Professional Practice – Week 02

Class

We looked at a wide gamut of visual identities this week. Self-promoting objects like business cards and logos find themselves in the visual ID camp, and these are going to be part of what we need to produce for this subject.

Obviously in the creative industry, your standard bone coloured business card isn’t going to cut it. There seemed to be an endless train of alternative solutions: etched razor blades, rubber, pop-up cards, stamps and so on and on and on and on… Clearly the message is to think outside the square and to create something that makes you stand out. My challenge will be to create something that doesn’t rely on a graphic to connect me to my work. I would prefer to remind potential employers/clients about my interactive, installation and motion work.

Having said that, I do need some kind of graphic element that will link parts of my visual ID together. A logo is the obvious place to begin and would be rolled out across several media types: business cards, stationary (letterheads, invoices etc), web sites, promotion and all the vehicles that I don’t have.

Research

I spent a little time thinking about what direction I want to take the visual ID of not only my personal site, but the entire angryPixel group. How to structure angryPixel has become a little lost of late, so I think this is a good opportunity to sort things out. angryPixel has always been a project that was to focus on collaboration. Whilst I do my own thing on this blog, we can come together to work on larger projects under the angryPixel banner.

I am a little unsure about where to take angryPixel Design though. I had hoped that others would take part, but it has been strictly my own freelance graphic work since it started. So perhaps it’s time to combine it with the rest of my personal work, possibly with a re-fit. If that was the case, the kodama.pixel head motif may not be the look I need. I do love the eyebrows though and it was the first place I started…

Trying for something that lends itself more to a corporate identity, I returned to text. It was around this time that I started thinking about the differences between angryPixel and kodama.pixel…

The angryPixel logo has always been the most successful of all the pixel IDs. The lowercase ‘a’ and uppercase ‘P’ lend themselves to leaves on a sprouting plant and a perfect metaphor for what angryPixel hopes to be…

This may be a better place to begin. Using similar imagery to connect angryPixel and kodama.pixel could be effective. Or it may be something I want to get away from altogether. Either way, it’s probably time I sat down and thought about business structure.

Which lead me to think of another point made in the lecture: the importance of email disclaimers. Most of my dialogue with design clients takes place over email, so it’s probably high time I put a few notes at the bottom of my communication, to cover myself. I don’t think I need to post it here, but if you’re looking for something similar, there are plenty of examples online.

I’m also beginning to think about who I would actually approach, should I decide to go back to getting a real job. The idea of advertising/marketing came up a while ago, but I’ve been hearing whispers of more tech-centric groups, who are doing some interesting work. The marriage of large-scale and interactive installations with not only promotion, but all kinds of events seems like a logical one and regardless of how slow on the uptake we are in Australia, there’s no doubt room for these type of projects.