New Blood ’09

newblood

Last week, I attended D&AD New Blood at Olympia in London. A fantastic exhibition of University students displaying their work over the course of three days.

I had been lucky enough to be chosen to be one of the students representing the University of Chester’s graphic design course. A total of nine students were chosen. We were informed roughly a week or two prior to the actual event, which didn’t leave much time to put together our display. At the time, I was also still working on producing the course’s own exhibiton, which meant that I had a lot to do in a very short amount of time.

We had been told that the rough dimensions for the display board were 200x90cm, which in theory was a huge amount of space but it all depends on how you use it. We had also been told that it was a good idea to keep the number of projects that we wanted to display to one or two so as not to overload the board. For my choices, I decided to go with my Oxfam posters and my Royal Mail stamps. I believe that the work for Oxfam is some of the best work I’ve completed this year, while the Royal Mail stamps show that a good idea does not necessarily have to come with bells and whistles.

After the boards were completed, we then focused on our own exhibition. I had exhausted my supply of business cards by the end of it, which left me with just five days to get more printed. To their credit, after I ordered them on Sunday night, Cards Made Easy proofed the artwork by Tuesday, printed them and then delivered them Friday morning. This is the second time I’ve used them to print my business cards and I’ll certainly be using them a third time. Previously, I had ordered 50 cards, but because I wasn’t sure just how popular the event would be, I decided to print a batch of 100 this time.

A group of five of us decided to head down to London on Sunday, the night before the exhibition began because we had to be at the Olympia at 10am to set up. I’ve been to London before, but I can’t say that I’ve had the pleasure of discovering much of it. On Sunday, we did just that, taking a trip to the beautiful Hyde Park, Leicester Square and then to the London Eye and Big Ben. We got back to our hotel about midnight.

Upon travelling to Olympia the next morning, we got our first look at the area in which we’d be exhibiting. It’s a huge place, with roughly 200 different Universities displaying work from over 2,000 students. Some Universities had bought more than one stand, knocking them together to form an entire row of exhibition areas dedicated to them, with a total of 15-20 panels. We had just 9, but we intended to use them well.

Our blank exhibition space, just before we set up.
Our blank exhibition space, just before we set up.
Boxes, portfolio display stands and many rolls of work.
Boxes, portfolio display stands and many rolls of work.

One of the things that had been difficult to come up with a solution for was where to put everyone’s business cards. Since the area we had was quite small, it didn’t really allow for a table, which meant that they had to be either nearby or somehow over the work itself. Mike Moore, one of the tutors came up with the idea of making a U shape out of some unused mounting board. Each person’s 200cm tall artwork would slip into the slit of the U, and then one side of it would be attached to the panels, while the other side would have a business card glued to it. This would then leave a small platform for each person’s business cards. It worked surprisingly well, as long as we didn’t put too many cards on the stand. Its weight was limited to about 5 cards at a time.

Nearing completition of our space.
Nearing completition of our space.
The fantastic "Hub", with lots of bean bags to relax on.
The fantastic "Hub", with lots of bean bags to relax on.

We were lucky enough to be right by the “Hub”, a long strip of yellow carpet running right down the middle of the exhibition with couches, tables and bean bags scattered around a D&AD tower with people’s photos on it. It didn’t take long before we were quite relaxed on the bean bags!

After about 90 minutes of setting up, the space was complete and it looked quite good. Because our space was small, it meant that we had to continually rotate people’s portfolio’s throughout the three days so everyone got a fair chance of displaying their work, but overall, our stand looked great.

Our exhibition space.
Our exhibition space.
Our exhibition space. Mine on the far left.
Our exhibition space. Mine on the far left.
Our exhibition space.
Our exhibition space.

Opening night of the exhibition was very busy. I was surprised at how popular it was. Luckily, the D&AD had issued different coloured wristbands to everyone, depending on if the were exhibiting or visiting. Red for exhibitors, green for friends and family and yellow for VIP. It didn’t take long to discover this and it quickly became the aim of all of us to keep a look out for any yellow-banded people as we knew they were most likely from industry.

Over the course of the three day event, I managed to speak to a handful of people from industry and hand out a few of my cards. I can’t say that I handed out many, but it was good to start getting my name out there.

One of the highlights of London came just after we had packed up the exhibition. On our way back to the hotel to pack up, I met none other than Matt Dent, winner of a pretigious D&AD Black Pencil for his work on the reverses of all UK coinage. He was waiting for the same train as me. What was quite interesting was that even though his work on the reverses had won him such an important award, I don’t believe as many people know his face as his name. The train station was completely packed with people who had just left the exhibition, but it was clear that no one knew that there was a black pencil winner in amongst us. In fact, I had seen him walking around the exhibition earlier in the day and couldn’t quite put a name to the face and I didn’t want to go over to him in case I was completely mistaken. Luckily however one of my friends decided to take the leap and go and talk to him and I followed shortly after to find that it was indeed Matt Dent.

We spent a good half hour speaking with him while waiting for the train. My friend showed him his portfolio of work while waiting, with me holding it up while he flicked through it. To my friend’s credit, he managed to get through his entire portfolio just as the train pulled in. We both gave Matt our business card and he gave us his. We were getting on the same train anyway so we continued chatting while travelling and found out about how he had started in the industry. We also discussed what we wanted to do next after University. Matt is an incredibly friendly and approachable guy and even on a hot, busy train, he was more than happy to chat about things. I really appreciated his time.

All in all, I believe that going to New Blood was a great experience and one which I may even return to next year. I may not be an exhibitor next year, but I could still see a hell of a lot of fantastic work on display and meet a lot of incredibly talented students and skilled people from the industry such as Matt Dent. A great exhibition.

Christmas break (isn’t a break at all)

Over the next three weeks while I’m on Christmas break from University, I intend to begin really ramping up the process of getting theworkof.co.uk launched. The back end is now pretty much complete, which means that all that’s left to do is begin uploading my artwork to the site. It’ll take a while because I have to format it properly, but I’m really looking forward to getting it all sorted.

Although I’m now on Christmas break, that doesn’t actually mean I can rest, unfortunately. There’s still plenty of work that I have to be getting on with. This includes two competition briefs and an essay to write. Additionally, I had to submit a competition brief just before my break, paying £30 just to enter. If I win though, I’ll win £2,000 and a four week placement at Pentagram. You can view the competition brief here. I’ll be going into more detail with this brief in another post.

I’m hoping that while I at least have a little bit of free time, I can begin the process of getting my name out into the open and start getting work in for myself. It’s going to be a long process and one which has many outcomes. None of which I’m very sure about. However, I’m confident that if I really put some effort into it, it’ll produce the results I want.

As I said in my previous post, my business cards were the first part of my plan and they’ve proven to be really popular with whoever I’ve shown them to. It’s really nice to see that they were money well spent.

Bad business, good business

Unfortunately, though I thought I’d have my new site up by now, there’s been a bit of trouble with the back end. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before I can finally get it up and running.

One of the main reasons that I’m so eager to launch it is because of the increasing priority to simply get my name out there. I graduate University in May and long before then, I’d like to have a few freelance projects under my belt and the only way to do that is to promote the hell out of myself. I’ve already begun taking smaller steps than the relaunch of my site. This includes fantastic new business cards, which I very much love.

New business cards
New business cards

Via the purchase of Michael Bierut’s 79 Short Essays on Design on Amazon, I recieved a flyer offering me 250 business cards from VistaPrint at what I thought was a rather good price. I had been looking for some new business cards for quite some time, after using very unprofessional ones that I had printed myself.

So, I fired up Illustrator and designed my card, with the dimensions of 85x54mm, which is a standard dimension for a business card (Same size as a credit card, for those that don’t know) and uploaded it to VistaPrint. Confirmed all of the options and paid my £19 or so. I was told I’d have them within two weeks. Not bad. Or so I thought.

When they came, I was very disappointed with them. The first, most glaring problem with them is that they were completely the wrong size. That’s not to say that VistaPrint had made an error, however. For some reason, VistaPrint (And I’m talking about the .co.uk version here) seems to think that the standard dimensions for a business card is 87x49mm. It’s not.

I did think that it was VistaPrint’s fault to begin with and was very quickly onto their site to check out what the hell had gone wrong. It was only after finding their artwork specifications page that I realised it was me who had been foolish enough to submit artwork without looking at their specs first. The only reason I did so was because 85x54mm is, as I say, such a standard size for British business cards.

Additionally, even if the dimensions were correct, the print quality and stock were poor. The colours were dull and the stock was thin. Not professional looking at all. So, in short, it was £19 badly spent.

I still needed professional business cards, however and I spent a great deal looking for a decent site that would print them to my specifications, not theirs. I found cardsmadeeasy.com, who, while only offering 50 cards for the price that VistaPrint were offering 250, would happily print them at 85×54, on heavier stock and with a laminate finish. Again, I submitted the artwork and they told me it’d be about two weeks for delivery.

I recieved them within ten days and when I opened the package, I smiled. Professional, proper sized, vivid business cards, bearing my logo and my name.

I’m a big fan of tactility when it comes to design and these felt great to hold. For those that don’t know much about business cards, when a card is laminated, it’s not the same laminate that you’d find on the likes of membership cards. It’s a kind of smooth sheen. Silky to the touch. Not glossy, not quite matte. Perfect.

I sent an email to Cards Made Easy, thanking them for deliverying a professional finish. They put my email up on their site on their customer comments page. They also noted that I was a graphic designer and offered me a 10% discount on any further client work that I might send their way. I’ll certainly be using them again.

It’s amazing how the likes of VistaPrint can get business cards wrong when they’re such a huge company and yet Cards Made Easy, while you could call the underdog, gets it right and goes a step further too, offering discounts to graphic designers and replying to emails personally, rather than with automated responses. It’s really nice to see.