Level 2
CHK Design
A multi-disciplined design studio working for clients in architecture, art design and fashion.
Client
Miser & Now
A magazine incorporating fine art, photography, film and video games as cultural entities. It encompassed progressive discussions on contemporary culture. Each issue was based on a relevant cultural theme. The publication ceased in November 2007 after 11 issues.
Christian Küster was the art director of the magazine so it was his company (CHK Design) that designed several magazines, Miser & Now being just one of them.
Miser & Now had a very clean and crisp look to it. The magazine paid a lot of attention to type and layout, using differing letter forms for different articles, giving each article an individual feel and look, while keeping to a very symmetrical layout. The head and foot margins remained linear.
In the magazine some articles were placed in thick black boarders, that draw the eye to the piece, making the reader linger on these pages just that little bit longer if just flicking through the magazine.
This is something I would not have noticed in the past. I have found myself looking at magazines in a new light, noticing things like spacing, margin sizes and paper quality, things that are just taken for granted.
Miser & Now looked like an interesting magazine and it is a shame that it has ceased publication.
www.chkdesign.com/
Pentagram
Multi-disciplined design firm with offices in New York, London, San Francisco, Austin and Berlin.
Job
First down, Houston: The birth of an NFL Franchise. The book accompanied a major exhibition at the Museum of Fine Art Huston that paid tribute to the American football team the Houston Texans.
Client
Museum of Fine Art (Houston)
This is a “coffee table book”
From the example shown on the portfolio page of Pentagram, the book reminded me of my magazine/book design. The similarities being that the text runs across both pages and in spoken word using comments from fans of the Texans. The typography is clean and crisp and seems to me to be the same font. The leading in the piece is interesting as it is never the same from one statement from the other, I like this effect and it works well on the pages displayed against the black background. I tried this with my piece and it didn’t work out so well. It does on this piece.
I have also looked at other pieces from the company’s portfolio and I was very impressed. They have created signage for King’s College London and the EasyInfo digital gate display, providing passengers with up-to-the-minute flight information for United Airlines. They also designed the Stowaway Keyboard (a portable folding keyboard Palm Pilot) and other handheld PDAs.
www.pentagram.com/
SAS
Design company specializing in branding and graduate recruitment, shareholder communication and corporate websites.
The Client
BDO Stoy Hayward
The Brief
The challenge was to create a campaign approach that would fit with the firm’s positioning and values and would increase applications from students. SAS needed to get the most out of guidelines that had been developed for B2B (business-to-business) marketing in a space where being too formal does not work well.
The answer
SAS centred the campaign on the positive difference of a career for graduates, and offered students support during their professional exams, in order to ensure that they had a good work/life balance, amongst other things. This is captured in the line “You’ll notice the difference” and illustrations which bring the campaign to life. In addition it ran a competition to underpin one of the key messages that allowed students to enter their names in order to win £1000 worth of support during exam time.
SAS have used simple illustration and colour to soften what could have been a very boring piece of literature, something that could have been overlooked very easily. The design makes the leaflet a bit more friendly and has the “flick through” value which leaflets need in this market.
I myself was drawn towards this as I investigated the websites, and the humour was why I chose this profile. I like to think I put a bit of humour into my work. The humour in this piece is used to break down the boundaries and appeal to students. They also use questions as header statements. The website also has some nice “handmade Type” titles on it, which I like.
www.sasdesign.co.uk/
BMF
Design company based in Sydney Australia.
Again the use of humour is very strong in a lot of BMF’s work, especially the viral internet campaigns. The piece I have chosen is “Introducing Ella.”
The Brief
Ella Bache, a skin care and beauty company, launched a “Skin Good Enough to Eat” campaign. The centre of the campaign was Ella, a giant naked woman whose skin was made up entirely from peaches (approx 24000).
The ad campaign for TV mixed live action with (what looks like) flash, and 3D vector graphics, showing the construction of an impressive statue of Ella made of peaches. It was unveiled in a park in Sydney next to the Museum of Contemporary Art, and was on display for 10 days for free.
What I like is that I used the same technique they used for my first flash project i.e. the look of a signature writing itself. This is a simple technique and is very effective at the beginning at the TV advert. Just knowing how this is done has added interest to me.
The whole website is well put together and looks, in my opinion, brilliant. The hand drawn look (in Biro) is eye catching and makes the visitor want to investigate the rest of the site. Also the use of humour, which as I mentioned before is very important to me, is prevalent on every page.
www.bmf.com.au/
CHK Design
A multi-disciplined design studio working for clients in architecture, art design and fashion.
Client
Miser & Now
A magazine incorporating fine art, photography, film and video games as cultural entities. It encompassed progressive discussions on contemporary culture. Each issue was based on a relevant cultural theme. The publication ceased in November 2007 after 11 issues.
Christian Küster was the art director of the magazine so it was his company (CHK Design) that designed several magazines, Miser & Now being just one of them.
Miser & Now had a very clean and crisp look to it. The magazine paid a lot of attention to type and layout, using differing letter forms for different articles, giving each article an individual feel and look, while keeping to a very symmetrical layout. The head and foot margins remained linear.
In the magazine some articles were placed in thick black boarders, that draw the eye to the piece, making the reader linger on these pages just that little bit longer if just flicking through the magazine.
This is something I would not have noticed in the past. I have found myself looking at magazines in a new light, noticing things like spacing, margin sizes and paper quality, things that are just taken for granted.
Miser & Now looked like an interesting magazine and it is a shame that it has ceased publication.
www.chkdesign.com/
Pentagram
Multi-disciplined design firm with offices in New York, London, San Francisco, Austin and Berlin.
Job
First down, Houston: The birth of an NFL Franchise. The book accompanied a major exhibition at the Museum of Fine Art Huston that paid tribute to the American football team the Houston Texans.
Client
Museum of Fine Art (Houston)
This is a “coffee table book”
From the example shown on the portfolio page of Pentagram, the book reminded me of my magazine/book design. The similarities being that the text runs across both pages and in spoken word using comments from fans of the Texans. The typography is clean and crisp and seems to me to be the same font. The leading in the piece is interesting as it is never the same from one statement from the other, I like this effect and it works well on the pages displayed against the black background. I tried this with my piece and it didn’t work out so well. It does on this piece.
I have also looked at other pieces from the company’s portfolio and I was very impressed. They have created signage for King’s College London and the EasyInfo digital gate display, providing passengers with up-to-the-minute flight information for United Airlines. They also designed the Stowaway Keyboard (a portable folding keyboard Palm Pilot) and other handheld PDAs.
www.pentagram.com/
SAS
Design company specializing in branding and graduate recruitment, shareholder communication and corporate websites.
The Client
BDO Stoy Hayward
The Brief
The challenge was to create a campaign approach that would fit with the firm’s positioning and values and would increase applications from students. SAS needed to get the most out of guidelines that had been developed for B2B (business-to-business) marketing in a space where being too formal does not work well.
The answer
SAS centred the campaign on the positive difference of a career for graduates, and offered students support during their professional exams, in order to ensure that they had a good work/life balance, amongst other things. This is captured in the line “You’ll notice the difference” and illustrations which bring the campaign to life. In addition it ran a competition to underpin one of the key messages that allowed students to enter their names in order to win £1000 worth of support during exam time.
SAS have used simple illustration and colour to soften what could have been a very boring piece of literature, something that could have been overlooked very easily. The design makes the leaflet a bit more friendly and has the “flick through” value which leaflets need in this market.
I myself was drawn towards this as I investigated the websites, and the humour was why I chose this profile. I like to think I put a bit of humour into my work. The humour in this piece is used to break down the boundaries and appeal to students. They also use questions as header statements. The website also has some nice “handmade Type” titles on it, which I like.
www.sasdesign.co.uk/
BMF
Design company based in Sydney Australia.
Again the use of humour is very strong in a lot of BMF’s work, especially the viral internet campaigns. The piece I have chosen is “Introducing Ella.”
The Brief
Ella Bache, a skin care and beauty company, launched a “Skin Good Enough to Eat” campaign. The centre of the campaign was Ella, a giant naked woman whose skin was made up entirely from peaches (approx 24000).
The ad campaign for TV mixed live action with (what looks like) flash, and 3D vector graphics, showing the construction of an impressive statue of Ella made of peaches. It was unveiled in a park in Sydney next to the Museum of Contemporary Art, and was on display for 10 days for free.
What I like is that I used the same technique they used for my first flash project i.e. the look of a signature writing itself. This is a simple technique and is very effective at the beginning at the TV advert. Just knowing how this is done has added interest to me.
The whole website is well put together and looks, in my opinion, brilliant. The hand drawn look (in Biro) is eye catching and makes the visitor want to investigate the rest of the site. Also the use of humour, which as I mentioned before is very important to me, is prevalent on every page.
www.bmf.com.au/
I like this logo, maybe because I am a bit of a film nerd, but I think the logo liked with the horn section are the brand everybody recognises instantly.
Again another film company logo. This one I also like but its hard to define why. When I see it I know there is history to this company, there is a nostalgia to the logo in which I feel comfort.
The film ’Batman Begins’ also brought a re-imagining of the bat insignia or badge that Batman uses as his sign. Again my nerdy-ness knows no bounds I am a fan of the Batman comic and film and love the old and new bat insignia. There isn’t much more to say.
Maybe one of the best-known video game characters of all time. Designed by Toby Gard and first seen in the game ‘Tomb Raider’ in 1996 by Eidos Interactive, Lara Croft was basically an Indiana Jones rip off with big breasts.
Croft was presented as an English woman of good stock who travels the world ripping off ancient ruins of any or all artefacts, while killing wild animals and henchmen with little or no hesitation. And all this while wearing a small pair of hot pants and a skintight green top. This made the character more appealing to male game players, but the inclusion of very good puzzles dragged in more gamers.
Car Manufacturer, Japan
