Adam Jacques -Design Blog

[ajacquesdesign-blog]

Pro Con List

Placements

Shieldyourself – Mid way through second year we were visited by Mia Horton, an ex student of Jo’s who is now Marketing Manager at Shieldyourself. Mia had a Junior Designer position available, which I was able to land. I worked part-time whilst studying over the two years and pretty much took on a full time role over summer. I have been working at the company for over a year now and was offered a full time job in January - ready for me after graduating, which I gladly accepted. In August 2014 I was given an award at a company conference, recognising the success and efforts in my job role. Working at the company throughout university has given me valuable real time industry experience and I have been able to transfer the skills learnt through my job position into my university work.

Exhibitions/Events

Roses awards night 2014 

Type Hype,Berlin 

Type Museum, Berlin 2014 

Design Museum, Barcelona 

FACT Museum 

Liverpool TATE Gallery, Liverpool

Hyper Island Learning Lab 

Opening of the TAGallery featuring Stan Chow 

Stan Chow exhibition at Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art

National Football Museum

Goodship Salford event

Talks/Meetings

Alumni talk from 6 former students on how to get a job 

Talk by Tom from Machina 

Talk by Nick and Paul from Whatever Your Brand 

Had meeting with Andy from the Business school about possible funding for an exhibition

Competition Entries

Entered Roses competitions in consecutive years 

Entered YCN competition 2014

Award Nominations

Nominated for Student Employee of the year 2015. An award nominated collectively by tutor and employer to recognise outstanding contributions and achievements of students who effectively combine part-time work with study commitments.

Workshops

JavaScript Lesson taught by Jason Mayo to help my website have a dynamic experience. 

Designing for mobile with Jason Mayo 

Screen printing workshop with Hannah Fray and Hannah Gibson

Online Presence

Created online portfolio website using html/css/jQuery/javascript. – Plan to launch live in near future 

Tumblr: ajacquesdesign.tumblr.com

Created behance profile: behance.net/ajacquesdesign 

Twitter: @adamjacques8 

Pinterest: uk.pinterest.com/adamjacques75 

Instagram: instagram.com/stillnilnil – Run collectively with Johnny Hall

Freelance

Created logo design for Kat Horrocks Make Up

Created pricelist for Kat Horrocks Make Up 

Creating branding for White Flag music (July 2015) 

Creating all material for brothers wedding (August 2015) 

Submitted logo proposal for Penelope’s Café 

Submitted logo proposal for US Media

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Full Time Approaching/Award Nomination

As I sit approaching the penultimate deadline I can only appreciate how lucky I am to have already secured employment after finishing the course. I have arranged to start my full time role at Shieldyourself on the 1st June - I am having a couple of weeks off after finishing, in an attempt to cling on to the last few moments of student life before having to face the fact I’m now an adult!! 

In the past couple of weeks I found out that I have been nominated for an award. I have generously been nominated for Student Employee of the year 2015. An award nominated collectively by tutor and employer to recognise outstanding contributions and achievements of students who effectively combine part-time work with study commitments. 

I have no idea about the award itself of how prestigious it could be but I am just happy to see that my hard work and efforts have been recognised. My job at Shieldyourself is one of a rather important role in terms of responsibility, and I have had quite a job to effectively balance this with completing a final year degree - As a professional I have only benefitted from this  but at times this has been extremely stressful and testing but I managed to keep everything balanced properly and on track - through plain good ol’ graft! 

[ajacquesdesign-blog]

Good Ship Salford

On the 23rd our course held a networking night where industry were invited along to have a few drinks whilst having a look through peoples portfolio’s... I think for some people there may have even been a few placements on offer too!

The night for me was quite strange in the sense I wasn’t looking for a placement or job due to already having secured my position after leaving the course. However, I still went to the night to have a few drinks, soak up the atmosphere and maybe meet some industry whilst there anyway. 

I didn’t end up taking a portfolio for anyone to look through, however looking back, I kind of wish Id have taken the opportunity to use the night to gain some critique on my work as you never know how it could help in future. Although, I did do my little part to help the event as I offered to help Jo in sorting the beer tokens and distributing them at the event to ensure the industry had a good supply of beer! 

The night was beneficial in showing that if you invite people an event then they will actually come - which is encouraging to see as it shows they still take a great interest in the students and offer to help with portfolio advice.

[ajacquesdesign-blog]

Price List - Kat Horrocks Makeup

I was asked to create a price List for my girlfriends Makeup business. Initially I was asked to create a double sided A5 flyer - However, after receiving all the content that would be put into the piece I advised against this as there wasn’t enough information to justify double sided. 

Overall Im happy with the layout and composition as I think it reads well and appears balanced. The header has been created in a way that matches the style of the website, this will ensure consistency is kept within the brand.

Upon the creation of the initial branding in November, we discussed about the possibility of changing the colours seasonally to ensure the identity is kept current and up to date. Next up is to change the website header to it matches that of the flyer.

*The typography on the image looks to have changed under the Packages heading - although this isn’t the case on the actual design .

[jhallgraphics]

Found out about a new gallery opening in Manchester through Twitter. It’s called the TAGallery (the adapted gallery) and was launching today with well known illustration artist Stan Chow in attendance at the opening along with some of his work. I went along with adamjacques8 as Chow has been an inspiration for our recent joint project for the NMP. 

It was quite hard to find to start with as it wasn’t very well communicated as to where it was actually located. It took a short trawl through a couple of twitter accounts to find out where it was. 

It was situated in the back of a cafe on Deansgate. Having been to Chow’s exhibition/sale in the Northern Quarter last year, we were expecting something similar in terms of volume of people, amount of work on show and level of interest. We were a little disappointed at the turnout and the amount of work on display as it wasn’t what we expected. 

 One positive was getting a like on Instagram from Chow himself and inadvertently frightening the life out of him in the street when saying hello.

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National Football Museum

I figured that for the ProCon3 module I could do with getting a few museums visits under my belt and thought whilst in Manchester what better museum to visit than one dedicated to football! 

It also comes as a good research visit for the NMP considering as me and Johnny are combining our love of football and design. 

The museum in terms of a designs approach turned out to have quite a number of interesting artefacts/memorabilia. The very first section of the museum displays various poster designs from World Cups which I found really particularly relevant to the research I have including with the NMP project. 

Around the corner there was a range of old match day programmes, unfortunately they were all hidden away behind a glass screen - which for a designer is a real shame because i’d love to have a flick through them all and get a real feel of the booklet! 

Me and Johnny have spoken about contacting the museum in the future to enquire about putting a stall of some sort together and exhibit the pieces we make for the NMP... the gift shop especially could be somewhere that I envisage some shit kit memorabilia doing well! 

[ajacquesdesign-blog]

Contact section

After all the difficulty with fixing the issues coding my portfolio section I was hoping the contact would be more straightforward but I encountered several issues separating all the divs in the container.. In the end I managed to get there and from then all I needed to do was implement each icon with an interactive hover state to notify the user each icon is clickable. 

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Portfolio website fix! 

Finally after hours and hours of frustration and frequent cursing, I managed to fix the hover issue of making hidden content interactive - Instead of the previous method using a hidden content div and having jquery slide over to reveal the blue box with text, I have now resorted to implementing a ccs hover state. It took a lot of fiddling around with positioning but eventually it fell into place! 

Using the css hover states I was able to insert a fancy box plug in which enabled me to use an image gallery where I can showcase various examples of work from portfolio projects. 

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Portfolio section problem 

After inserting all of my portfolio section my next task was to incorporate some hidden content overlays with the use off jquery slides. I eventually managed to make this work as you can see above - the medley image slides down the hidden content when hovered (please note I hadn’t stylised the type at this point).. This was all well and good but then I realised that I was unable to make the hidden content clickable. I could only make the initial Medley image one that was a link.. 

So have had to look elsewhere for a solution 

[ajacquesdesign-blog]

Hyper Island Learning Lab

The visit to Hyper Island turned into a really interesting night. We arrived and were immediately put into randomly selected groups and made to interact and network with new people - The only downfall of this of course was that many people from the course turned up so in some instances it was hard to get matched with someone new. 

After being put into groups of 5/6 we participated in many tasks that helped us to open our minds and think really creatively. This was the whole ethos of the night - to open your mind and start creating. 

There was also a visitor who gave a really interesting speech about the various projects she’s been involved in/curated over the last few years - each project was aimed at spreading creativity through some really deprived and un developed areas of the world which was very inspiring to see how some people to so far out of their own way to help others. 

The night served as a great platform to meet like minded creative people and discuss a range of topics.

[ajacquesdesign-blog]

Services Section

Similar to my about section the Services was relatively straightforward to code. I simply needed to create two classes and then inserting the correct elements with appropriate margins. I have found that when I code I tend to use classes unnecessarily as ID’s would have been fine in this scenario due to me naming each component of services separately. Although i’m sure it doesn’t matter too much.  

I feel quite relieved to have had a generally simple experience coding the last two sections as everything was mostly put in place correctly first time. Which I have began to understand is a rarity in web development!  

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About Section 

Thankfully this section has been relatively straightforward to implement. It was just a case of creating two divs for the text to sit in. The hardest past of creating this section of the website was probably figuring out what I wanted to say in the text. Through adding a h2 tag I was able to pick out some of the text I was going to include and isolate it so that the page was a little more visually appealing due to the considered use of hierarchy, this also helps showcase my typography skills.  

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Smooth Scrolling Nav

After Jasons lesson of inserting jquery I was able to pretty much steal the code from the site we built in class. However with the addition of the bottom line: “event.preventDefault”  - My site now smooths much quicker because the website isn’t trying to load the URL again before scrolling down. 

[ajacquesdesign-blog]

In one of the coding lessons taught by Jason we started to learn the basics of implementing javascript into web development. Above is the example where we build a one page scrolling site with jquery incorporated into the navigation which allowed for a smooth scroll. We also learnt how to implement hidden items however I don’t think I will be using this within my website. 

I was quite lucky in the sense the example above is structurally very similar  to my portfolio site so I can implement this straight into my website.

[ajacquesdesign-blog]

TATE Liverpool

In the same visit to Liverpool we also went to the TATE. Unfortunately our group arrived slightly late to the gallery so we didn’t get too long to look around. - Which had absolutely nothing to do with a visit to the pub for lunch.....

Whilst wandering around the various exhibitions I was unsure as to whether I could actually take any pictures so there was quite a few items I saw that I didn’t photograph, as I know galleries often have different etiquettes when it comes to photography.  

I didn’t really understand a lot of the pieces on show as I’m not a keen modern art enthusiast. So I found myself often being swayed over to the typographical pieces, which unfortunately there was little. 

Maybe if I visit again there will be a different exhibition on with some works that I find more interesting than in this visit. 

[ajacquesdesign-blog]

FACT 

On a trip to Liverpool we visited a place called FACT that turned out to be a cinema with a few design exhibitions added. From what I gathered from the visit the purpose of the exhibition was to showcase type in motion, where several screens displayed typography moving in all different kind of ways. Motion isn’t something I usually think about too much so it made an interesting change to see how people interpret type in a way to make it move and interact with a screen - as opposed to it being static. The exhibition was also quite fun as one room included an interactive installation where type could be manipulated and moved. Albeit through the use of a really confusing interactive screen - seen above! 

The cinema also displayed some really nice typographic posters advertising different films throughout history. Im not sure if any of them were the official posters but they made for an interesting depiction of the film story lines anyway. 

[ajacquesdesign-blog]

Placement Update

It seems I have neglected my blog over the last couple of weeks (it looks more bare due the the fact I made a completely separate one for the last brief) so thought I'd give a little update on the progress I have made at my placement.. 

I started working at Shieldyourself late April in 2014. (Although that's nearly a year ago it has flown by so quick!) My role as a Junior Designer at the company is to manage, design and update compliance diaries. Although aesthetically, some of the work isn't as creative as I would have liked, I am still learning some vital skills that will only develop me as a professional designer and be valuable experience in my career. I have strict deadlines, meaning I have to plan and organise my workload accordingly to ensure everything reaches the printers/clients on time. Some months I have had over 50 diaries to manage, workloads of this quantity can be quite difficult to manage (especially because I only work part-time and have to balance uni work and a dissertation) but with the right planning and scheduling I have been able to meet the deadlines and keep clients happy (I hope!). Some weeks over summer I worked full time hours which was very helpful in gaining a proper insight into everyday working life - sometimes with deadlines approaching I had to stay behind extra hours and put extra days in to ensure I met them. I feel that this intensity has only helped with how I approach briefs at uni as I tend to plan my workload much further in advance, as opposed to a deadline week filled with all nighters I have endured previously. 

InDesign - With every hour I work at Shield, I constantly develop my experience and knowledge with Adobe InDesign. A programme that before starting my job I felt a little uncomfortable using because I relatively had no experience. Knowledge of using the software to a high standard is vital to the career as a Graphic Designer as any editorial work will revolve heavily around it's use. The diaries I produce for Shieldyourself are often very text heavy with a lot of tables incorporated. Sometimes this can result in hours of rearranging and restructuring page layouts throughout the diary. I often have layout and composition problems to solve which again are vital skills every successful Designer needs to possess. 

Appraisal - Around December time I had my company appraisal which occurs every 6 months I believe. This consists of my colleagues and managers anonymously reviewing my performance at the company and how successfully I complete my role. If I remember correctly there was 4 separate colleagues who had to complete my appraisal so I was given the opportunity to gain an insight into how other people judge how good I am at my job and fit into the business. The feedback I was given was extremely motivating and refreshing, the reports were all positive which was really refreshing to see that the business, and my colleagues recognise the hard work I have put into my job to ensure I operate to a high standard. 

Award - Every three months the company hosts an internal company conference in which the various departments of the business review their performance and share their goals an ambitions to help the company grow. I find these conferences extremely useful as you gain a fuller understanding of how the company works at present and how it strives to grow. *Not to mention the great night out that is usually followed!

Each conference ends with the Managing Director presenting recognised employees with an internal award for the hard work and effort put in by someone in recent times. Over summer in the August conference I was lucky enough to win an award myself which again I found really refreshing and motivating that the company recognises such efforts. 

Job Offer - I am extremely proud to say that recently I have been offered a full time position at the company to start once I finish my degree. I feel privileged that I have been given such an opportunity, considering graduates often go months without finding work. I fully look forward to starting work full time, as I know it will be a huge step forward in my career - not to mention the motivation it has given me to really push on with finishing my degree to the best I can!