I know that I promised images of the final pieces of work for Redhall and the NGCFI last time, but that may have to wait until next time. That’s not to say that we haven’t been busy, far from it. Iain has completed a couple of ads for Down’s Syndrome Scotland’s legacy campaign.
The first ad was an 8th page ad that appeared in Retirement Today, encouraging people to remember Down’s Syndrome Scotland in their wills.
The second ad was to appear in Life and Work, a Church of Scotland Publication and was a quarter page ad
The Academy is also pleased to announce the arrival of a new member, Ewan O’Hare. Ewan is a graduate from the University of Paisley and has an honours degree in Animation and Digital Art. He is replacing me, as I have been offered a job at Direct Media, a media buying and graphic design company based in Paisley, so I’d like to extend massive amounts of gratitude to Richard and Stephen at Do Good for the experience here, which proved to be invaluable in getting the new position.
Well that’s the Good Academy website updated at last. With a new logo made by Iain that you can see below and a small amount of me messing around with Richard at Do Good’s files, the Academy is now a true online tour de force.
The new site has a couple of new features, such as a link to this page, which is probably the reason you are here (if not, hi Mum), some photos of myself and Iain that Catriona at Do Good refused to take again and a couple of other bits and bobs. You can visit it here:
In other news, the NGCFI project has now been completed and I am putting the finishing touches to the Redhall leaflets. We have also had a new project just rushed in which is the design of leaflets to encourage legacy donations for Down’s Syndrome Scotland that Iain has been working on.
Hopefully we will have some images of the finished projects to put on the blog next time.
Hi there, Jonathan here with our first post that isn’t merely a case of us testing to see how the blog works and this time we actually have some real news for you. We also come with a plan to make this a much more regular occurrence so here we go…
Over last week we have had not one, but two presentations to go to. First we went out and visited the people a the NGCFI. The NGCFI (or North Glasgow Community Food Initiative to give it its full name) is an initiative up in Springburn that aims to bring communities together through a number of schemes centered around the promotion of healthy eating. Originally started as a way to provide low cost food to asylum seekers (North Glasgow has one of the highest densities of asylum seekers in the UK), it has since expanded to provide support to anyone in the community who needs it.
Iain and I had been asked to produce their 2008 annual report. We were told that an idea of multiculturalism, sharing and unity in the community should be promoted and that the report would be aimed at everyone who would be using the service as well as volunteers and funders. The report was to be image intensive as English may not be the first language of all the people reading the report and a square format was spoken about.
Iain took some really nice photos of different slices of fruit that had been put together to make an new form as a way to get the multicultural idea across, as well as the idea of healthy eating. He also used the square format. To top it off he added a really nice duotone to the photos that the NGCFI had supplied us with, giving a really classy product:
My contribution was also based on multiculturalism and fruit , but I had concerns that the square format may not allow for enough room for the report to be as image intensive as I would have liked, so i used the square in the grid I was using to help with the page layout, and then added a space for photos to the edge of each page. I also tried to use the NGCFI’s existing colour schemes to make the report seem as friendly and accessible as I could:
Ultimately the NGCFI opted for an amalgamation of the two ideas, which equated roughly to my layout with Iain’s images.
The next day we the people from Redhall Walled Garden round for a presentation. Redhall Walled Garden is an organic garden on the outskirts of Edinburgh where people who have had mental health difficulties can take up horticulture, among other activities, as a means of therapy and rebuilding confidence, teamwork and to meet other people who may have been through similar things.
When we visited the garden, we were shown round and even shown a stop motion animation that the people there had made:
We were asked to produce an informational leaflet that was designed to give an impression of what Redhall is all about, what they do and to give a rough idea how they would do it. We were told that the leaflet should not be patronising and should give an idea of how it was good hard work mucking in, but also to have a positive element to it. The leaflet also had to work both in black and white as well as colour as they were not sure exactly what their arrangements for printing would be at the time.
After being told this, I decided to put all my original ideas on a back burner and started working on two different ideas. As the report was to work in black and white as well as colour, I decided illustrations would be good to use. The first idea was aimed at being as motivational as possible, and with that I decided to draw on my mild obsession with war posters:
My second idea was to give a rustic, textured, handmade feel to the leaflet, and also to tie the design in with another thing that was mentioned in the brief which was to give an idea of a book of stories. With that in mind this was the result:
Iain took a different approach and decided to keep the whole thing simple and stylish. His idea was based on that of a seed packet and was designed so that the image could be kept both in black and white and with a subtle shade of green. The rest of the leaflet was done in the same style, and featured seeds shooting up to give an idea of growth, and also to tie in with Redhall’s ‘a place to grow’ tagline.
The guys at Redhall really liked these three ideas and were unable to decide at the time, so have taken the images back to Edinburgh where a democratic decision will be made on what will be contained in the final leaflet.
We had more ideas than that and I’m sure they may get posted in the near future as well.
Hi everyone, this is Jonathan. I’ve been helping put this blog together and updating the website.
Hope everyone reading this is doing well. To be honest this post is just a way to check how my username is working, but the sentiments remain the same anyway =D
