HOT14 Plymouth Graphic Design Show

Next in my series of Plymouth Degree show posts we have Graphic Design. Being an illustrator the design at Plymouth is very type based and not always my cup of tea as someone who prefers pattern and loose lines over order. These are my favourite bits from the show!

Lovely type and tiny line drawings.

I love the vintage feel of the faded ink here.

Blown away by the masterful paper sculpture!

I just like this because of the acrobatics...

Pattern Hunting in Guildford

So last year, after a weeks placement at The Great British Card Company, I was told I would never look at greetings cards the same way. They said that every time I go into a shop I would pay much more attention to the designs and styles on the shelves. 

This is definitely true, and it goes further than just greetings cards, I now find myself noticing packaging design, home ware, wrapping paper, clothing patterns, and anything else that involves beautiful design in shops.

I met up with my illustrator friend Jess in Guildford for some shopping, and we decided to go pattern hunting in a number of shops - it was a very successful mission and I documented our finds here for your perusal and inspiration. I always find looking at a number of beautiful designs can help me get started when I am stuck for ideas :)

Let me know what you think of these!

I also highly recommend The Tea Terrace at the top of House of Fraser in Guildford - they have a beautiful garden outside (shame it was cloudy) and gorgeous vintage style cups and saucers. The people next to us had tea in these elephant teapots which you could also buy from the counter!

Tigerprint Gifted Competition 2013

Hey everyone! so I have been very busy recently working lots and spending time down in Plymouth for graduation so haven't been posting as much... sorry! Getting settled in now back home though so I will have more to show over the next few weeks.

For the past few years Tigerprint (who make greetings cards and gift wrap for M&S) have run a design competition for new graduates called "Gifted".

This year it ran over a whole month, each day had a new theme and you had to make a square design based on that theme. You could enter as many as you wanted but obviously the more variety you could show the more likely you were to win the prize which was a 3 month placement creating a range for Marks & Spencer.

I managed to create 13 designs and was selected as one of the commended winners (yay!) - you should check out the rest of this lot they have some lovely work :)

Anyhow, it seems like forever ago I did all of this work as it was back in July and I had to keep it secret until the end of the competition!

"Alphabet"

"Express Yourself"

"Back To Nature"

"Typographic"

"In Bloom"

"Freestyle"

"All About Colour"

"Make Your Mark"

"Spot"

"Summer"

I am hoping to release some of this work as prints and put some patterns on products soon. This may take a while as I am saving up to move out currently and working a lot but doing well in this comp is definitely motivating me to keep making stuff :)

Great British Summer Inspiration

So I have been inspired this week by the beautiful packaging Kate Larsen has been designing for M&S's "Great British Summer" range. 

Her designs are being used on a wide range of snacks, cakes, desserts and food featuring scenes of the british summertime including hot air balloons, beaches, fairgrounds and beach huts.

The illustrations are super beautiful, and I love the way she has incorporated food into them, biscuits riding a ferris wheel etc.

I got a little inspired and made this colour palette to work from and create some "Great British Summer" themed patterns: 

Also I downloaded an action for rounding corners on images which makes them look swish and also hopefully harder to steal (; 

Let me know what you think! Has anyone else been inspired by any packaging/artwork they have seen recently?

Timelapse flowers and patterns

Today I started working on a design for this months Tigerprint competition to create a purely black and white pattern design. This was a bit of a challenge for someone who likes using colour so much and I had some fun with it.

As a bit of an experiment I started using a time lapse app that I downloaded to record my process and see how it came out. I recorded myself doing some of the drawing and then the digital editing on Photoshop. I found out it is really hard to get a straight on angle of a computer whilst also being able to use the keyboard (hence the sideways view). Let me know if you like this video I want to do a few more, though it does make me feel a bit more self conscious and slightly distracted whilst drawing...

And here is the pattern I came up with :

Edited the black and white design a bit further than in the video (its harder to focus when theres an ipad practically leaning on your shoulder...) 

I also got excited and wanted to use some colour (I don't think i am a monochrome artist!) so I came up with this mini range from the drawings I had. 

Oh and I got excited and put them on some things:

Buy these over at Society6. 

By the way this is all I am doing now I have graduated so if you have any commissions or projects you may need me for drop me an email at josiethejump@gmail.com and say hi :)