Josh Glover procon3

Today I did the last of my NMP filming for my app. I first had to re-film the shot of the hand using the phone/ with the green screen because when I did it last week, it’s come out slightly to dark, and I’ve slightly altered the order of the pages. So I had to do it again, but it looks much better now so it’s all worth it. 

I also did the ‘networking scenes’ today in university in the Level 2 studios. It went really well and I’d like to give a massive thank you to all my extras - Andy Golpys, Zoe Birtles, Martin Craster, Simon Austerberry, Calum Bennett, Hannah Gibson, Laura Pearson (Nailed the walking role) and my star man Jules Tagoe on his acting début. You all did a great job and I owe you big time. Also another big thank you to Phil Russell for his filming expertise, much appreciated my friend.

Now need to start learning After Effects tomorrow and start editing it :\ Easy…

I saw an article last week about Billboard design’s in Liberia that I found really interesting and it got me thinking. So basically like many African countries, Liberia show’s a lot of potential but has little to show for it. It takes a long time to get anywhere in Liberia. There are only a couple of narrow tarmac roads and the further you get from the capital, Monrovia, the more dangerous they become, such as pot-holes like jagged craters so steep and deep you’d never survive hitting them at speed. You have to do a lot of very violent swerving. But there’s one good thing about travelling by car which is that you learn an awful lot about the country: its past, present and what they hope will be its future.

Relatively few people read the newspapers. The rest have huge public billboards at the side of the roads that tell them what the government wants them to know, how it wants them to behave. A very simplistic form of propaganda, but if these messages do get across, the country will be a better place. So it got me imaging what it would be like to do a job like this.

I bet there are a lot of people these day’s who feel like their producing crap and meaningless work day in day out for dog food and shampoo bottles (to reference the First Things First Manifesto). But imagine a job like this where you not only make design that gives people hope in hard times, but education and guidance on how to live a better life and to improve their country. I think this would be a great job to do, and you would really feel like your work means something and hold great worth. Liberia sounds like a country in great struggle, so I’d like to wish them all the luck for the future and I’d like to hope that design (even if ever so slightly) could help them get back on track. 

So today I started the filming part of the footage for my app. Today I was working on the majority of the piece, which is the hands using the app. I managed to get this nice little set up thanks to the help of my dear motion friend Phil Russell. I filmed using he’s Cannon 550D, and some of his lights. I decided to flip the lights around to get more of a muted light to prevent shadows. And we tied the tripod to my bedside table using string to get the aerial shot. 

I’m going to put the app design onto the phone using After Effects in uni next week, so I added a green screen over the phones screen to allow me to do this. I filmed all the footage I needed from these scenes today so hopefully they will all look okay. I did a few different takes to have options.

So last night I was lucky enough to attend Blab10. With talks from legends Peter Saville and Vaughan Oliver, the tickets sold out in less than 10 minutes, so when I was asked to help out meeting and greeting for the event, I couldn’t turn down my free entry ticket. So I helped out on the door with Hannah Gibson and Martin Craster. Nice and easy, crossing them off the list as they arrived, giving them a wrist band and a beer token. I was lucky enough to be introduced to Vaughan Oliver before people the event, then I went up and spoke to him after his talk. We both had one thing in common… we were the only two Sunderland supporters in the room, so there was my entry! I just thanked him for the talk and said how much I enjoyed it, and he asked me a bit about what I do and wished me good look for when I graduate. A really nice and down to earth guy.

I didn’t get chance to catch Peter Saville’s Q&A, because people were still arriving, but I was really looking forward to watching Vaughan Oliver’s talk. He talked us through the design’s he’d done in his career and where the ideas came from. One of my favourite design he did was for the Pixies Surfer Rosa album, which he talked about, so that was really cool.

From Vaughan Oliver’s work, I also first discovered my love for bold type mixed with calligraphic type (Which I’ve used in my logo). He talked about how he likes that the bold type can make the calligraphic font look and feel even more elegant and that they work hand in hand.

So last night was my first experience of a Blab event, and I shook hands with a design legend. Good start! Thanks Tash and Matt Booth for letting me help out, much appreciated.

I love the latest poster campaign for Stella Artois 4.

London agency Mother had the account, and wanted to achieve an authentic 60’s look and feel. ”Because Stella Artois 4% lives in the 60s Riviera, we tried to make the work look as genuine as possible, so it becomes a homage to that era rather than just a parody of it,” say Gustavo Sousa and Rodrigo Saavedra at Mother. So there was no better person to ask then illustrator Robert McGinnis, who created classic posters for films including Breakfast At Tiffany’s and Barbarella, as well as Bond movies Live And Let Die and Thunderball.

“Robert McGinnis is undoubtedly the best film poster illustrator of the 60s, and probably one of the best poster designers ever, so it wasn’t a hard choice. In fact, we had been referencing his posters when we started looking for illustrators, but we thought he was retired. Eventually we thought ‘what if we try it?’, and we decided to give him a call. Like we expected, he was retired, but to our suprise he told us he was willing to come out of retirement to do this project.”

So here are the finished posters for campaign alongside a number of McGinnis’s preliminary sketches. Working alongside Mother producer Carole Smila, McGinnis initially submitted pencil sketches of ideas, before completing comprehensive colour renderings of the chosen sketch ideas, and, finally, the finished paintings. I really like them, and it’s nice to see an old method really working on a modern day ad campaign.

A couple of weeks ago I received this lovely wedding invitation in the post from my cousin. He’s a graphic designer working and living in Hong Kong, so obviously it was all designed by himself. He’s created this really nice logo using their initials, which he’s used to wax seal up the envelope, and also embossed it into the card invitation.

Very nice little touch, and I cant wait to go over to France for the wedding. Shame it’s the weekend before NMP deadline….

I’ve managed to sort out another placement, this time with Code Computerlove. I was given the placement by Dom Barnfather who I met at the Salford DNA Carnival a few weeks ago. I went into the office last week and had a tour around, and it all looks really cool and everyone seems really nice and welcoming. Yesterday I managed to sort out a date for the placement, and I’ll be going in for a month starting on Monday 4th June. He said that it’s a good time to be joining them because they have a new Creative Director starting around then, so it would be good to work with him.

Really looking forward to getting started!