Professional Practice – Week 12

Posted the first of this week’s final assessment today. It’s always an interesting mix of relief and anxiety when you see an assessment fall into the drop box – you never really know how it’ll fare on its own. Nevertheless, it was nice to get one out of the way.

Because this project is now unlikely to be installed in a public space (at least in the scheme of next semester), it was difficult to continue working in a headspace of imagining that it would be. This isn’t a problem in terms of how my work is marked, but did make the process slower than when I felt as though I was working towards a real outcome.

I’m posting the final assessment on this blog purely as something that may prove of interest to someone else – note that none of the figures are anything more than an educated guess and shouldn’t be quoted.

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Professional Practice – Week 11

The final assessment for Professional Practice is due next week, for which a physical business card is part. This is the only element of this project that I was able to get printed commercially, so I thought it was worth a post of its own.

At the start of the semester, I had grand plans for the physical business card (as opposed to the electronic version, which was required for the first assessment). I was thinking along the lines of die cuts, or some clever paper mechanics, however in the end, I chose to do a complete 180 and keep things very basic by being as environmentally aware as possible.

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Professional Practice – Week 06

I most definitely disappeared into After Effects over the past couple of weeks. Somehow I had it in my mind that I could output a vector animation from AE and keep it nice and lightweight for PDF presentations and the web, just like Flash. Wrong. Similarly to Photoshop, even though you can create vector shapes in AE, they will be rendered out as pixels and therefore chomp up disc space pretty quickly. Figuring this out only after spending an inordinate amount of time struggling with the software was kind of embarrassing. Chalk that one up to experience…

This work was the lead-up to our first of just two Professional Practice assessments this semester, where we are asked to present a project proposal brief, along with some self-promoting work (resume, business card etc). I decided that it made sense to use my Digital Studio work as the subject, as I’m already having to present concepts to some serious people, like Council.

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Professional Practice – Week 05

The logo work for angryPixel feels like it’s nearing a conclusion. Via some experiments animating the work I’d done in Illustrator, I made some cosmetic changes to the greyscale version that I wrapped up last week.

I’m in two minds about breaking up the horizontal-ness throughout each of the elements, but for now I think I’ll leave it be. I’m in danger of over-cooking things already and really should be moving on to rolling it out across a screen-based business card and letterhead.

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Professional Practice – Week 04

The logos for angryPixel, angryPixel Design and this blog have seen their share of changes. I have a fairly short attention span and haven’t been happy with what I’ve turned out in the past, so I keep ‘updating’ the designs.

This has probably been compounded in that I have split angryPixel up unnecessarily, giving me more visual identities to create. This week, I have decided that things need reeling in a little, so any of my production or design work will simply come under the ‘angryPixel’ title, with a ‘by Scott’ at the end. This blog will serve (as it does now) as a process diary and for me to ramble on about whatever takes my fancy at the time.

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Professional Practice – Week 03

With my Digital Studio/Professional Portfolio project beginning to take shape, there’s now a little more direction for the first Professional Practice assessment. The task here is to create a project proposal and provide all the supporting documentation to go along with it. The business-orientated documents, like a business card, letterhead and resume don’t need to be project-specific, however the project summary, aims and methodology will provide an excellent opportunity to knead out some finer project details.

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Professional Practice – Week 02

Class

We looked at a wide gamut of visual identities this week. Self-promoting objects like business cards and logos find themselves in the visual ID camp, and these are going to be part of what we need to produce for this subject.

Obviously in the creative industry, your standard bone coloured business card isn’t going to cut it. There seemed to be an endless train of alternative solutions: etched razor blades, rubber, pop-up cards, stamps and so on and on and on and on… Clearly the message is to think outside the square and to create something that makes you stand out. My challenge will be to create something that doesn’t rely on a graphic to connect me to my work. I would prefer to remind potential employers/clients about my interactive, installation and motion work.

Having said that, I do need some kind of graphic element that will link parts of my visual ID together. A logo is the obvious place to begin and would be rolled out across several media types: business cards, stationary (letterheads, invoices etc), web sites, promotion and all the vehicles that I don’t have.

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Professional Practice – Week 01

Class

This is a subject I have been looking forward to, and especially useful for our final undergrad year. Professional Practice looks at some of the drier – but nonetheless extremely important – realities when working in creative industries.

Stepping out of the lecture theatre, I overheard the whining toward a theory-based subject that by this stage is getting familiar… and tiresome. I guess it’s my (limited) experience doing freelance design that has made me so keen to learn about contracts, copyright, intellectual property and how to present yourself well. Learning through experience might be important, but at times it’s pretty painful.

It wasn’t just paperwork that held my attention though. Our lecturer made the point that as Australians, we shy away from calling ourselves artists in the creative industry. I can relate to that. This sparked thoughts about what title I should give myself when people ask that dreaded question: “So, what do you do?”.

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