You've got to sell yourself!

Tart card for a graphic designer.

I can honestly say I've never laughed so much whilst making a piece of work. I'm not sure what that says about me, and if it's good or not, but either way I had so much fun with it

"Create a business card for yourself as a graphic designer. Oh yes, you must also only use the visual language and vernacular of a tart card. Don’t forget to give yourself a juicy ‘stage name’!

Consider leaving your creation in strategic phone boxes around Shoreditch.."

 This was one of the optional Summer briefs from last year, which is going in my portfolio for Semester 2. It was a very quick project, maybe half a day or so (there was a LOT of puns and innuendos to think up and write down).  

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Celebrity tweets

I decided to make use of my Twitter addiction and made a series of magazine spreads featuring celebrity tweets (I use the term "celebrity" loosely for Katie Hopkins though) I had a lot of fun with these, and tried something new with the style of imagery and varied my colour scheme more.

 I've tweeted the designs to Katie, James and Anna – here's hoping they might see them and want me to make stuff out of all their tweets (yeah right, I can dream though)

Weekly word vomit: Katie Hopkins
Let me be Blunt
Truth be told: Anna Kendrick 

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Out of sight, out of my mind

"Everyone deserves their rights to mental healthcare"

Campaign to challenge the perception of prisoners with mental health problems. 

A self-directed project on a really interesting topic. I learnt a lot about the statistics of prisoners suffering with mental health problems, which helped me to make informed decisions about the message I wanted to get across. Prisoners face a double stigma; they are both criminals and victims of mental health problems. By putting them in prison, they are simply out of sight, out of mind. 

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*The portrait photographs used are not my own

It's about time (no, it really is)

Derrian Bradder

Entry for ISTD 2015

A response to 2 briefs combined – "Milestones" and "Taboos":

The history of mental illness
"Why should there be a distinction between people who are sick above the neck and those sick below the neck?"
– Abraham Low

(For much better quality images please feel free to visit my website: derrianbradder.com)

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Photos of a graphic designer placing things

It's the final day before my ISTD submission is packed up and sent off, meaning yesterday I took my final photographs of the packaging, and development work etc which is needed for their archives if my work is awarded membership. 

I've put a serious amount of work into this project from start to finish, and I'll admit I am proud of myself and the designs I've produced. There's nothing wrong with being proud of your work and the things you achieve, you just need to stay humble. 

Here are 2 what look like stock photos of me prepping my work to be photographed – I can assure you I was in motion at the time, I'm just verrrrrry careful and steady. 

As the timeline is over 2 metres long and needs to be unfolded to be viewed, I've made an A2 presentation board showcasing images of the finals to put in with the physical final designs. 

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Let's talk business (cards)

(Apologies for the poor quality photos, they're from my Instagram account)

This week myself and Edwin attended a "networking event" at the uni, where we were able to talk to a range of people in the industry within Cumbria who could potentially open up a lot of opportunities for us. This would have been great if I wasn't so terrible at talking to people. I did speak to a few people though, and got possibly myself some work experience, so I can't have done too badly ey?

I'm getting off track here, but basically we needed business cards. I'd already made mine a few weeks ago, but never actually got round to having them printed. It wasn't ideal having to double-sided print at uni and cut out manually but I'd say they came out pretty good. For next time though, I'll be having them done professionally.

My design is an extension of my website and all of my personal branding, and feature 5 different faces to choose from – happy, happier, fangs, stressed and shocked. My favourite is the fangs, it seemed to prove popular on the night too! 

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Timeline 2.0

Timeline 2.0 – now with pull quotes

This week marked the final printing of timeline 2.0 as I've started calling it. In 3 days everything will be sent off to ISTD for judging and it will just be a waiting game to see how I did.

Again with the apologies for the poor quality Instagram photos. I've taken some ~proper~ photos which I'm currently editing as they're part of my submission, I'll be uploading them when I can. 

I'm so pleased with how this piece has turned out – the alterations I chose to make, and the ones suggested to me, have made a HUGE difference. 

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Altrincham adventure

6am start, 9 hours across 5 trains, 1 trip to Costa, 1 interview and several lovely people.
Followed by a well earned sleep. 

That was my Thursday this week. I had an interview for a junior designer position in Altrincham, Manchester. It was definitely an adventure, to say the least, but I had a really good day. It was nice to go somewhere new and feel completely at home there straight away, followed by a very positive interview experience. It was quite a draining day, but so worth it.

Highlights included:

– Perfect reading opportunities on the train
– Mrs Doubtfire style changing in and out of outfits appropriate for travel and interview
– Getting to sample Costa's chicken and basil gluten free wrap

– People watching 

I was still feeling the effects this morning, so I treated myself to an omelette and a couple of episodes of Friends (because it will NEVER get old), before coming into uni to work.  

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IT'S OVER!

My dissertation is finally all handed in so I can give my full attention to my studio work, and personal work, and blogging, and reading, and oh my gosh so MANY THINGS.

It was obviously a tough thing to write, but if it was easy it wouldn't be worth doing. Also I got to spend a considerable amount of time looking at Rob Ryan's work so I can't complain. 

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In with the new

Say hello to my brand spanking new website, shown to you through poor quality screenshots.
You can see it in action at derrianbradder.com – it still needs some work on phone display but works perfectly on desktop. I'm really pleased with it, it feels a lot more "me" (lame I know).

There's a lot more going on this time around, a lot more work went into it, and overall it's just better. There's colour changing rollovers, the blog opening up in a new tab, and tiny flags.

Dreamweaver knowledge originally taught and expanded upon by my trusty illustrator pal Edwin. You can see his work here : edwinburrow.com

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Out with the old

It's not you, it's me.
It was time to finally say goodbye to my first website and start again completely from scratch, with new branding and a ~fresh~ look. But that's not to say I didn't love my first website, it was very me at the time and fitted well with what I was doing.

Here it is in its entirety.
Home page and portfolio which uses a lightbox. 

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