Flex Student Newspaper: #31 Freshers 2012

Freshers Mood Board Cover

Production has begun on the Flex Freshers issue for 2012/13. Above is the mood board for the cover and we are pulling in articles, building the mood board and designing as content comes in. I am currently trying to find illustrators for the issue as well as the cover. Myself and the Editor-In-Chief Dan Simpson know that this issues cover should set the standard for the rest of year and this is what we want to kick off with.

There have been a few changes over the summer. All of the design team I had in 1st and 2nd year and left so they can focus all their time on their 3rd year. That was also my plan, to pass it on to a new designer but I could not find anyone willing to take it on. I sort of understand it because being a design director is a lot of pressure. So far I have one other, soon to be 2nd yr, student designing a long side me and I am very grateful. I will have a lot to balance for my third and final year but I will have less on my plate than I did last year as I was freelancing as well as Treasuser for the African Caribbean Society at University College Falmouth.  In October is the fresher fair where we hope to recruit new people for all departments I will have to find some new designers. We also have a Facebook group but will try to rely more so on email and phone calls for communication as simply being Facebook can result in procrastination.


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Flex Student Newspaper #27

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Flex 2011 Redesign Complete

You can see the full design process 'here'

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Flex Re-Design: Freshers Guide

On of the articles in the Freshers Guide is called '10 Things To Do Before SecondYear' by Hollie Anderson. I asked if I could see the articles before it was proofed so I could get an idea of what I have to work with. I will also be doing with for the other sections too.


After reading the article I felt that it would lend itself well to a poster quality approach. As you scroll down you will be able to see how the design has developed. I plan to experiment with illustration for maybe 5 of the 10 'things' and upload this later. But i personally feel that the last one, the most simple is the best and will continue to develop this.

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Flex Re-Design: Lifestyle Section

Today I decided to take a shot at the lifestyle section. Photography will play a large part in this section and is ideally at the forefront of the writer and editors mine. The only catch is that Flex has had consistently poor not to mention low resolution images. I want to take much more of a magazine approach to lifestyle as I feel it would lend itself well. Text-over-image is something I have been discussing with Henry but I will also need to run it by the printer. I would like to get the editors confident enough in letting us run full page, full bleed high resolution photos. Below is what I have in mind for lifestyle.

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Flex: Student Newspaper Issue 19

This term the design team says farewell to Rachel Maria Smith our regular Lifestyle section designer who is leaving the paper since being with us from the start of 1st year. She has done a great job and being a Designer for one of the UK's few student newspaper will look very impressive to employers on her CV. We are still looking for a new designer to take up the mantle. If you know anyone then tell them to get in touch with directly.

Despite our loss I feel this is the first issue of Flex that has been published after easter. I feel it is one of our best covers yet, something which we all need to put more time in. As you know I am Head of Design for the paper a role which involves working closely with the editors to achieve a quality and timely publication, managing a design team of of now 5; Mo, Nadya, Guro, Henry, Lou, designing a providing feedback on various designs, ensuring consistency across the publication, pre-press and enduring the printer gets the files on time.

There are only three issues for this final term so they should not conflict too much with course work and if they do it usually means I am up until about 3am on a Thursday night/ Friday morning with the printer screaming at me. (No, I kid. he does not scream he always seems very calm, I am the one who gets stressed.)

Next year there will be a new team of editors who are currently shadowing the 2nd year editors. I plan to arrange a meeting with them an improve the relationship between writers/ editors and the design team. Its will only the make the paper stronger. I have also had a few ideas about launching an online magazine to run a long side the paper. But i'll save that for another post.

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Silver In Black Identity

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Flex: Student Newspaper Issue 15

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Research/

When it comes to design projects the more you put in at the start the more you ge out at the end. What follows are a series of questions I have devised that should be put to clients before a project begins with the question I feel that are most important highlighted in red. This would usually be in the form of a brief. How ever these question shave not yet been broken down yet. As you can see the questions are not a linear process and certain questions affect other answers. My plan is to put these into a more effective brief for clients to make it faster for me to give them a quote, understand the project and weather it is worth pursuing. 

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Save the British Film Industry Identity

This is a self initiated project based on a fiction brief for a real company.  The aim as to produce an identity and promotional material for the cause and to raise awareness. I plan to submit the finalised materials to the company to see if they wish to use them for their identity.

To see the full project please 'click here'

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Birmngham 64th Scout Group

My older sister is an honorary leader at her local scout group. The group decided to get some hoodies designed for the group that everyone could wear. However they needed an icon or logo to feature on the hooded tops. With me being in the right place at the right time I was able to provide my logo design services to them.

Brief: I was asked by my local scout group to design an icon to feature on their hooded tops. The icon must work against a black background and be suitable for embroidery. The hooded top will be worn by scout member while they are with scouts and they are out and about. A limited colour palette is advisable as printing cost can spike.

Research: I looked at the history of the scouts and the symbols that they have used such as the reef knot and the scouting portal as well as any potential icons I could use to symbolise birmingham.

Although it has not been requested these are some stationary mock-ups.

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