Instagram #2

- Sofa shopping in ikea - A nice email I got from a design company - My hair is getting long! - Doodling food in work because I was hungry - Costa, pasta, cous cous and falafel - Cosy in my new scarf - I made a instagram frame for my room like Louise on Sprinkle of Glitter! - A band t-shirt kind of day - I made steak, potato rosti, garlic mushroom and veg for dinner - Amazing full english - Driving to Bristol with Matt - Mini golf in Bristol - 

I will be blogging more soon I promise!

Instagram #1

- My iPod dock - A terrible photo of my homemade katsu curry - Japanese beer - Crash bandicoot warped - McDonalds breakfast at 7 in the morning - Duck with parsnip puree, blueberry jus and veg - Breakfast, smoked salmon, crumpets and scrambled egg - Cocktails at Peppermint bar - My blue cocktail - Yo! sushi buffet - Spicy tuna sushi - Old photo I took at Boy's village -

I've decided to start posting my instagram photo's on here each week, which kind of shows what I've been up to! This is the first lot from the last week.

Follow me on instagram on: @rachieface

:)

Beyond the Visible Spectrum. x

Learning Web Design

I've realised, more-so lately, that there's a lot of competition when applying for jobs in the design industry. This has made me want to improve some of my skills, to make me more attractive to potential employers.

I learnt a bit about web design and development in university, but only very basic stuff, like very simple CSS and HTML, so I have set myself the challenge to learn to make websites in my spare time.

Firstly, I looked into doing a course in a nearby college and didn't find anything that really seemed like something I wanted to do. I then looked into online courses. A lot of them had some crazy price-tags and one said it would take me 6 years to complete, which is definitely too long!

After looking at different blogs and websites which gave advice on how to learn web design, I found a website called Treehouse. 

It's an American website, which consists of videos, quizzes and challenges, which help you learn. Not only does it teach you how to make websites, using CSS, HTML, etc, but it also teaches web development, Javascript and programming, and also iOS development, which is making iPhone and iPad apps. 

Click screenshot to go through to website.

This membership isn't free, but isn't too expensive to join. It costs $25 per month for a silver account and $49 per month for a gold membership. To be honest, there's not a lot of difference, all it is is that with gold you get project videos and conference talks, so I went for the silver membership, which has, so far, been just fine for me. 

I'm still not yet a website making genius, but I have definitely learnt a lot from this site! I would definitely reccommend if you struggle to take in information from big boring books. This website is very interactive, after each set of videos there is a quiz about what you've just been taught and also a 'coding challenge' where you are told what you need to do on the website template and you then write the code for it.

To learn to make websites, I have also found a few books that are great and have been really helpful. I will be blogging about these in another post! :)


Beyond the Visible Spectrum. x

My Creative CV

I've definitely neglected this blog, so I'm really sorry! Third year was stressful, then I had graduation and now I have a job (sadly not a creative job), but enough of the excuses and on to what this post is actually about, my design CV.

In my third year, we were asked to design a design/creative CV. We were told to design something that would really stand out and stop companies just placing our CV under a pile of paperwork or chucking it in the bin. So I decided to make mine in a box, something that would sit on a potential employers desks and really stand out.

For the first draft of this, I made the box myself out of cardboard, but then realised this looked messy and unprofessional, so I bought some pre-made boxes from Hobby craft. I then added a sleeve in a red/orange colour and put my logo on it.

Inside the box I added a few things, stickers of my logo and little pencil stickers, as well as a few of my business cards, which are shown below (I've had to take out my personal details). My business cards were printed by moo.

Then my actual CV is a small book, which also shows examples of my work. I then also have a cover letter, which isn't that interesting, so I haven't taken photos of it. 

Front cover of the CV book.

Introduction page and an example of my Little White Lies project.

About me page and my Dracula book cover.

Skills page and Zushi logo.

Work experience and Achievements and a photo of my fabric book.

Education and my sewn magazine cover.

Education continued and my 'grow your own' project.

Personal information and my recipe card.

I'm hoping sending these CV's out will stand out to potential employers. Keep your fingers crossed for me! :)

Beyond the Visible Spectrum. x

What I've been listening to this week

So I've been listening to quite a range of albums this week. Some old, some kind of new.

1. Contact, contact - Tellison
I've seen these guys three times in the past few months, thanks to my friend, who gets us guestlisted and they're awesome. Such catchy music and such great songs.

2. Nothing worth having comes easy - Saves the day
These guys are from my hometown, so I've seen them a fair few times. This album is so catchy, not sure about the new singer yet, but otherwise really great album.

3. What are you so scared of? - Tonight Alive
I've loved these guys for a couple of years now, they're from Australia and have just started to make it big and have brought out an album (which even has guest vocals from Mark Hoppus!). I went to see them in Pontypridd the other day and met them, which was really cool, they're such nice guys. The album itself is awesome, I like every song, which is really unusual for me!

4. Relationship of Command - At the Drive In
Love love love this album and have done for years. So glad these guys are coming back!

5. This will be the death of us - Set Your Goals
Amazing band. Amazing album.

6. Hold on now, youngster - Los Campesinos
My friend would make fun of me for listening to this, but I don't care. Catchy songs. My boyfriend describes them as sounding like Little Big Planet.

7. Romance - Tubelord
Saw these guys the other day, I'd never listened to them before, but this is such a good album.

8. Full Collapse - Thursday
I've loved this band and this album for years. The songs sound so epic and have such great lyrics. Saw these guys last year and I acted like a proper fangirl. Amazing.

9. Sound the Alarm - Saves the Day
Such a good band, such a good album.



xoxox

YCN Competition Brief

In our third year of university, we were asked to choose from a variety of competition briefs from the YCN website (here). I chose the Marks and Spencer brief, which requested a design for a themed picnic, to be sold in Marks and Spencer's stores. I chose to do a Traditional Japanese picnic. I started off by looking at traditional bento boxes and the typical style of these. I looked at how the food was served in these and found out that some were set out in courses, with boxes that stacked up in the order of which they were to be eaten. I used this idea to create the inside boxes of the packaging. Each box stacks up in the order it's eaten, starting with starter, then main course, dessert and ending with 'extras'. Each box has the Japanese and English for the course it is written on the top and then inside it has the Japanese for each food and a brief description of it. The starter box contains sushi, a cucumber and nashi (Japanese pear) salad and duck gyoza (dumplings). The main course box includes tempura prawns with a soy dip and a spicy flavoured rice. The dessert box contains mochi (sweet rice cakes), dorayaki (Japanese pancakes) with a raspberry dip and Strawberries. The 'Extras" box contains a Pomegranate and Green Tea Juice drink, chopsticks, soy sauce and some 'learn Japanese cards' and 'learn Origami cards'. I kept the boxes traditional bento box colours, black on the outside and a dark red on the inside. For the outside, I wanted to have it with a handle, to make it easier to carry around. I looked at Japanese patterns, ranging from kimono patterns to Japanese art. I ended up looking at the Japanese blue and white china patterns and designed my own. For the label on the front I used a simplistic type and put the Marks and Spencer logo on.

This is my finished picnic. I created a chopstick holder and bottle label in the same style. The packaging shown isn't to scale, as the bottle and chopsticks would be able to go inside the box.

This is the pattern I designed for the packaging, made up into an origami crane, as shown on the 'learn origami cards'

This is my bottle label design, designed in the same style as the packaging.

Learn Japanese cards. Teaching very basic Japanese to beginners. Ties in with the traditional Japanese experience.

Learn origami cards, showing how to do make an origami crane and an origami panda.


xoxox

Boys Village, near Barry (Photography Post)

So on the 21st I went with two friends to take photos at 'Boys Village' near Barry. It was such a cool place, my photos don't do it justice at all and I recommend going there if you're near by.
It's pretty vandalized now and there's loads of graffiti, but it made it even more interesting to photograph.
This is what Wikipedia says about the place:
"Philanthropist David Davies, 1st Baron Davies of Llandinam and president of the Ocean Coal Company was first inspired to build a holiday camp for the sons of miners from the South Wales Coalfield in the early 1920s. Opened on August 8th 1925, the camp offered them an escape from the polluted and unhealthy atmosphere of Valleys industrial towns and a place to play and be free, as well as being close to the nearby beach. Over the years its usage developed to include the teaching of apprenticeships and new skills and a youth hostel was opened on site.

The buildings included a dining hall, dormitories, a gym, swimming pool, workshops, a church and even a war memorial. There was also a full-sized cricket pitch, putting green, tennis courts, football and rugby grounds and a pavilion.

The camp was requisitioned in 1940 for military use but returned to civilian use in 1945. With the nationalisation of the coal industry ownership passed to the National Association of Boys’ Clubs, an organisation that supported working boys from the ages of 14 to 18.

The site declined with the growth of cheap holidays abroad and the decline in coal mining in the Welsh valleys and subsequently closed in 1991."


When I went I took my digital camera, my diana camera and my agilux agifold camera, which is yet to be developed.

More of my photos and work can be found on my Flickr, which is here

xoxox

Packaging Research

So, at the moment I am doing a packaging project. It's another competition brief, but this time is for m&s.
I've been researching packaging a lot lately, so I thought it'd be useful if I posted the best packaging blogs I found.

Here they are:

The Dieline

FormFortyFive

Packaging of the World

Lovely Package

Hope these are useful :)
I will hopefully be doing a few design book reviews soon, and maybe a post about packaging books :)

xoxox

Little White Lies

For our second Brief in university this year, we were asked to choose a competition brief to complete. I chose the Little White Lies Brief. The brief asked for one cover design, and we could choose from a selection of 5 films. I chose to do a cover for Black Swan. I kind of struggled with this brief, as I wanted to do something different to the covers that had been done before. I tried out loads of techniques, and then ended up deciding to sew Natalie Portman's face (the cover had to have the main character of the film on the front). My design started off looking way too perfect for the nature of the film, so I turned the design round, made it a bit more messy and had that as the cover.

Even though the design was kind of a mistake, I think that it references the film a lot more. The threads look as if they're taking over her face, like the black swans personality is taking over the characters in the film. I also added in features of the black swan, like the make up on the eyes.

As I used my own pencil drawn illustration to sew over, some of the lines from that are still showing through, giving it a bit more detail.

I'm not overly happy with this design, I need to make a lot of improvements before sending it off for the competition.

But, yeah, that's my latest work :)

xoxox

Magazine Inspiration

The last project in university I did was designing a magazine cover. I tried to find websites or blogs about magazine design but am yet to find an interesting one. So here are some magazine covers I love. Sorry I don't have the source of all of them, some are mine and have been scanned in and some are from random searches on the internet, but I'm sure if you google the titles, you will be able to find them.
I think these covers are a good range, which can give you a lot of inspiration for a magazine cover project.

In the next post I will blog about my finished magazine cover for this project.

xoxox