codex alimentarius

Wednesday, 6 May 2009

Recently our college had the privilege of not only having a lecture by ‘FakeID’, but we also got up close and personal with Joshua Trees and Yvan Martinez in a one-day brief. The brief entailed being given a photograph of a seemingly random event and creating a dialogue to expand on an otherwise disconnected image. I will update this blog with the results of this experiment as soon as Trees and Martinez post them on their website. This brief was interesting as it dealt with language and communication in a completely different way than we have previously dealt with, in words rather than pictures.

Apart from teaching, ‘FakeID’ also find the time to work for huge corporate companies, and because of their Fine-Art approach they are allowed to be very experimental in terms of their approach to dealing with briefs. Instead of creating posters and other standard forms of artwork, they focus more on the creation of cultural instigations to infiltrate the public in a much more subtle and refreshing way. Other works of note include, ‘LSTN’, which is an online archive of the sound-based experiments they collect whilst working with students (this can be found at: http://www.wefakeid.com/lstn/index.html) and also their range of diverse typographic solutions, such as ‘Placas’, ‘Trader’ and ‘Ghetto Typeface’. ‘FakeID’ have also worked for companies such as ‘NIKE’, ‘Émigré’ and ‘Aiwa’, examples of these typefaces and work will follow.

FakeID Lecture and Workshop (www.wefakeid.com)

Tuesday, 5 May 2009

End-sting, Animation 2

Sunday, 3 May 2009

End-Sting, Animation 1

flash tutorial (www.youtube.com)

Friday, 1 May 2009

Craig Oldham Lecture

Craig Oldham Lecture

Craig Oldham is a relatively young designer who has progressed very quickly in the design scene. He is probably most well known for his book ’12 IN 12’.
Aimed at students, this book informally advises the best-practice techniques of which he experienced in his first twelve months of building a reputation in the design industry. He emphasizes what he considers are the most important factors involved in this process in twelve steps.

1. Understand what Graphic Design means to you.
2. Be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses.
3. A portfolio is for life, not just for an interview.
4. Placements matter. Do them.
5. The Design industry is small, everyone knows everybugger else.
6. Participate with other people and share your ideas.
7. Graphic Design is just a job, but being a designer is different.
8. Fall off your bike. If you don't fail then you are not trying.
9. Life and work exist outside of London.
10. Designing is only, about, 20% of your job.
11. Have a life outside of Design.
12. Work hard and be nice to people.

As his graduation was fairly recent and his advances into the field have been so fast, the experience he gained is still very much fresh in his memory. The book is produced with a particular emphasis on typography, and gained Craig the following awards and nominations:

1. The ‘Certificate of Typographic Excellence’ from the ‘Type Directors Club, New York 2009’.
2. Bronze for ‘Best Use of Typography’, ‘The Roses Design Awards 2008’.
3. Nominated for ‘Best Promotional Brochure’ at ‘The Fresh Awards 2008’.

His lecture was simple, informal and humorous, and contained specific referenced his background and his book. It seems Craig has done very well in a substantially short amount of time, and comes across as a great role model for all graphic design students.