Sort Design

'Enhancing businesses through effective design' ... Sort design is a Belfast design and branding studio founded in 2006. I came across them after finding a new blog called Grafikcache.com and their work was featured on that.

I was particularly drawn to the work they had produced for St patricks festival in Dublin. For the last 3 years Sort design have worked with the client to create branding, advertisements and promotional materials. I like this work for its typography and it's strong use in colour. This particular colour theme represents the variety of activities which take place at the festival which I think works nicely.

 

A - side studio

Based in Falmouth A-side studios do Id's, tees, books and magazines. 

Their branding and promotional campaign 'Mark' is the work I recently saw on grafikcache. Mark is a new furniture and lifestyle brand based in Cornwall and the promotional materials they produced for the company reflect values of a contemporary Cornwall.

 

They also do some really nice business cards for numerous companies!

Seven25

Isabelle Swiderski is the creative director of seven 25, founded in 2000 in Vancouver. They are a multidisciplinary creative direction and design agency discovered on the Form fifty five forum. The understand that powerful ideas and images inform or inspire.

I really like the work they produced for the 'LOUD' foundation in which they named the foundation, designed it's identity and all materials for the campaign. 

I really like the logo above as in between the words the exclamation mark can be seen, it's a really interesting piece of design.

  

Mark Studio

After browsing through Form Fifty Five's blog I saw a feature on Mark studio, apparently Mark studio who Dan Ingham works for has recently updated their website therefore I decided to have a further look.

I particularly liked the work they produced for the comedy store. I think it's interesting how they challenged the idea of comedy by turning it around and using images of people being well miserable to promote the store. The photography is very strong and compositionally I think it is aesthetically pleasing.

I also really liked the work they produced for the Manchester Literature festival, a brief that we worked on to some levels in the 1st year. Mark studio state how they solved the brief by saying ' our big idea for the identity came to us while staring vacantly at our book case' I also really like how they show there work in situe so we can see how it works in the envionment.

Telegramme and A to M

After not hearing back from Telegramme or A to M I decided to re - email them... however knowing how busy they must be I know a reply may be doubtful.

Graphical House

Graphical House is an agency based in Glasgow who specialise in print, motion graphics, animation, typography and identities to name but a few. I first came across their website when I saw a piece of their artwork on the Form fifty five blog and decided to look into them as a company a bit more. As an agency they state about the work they produce ' at any given time we will be working on an eclectic mix of projects: we consider this diversity vital to maintaing our fresh and optimistic approach' and they are also inspired by the culture around us.

I really like the layout of their website and how the work shown has been photographed which gives me great considerationg and inspiration when designing my portfolio. As to the work they produce I like it all! I don't have a favourite piece but I like this A5 brochure which details some of their favourite projects over the past year. I think the typography is very strong and accentuates the rest of the book.

  

Seven Zero

I came across the work of Gary Austin on the Form fifty five blog. His website seven zero is a portfolio of all his work, what is interesting is that he is a 3year university student. Therefore, it was interesting to see what sort of competition we are up against even though were a year behind.

Austin's work shown the the Form fifty five blog was a piece of work based on a scrabble championship, it was these designs which attracted me into looking into his website. The idea behind it is clever and well executed as he produced a set of interactive beer mats and posters to promote the World Scrabble Championship. The beer mats are perforated so each printed Scrabble piece can be ripped off individually and played with.

     

His website also features some work he produced for the D&AD competition briefs which I think look really nice. While I myself did not work on this brief when given to us I know some other students did and it's nice to see how a student at a different university tackled this brief.

  

All in all I really liked all the work shown which only leads us to the conclusion that it really is going to be tough when we all graduate to find a job!