As for updates on the design front, I have been having a brilliant time at iWant Design over the last couple of months whilst finishing off a few freelance jobs on the side. A couple of jobs aren’t live yet but here are a small selection that are:

Front Cover and Inside Section Opener for Step Journal Magazine – November – December Issue:

Completed the following three CD’s whilst at iWant Design – CD Pack Shot Design for La Bombe’s Float EP by Seya:

CD Pack Shot Design for La Bombe’s Four of a Kind Album:

CD Pack Shot Design for Sample Magic’s Vintage House Album:

Unexpected Journey’s Exhibition Piece ATOM (All Together; One Mind):

And here is a very shaky picture (must have had too much wine) taken of the work I exhibited at Some Think Funky back in November at Gopher Hole:

My shop over at Society 6 is continuing to go well. Some of my iPhone cases are now being sold on Amazon and I also have a few prints for sale over at the Urban Outfitters print shop at discounted prices if you fancy a bit of post Christmas shopping!

Shop LINK!

Urban Outfitters Shop LINK!

I’ll hopefully be uploading a few more designs over the next couple of weeks and have some exciting news to mention so keep an eye out for that!

D X

This week sees the opening of ‘Unexpected Journey’s’ – an exhibition located at the Stour Space Gallery, located 10 minutes from Stratford City. The exhibition is based on a case study about women and domestic servitude, and will be showcasing work from a range of artists, including myself. The private view is on Thursday 3rd November, 6-10pm, with the exhibition then running until the end of November. It would be great to see you there – there is a lovely cafe too!

Link to the website – HERE!

I am also having another exhibition at the end of November – 24th & 25th – over at Gopher Hole in Old Street, Islington. ‘Some Think Funky’ will hopefully be a running exhibition with a selection of artists and designers contributing, the first being based on the theme of ‘Create’. More info on this to come!

I have also opened up my first shop on Society 6! A collection of my designs in the form of prints, canvases, iPhone, iPod, iPad & Laptop cases and skins are now available to purchase – the perfect Christmas gift!

Have a look – HERE!

I had a great experience interning at Landor Associates, met some lovely people and learnt a great deal in the process. The time went incredibly quickly and the views across the River will be missed! I am now interning at iWant Design, located just off of Brick Lane. I’m having a brilliant time so far and I’m starting to feel ‘at home’ Fingers crossed things will continue to go well.

Hopefully you should see some updates on the website soon in the form of some freelance projects that I have been working on over the last couple of months.

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CLICK HERE! 

Congrats to Scott Coleman for also being selected – and placed on the front cover too!

Last week the Emerge exhibition at the London Design Festival took place. Had a great time on the Friday and there was a good turnout too, thanks to those who came! The Pentagram Competition winner was announced on Friday evening, the two week internship going to Chris Nixon for his urban take on the brief. Well Done!

Below is my typographic expression of a quote based on London and the River Thames.

I also took a few shots on the night of the other poster submissions and the reminder of the gallery space.

I was also featured on the inkygoodness blog last week for an illustrator Q & A feature, here’s the link if you would like to have a read.

INKYGOODNESS LINK!

I’m half way through my month internship with Landor Associates which has been going really well. I am still in awe of the views from the building across the River! Hopefully I will be posting some freelance work that I have completed over the next few days, and there have been a few updates on my website too

On Friday I attended the Kscope ‘A Night at the Union Chapel’ Event that I designed the poster artwork for a few weeks back (designs are on my website!) The acoustic themed night had four acts from the Kscope roster performing – Nosound, Engineers, The Pineapple Thief and Anathema – at the Union Chapel in Islington. I had an amazing time, the venue was breathtaking and fitted the music perfectly. I definitely recommend checking out the bands that Kscope represent, there are hidden gems awaiting!

And finally, I have become a little obsessed with pattern making over the last few weeks so have decided to begin creating my own collection of prints. Below is the first one in the series as a sneak peak. I am hoping to then have these riso printed in a couple of colourways and sold either as sets of prints or as smaller postcards / books. We shall see – watch this space

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I finished my month internship at YCN on Tuesday which was a really good experience. The riso flower wrapping paper that I designed for bouquets made by the Flower Appreciation Society and sold through the YCN shop were a great success and although all the bouquets are now sold out, some shots of the paper in action can be seen below taken from the YCN site. I will hopefully be posting more examples of the briefs I worked on during my time at YCN over the next few weeks either on here or my website.

(The lovely chalk type was done by fellow illustration intern Lauren Gentry)

Alongside some freelance projects (more on those soon) I will be starting my next internship at Landor Associates on Monday. I am really excited about interning with Landor, their offices are amazing, and the global work they produce is very inspiring (and daunting) and I’m looking forward to exploring the design industry from a different perspective to what I have recently been used to.

From Thursday 22nd until Sunday 25th (September) I will also be exhibiting at Emerge as part of the London Design Festival at the Truman Brewery. I feel genuinely honoured to have been selected as one of the 12 recommended Emerge graduates this year and am really looking forward to the meet and greet sessions with industry professionals during the course of the event. All Emerge graduates were set a brief by Dominic Lippa from Pentagram, the outcomes of which will be exhibited during the show and judged by Dominic himself. The prize being an internship at Pentagram! There is a meet and greet session on Friday afternoon so if anyone would fancy popping along to say hello you are very much welcome! 

All the details about Emerge, London Design Festival & Tent, Jotta, Indigo Mile can be seen via the respective named links.

More visual posts to come soon!

I spent the majority of last Friday designing an illustrative paper design that will be used to wrap bouquets of flowers that will be sold in the YCN shop in conjunction with the Flower Appreciation Society. The final wrapping will be printed using a Riso – a spot colour duplicator that will provide a tactile, low tech finish. Riso printers only have a limited set of spot colours available which has to be taken into consideration within the design if multiple colours are to be used, as the paper has to be re-fed through the printer for each new colour desired. 

I decided to concentrate on one-two colours, separating the layers of the design into two categories. A rich teal would be used for the undertone to reference the foliage of the flowers, whilst fluro pink and orange would be used as the top highlights to project the more delicate floral details. 

Below are a few examples of the design so far, providing an indication of the type of effect the Riso spot colours would produce.

I am really enjoying my time at YCN so far and hopefully I will post up some more work in the next couple of days . . .

The week commencing the 4th July I exhibited at New Designers @ the Business Design Centre, Islington London. It was a fantastic experience that proved fruitful with regard to gaining contacts, meeting new people and exploring my passion for design amongst the many other talented graduates. It is certainly something I will never forget. Below are a few images from our stand:

As a result of exhibiting at New Designers, I have also managed to achieve features within Creative Review for the CR Top Picks of  New Designers 2011 and on the Arts Thread Blog for the highlights of Visual Communication. Links for these features HERE & HERE respectively. Thank you to both Gavin Lucas & Selina Mealing for these write ups!

A few other online features include Tangled in Design (a fellow exhibitor @ New Designers), Design for Mankind & Jessica Svendsen. Links HERE, HERE & HERE. So thank you so much too! 

In order to continue the progression away from a design student to a fully fledged designer I am also in the process of setting up a new portfolio website and URL transferring. This blog will continue to exist but will be accessed via my new online portfolio site courtesy of Cargo. The template will enable my projects to be more professionally structured with accompanying written content with a more streamlined focus of information and navigation. 

You can visit my new Cargo website now, HERE, which also contains links back to this blog and my tumblr site, but the URL will shortly switch to dawngardnerdesign.com

I have been enjoying further design experimentation over the last few days, exploring some other techniques & merging them with my love of collage. A few bits can be seen below:

Not sure where this next little piece is going, but its definitely not finished yet!

I am also super excited about my forthcoming internship at YCN, and about a few other freelance projects currently in the pipeline, but the hunt for a full time design job still goes on . . .

Hope you are all well

DG DESIGN

Thank you to Dominic for the inclusion!

I have also been interviewed for a feature on Not Paper.net, one of my favourite blogs based on hand made and digital collage. The interview can be read here.

Thank you to Aprile for the lovely write up!

I will be exhibiting at New Designers Part 2 next week, starting from Wednesday 6th July @ the Business Design Centre. My stand no. is VC18 under ‘Havering College’ and located within the Visual Communication section. It will be fantastic to see you all there!

This exhibition will be on until the end of June, so if you are in the nearby area it is well worth checking out Next stop – New Designers . . .

I will be updating this post over the next few days as further design variations are worked up.

Check out my new Tumblr Portfolio Page and We’re New Here on Twitter for updates on our Group Exhibition Shows happening this summer!