Creative Convos: Robot Food

Chris and Eve are both graduates of Leeds College of Art, from 2014.

Chris Shuttleworth
Chris did a placement at 'Big Fish' in London, 'The Chase' in Preston and in his final year at university, he did a placement at Robot Food and eventually, ended up with a full-time job there and has been at Robot Food for 4 years.

When he did his placement at Robot Food, it was a studio of 6, but now it has grown into a larger studio of 14 people.

Eve Warren
Eve did a placement at 'Field Work' in Manchester and a few other design studios in the North. She had been a freelance Graphic Designer up until last year when she found a job at Robot Food and is now working full-time as a designer. She has currently been at Robot Food for a year.

Robot Food
They mainly specialise in branding and packaging design.

Their brand strategy is to simplify and amplify. Before getting straight onto designing, they do a brand workshop where they first: identify and define the brands personality, find their competitors, look at trends and how their products/brand look against existing products/brands.

They have worked with clients such as Seabrook and The Co-Op.

Electric Ink
Simon, the founder and creative director of Robot Food is a fan of tattoos and tattoo designs. He wanted to create an tattoo aftercare range for people with tattoos to buy as in shops, tattoo aftercare products seemed to be too silver or more about the brand than the product itself.

They hired Tom Gilmore, a illustrator to create a playful pattern design for their packaging.

Electric Ink launched in Urban Outfitters in the US and in Topman. They are also looking towards creating a mailing/subscription service of their tattoo products for consumers. They use Instagram to engage with consumers and find brand ambassadors for their products.

Advice

• Add personality to brands to make it seem more playful and fun in their tone of voice
• Shout about the USP of each brand to draw out their unique characteristics that may make it stand out from its consumers
• Identify what the consumer is missing and create something unique to make it stand out
• Introduce and unexpected stand-out style.

1-2-1 Careers Advice at Leeds Arts University

As I am currently in my final year of university, I need to start thinking now about what I want to do after university finishes and what to do after I graduate. I do have a CV but I have not updated it since college and I was unsure if it was correctly laid out.

I had booked a 1-2-1 careers advice session with Sue, she had helped and advised me with what to do after university and how to create a CV depending on who I wanted to give it to e.g. a design agency or for a retailer.

I had initially told her that I wanted to create a CV for a retail job as I am not sure if I would immediately start working for a design agency. By the end of the session, she said that with the skills I have, she doesn't understand why I wouldn't get a design job as I do have the experience and skills necessary. Sue said that I would be too good to work for a retail job and I shouldn't settle and I should indeed, look for jobs in the design industry.

The session with Sue was very uplifting and positive as I went into the situation feeling slightly disappointed in my skill set and CV but by discussing it with Sue, she helped me draw out and find that I do have quite a lot of experience and organisation skills in things I've done. Before I went to the session, I didn't think I had any work experience at all but when talking to Sue, she had made me realise that I do have more skills and experience than I give myself credit for.

Creative Convos: Rose Nordin

Rose Nordin
Rose Nordin is a freelance Graphic Designer and works with an art collective, 'OOMK' with 2 other designers.

OOMK is bi-annual zine which mainly discusses the representation of women in the creative industry and activism.

Her work is very much self-directed projects and she has an artist residency in London.

OOMK founded and run a Risograph printing press in London called 'Rabbits Road Press' that is open every Wednesday where people can learn how to print and produce designs.

Rose's website inspirations
Artfund.org
ArtistNetwork - AN

She did a 6-week trip in Malaysia which was funded by the British Council where she spoke to fellow local designers and found inspiration in another country.

Her advice is to avoid doing any work for free - don't be afraid to ask about what you feel is worth your time.

We had created zines at the end of the session, that were an A-Z of what we associate with Graphic Design in which the whole course pitched in with designing.

Although it was a fun and different task to do, Zines and editorial design in general is not particularly something I want to get into but am happy to experiment just to make sure.

Creative Convos: Dines

Dines
Dines is a graphic designer and creative director who graduated with a 2:1 at a university in Southampton, 8 years ago.

In the beginning, Dines was inspired by cartoons and manga that he used to watch when he was younger as he saw it as being playful and not too serious in which is his design approach.

He likes to draw and his unique design style is to mix illustrations with other forms of creative outputs such as photography. He likes to mix cultures - renaissance painting and his own style together to create something unique and different which people like.

His first ever gig was to create a poster for a nightclub in London called 'Orange Rooms'. His work got printed into leaflets and posters. For Dines, he really felt the impact of his design when he saw his poster in a stranger's wall at a house party and thought that design is about making people feel happier through visuals.

Dines advice is to get rid of @ emails that contain hotmail, gmail, outlook etc... It is not as professional and people/brands are less likely to respond to your email as opposed your own email mailbox name.

Studio BLUP
Him and his best friend from the same course from university are 50/50 partners at BLUP Studio in which they had founded and are now a team of 7. 'BLUP' has no meaning in particular, it is just a simple and easy word to say and use.

The studio is about being in the culture and going to gigs and fashion shows. They have clients such as Adidas, Nike, P&G, Universal Music, Sony and BBC.

Soccerbible
Dines had contacted Soccerbible serval times to ask if he could design the front page for their magazine which was France-themed. Soccerbible agreed and he then persisted on asking them if he could also create the cover design for the magazine, in which they already had a bunch of people asking to do it. They allowed Dines to create the cover design as well as the front page and he had sent them videos of the cover being designed behind the scenes so Soccerbible had free content for their social media.

Personal goals and visions

• Win awards
• Inspire millions
• Provide for his family
• Live like a G.

Drunk nightclub

Dines was the creative director for the designs at Drunk nightclub in Southampton. His work was recognised by other nightclubs - especially ones that played house music in their clubs and his designs were known to other nightclubs all over Europe.

From the Drunk nightclub design recognition, Adidas reached out to BLUP to create invite designs for the Olympics in which they did. He added that they almost lost their money as they did not read the small print of the brief where it told them to package each invite in a black envelope.

"Commit first, figure it out later."

Cadbury

Cadbury had asked Dines if he knew how to use Cinema 4D and he said he did. He had to watch YouTube tutorials all night to see how to use it. Luckily, he did successfully create the Cadbury Olympics design.

P&G

Dines created a website for Lacoste and that's what got him into designing for Protector & Gamble and has made more of their designs ever since.

International dominance

They created a design featuring the England football team for Singapore which got them recognised by G.E.M, a Hong Kong singer and created all designs for her.

BLUP

Blue have launched their own clothing in which they have their logo and other designs printed onto.

Dines advice is to learn as much skills in design as possible.

Made By Bespoke Placement Experience

In my last PPP presentation, I had said that I would want to gain industry experience and hopefully do a placement at a design studio during the summer. I had found the Made By Bespoke studio during the final few months of 2nd year and had reached out to them to see if I could do a placement with them during the summer. They had asked me to show them my portfolio. I told them that I wanted to show them my physical work but I was still at uni and was unable to take it as it needed assessing, so I sent them my Behance website in which they liked and asked me to see them in person to discuss my work and the placement.

I wasn't able to meet them in time to get a placement as they are closed on weekends. So after the 2nd year of university had finished, the opportunity had gone for the summer placement.

I emailed them again at the end of November asking if I could do a placement over the Christmas break. I spoke to them in their studio about my work and their design work in which they agreed to let me start the placement on the 15th December.

The placement at Made By Bespoke lasted a total of 14 days (15th December 2017 - 5th January 2018) but stretched out within 3 weeks since it was the holidays.

Made By Bespoke is a small design studio, made up of designers and web developers. They specialise in web design, branding, advertising and packaging. Most of their clients have requested for web designs and so that is why I initially wanted to do the placement, so that I could develop my web design skills to see if I wanted to specialise in the area.

Experience
On the first day of the placement, I was briefed on some of their current clients, client work and previous designs that they had produced. I was also introduced to the team and their specialities. They said they are not as busy during the Christmas/New Year period so it was easier for me to learn more about how studios work.

Since I told them that I wanted to expand my digital design skills and knowledge, they assigned me to help the design team to create a website and come up with ideas and solutions for the client.

Throughout the 14 days, I had been helping with the design of a website and other designs as well as doing some printing and office work.

As I was helping design a website for their client, it was difficult sometimes to input my design knowledge and skills into the website as the client knew what they wanted and didn't want. It was a little frustrating as my design skills felt very limited and I felt like I had to do what they wanted rather than compromise and suggest ideas as a designer. The experience has made me realise that I do not want to design because I have to, I want to design because I want to help others make good, informed design decisions where I am also able to negotiate and have a voice.

Overall, the experience was beneficial and helpful however, the 10-day placement over the 3 week period made it seem like I was there for longer and gaps in-between made it difficult to stay motivated.



Walsh Solicitors website design
The only creative experience that I did to re-create some of Walsh Solicitor's website which consisted of replacing images, adding type boxes and I had to copy and paste it from a computer webpage, to a tablet device webpage and also a smartphone webpage. The experience was quite inflexible and a little mundane for me as a designer. I'd like it if I had more creative control and would appreciate if clients would trust designers as they know what they are doing rather than the client thinking they would know what's best as they shouldn't hire a designer if so. Made By Bespoke offered me a job after I finish university but based on the placement, that particular design studio is not going to work for me.