OUGD402 - The Sharp Project Manchester

The Sharp Project in Manchester is a digital production complex which hosts multiple different events and meetings all year round. It holds offices, stages, studios, room hire and event space for various fields within the creative industries. This particular event which I attended was all about graphic designers, in industry and education, showcasing their work using Behance portfolios and networking with each other. We firstly had a talk about the history and founding of the complex, followed some inspirational speakers, and then was divided up into different groups where we critiqued and viewed each others work. It was refreshing to see how diverse each person in your group was and how industry professionals really took your feedback seriously. I spent the afternoon viewing work from college students, university students and from new professionals all the way up to managing directors.

After the event, Mark Stringer, the managing director from the company 'Ahoy' approached me about my portfolio and gave me a business card. He said he was impressed by my work as a whole at this level but has given me the email address of his head photographer and has suggested that he could possibly use me as an assistant. I will email him and see if he could use me, even if nothing comes of it at this stage, it still proves the importance of networking and it could be a useful contact in a couple of years time when looking for a placement.

I have blurred out his details for confidentiality reasons

OUGD402 - Mural Graphics

 This particular job was issued by the company 'Bumble Bespoke Murals' who usually specialises in unique personal house murals and more commercial murals for nurseries and other businesses. The design work above was briefed to me by my mother who is a qualified hand sign writer and artist. She asked me to collaborate with her to create a design for a mural for a new nursery. The task asked of me was to create an underwater themed mock up design for the owner to have a visual representation of what the painted mural will look like. I had to also take into consideration the budget of the job and how much each element of the design would cost on the overall price. The children knocking the walls at a lower level was also taken into consideration so I arranged the contents of the design at a high level so that the painted mural would not be chipped away at a later date. It would also have cost too much to paint the whole wall blue so I devised a plan to use splatters of blue and yellow to represent the underwater theme. This also allowed the rooms to stay bright and justified there being a larger quantity of fish making the design as cost effective for the manager of the nursery as possible, allowing her to get better value for money on the mural.

The design utilised as many non copyrighted images as possible however, the images of the fish would turn out bespoke on the final painted mural so this was not a huge issue.

The finished painted mural is photographed below.