Graphic Design Portfolio

Hello, and welcome to my most up to date online portfolio. Here I've chosen some of my favourite pieces of work to show you. I've selected work to demonstrate a range of skills that I believe set me up well for studying degree level graphic design.

Skateboard brand launch catalogue.

This project was the first of my Level 3 Btec course where I was able to determine my own project brief. I decided to go for a launch catalogue for a new skateboard brand. This combined my passions of skating and graphic design, with a focus on creating eye catching artwork and a professional looking final outcome.

I developed a series of plant based characters, maintaining a refreshingly bright and entertaining style. This set out a clear vision for the feel of the brand, titled "Beast Boards", and I carried this visual style through to the final outcome, with bold typography and an awareness of colour.

Most of my digital work starts off as a rough pencil drawing. As I have become more confident with a range of media, I have also developed designs from paintings. These rough designs allow me to experiment with layout as well as to get a good idea of where the design is headed. I always like to keep the final outcome in mind, and as part of this process I think about  the manipulation options available to me in when I take the design in-program.

Painting project.

I wanted to include this piece of work because it shows how I like to approach my projects in general. Before we progressed to self determined project briefs, the class undertook a project to create paintings for a local hospital. Painting has often been an area of art where I have struggled, going right back to the Level 2 Btec I worked on at secondary school. I struggled with this project initially. Eventually there was a stage where I could abandon the project and take a "pass" grade for it, but I decided against this, and instead put the hours in away from college working to improve my skills in this area. In the end, I was able to resubmit the project with new artwork and gained a "merit" grade for it. I was proud to put the time in to a weaker area of my work and improve my results. This is how I look at all of my work, I always want to improve and apply new skills I have learnt. Now I can say that I am a more competent painter, through time and patience.

Wire work.

Here's a fun piece of work I created when studying a sculpture unit. I found the process of working with wire  was one that I could relate to, because it relies on a gradual building up of the whole, much like putting together layers when working in Photoshop. This photograph was taken on a table and has been photoshopped to give a professional looking white background, as is the standard for product photography.

Tote bag.

I developed this design from a three colour stencil and printed it onto a tote bag for a project last year. The silhouette of the skater is immediately recognisable, and the bold typography can't be missed. The scaling of the text is to emphasise the second word, giving the slogan a rising "volume" when it's read, as well as catching the attention of anybody with an interest in skateboarding. I was reading recently some general tips from a professional designer, and one of them was that the best designs can look effective as silhouettes, and I think that this design shows that.

Graphical artwork.

Heres a piece of work I developed under my own general brief for developing exhibition worthy digital artwork. I've been fascinated by the level of work which top designers are able to operate at, where some can deliver immersive "real" looking scenes. I see "real" and "realistic" as meaning different things. An example is the movie "Avatar". I think in the future it will be regarded as a landmark moment for immersive CGI in film. People who have watched it in cinema remark that watching it is like being in a dream, and this is a great example of how the visual arts can immerse a viewer by looking "real", without necessarily looking "realistic". The highest level of graphic design can reproduce immersive visions of this world, or an entirely different one.

This piece of work, developed from a pencil drawing, mainly uses an awareness of light and shadow to give the phone a presence and look of weight. Work with depth and presence makes the viewer feel like they can reach into the image and interact with it, making objects seem tangible and characters seem like they are standing in a definite place, just as the viewer is.

Photoshop Presentation.

Here are a few slides taken from a presentation I delivered all about Photoshop. With these slides I described some of the main developments that have been made with the program. These range from the predictable, such as improved layout and increasing the range of tools available to the user, to those that have revolutionised the way we work, such as the implementation of "layers". Rival programs were developing similar systems at the time so it wouldn't be right to say that Thomas and John Knoll's program invented this method of working, but Photoshop has implemented layers to make them a cornerstone of how people work such as through adding the ability to adjust how the colours in the layers blend, their opacity and giving the user a wide range of "effects" options to quickly enhance their work with the use of sliders.

I also undertook in-depth research into how the program came to be. It started as a simple creation to help Thomas with his thesis writing, was at one point bundled with the products of a small scanner company, and eventually was bought by adobe. Initially, Thomas and John were able to keep the "ownership" of the program, and were therefore able to benefit from large amounts of royalties. Some people took exception to John's insistence in spending time developing "filters" to manipulate layers, but his foresight has proved accurate, with filters being a popular method of manipulation, often allowing novice users to quickly produce pleasing outcomes with the adjustment of sliders.

I enjoy studying methods and the work of designers. My teachers gave me a distinction mark for my presentation, as well as commenting that every major research task I have undertaken recently meets this level of working, even when the mark is unavailable for the particular unit. This includes a gallery report,  where I wrote about work I found at a small private gallery, and analysis of an individual piece of work, where I studied Jamie Hewlett and his design for the cover of the "Demon Days" album by the virtual band Gorillaz.

Self promotion project.

This was the last project I completed, focusing on developing an identity as a designer, and creating successful self promotional items.

This piece of work is a good guide to the level of gain I have made with my digital manipulation. This "eye" design was taken through many iterations before reaching this final stage. I integrated pattern into the design, and adjusted the blending so that the opacity of the pattern matches the areas of shadow on the face. Little details like that demonstrate a degree of sophistication that I have learnt to apply to my work.

 Here is a product shot of all of my self promotional items together. This includes a container, jigsaw puzzle, postcard design, keyrings and business cards.

A closer image. I enjoyed seeing the whole project set out like this, and took a range of photos to best capture my work.

 I looked at the painting work of Rene Magritte, and was fascinated by a piece of work of his where he depicted a painting within a painting. The interior design for my container is a tribute to that. This image was created using a cropped photo of four bricks, manipulated to create a wall, imagery created solely in program and a manipulated acrylic painting of a cloudy sky. Magritte's "painting within a painting" work can be found HERE. It looks incredible.

I added a series of acrylic paintings to the edge of the lid, to demonstrate a wider range of skills than just working digitally. I applied artwork to the outside of the box, developing designs that contained colours that would make them stand out to the passing viewer.

I created these slightly sinister looking faces as a keyring design that I thought people would be more likely to keep. I think iconic imagery is often more effective than simply trying to sell your "name" as a graphic designer or artist. Everybody knows of Banksy, but he achieved his level of fame through his work and showing his artistic identity, and let this spread his name, rather than writing it everywhere.

I developed this design because I knew a jigsaw puzzle would be an unconventional self promotional item, but also the best products are those that people keep and reuse.

I use the website Photobox for any print work that I can't achieve with the facilities available at college. The finish on the jigsaw is nice and the colours are rich. I've used Photobox for poster prints and the outcomes always look professionally printed and are dispatched quickly. I am looking forward to learning to produce outcomes like this myself with the step up in facilities at degree level.

Here are the finished business cards. Along with the jigsaw, these are something of a centerpiece to my range of products, demonstrating ability to potential clients as well as using this ability to catch attention and stand out from the crowd.

Final Major Project

I've just finished my final major project for the second year of my Btec course. I think that the work shows another step up in ability.

Here is an early experiment, manipulating an acrylic self portrait painting using Photoshop. 

Here is the development of a car design that I used in my final piece. The first image is acrylic paint, the second is the first main digital development stage, and the third is the finished design. You'll notice some of my other artwork features on the car.

I created an "eye" design, but decided it was too like the business card I produced before, so I decided to go the full way and create a portrait image. The backgrounds for my three main pieces of work are derived from the same painted design, giving a consistent visual style that links them together.

 Here is a design featuring a heavily modified picture of me. I went with a cartoony style on the left, and a more subtle style on the right. The background is modified to follow each style, and I placed myself in the centre of the design to create a "cross" shape, with the limbs and wings all meeting at one point. The original photo of me was taken with a timer at the wide angle end of the "superzoom" lens on my Fuji bridge camera, to exaggerate depth and make it look as if I'm flying backwards.

Here is my final exhibition piece.

I was pleased with how this design printed. I decided to go for a 30 by 40 inch poster print. This allowed me to include some fun extra details to find, as well as test myself- editing has to be spot on when working with such large media. It would have been possible to derive the entire screen image from a printscreen, but the quality would have been poor on this scale and I wouldn't have the degree of control over layout that I was looking for. The main screen images are imported from separate files, and the desktop icons and program borders are edited printscreens.

The assets "outside" of the screen are photos modified to give a consistent colour palette, since the images were taken in different lighting conditions. On the "desk" is an early design.

As you'll see the print quality was great, meaning all of the fine details came out as intended.

I'll be exhibiting my work along with the rest of the Art and Photography departments soon.

Next up for me is creating a short presentation to show some of my strongest pieces of graphic work to my class, and continuing to learn all I can about digital manipulation and design, including photography post production. This is a relatively new area for me, but I'm increasingly excited by how I can combine my own photographs into my work. Some of my latest images are below.

Thanks for taking the time to look through my portfolio.

Will