Back to the 90's

Baster is the professional playground of designer Bas Koopmans. His work has real personality and I love these posters found on the form fifty five blog. You can understand them and get what song it is without reading them all. They made me smile!

Visit the website here.

Reply from Red brick road

I was lucky enough to hear back from the Red Brick Road within a couple of days and was very happy to hear that they would love to take a look at our work when we visit London.

Andy Vasey an art director from the agency emailed me back : 

Hi I'm an art director at the red brick road.

The creative dpt pa forwarded on your email about coming in.

We'd love to take a look at your work.

When are you around? Any dates best for you?

It was decided through numerous emails that we would meet on the 2nd of March. I was very grateful to Andy for getting in touch.

Red Brick Road

I came across London based studio Red Brick Road after searching for Sam Cartmell who produced the Tesco advertising campaign for Granny smith apples. It was upon looking through their site that I came across more poster designs for Tesco which, still in my opinion are really clever and well executed.... one of those designs which really make me wish I had thought of that.

Other clients include Florence and Fred for Tesco, Heineken and Sky One. In a few weeks time we will be travelling down to London to meet with the industry and I thought this would be the perfect time to get in touch with Red Brick Road and to try and meet with the designers of the Tesco campaign to get feedback on the Bacardi brief that myself and Grace have been working on for the last couple of weeks.

Email sent to Paul Hammersley at the Red Brick Road:

Hi Paul,

I'm currently in my final year of Graphic Design studying at Stockport College in Cheshire.

As part of our degree we are asked to get as much feedback and experience as we can with other designers in the industry. From Monday the 1st of March until Wednesday the 3rd myself and a few other students will be visiting London with our portfolios to meet with people from the industry.

Recently myself and another fellow student have been working in collaboration on a brief for the alcoholic drink Bacardi. Whilst working on this brief we were heavily influenced by the work you produced for Tesco and decided ourselves to work with copywriting to create a series of type led posters.

As we will be coming to London I was wondering if you had the time, 10 minutes or so, to look at our portfolios and maybe give us some feedback on our Bacardi brief?

I understand you must be very busy so would be very grateful for your time. I will be travelling with 2 other students, and we'd all be delighted to have our work seen by professionals.

Regards

Michele McKee

Have a look at Red Brick Road website here

Reply from Mind design

I was lucky enough to hear back from the creative director of Mind design within a few days. I found his answers to my questions very helpful.

Mind design

Mind design is an independent London based design studio founded in 1999 by graduate Holger Jacobs. They focus on intergrated design solutions that combine corporate identity, print, web and interior design.

I was initially attracted to the work they had produced for 'Tom Dixon catalogue 09' where they designed a brochure for a furniture catalogue. I like their attention to detail and love for typography. I have always been influenced by editorial design and these specific spreads reminded me of the work of Alexey Brodovitch who I had previously looked at.

    

I decided to put together a constructed questionnaire to send to Mind design to ask about themselves as an agency and their views on the industry.

Email to Mind Design.

Design posters

Whilst browsing through the 2008 d&ad awards annual I came across this striking poster campaign designed to promote the Imperial war museum's London exhibition, Camouflage. Designed by advertising agency Ogilvy Advertising London. The posters themselves were difficult to see against the backgrounds they were placed on, apart from one corner, which was noticeable because it was peeling off. On this part were the details of the exhibition. The posters were strategically placed in order to be seen by a younger, more artistically minded audience, as the exhibition also covered how camouflage design has been used in contemporary culture such as fashion and music.

Kate Forrester

As a designer I am highly influenced by other areas of design, music, fashion and illustration feeds my practice as a designer each day. I find myself looking at illustration for inspiration as i find the way illustrators work and their final outcomes are visually stimulating. I came across the work of Kate Forrester whilst working on a typography brief. Kate produces some stunning work for big name clients such as Harvey Nichols. I love her work as each of her designs are carefully executed.

Event design for Harvey Nichols:

Visit Kate's site here.

Mark Howe

Mark Howe is an illustrator with a background in graphic design. His work excites me as it looks visually stimulating as well as showing clear communication. Howes designs are fun and quirky containing depth and flexibility as well as showing similar characteristics to images. I have been a huge fan of his work for a while now.

Brochure illustrations for make your mark designed for Elmwood, I love how he incorporates text with his own handrawn text and own doodles.

Visit Marks website here.

Helvetica cookie cutters

Just to show that Helvetica really is everywhere...