Promotional material

Current promotional material using my monogram logo design. I used a monochromatic colour palette to best reflect my practice. I always aim to achieve simple, clean and concise outcomes to ensure clarity so hopefully my logo design is representative of this.

Website — www.joewarburton.co.uk
Tumblr — www.joedesign.tumblr.com
Twitter — www.twitter.com/joewarbo
Dribbble —www.dribbble.com/joewarburton

Formula - Studio space

Luke found a cracking studio space on Gumtree, sharing the space with a marketing company. At £130 a month including all bills, we couldn't refuse and have now had the space for a couple of months. Although we haven't been there as often as we'd like due to uni commitments, it's been a great push in terms of the development of the business.

As we, along with Max and Niall, won the pitch for the LCA prospectus, it's been a great opportunity to use the space for meetings and project development. We had a meeting with GFSmith using the board room available — it seemed far more professional than the university.

BCN:MCR

Last week, I was fortunate to be able to get a ticket for the BCN:MCR event, curated by Dave Sedgwick. The event was to showcase the work and hear from the designers themselves, of 5 design studios based in Barcelona. Both cities, Manchester and Barcelona, host thriving design scenes and encompass certain parallels between the two.

The talks were brilliant and offered great insight into the studios practices. The designers showcased their previous, current and future work and it was great to hear how different studios, albeit very close to one another, typically approached a project. I didn't get to take many photographs but the following are taken by the house photographers.

Image sources: thisiscollate.com

Portfolio (Jan 2013)

I had previously got some of my portfolio up and running for a studio visit before Christmas but needed to add new projects and adapt the content as a result of the feedback I got, ready for the portfolio surgeries ahead. I tried to use a simple grid to ensure primary focus was on the images and tried to limit distractions whilst still retaining enough white space. I chose projects I was most engaged with so when talking through the briefs, this was evident.

Formula - Studio visits

Over the past few months, me and Luke have been researching into various potential studio spaces for when we graduate. We chose Leeds due to our mutual appreciation of the city and what it has to offer.

Umbrella —

We first looked at Umbrella who offer various sized spaces fairly close to the city centre in Holbeck. The rent started at £150 a month for the smaller spaces though the studios themselves were not as I hoped. For the larger spaces (which would be ideal), the rent is £285pcm.

Tower Works

Next up was Tower Works which had been our favourite from the get go. The studio spaces looked fantastic and they were situated in an idea location — directly behind the train station and therefore within in the city centre. Although more expensive than Umbrella, at £300pcm, it was fair for what they had to offer.

Formula - Plans

Me and Luke have decided to start a collaborative practice upon graduating as after working together on a few projects, we have realised our direction and approach to design works parallel.

We have named ourselves, Formula — the name comes from our methodical and logical approach and after looking into mathematical terminology, Formula stood out. A formula is a process that leads to an end result, much like design and we believe the two marry with one another.

Designival

In November, me and Luke went to Designival — a 2 day design festival in Liverpool. As we'd be setting up a studio together, we thought it'd be useful to hear from the 4 speakers, particularly Lance Wyman and Simon Manchipp due to their specialisms in brand design.

Day 1

For the first day of Designival, a few studios around Liverpool opened their doors. We selected a few we wanted to visit in particular — Mercy, Uniform, SB, Black & Ginger and Smiling Wolf. I think we only managed to see 3 of these (Mercy, SB and Black & Ginger) but all in all, a really insightful day and interesting to see the environment in which these studios work in. (Also got a mean brekkie this day, as you can see below).

Day 2

Day 2 was the day of the talks and portfolio review sessions. Although we had booked for these, there must have been some confusion with timing as we didn't get seen to in the end. The talks make up for this and first on was Sara De Bondt who talked through the development of her career. She discussed in depth how she approached, created and resolved a project which was extremely insightful.