A Quick Perspective on Death

Image Production; D&AD – London

At D&AD I was working towards creating the 2011 D&AD Annual and updating the company website by collecting all artwork and photography from successful entrants.   On a daily basis I would check image specifications and quality, ensuring suitability to the overall aesthetic and desired continuity for the final publication of the Annual.  If images were identified as being insufficient in quality I would retouch and alter where possible or communicate with the entrant to arrange having the images recreated/resent.

“Image production was done to such a good standard this year that we saved five thousand pounds on pre-press costs”

Donal Keenan, Awards Operations & Production Manager; D&AD

Logo Design; D&AD – London

While working at D&AD I was asked to create a logo for a workshop being held at the 2011 New Blood event.  The workshop was called ‘The New Creative Toolkit’ and examined the shift in the average designer and art directors toolkit in the last few decades.  Where once all that was required was a nicely sharpened pencil, rubber and ruler there is now a great deal more to consider, social media and communication, data and the relevance of geographical integration to name a few.  The concept for the logo was to use the tools in the ‘creative toolkit’ of yesterday and have them becoming the ‘creative toolkit’ of today.  To achieve this I turned the sharpener, rubber, pencil and ruler into bars in a bar graph essentially turning the tools into data.  While I experimented with a number of graphic techniques to better reference a bar graph, a more minimal and bold logo was decided upon as it was thought to be the most clean, clear and subtle.

“We love it!  It’s clean, clear and really stands out while offering an inferred reference to what the workshop is all about . . . perfect!”

Ella Schofield, New Blood Content and Events Executive; D&AD

Concept/Development Logos

Facebook Friends; Based on an Article from The Economist Online

I created this infographic after reflecting on the idea of social awareness – how many people are aware of one persons existence, generally and in any given situation.  Initially I was thinking about scales – which person is known by the most others and what do they do, who comes next after them and so on.  I then began to wonder how many people are aware of the average person and how many of their radars do they appear on everyday.  I found some interesting data on this subject in an online article at The Economist.com based on Facebook friends and created the infographic to represent that data.

The work received Staff Pick on Visual.ly.com featuring on the home page for 2 days and has currently received 2131 views, ranking at its peak 49th out of 420 in the Social Medial category.

The Extinction Rainbow; Based on an Article from The Guardian Online

I wanted to create an infographic that gave a holistic representation of the endangered species on planet Earth.  I designed the graphic so that it is very easy to directly compare the categories and numbers of endangered species to specific countries.

This work also received Staff Pick on Visual.ly.com featuring on the home page for 2 days and has currently received 1794 views, ranking 8th out of 142 in the Environment category.

Network Visualisation; Royal Society of Arts – London

I was at the RSA on a 3 month contract to develop a process of visualising large complex networks. The purpose of the visualisations are to tell stories about communities to enable people to understand their networks and encourage them to enforce positive change in their lives. These networks include drug using groups and people who live in deprived parts of London and the UK.

When my contract was finished we were able to meet with the MIT Media Lab to take the project to its next stage.  As a continuation of the work I have completed software is to be developed to allow people to construct, visualise and amend their own networks on a tablet or mobile device.

To have a better look at the entire 4 part process please go to the RSA Network Visualisation tab at the top of this page

Logo Design; jee-o – London

jee-o is an ongoing project that I am working on to further develop my final major project.  This is the most recent iteration of the jee-o logo, which seems to have changed numerous times.  In order to build a solid identity for the service a final logo was required moving forward.

We decided at an early stage that the logo needed to be friendly and reassuring, as the service is new we want to encourage positive adoption through friendly and reassuring imagery and themes. This logo is for the time being fitting and projects the right image.

Iconography & Logo Design; jee-o – London

For the service I needed to create a series of icons to allow users to interact intuitivly with the software while maintaining an aesthetic that was in keeping with the graphic user interface of jee-o.

The share icon offered the most challenging problem as it was perhaps the more abstract of all the icon symbolism. This is the final solution I arrived at which I have converted from an icon to a logo to clarify the design.