Died Young Stayed Pretty

I attended a viewing of this film last week in the lecture theatre.
This feature film is all about poster culture, mostly underground production it depicts the effort and time going into a single piece. Interviewing numerous 'characters' and getting them to discuss and portray there views to certain milestones and people in poster history, it is very unorthodox/different which i think gives it success. There are some on this film who are quite opinionated about certain aspects and also some crazy as well but this just adds to the comedy to the overall picture.

I thought this was a good film and it did entertain me, it really showed the underdogs of the poster world and that they were still fighting to stay alive.

Shellsuit Zombie

http://www.shellsuitzombie.co.uk/


Whilst in London we attended a special night organized by a group named 'Shellsuit Zombie', comprised of three young men and a single young woman they may be small in size but make up for in liveliness and creativity. This evening was designed to give us a mass of information and piece of mind that inventiveness and vision doesn't get left behind at university.

Although this was aimed directly at the third years as they are leaving quite soon we were encouraged to come and get involved and further prepared for leaving ourselves. After talking to us individually, both introducing themselves personally and getting a feel for how we function they devised a small task for us to do. In this we got together into groups of no more than five and were presented with two pieces of paper; one being the name of a celebrity and the the other being a product/item. With this we had to create a campaign/advertisement to try and successfully sell the said item using the celebrity as endorsement. I enjoyed this and so did everyone else, we all worked as groups to quickly come up with a range of ideas in both a humorous and professional fashion.

The overall meeting was a good piece of mind, The hosts were brutally honest about the industry and serious about partial difficulties but assuring at the same time that with effort and drive most people can find there way.

Lauren Moriarty

http://www.laurenmoriarty.co.uk/profile.html


Today we had a practitioner/visiting lecturer and her name was Lauren Moriarty, her initial background is textiles/surface design orientated, although she has both worked herself and collaborated with foreign mediums. This includes digital production in a 3D sense of products designed by her and working in connection with the London Council installing energy efficient street lighting, again designed herself.

Her speciality is these intricate overlapping weaves of lazer cut rubber, plastic and other man made materials. She forms them into a lace which develops into a structure creating cushions, lamps and other wonderful manipulated concept furniture.



Her lace cushion has featured in the advertising for Renault, paris. In this she has had her unique design presented inside the car as apart of its international concept advertisement.




Although these batch productions are very impressive they are very time consuming to make, which is why they are limited to not being further developed into mass production.

She has created a number of wonderful items that she has got into production and stocks them in interior boutiques and retail outlets throughout the UK and internationally. She also told us about PULSE which is a London product festival where she, amongst other designers showcases her work, products and designs to industry figures.


She had a lot of information to give about how she started her production and business, including: setting up her website, payment modes etc.

I think it was good for a change to see someone from a completely different medium to show us no matter how different it is there was still a great deal of relevant information and similarity in the industry.

Thoughtful

http://thoughtful.squarespace.com/


We were visited by Stu and Chris from a design group called Thoughtful. Telling us about there pasts in the industry they were very honest about there experiences, discussing this they didn't neglect their problems, they shared with us both the constraints and advantages with working for such big clients, for a huge design firm.

They started off by each introducing there inspirations and things that interested them, although most of this was design related they did both show personal things that gave them muse like Stu's 'David Beckham infamous world cup free-kick moment' and chris's 'attitude of the band Oasis (knowing they were going to be the best band in the world)'.

To accompany there presentation they had several practitioners/designers answering important questions that the thoughtful guys felt were key to expressing how there company worked, these also acted like foot notes so that Stu n Chris could discuss important parts to us more easily, like worlds of wisdom.

at the end of the lecture they had lots of people asking questions, I'm guessing this was because it was a more open and different lecture to some one just boringly going through slide after slide of work, they also asked us for our feedback and how they could impress there next viewers as they were preparing for another massively bigger showing.

Not much could be changed in all honesty the level of detail and genuine thought into this was shown, I was thoroughly impressed throughout the lecture and find it definitely to be one of if not the best so far..