and newspaper campaign. They want to take a leaf out of Waterstone's books and make their logo and campaign a lot more modern and appealing to a younger audience. They liked the fact that Waterstone's simply turned the hmv 'm' upside down to create the 'W'. 

Guy Sexty, the head of type, told us that it would be better to use a serif typeface if we are making the whole name lowercase (which he quite liked the idea of) because changing to a serif and changing the case would be too much of a change... or make it sans-serif but keep the change in case. 

He also introduced us to new web-based font tools. 

www.myfonts.com - The World's largest collection of professional fonts.

www.fontscape.com - Typeface directory, can identify fonts by mood.

www.identifont.com - To find and identify fonts and similar ones.

A few points I picked up...

Headlines in Impact instantly look old-fashioned. 

2 typefaces across an ad is ideal - one for logo, one for content. We need to find a typeface which works well small and has good numerals. 

So on we go. 

We have also been given access to about 5000 fonts on their server. The choice is mind-boggling!

These are some of the companies that WHSmith want to base their designs around.  Contemporary companies who use modern design in their branding.
Quick mood-board.

So I have decided to focus on re-working the logo using both uppercase and lower... like it is already, just re-vamping it by using a sans-serif typeface.
So I have been trawling through and these are some of the ones I have liked.

Obviously I am going to change and adapt certain aspects of these fonts that I don't quite like.
I showed this list to Guy and he spent a while trying to identify the ones they had on the server... and if not, either buying them, or matching them up to similar ones they have.
He also showed me how to do more character alterations than I already knew how to do... which is going to be very helpful in my own practice.
Guy is incredibly quick on illustrator and knows his fonts off the top of his head, amazing to see someone be able to find ones that are similar instantaneously. He will be amazing to have in my address book if I ever need help or feedback on my own work.


After this I decided to alter one of the typefaces which I liked called Variable but which they did not have on the system. I was advised of a typeface which was similar called AGBookRoundedBQ and play around with the parts which were different. This is my first time actually adapting type on Illustrator so I quite enjoyed the little induction that Guy gave us. It is going to be very useful.

Playing around with the 'm'

The two separate typefaces, one is a screengrab. 

The finished product.

After showing Guy, he noticed some more problems with the 'm' and showed me a nifty little way of solving it.

Make a single stroke through the character.

Fatten it up to the desired stroke size. 

Expand and fit it to the character. 

Copy and reverse the image and place together. 

Go to the path finder and make it into one single object. 

This is another one which I liked. I like the way the little serif on the 'm' follows the 'S'

Some more ideas...

We now have to choose a font which will go for the body text. Considerations for this are... the '1' needs to look different to a lower case 'l'... and the £ needs to be nice (there are some really ugly ones out there!!)

Also, a font family which has a good medium and heavy weights for different parts of the body. 

More trawling through typefaces for me now!!

Day 2 on Flash...

So today I have been trying to really put my concept into context by adding textures to the assets... and starting to make my characters.

This is the new wall which closes in on the bike.

This is the texture I imported into Illustrator to create the wall. 

(Another little skill I developed this Easter break)

This is the flash screen for the setup.

 A part of my timeline with a few keyframes. 

 Going deeper into the animation... this is tween 1 where the information for the walls is stored.

I have learnt a lot in these two days. Both experimenting myself with different aspects of the programmes and being taught by Steve and Rob... who dubbed me 'Ellie the Illustrator' which was nice. 

Again, I have to say, people at this agency seem full of time and advice for us. So incredibly accommodating. 

Tomorrow I am going to go around and ask everyone who has helped us for their e-mail addresses. Both to send personal thank yous for the experiences that they have given me this week... and for future reference so that I can get feedback and advice about my work. 

Another very fulfilling day at DLKW Lowe. 

I love this place. 

Now I am giving myself an evening off and going out for dinner with my uncle.

Luke Skywalker design

Today, as part of our flash and illustrator working I decided to incorporate a bit of Star Wars into my designs. So I spent the day trying to do something I've wanted to learn for a while... and now I have the opportunity. To vector up a line drawing of a person... and the end result to actually look like a person.

Work in progress...

The photo I was trying to trace. I was advised by one of the team to live trace it... that defies all the purpose of the exercise... although it sure would be a lot quicker.

Line drawing...

Adding shading. 

This all took me a lot longer than I expected... a good 6 hours. Youch. Now to try and incorporate it into my Flash advert...

Email correspondance with Simon Gosling, Senior producer at Framestore

DLKW Lowe - Upstairs in the Studio - Day 1

So today was our first day up in the studio with the designers. A complete change of scene and atmosphere. Very much a male environment up here. 

Just from looking around at people's screens you can see that these people are incredible at what they do, working on all sorts of programmes to make the ideas that come from downstairs a reality. 

We were introduced to Steve, who set us our tasks for the day. He was incredibly helpful all throughout the day, answering any questions we had, both about the industry that he works in and the programme he was showing us... it was time to learn Flash. 

At first, I thought that this was very similar to AfterEffects... if a little easier! Then I realised about the possibilities that came with it. 

By the end of the week, I am hoping to have an interactive web advert created. 

We decided to work on the Halford's brief we were given last week... to make some of our ideas into a reality. This is where we split off, taking two ideas forward. 

So much to take in in just 6 hours, but I am very happy with the amount I have learnt today. Even learnt a bit of scripting to get the programme to work how I wanted to. 

My idea is based on a scene from Star Wars... where two walls close in and something blocks them, stopping the characters being squashed. In this instance, that blocker will be the Halford's bike that we are trying to portray as strong and durable. 

So I started by vectoring up a bike on illustrator and then importing the different assets into Flash, then working in different layers to get the wheels spinning parented to the actual frame of the bike... in turn getting this to rise up the screen and blocking the incoming walls. 

By the end of the week I want this to be interactive, to get people on the internet being able to move this bike around and blocking the walls themselves. I also want there to be a lot more detail than the simple vector images I have come up with today. 

Bit of coding. 

stop(); - to stop a timeline

Again, a day filled with skills I can take back to Leeds and use in my practice. 

I am loving these two weeks more than I can quite explain. I feel a lot more certain about my skills and have a new direction. I have something to strive for.