WIG? - Place.

'How we work

Good communications should be a collaborative and creative process. We work with our clients as partners to really get to grips with the brief, set the priorities, agree the deliverables, identify the target audiences and measure the results.

Clued-up: We regard knowledge gathering as the first step towards delivering a communications solution. We pride ourselves on getting to know your subject, analysing the data and delivering intelligence-led solutions.

Head-stretching: Our aim is to stretch the creativity of a brief as far as possible to ensure your ideas and work stands out from the crowd and has the right impact.

Multi-disciplinary: We are a full service communications agency. From video, multimedia and web development to print design, media relations, strategic planning, advertising and copywriting – Creative Concern has the skills and the experience to provide a full communications service.

Penny pinching: Creative Concern is transparent in its pricing structure and will negotiate on your behalf with any partner agencies to ensure you get the best deal available.

Objects of beauty: We strive to create communications which are effective, powerful and beautiful. We want people to remember and cherish our communications, not ignore them.

Walk the walk: We aim to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Creative Concern believes passionately in sustainable development, and actively seeks to minimise its environmental impact in all the work we do.'

WIG? - Place.

'Creative Concern was borne out of a belief that communications could change the world. It’s eight years on and this belief remains at the core of our business; it’s what gets us up in the morning. We summarise our approach as: communications for a sustainable future.

We are a creative communications agency, based in Manchester's Northern Quarter, providing design, digital, film and strategic PR and marketing services. Over the past eight years we have grown from a team of 2 to 23, working with over 60 clients on a diverse range of issues. As a company, we are driven by our ethical outlook as well as our ideas and creative edge. We care about what we do. We deliver projects with intelligence and enthusiasm across different disciplines and platforms.

Creative Concern is a new type of agency. We are as likely to be making a film or devising a media campaign, as we are developing a new brand identity or planning a social media campaign. We are a genuinely multi-disciplinary team, working across a range of media to develop powerful and effective marketing and communications. Whether the job is to lead a rallying cry for action, engage the community through consultation or delivering a viral advertising campaign, we have the skills and the team in place.'

This is the ethics of Creative Concern which I have taken from the 'About Us' page on their website. This really captures Creative Concerns positivity and describes the companies aims.

WIG? - Place.

Why is Creative Concern Good?

1. It's close to home.

2. They were very welcoming.

3. The studio is amazing.

4. All the work they do benefits the area of Manchester and its surrounding areas.

5. They will not take on work that could have a negative effect on the environment or the people of the area in which the work is being used.

6. They didn't ignore me, they got me involved with lots of different projects and allowed me to come along and see lots of locations where their work would be used.

7. Nice relaxed environment to work in.

8. They checked up on me regularly and helped me develop my working skills.

9. They showed a massive interest in my work and they work of others that I had found.

10. They never had a negative attitude, they always had a positive response to my ideas and my work and gave me consistent constructive feedback.

WIG? - Place.

MODERN DESIGNERS

DAY 11

Today i was continuing to work on idea development for the trails that will be going through Manchester.

I was primarily typing up all the ideas that were present and adding my own suggestions and ideas. I aimed to be really exhaustive with the ideas so as to provide plenty of options to choose from so that the book wouldn't be repetitive and become boring for the children its targeting.

During the late hours of the afternoon Matt (founder of Modern Designers) gave me a brief for a record sleeve and a poster to be designed and printed for a record of the sound of its own making.

The record is a conceptual art piece and will feature in the Chelsea Postgraduate Summer Art Show so the designs would work in the exhibition as extras. I've drawn up thumbnails and ideas for the designs and pulled out keywords and phrases in the brief to help direct my design work.

Speaking to Matt he directed me towards different ways to be creative with the record sleeves and what options I would have like, designs for the inside of the sleeve, different stocks that would add to the concept of the record and design, different processes of carrying out the designs and so on.

WIG? - Place.

MODERN DESIGNERS

DAY 10

Today I spent a few hours at Creative Concern before I went over to Modern Desingers which is a neighbouring design studio in Manchester's Northern Quarter.

The studio is much smaller than CC and there is only two full time staff so it gets pretty busy at times. After settling in I was set to work on getting to know one of the current projects which is a series of activity booklets for children aged 5 - 10 that would be based on them going on a series of educational trails through and around parts of Manchester.

The booklet will be 48 pages and divided up into sections and each section will have about 5 DPS's which facts and activities laid out in the order that the trail takes place so the children can stop and do.

This project is aimed at families that are going on a day out to Manchester during the summer and there is already a lot of work and content thats been put into it. So I've been reading through the ideas so far and trying to develop some or provide variations to the activities and draw more and more ideas from the surroundings and facts that will be in the booklets.

I'm trying to be as exhaustive as possible so that we can whittle down what will actually be put into the booklet.

The artwork for the booklet is being designed by an illustrator called Tracy Waller so this is more of an ideas based project than a design task.

It's quite a different environment in comparison to CC as it feels more like an office. It's interesting to experience two different studios in a day because you really appreciate different methods and working systems better.

WIG? - Peter Saville and Malcolm Garrett.

As I'm going to be attending the talk I thought I'd do a bit of research on the speakers. Both designers work heavily influenced the look and feel of the music industry in the north. Peter work with such names Factory records and Joy division and produced these highly memorable and innovative designs.

http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=166

http://www.designlessbetter.com/blogless/posts/peter-saville-on-his-album-art

Whilst searching the internet for information on Saville I came across this interesting website. Not too sure if it has anything to do with him but I thought it was a really cool way of interacting with the website.

http://www.btinternet.com/~comme6/saville/

Malcolm Garrett was the first of the two designers to produce a published piece of design and it was a record sleeve for the band The Buzzcocks second hit Orgasm Addict. He later went on to work with the likes of Magazine, Simple Minds, Duran Duran and Peter Gabriel.

http://invizuals.com/post/4803527525/malcolmgarrett

Both of these designers have played a big part in the music industry and for me I prefer the works of Saville. I enjoy the composition of his work more and how contemporary it is even now 30 years later.

WIG? - Place.

DAY 8

Today I went back to working on the collages of the Memphis and Liverpool images which i had a look at early on the my first week here. They already had one collage for the header of a webpage for the project but they need 2 more. I've been looking through the images I'm allowed to use an been carefully removing the backgrounds from some of the and picking out bits that would be great for the collages.


Cutting them out was the hardest part, creating the collages afterwards was more straight forward. The project is about the two cities being almost twins and it's about the music scene focusing primarily on the Beatles. The collages wont be using any Beatles imagery but instead are focussed on the similarities of the cities for example architecture and travel.


I've had the idea of using a 'mirror' aesthetic apposed to the tidy mess collages that are more typical. When I say mirror i mean that one side would be images of Memphis and the other of Liverpool to create the idea that the cities are reflecting off each other. This gives the compositions a good structure of symmetry and provides a good consistency in the visuals as a set despite the fact that they will be use separately across three webpages.


Here's what i have so far. I'm not very keen on the first three but they were made before I had the mirrored idea.

These are vectored sunburst shapes that I made which was a suggestion from Rob. I've only applied them to one of the collages so far but I'm going to make more compositions to see what works best but I think its safe to say that the three above are far better than the first three.

Later in the evening Rob and I went to The Short Project where the talk would be given by Peter Saville and Macolm Garrett was going to be held, the project was quite secretive and it was difficult to understand was it was all about. When we arrived they gave us different coloured wristbands which allowed you into different areas which seemed quite restrictive. After being confused and restricted for about 40 minutes we left as it would be another 2 hours before the talk. 

Although it was shame to miss the talk we did however go to an old pub in Manchester and saw some people do some stand up poetry readings which was interesting. The event was run and organised by Bad Language which is a small sort of company project which has published 3 books of poetry and short stories which get submitted to them through a website. The books had some interesting illustrations on the cover so it was nice to see how this low key company was getting people involved and who did the artwork.