Vanessa Di Maio   Placement Report 2007/08   13974005

(images coming soon!)

Section 1

1.1

Introduction

For my industrial Placement I worked for Ian Fleming as a Multimedia Designer and Research Student for his design company and fine art practice.

I was based on the Castlereagh road in Belfast at the Creative Exchange studios.

Oil of canvas by Rajesh Rana Part of Creative Exchange's MILL exhibition, shown at Engine Room Gallery February 2007

Images of the Mill taken from the savethemill.net website.

1.2

Organisational Structure

I worked foe Ian Fleming alone so within the organization there was him and myself. My role within the company was that of designer, researcher and administrator. Ian’s role was that of mentor and co-ordinater of projects.

Eighty mph is the name for In Fleming’s design practice. Ian Fleming is an associate lecturer in Interactive Multimedia Design at the University of Ulster Jordanstown. Eightymph is also the name for the Creative Consortium, which is a network for the different factions of the creative industries, so that they can work together on projects.

 2.1 My role within the company

My main role in the company is that of designer, graphics and web and assisting with design. Being based at the Creative Exchange studios in the Loop bridge Mill (www.savethemill.net/ for your chance to voice your opposition against the demolition of the Mill). I also assisted some of the Artists with their work, I found that really helpful in terms of creative inspiration.

Here is a Brief note about some of the projects I was involved in.

The most interesting time in my placement was organizing the launch event of Eighty mph. The experience was useful in many ways. I was able to make many contacts in the creative industries, ranging from design to performing artists. Also I found it quite a task to take on organizing the whole event, from the exhibitions to the bands that were playing on the night. I had roughly three weeks to organize the entire event, which meant that I had three weeks of intense organizing, contacting people every day and going back and forth to the Art College (the venue of the launch), so it was a real challenge. The experience also taught me to manage my time better, and looking back, I feel that a lot of time was wasted on trivial things. I feel this is a valuable lesson for anyone going into full-time employment, as time management is very important when it comes to completing tasks, especially if you intend to take on freelance work.

As well as organizing the launch event, I was involved in some of the branding for Eighty mph such as the logo and parts of the website.

This is the logo for Eighty mph, it was collaboration, I came up with the shape (which was inspired by a picture I saw of smurfs dancing around a campfire) and Ian sourced the typeface and arranged it on the logo. The logo is set against a red background, red was used to give the impression of speed and of course to go with the fire shape, we image something that’s really burning is "white hot" so that’s why white was chosen and also it looks well against the red background.

The website has not been launched yet, but I did work for a long time on it, researching what would be the best in terms of look and feel, bearing in mind the diverse nature of the company. For my research, I looked at other websites which featured the colour red, (it being such a large part of the branding) in order to see how much red I could get away with in the website.

This was one of the ideas I came up with for the website, you will notice that I have used a different shade of red. This is the shade of red that was being used for the logo, we came up with the final shade during the process of exploring possible layouts and colours for the website.

I felt this process was very useful and definitely not a waste of time, it is important to follow a good idea right the way through from the initial brainstorming to the final implementation.

So the layouts evolved, as did the brand, the creation of business cards was the next step.

This was one of the ideas for the business cards; I designed the front of the card and the back designed by Ian Fleming.

This was my version of the back of the card.

As well as business cards, the brand was used in leaflets for the Eighty mph launch event, I did not design these leaflets although I did take a small part in designing the final layout.

This is the version of the poster that features the line-up of bands for the event.

I think it was very important to do all the research I did for the brand, as it was so widely used, it was even projected on screens at the event, so it was vital to get it right.

After that massive project, I was involved in creating a website for the artist Maura O'Rourke and her gallery, the Cottage Gallery. She was very specific about what she wanted in terms of branding so the brand was decided upon at the client meeting (This meeting took place in Dublin so I was not present, therefore not involved in the creation of the brand). Another thing I learnt was to seek another’s opinion on a design, and ask people how they arrive at a design, this helps you appreciate how other people see things, which is very useful when it comes to designing. So with this in mind, I asked how the design was arrived at for the Maura O'Rourke and Cottage Gallery websites. (Also I was going to be working on the layout of the websites so I had to know what was the thinking behind it.)

It was felt by the client that Women are undervalued in the Art world and felt that she would sell more if she sold herself as a man, hence the use of 'M.O'Rourke' as opposed to Maura and the masculine colourscheme. So carrying on this idea, I went for a very neutral layout, sidebar and content. The same principles were applied to the Cottage Gallery website.

My job for these website were to create the image viewers, for the various pieces. These were all done in JavaScript as opposed to Flash; I'm more in the habit of using JavaScript.