Hey There
I'm Jon, a Graphic Design student based in Newcastle-under-Lyme, who's currently looking for some experience working at a design company.
If you could take just a few minutes to have a look through my portfolio, that'd be smashing, and even more so if you could tell me what you think. There's also a copy of my CV available.
(Site's due for a redesign over the summer. Not too thrilled with how it looks or navigates at the moment, it could be a lot nicer.)
D&AD 2010: BBC iPlayer
Here's my design proposal video for a recent D&AD brief. The brief aimed to add a social/sharing aspect to iPlayer, and to have that link in with the rest of the BBC site, or other BBC content.
I took influence from YouTube's video overlay tags and recommendations, as well as Twitter, to create various modules which can plug into iPlayer as it exists, on various platforms. Unfortunately, I'm not nearly skilled enough in software engineering to write them, so you'll have to settle for animated versions instead.
Personal Twitter Bird
I'd just signed up for a Twitter account, and I enjoyed doing my own take on their bluebird mascot. I think giving him a brew was a nice touch; I'm rarely seen without a mug at my desk.
Stop-Motion: 'Bonington Drift'
End result of a 1st Year university team project to animate a stop-motion video. We injected elements of humour into a race round our Art & Design building, eventually getting a much larger narrative than planned.
Motion Tracking Experiments
During the 2009 Winter holidays, I did a few experiments to get to know After Effects and Mocha's motion-tracking features better.
Myst Linking Book: Basic 4-Point Perspective Pin test in Mocha using the videogame Myst as an inspiration.
BBC Corruption: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex features a character named the 'Laughing Man' who has the ability to disguise his face on TV behind the emblem in this video. What if the BBC had been infiltrated?
Holding a Video: Another test with 4-Point Perspective Pin to determine how well After Effects handles them rather than Mocha, inspired by the recent rise in multi-touch input devices.
Annual Report: Health & Safety Laboratory
This was a second-year live brief set by local design company Purple Circle, and I was able to present the project directly to them at their head office. This was a fantastic exercise in learning page layout, experimenting with type, and trying out various printing processes. The final result is a 28-page booklet with a strong recurring theme.
When I get the chance, I'll be running a few prints of this. A hard copy is far nicer than looking at the PDF on-screen, plus I'll be able to get some finished photos up here rather than renders.
Book Jacket: 'A Spy Among Us'
Designing a book cover was a short brief, created to help first year students learn the basics of using Illustrator and InDesign in tandem. Influence mainly taken from the classic Airfix kits.
Tetris Addict
Produced in response to the word 'Pattern' back on a first year University project, 'My Cube'. Let's just say that I enjoy a game of Tetris a bit more than the next guy.
Typographic Terms Colour Swatches
Back in first year, we were set the task to create a printed piece of work which would educate others about basic typographical terms. I doubled it up as a functional item, designing a set of colour swatches that could easily be kept on hand.
Clyde Cobras Logo
An old college friend asked me to draw up an logo for their Strathclyde University hockey team. I took influence from the modern NHL logos: a limited colour palette, with the aim for the shapes to remain simple yet clear.
Photo Series: 'Out of Fashion'
This brief asked to produce a visual commentary which combined a word (mine being 'fashion') with the phrase 'Then and Now', so I ended up wondering about what happened to things when they went out of fashion. I grabbed my camera and took a day to walk round Nottingham, taking shots of anything that'd been discarded, that people didn't want any more.
It's interesting what you find, if you're looking for it.
Come to think of it, with my camera, I must've looked like a mental tourist at the time. I really need a D-SLR, so crouching down to take an awkward photo of the pavement won't cause someone to think I'm wrong in the head.
Print: Go Mental and Smash the Place
A quick reverse-take on the Keep Calm and Carry On poster that's been increasing in popularity in the past few years. I keep getting requests from people to sell them prints of this one, and I might just cave in one day and see what I can do. Shouldn't be too hard since it's single colour, after all?
Pac-Man 30th Anniversary
It's been thirty years since the launch of one of the most iconic videogames in history, and I'd been reading up on designing using negative space, so mixed the two interests. People seemed to enjoy having the rug pulled out from underneath them as they begin to read it as the number 30, only to suddenly click when they see the character and two pills.
If I manage to get these to print (roughtly credit-card size) I'll post some shots.
NBC Rugby Shirt
Newcastle Baptist Church's youth group was heading to Soul Survivor back in 2007, so I was asked to design an emblem for our custom rugby shirts.
Based around Jeremiah 20:9 - 'His Word is in my heart like a fire'