J.Hall Graphics

Graphic Design Degree 2012-2015

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Everything for the NMP is on this blog

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A guy I’ve done work for before from Twitter asked me to a better version of his Twitter avi of Ryan Giggs waving his shirt over his head - his celebration in the ‘99 Cup Semi Final after THAT goal.

Rather than do a digital one on Illustrator, I decided to do a quick sketch instead.

It only took me a few minutes but I was happy with it myself having not sat down to draw something that wasn’t for uni for a while.

The chest hair makes it I think.

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A friend of a friend asked me to do her a title page for her final project on her journalism course. She’s doing it about DJs. 

She provided the details and it was quite a simple process to follow such is the style she wanted to achieve. 

The reason this looks so plain is because I’ve saved it as a png so she can insert whatever background she has in mind. 

Happy to help!

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Pro Con 3 Itemised List

Placements: Shield Yourself – I successfully obtained a placement after a talk from one of Jo’s former students, Mia Horton. I was hired on a part time basis as a marketing assistant to Mia. Unfortunately, I cut short my time at Shield Yourself because I felt I wasn’t getting any proper design experience. Granted, it wasn’t a design agency as such, but the work wasn’t very enjoyable so I left and decided to focus on some solo projects and look for more relevant placements.

Yolo – I responded to a tweet found in a random search for a placement and I managed to get 3 weeks at Yolo, a small agency in Manchester. For the first week, I worked on some promotional material for an exhibition held in Sheffield. For the next 2 weeks I produced some posters, flyers and online banner images for Sankeys, one of Yolo’s long term clients.

Eagle Eye Solutions – I have successfully obtained a placement for 3 months at a company on Salford Quays called Eagle Eye Solutions. They are a digital company who develop apps and deal with companies who wish to engage with more customers. I’ve got a paid placement that could potentially lead into a full time should I fit the bill.

Exhibitions:

·      Roses awards night 2014

·      CREE15 held at MMU

·      Design Museum, Barcelona

·      Opening of the TAGallery featuring Stan Chow

·      Goodship Salford event

Talks:

·      An Audience with Gary Neville

·      Creative concern talk

·      Andy Golpys freelance talks

·      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

Competition entries:

·      Attended YCN Awards Ceremony

·      Entered 1 Roses competition and 2 YCN competitions in consecutive years

Workshops:

·      Ipad training with Hannah

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

·      Designing for mobile with Jason Mayo

·      Business Bootcamp held in Business Support in the university

Online presence:

·      Created my online portfolio website using html/css/jQuery.

·      Tumblr updated often: jhallgraphics.tumblr.com

·      Created my behance profile: https://www.behance.net/jhallgraphics

·      Created an instagram account: instagram.com/jhallgraphics

·      Twitter: @jhallgraphics

·      Linkedin: uk.linkedin.com/in/jhallgraphics

Freelance:

·      Submitted work for a brief from Manchester United to produce illustration work based on a certain player for them to use on Twitter.

·      Produced a series of digital vector illustrations for personal pleasure and to practice my skills.

·      Submitted logo designs for the rebrand of Salford Student’s Union.

·      Submitted logo designs for a BBC Comedy event held at Media City called ‘Mock the Dock.’

·      Created the logo and EP artwork for a friend who is a singer – it appeared on iTunes.

·      Created logo for another friend who is a DJ (the singer’s sister) so she can promote herself for gigs.

·      Created logo for a different friend who contacted me thanks to the DJ mentioned above who advised I could do him a logo design for self-promo purposes.

·      Regularly produced pieces of football artwork and posted to Twitter which were well received by my followers.

·      A friend who is wrote/directed/starred in his own online series asked me to produce some visuals for his show that was backed by Comedy Central. My work was used as a banner image on their website.

·      For the same friend, I produced the design for a press board for the launch night at Manchester’s Comedy Store.

·      A Twitter follower of mine contacted me to produce a logo for his YouTube channel, ‘Unmasked Gaming,’ having seen my artwork and other logos posted online.

·      A friend set up a home business before Christmas called ‘Gift in a Jar.’ She asked me to design her a logo which was also used as a label for her jars.

·      Asked by a friend from the English Literature course to produce an artistic version of her own poem as a gift to her parents.

·      One of my Twitter followers set up a Manchester United digital fanzine and after my consultation on the original design, gave me the job of producing a logo for it, but also to do the whole editorial design for it. It is a quarterly 60 page digital fanzine called ‘Utd Way’ available at http://issuu.com/unitedissue/docs/utd_way_1_final/1?e=14472665/11311088.

·      A friend who does the journalism degree at Salford put my name forward for a design task required by her fellow journalism student who runs a scheme within the university called ‘SalfReach.’ SalfReach is a small organisation who helps students with their life/work balance and hold regular exhibitions and talks. I produced a logo, flyer design and roller banner design for an event they had coming up.

·      Submitted logo designs for the end of year Salford graphics show, Goodship Salford.

·      Thanks to Gary Peploe, I was asked to produce a logo and app interface design for a new fitness app called FootyFit due to be launched in association with Salford City FC.

·      Thanks to my friend, I was asked to produce a logo for a dance academy set up by Salford Red Devils Foundation aimed at 7-16 year olds.

·      Asked to produce a flyer design and logo re-design for a conference at the University of Bath. The chap who asked me to do the app design for FootyFit came back to me for this job.

·      Recommended by the guy for whom I did the Utd Way fanzine to do a graphic for a Q&A session with a United youth team player. I agreed to produce subsequent graphics for them for upcoming Q&A sessions with different players. Also did the new banner image for their new website launch.

·      Approached by a guy on Twitter wanting people who can do United-related artwork for a range of mugs and phone cases got in touch with me thanks to my friend who recommended me. I sent him some versions of my work to be printed onto mugs and I will be getting a pound from every one sold.

·      Found the venue for our end of year show, Goodship Salford, and liaised with the people at chosen venue to organise deposit payments and set up of the event.

·      The second DJ who came to me for work approached me to do some promo material and a business card design for his girlfriend’s eyelash business.

·      A friend of a friend came to me for the title page for her project at uni about DJs.

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Christian, who came to me for a personal logo, asked me to design me some promo material for his girlfriend’s eyelash business. Includes a Facebook cover image and a business card design.

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The Goodship Salford night on the 23rd was a really good night. I was surprised by the amount of industry people who hung about most of the night. There was a good atmosphere in the place and a lot of enthusiastic people willing to take a look at people's portfolios. 

I was in a position where I didn't have to speak to people about my work as I wasn't after a job/placement because I already have something lined up for when I finish uni. 

 The response on Twitter was quite encouraging from industry people as hey seemed to fully get involved with the whole nautical theme by tweeting pictures of themselves in the pirate hats. 

 I was glad everything went so well on the night and was glad the room was big enough. I was wondering whether the roof terrace might be more appropriate as it had more tables and was a bit more airy and lighter but I think given the amount of people who turned up, the downstairs was much more suited.

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The logo for the Salford Reds Foundation Dance Academy now featured online. They've tweeted about it and it has featured in a programme as well. Picture to follow.

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New graphic for Utd Report for news reporter James Ducker. Smaller dimensions for this one meant I couldn’t be as elaborate as the previous one I did but I still stuck with the same theme for consistency.

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The same chap who got in touch about the Footy Fit work came back to me for the re-design of a logo for CHOBE. I sent him a few concepts for a logo design and they ended up picking the top left one as it was a newer, cleaner version of their existing one.

The second half of the job was to design a flyer based on the basic layout I was sent (done in PowerPoint). I had a basic idea of how to set it out so they were happy with my version where I was just asked to make it look nicer. 

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A few nice shoutouts on social media for the work I’ve done for a couple of loyal clients.

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My graphic for the United Report Andy Kellett Q&A featured online. 

Also, I produced the new banner image for their relaunch of the website. Again, with the design for that part I kept it simple as the dimensions were only small. I used the white and black band on it which is a simplistic, iconic piece of styling that has featured on United kits and scarves in the past.

And I kept the same font as I used on the Andy Kellett work.

This client has told me that they will come back to me for further work.

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Following on from a previous post about mug designs, the guy I’ve been in contact with sent me this the other day to show how one of them will look on a mug and on canvas (the ‘Dave’ canvas, not the one behind it). Exciting to see my designs featuring on something people can buy!

I’ve been told that the guy who wants to sell these sells 150 mugs a month so it could be a nice littler earner!

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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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Thanks to Twitter, again, I’ve been contacted from a guy wanting to produce items such as mugs or phone cases featuring United artwork. 

My friend’s sister put me onto them so I sent them examples of my illustrations and these are the mock ups of what would stretch right round a mug. 

He’s going to send me mock ups of how they’ll look when they're on the mugs. And if it takes off I’m going to get some money from each one sold. Everyone’s a winner!

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A guy on Twitter put a tweet out asking for a graphic designer and I got recommended by the guy for whom I did the United fanzine.

Anyway, what was needed was a graphic for a header image to advertise a Q&A session with United youth team player Andy Kellett. 

This was the first version I came up with and he liked it. Didn’t take long but I’m pleased with it and he liked it. 

Now I think I’ve secured the job of doing these regularly every time a Q&A comes up.

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These are the first preliminary logos I produced.

I started designing them in a rounded rectangle to visualise them as an actual app. Bearing in mind that the size of an app logo is small, I needed to design them to be eye-catching and stand out. Boldness is the key here.

I tried to incorporate the footballer icon on the logo but it looked better without eventually. I used the icon as a part of the branding on the app itself.

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Thanks to my tutor, Gary, he put some work my way that was required by someone at the university who works in the business department. He had plans to develop an app called FootyFit which ran in line with Salford City FC, who the university have strong links with. 

I developed a few different logo designs (see in the next post), and once the final one was chosen (the top one), I developed some app interface designs based on the wireframes he sent me. 

I stuck with a red coloured background given the Salford link and the link to the Class of 92 (Manchester United colours obviously). Then from there I looked at Pinterest and a few different design sites to inspire my app designs. I began to develop a style once I had a few interfaces designed and stuck with it so it looked consistent. I think it looks quite slick and has that added gloss for when I sent him the final versions mocked up on an iPhone with annotation.