chris-donovan-visual-journa-blog

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Catalogue of... well, me

I have compiled a perfect bound catalogue of my work over the recent months, i.e major study projects and personal work art works carried out for clients. I’m very pleased with the outcome and think it adds a different edge to showcasing my work.

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Business Cards

Here are my business cards all designed and created by me, I'm really pleased with how they have turned out! Also featuring a little business card holder I created out of Chip-board that ties in with visual the theme of Catalyst.

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Range Plan illustrations

These are the final illustrations I created for the Irresponsibly Responsible brief. All of my research and development can be found in my RVJ as I'm using tumblr as a means to post my final outcomes for the briefs. The client was really pleased with these designs and from working closely with them the branding matched exactly to what they wanted from it.

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Commissioned canvas art piece for a client of Dublin's Ha'penny bridge in an abstract, expressionistic style. Expanding my work by doing art commissions along side my graphic's based work

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Putting finishing touches to learning for life leaflets by adding Braille

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Testing out textures and doing some sketches for a branding project I'm currently working on

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Creative beer mat design for new sparkling ribena, small pieces of graphic communication like this are inspiring some of my work in major study

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Major study

Going forward into major study I need to define clear areas of practice and nail my technical skills. My next task is defining a clear aim and direction for major study and getting on with some exciting briefs!

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Evaluation

There have been some aspects of this project that I have struggled with. Juggling three projects as well as writing and researching for my dissertation was very difficult with the various other commitments I have as well as University. Drawing from this project and the experiences I have had during it will hopefully help me to create proper plans, set concrete personal deadlines and find a way to manage my time effectively with my University work, employed work and my personal life. I found that a the beginning of the project I tended to focus more on my dissertation and finishing that and the projects seemed to be left on the back burner so in the future I must learn how to manage effectively juggling tasks and projects. However given the difficulties I faced with creating the projects I do believe that the outcomes of all three of my projects have turned out well.    I enjoyed working on the Moonpig Brief as it allowed me to have fun with my ideas and create some concepts that were funny and enjoyable to work on. I found the learning for life, RSA brief the most interesting to work as I learnt a lot my self about how the human mind works and how ti changes when we top stimulating it and stop learning. All of this research can be found in my RVJ sketchbooks. Then when it came to my personal project I hit a bit of a wall as I did not know what direction to take the project in. I came up with a few ideas of where to take my awareness campaign however I eventually came to the decision to create an awareness campaign around the government cuts to arts education. I titled the campaign “Brushstrokes”. Although the most difficult out of the three projects I found this project the most rewarding as it was a brief set by myself and I had to be strict with deadlines and what I needed to produce.   Although I have found this project difficult with aspects regarding what directions to take my work in and managing time between the three projects and my dissertation I overall learned a lot from this project and using different areas of practice to achieve some of my final results has benefited me a lot. I have also got to terms more with the use of social media and how it can be used for good reasons to promote ones work and promote awareness about certain issues that mean a lot to some people. Altogether I do think this project has been a successful one in terms of my own personal development as a Visual Communicator.

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Brushstrokes twitter page

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Final outcomes

These are the final concept out comes for the brushstrokes campaign. I am really pleased with how they have all turned out. I think the monochromatic style is important as I chose it in a way to represent that the cuts to the creative industries education services are removing the colour and vibrancy out of our society. I then went onto create a twitter page for the campaign to start the ball rolling with getting the awareness of the cuts out there.

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Paint Please then developed into Brushstrokes. A campaign using social media and the hashtag #brushstrokes to raise awareness of the cuts to Arts education services. I then began to take the project out of my comfort zone and use photography to get across simple messages with the use of everyday items that those the creative industries may use every day. I then developed these photographs can created posters with them.

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Personal Project

This is the project that I found the most difficult in finding a direction to with. I knew I wanted to create a campaign about Government cuts to Arts education as I've heard reports about it so much lately  *before Brexit became the hot topic to be discussed*. So I began to per sue the idea of a campaign called “Paint Please” a campaign to raise awareness of the arts and encouraging people to pick up a pencil or paint brush and get inspired again, However this did not have a lot to do with my initial passionate meaning behind starting a campaign. I began looking on line and found a wealth of information that inspired me to take the project solely down the road of raising awareness about arts funding cuts. All of my research and development can be found in my RVJ sketchbook.

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Digitising ideas, Production and Final designs

From my initial sketches i then took to Adobe Illustrator to design something digital allowing me to see how it would look before i went into editorial production of the content of the first edition of the leaflet. I decided to include quotes, facts and brain teasing puzzles. You can argue that this is similar to any puzzle page already found within a newspaper however with the app development to come it will become something more than a generic puzzle page. The submission for the RSA competition briefs is not until March so i have time to hone any concepts and ideas and to develop the proposed mobile application. As the deadline for RSA submissions is still over a month away I plan to print the leaflets closer to the time however for my presentation at University on Monday the 16th I plan to bring some small mock ups of the leaflets to show the concept, idea and direction the brief can go. I have really enjoyed working on this competition brief and have learnt a lot about how the human mind works. All of my research can again be found in my RVJ sketch book for Learning for Life.

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Learning For Life

I undertook the RSA Student Design awards competition brief “Learning For Life”, the idea is to design an exciting was to encourage and stimulate learning throughout peoples lives. My initial ideas were focussed on the current ageing population and their generation. I began looking into how they receive their information, what keeps their minds active and how can I design something around this. I began to design packaging or leaflet that would be a daily supplement alongside popular newspapers nation wide. I then planned to design mobile app that includes daily updates and tasks to help people continue to learn throughout life. However, my primary focus was on creating a leaflet with app development coming later, closer to the RSA final submission in March. Full development of my ideas can be found in my Learning For Life RVJ sketchbook.

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Moonpig Final Concepts

As this range is a concept of what can be extended across various platforms such as novelty gifts and mugs etc, I produced digital concepts that cover 3 types of celebration and ones that are most popularly used for for cards. Christmas, Birthdays and Thank you cards. I uploaded my sketches and typography from the sketch book onto illustrator and from there I digitised them. I believe the hand drawn nature of the cards comes across well and if the opportunity arose to expand the range I create concepts for more occasions. Full development of my ideas can be found in my Moonpig RVJ sketch book.