Gonçalo's Blog

Hello there, my name is Goncalo Gomes and I'm a first year student of Graphic Design at Coventry University. Welcome to my blog. I hope that you find what you are looking for, if not, I don't really care. You will enjoy this one.

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Next year...

Plans for next year? Still being a happy person, hard worker, focused, dreamer, still looking to improve in every aspect. Obviously next year I am looking to improve as always. I still want to be me but a better version of myself, as a designer and person. I can’t wait to next year to be honest, I know that will be way more challenging than this year but that is exactly what I like and what I’m always looking for. Challenges make us to become better and the harder they are, the better we will become. Either by winning or losing, we learn every time. Live is all about learning.

My second year of Graphic Design needs to be better than my first. But a step at a time, I will get on the level that I’ve always aimed for.

My expectations are high, either for the new and better projects & assignments. This year was a really good one for me to adapt and to learn how to live as a student and worker, all by myself. I grew so much in this year than my whole life and I will be always thankful for that.

Next year, here I come.

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What are we, graphic designers, to others? My point of view.

Nowadays there’s loads of art and artist and it’s becoming easier to explain to someone what do you do for a living, what are you studying and what does graphic design (in my case) consists off. For some people, they already know what graphic design is or have a slightly idea of it, others you explain using very basic examples, like (I can work with pictures, editing them, I can create album covers, posters, advertisements, basically everything graphical that you might see in your life, billboads, etc) to others is literally impossible and they think that you do some type of dark magic. Literally.

The hardest for me it’s when I tried to explain to some members of my family and I thought that was really fun. I tried everything, showed some examples and all that... It was hard but in the end they understood what I actually do. It was worth it.

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“OUT Projects” - App Proposal

As a part of our body of work/project, we had to create an app proposal to our exhibitions. 

I started by developing the app layout so it could be consistent and unique. Our app proposal had just a simple purpose and easy to navigate pages because we don’t want the user to spend more time on the app than actually enjoying the exhibitions. So we tried to make it as simple as possible.

These examples show how we were thinking the app would look like.

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“Self Brand Identity” - Work in progress

I started by developing my self brand identity a couple of years ago. Instead of going to something around my personal name (Gonçalo Gomes), I preferred to try something different and went towards my “online” name, which is Rolly. Since my early days of design, I’ve always used that nickname and everyone used to call me by that name instead of my real one so I sticked to it. For now, I like this brand that I’ve created, of course it can have improvements, like I said it was 2 years ago and now I have way more skills and knowledge in order to come with something better and professional.

I just wanted to show you how it looks and tell you a little bit of a backstory. I was looking forward to a catchy and easy name (thatsrolly), and that red dot in the end, makes the logo not look that boring and simple.

I rather use this “persona” behind me and trying to escape the ordinary.

You can check more about this project here https://www.behance.net/gallery/57939033/Personal-Branding

I hope you enjoy.

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Art in Berlin

This is just a appreciation post about some art that I found in Berlin and how good they look. Either graffiti, paintings, huge walls, vans, they all look fantastic. It was a very unique experience that I will never forget and I hope there’s more to come!

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Inspirational Graphical Design quotes (kinda).

“There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.” - Milton Glaser

“I’ve never had a problem with a dumb client. There is no such thing as a bad client. Part of our job is to do good work and get the client to accept it.” - Bob Gill

“It’s through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good.” - Paula Scher

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Never fall in love with an idea. They’re whores. If the one you’re with isn’t doing the job, there’s always, always, always another.” - Chip Kidd

Was just surfing on the internet when I suddenly found this website https://99designs.co.uk/blog/creative-inspiration/10-famous-design-quotes/ and started looking inside of it, Came across is very good and funny famous quotes and I felt this was a good idea to express them.

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“Typography”

This 1st semester assignment was about Typography and creating our own. Our typography needed to be based upon a drawing that we did earlier on when the module was first introduced to us.

I started to create my font simply by responding to the brief. We had a series of exercises to do, all of them were drawings and the one I enjoyed the most was the one when we had to capture just the most important things of the person that was chosen. Important things such as the lines that stand out, shadows, silhouettes and basically it was what I did. I took that composition and started by creating the font with simple shapes and lines, making the font readable but without using the whole form of the letters. So I came up with a very objective, clean, simple and fun font according to my drawing. I started by cutting out the letters and seeing how much readable or not they were after finished. After that, I had to resemble shading into it and the main idea that I got was to simply use dots in between the lines (curved and straight lines) to create a more dense shape, like shadows. After that, I knew that I had every key aspect of my drawing present into my created font. And started by creating all the letters from the alphabet and I came up with this composition that I think that corresponds to the brief.

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“Logic, Sam Spratt and their collaboration”

This wouldn’t be my blog if I didn’t speak about my favorite artist, Logic. I know this artist and I’ve been listening to him for the past 8/9 years, since his early days of rapping.  His music is heaven, is the most amazing art that I’ve ever listened to but is not only that. His lately album covers are truly amazing me in every sort of way. They are so unique, professional, vibrant, etc. The quality of those drawings are amazing, specially the last album “Everybody” (you can check more about it here http://www.samspratt.com/logic-everybody-album-cover), the detail, the quality, are just fantastic. The designer is Sam Spratt (http://www.samspratt.com/)  and his style is just perfect to me. You can easily tell that a piece belongs to him by just looking carefully to the details, the color palettes, the lines, the lightning, etc. He has worked with several artist, companies all around the world and Logic is the reason why I know his work. Since Sam designed his first album cover (Logic’s), they have been working together ever since and that creates a unique visual language between all his album covers.

Can’t wait to see more of these two in the future.

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“Prints”

Today is the day. The day of the final submission. And because of that, I had my prints ready to go and I just want to show you how they look out of a screen. They look amazing! And I really enjoy my art. I was so familiar with all my art being on screen and just staying on screen. All I did was digital even when I worked with clients if they needed to print something they would do it themselves. And Paula is totally right, the proper and right way to see if you art works is to print it. These weren’t my first and final prints, I did print several times in order to see if my projects needed any changes and they did, I changed them and printed once again. Great result at the end.

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“Group projects”

Group projects can be 50/50. 50 good or 50 bad, or in between (which is pretty difficult to happen).

It was really good to know more people from my class and to know how they work as well and this group was actually a good one but I think it could be better if we fixed some points.For example, we didn’t have the whole group working every week, even better, every week were just 2 maybe 3 of us at the class available to put some work towards the group project. This made the group’s life a lot difficult because is really hard to come to a proper decision when there’s not the whole group available. At the beginning everything was going just fine, everyone was helping and working towards the same objective and I can say we were like that for a long time but then, the lack of attendance made it go downhill and we struggled a little bit more that was supposed to. We had a lot of fun working together and i think the decisions we made as a group were always good decision according to the project we were developing. Can’t wait to keep working in more groups and knowing more people from my course.

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“Visual Language”

Like I’ve showed you previously, my other bodies of work (A2 Poster & Tote Bag) for the 114AAD module, Design Practice 1, it’s time to show a little bit more how I introduced and worked with my unique visual language. As you can see, this is the catalogue I’ve developed for my project and I made sure that I introduced my visual language to it, which is those scribbles that I’ve created. I sticked with the same colours, same fonts, same text orientation and with those scribbles. I tried to make them look as much credible as possible.

That’s why those scribbles are everywhere in mine catalogue. Like I’ve explained during my project, these scribbles are the kids’ vision of the devil and how they see or might see it. And kids when they want to explain something, the easiest way to do it is by drawing or painting, everywhere without any concerns. That’s what I did with my catalogue and in the tote bag design, those scribbles are randomly positioned and everywhere.

I am really happy with the final product and I’m really surprised that worked so well, at least for me, can’t wait to show and submit all my projects and collect reactions from my tutors.

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“Sketchbooks”

I haven’t been the biggest fan of sketchbooks until I started university. I didn’t seem to care about them and i thought they were simply useless. I used to do all my work and research online and not really put it into paper and trying to develop more and more. Usually I was using illustrator or another adobe programs to create and develop my work, using only digital media instead of paper and a pen.

It’s way better to draw, write and develop work in a sketchbook because you have way more freedom to create what your minds sees. You are not trapped inside of a digital limited tools that you can use. It way more satisfying to go through the book with your hands, read, touch and see exactly when and how the process started.

The main reason why I didn’t get the grades I was expecting to get in the first semester were due to the lack of information and work on my sketchbook. I really want to improve in that aspect as a graphic designer, since it is one of the most important ones.

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GIFS

This GIF that I made is very unique, it was my first one done in Illustrator and then composed in frames in photoshop and I am really proud of it. It is totally how I wanted it to be, simple, playful, childish drawings type of vibe, related to my visual language on my 114AAD module project. 

This devil scribble is one of my favorites between all of the scribbles that I created, so, I had to animate it and my chosen GIF for the website. I drew it from scratch and then merged all the images/layers into a unique GIF. The time that takes to move from one frame to another is 0.15sec, the time that I found perfect for it.

Took me less that 10min to create this GIF since I was already familiarised with them.

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<!doctype html>

Coding, coding and more coding... when I thought that I was never going back to my early stages of coding in my highschool. Coding at the university was totally different experience for me and I actually enjoyed it for the first time probably because this was not my first time coding so I wasn’t that bad at it. Besides all the body of work that we had to create to 114AAD - Design Practice 1, we had to create our own website (A Coming Soon website for our chosen exhibitions). At the beginning I was really struggling with this because I almost totally forgot about coding and I had to refresh my memory by going to several websites and re-learn how to come with proper coding lines and once I did that, I felt pretty comfortable to start my website.

I tried to keep it as much simple and easy to navigate as possible and obviously, making it looking like it is part of all the body of work/visual language around my project. Used the same colours, same fonts, same text effects, etc. This image that I uploaded is just an example of what the website looks like and how it works.

In this example of my code, I’m really impressed my all the detail that I used to make everything look better and clean and the way they are organised, the text styles (text-align, font-size, font-weight). All these little details that take time to create, they all make the difference in the final product. 

I had so much fun creating this website only using HTML and CSS and it was good to come back coding again to a project of my own.

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Social medias, good for artists?

Since it’s 2019, we all need social media if we want to succeed as an artist. I am totally happy for this idea/invention. Nowadays we need to use the most useful tools that we can in order to go with the flow. Social medias are very good at doing his job. It’s easy to use, you can find anything that you are looking for in a matter of seconds. You can express yourself, you can be you, you can be someone else, you can do anything. But the most important point that I want to mention is how social media boosted me as an artist. Social medias are free and so the publicity that you can make through them, the network that you can create, the art that you can follow and get inspired from. That’s a massive world that exist in these social medias that are available to everyone to use, it’s truly amazing how everything relates to each other.

I’m talking by my experience, I create my web pages, my social medias in order to create a proper image and meaning around me and my name as an artist. Not gonna lie, with all this uni work and this big change in my life, I’ve been focusing more in other things than updating my social medias or my portfolios, but I am definitely looking forward to do so since I’m still creating art every single day. I got my portfolio links everywhere in my blog but not my instagram, where I mainly have video editing art and the early stages towards my brand.

I was able to spread my art and show a little bit of my life and what type of content that I create and live is all about sharing our art to others to inspire and to get inspired.

You can check everything here in just a click https://www.instagram.com/_thatsrolly/

I hope you enjoy am make sure you start following my page.

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Deadlines ⏱✅

This must he a word that scares most of us and that will continue scaring through our university days. I’ve been having deadlines since I started studying and obviously they are not good at all. They put so much pressure in you in order to get stuff done before the deadline. Not just done but ready and finished. I’ve been good with deadlines, I think that I usually manage my time well enough to make sure I submit every project or school work before the deadline, as always. Even though, every year that passes becomes more harder to submit stuff in time as so, I’ve been having so much more stuff to do besides my uni work. This semester I can say that was the best deadline time because I’ce finished pretty much everything and I’m not that stressfull like I was in the first semester when we had plenty of project and different deadlines to each one.

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Creative Identities

“Jesperish”

Jesperish is a designer that I really look into. I’ve been following him for a few years now sincd I started working as a designer. I’ve seen him developing projects and involving as an artist. Above is a few of his work (latest ones). He really focus his your on illustration and to be honest, I’m not good at illustration but that is a thing that I’m really looking to improve in the upcoming years. His work is truly amazing and inspires me to be a better designer. Even though his work is amazing and he gets a lot of support from another designers, loads of other people and even companies use their work withou permission/paying for it which is truly bad and that shouldn’t happen. Because that’s unfair to the artist and they are disrespecting his job and there’s literally nothing he can do against those bug “sharks” to come with a lawsuit against them.

I know that he is going to continue doing his job and become a even better artist in the upcoming future.

His twitter: @Jesperish

Portfolio: behance.net/jesperish

Website: jesperish.soar.gg