This is an afternoon well spent, not the finished product as that's a surprise between me and the company I did it for. Basically, Purple Door at the University of Portsmouth have found me a position as a Creative Lead within a Marketing company, pre-interview prep was essentially showing them what I could to on Indesign using a short brief they provided.
The brief was to create a postcard to go at a till in a builders merchant advertising a particular brand of copper tube for plumbing and heating contractors with the main incentive that if they 'like' the brand on Facebook, they can then enter a photo competition and be in the running for winning an iPad.
Here's hoping this is enough to impress them, I'm quite happy with it, obviously I had to do a bit of Google-image trawling but hopefully they'll see past that. Coincidently, earlier today I walked passed a builder's merchants, and they did in fact have post cards at the till, I've tried to make mine as different as possible. From what I saw available, they were mainly straight-forward text so I think that part was pretty successful. Thanks to some help from Moon I've got something a bit less 'obvious' than my initial idea.
Fingers crossed it was worth it. I'm so hungry now.
Last year's New York Times Hollywood issue videos blew my mind, showcasing the finest acting talent Hollywood has to offer and showing us what they do best, this year, they might just have outdone themselves.
I enjoyed 14 Actors Acting mainly on an aesthetic level, the series was beautifully filmed with a gorgeous accompaniment of slick, polished images. This year's 13 Villains pleases me even further, showing actors and actresses as you may have never seen them before, with more specific references to popular films and cult classics. NY Times have kindly put together a rogues gallery mood board to help out with the references you might not get so quickly.
My favourite performances are those by Gary Oldman and Viola Davis but each video is visually pleasing in it's own way and I think I will make a special effort to keep my eye out for the next year's edition. The '13 villains' series also features Ryan Gosling, George Clooney and Rooney Mara to name a few, not to mention Brad Pitt as you may never have seen him before.
When I left Ink Global last Wednesday, they were kind enough to give me a copy of December's Metropolitan Magazine for Eurostar which I had helped work on. I think I will have contributed a bit more to the following issue as this one was just finishing up when I started, but it gives a balanced look at what I did all the same, with the images on the Radius London article being ones that I sourced from a couple of the companies mentioned and the inset Benibar images being from Rex Features and Getty.
They were also kind enough to send me off with an advent calendar, as I finished on 30th November. It's a proper one too, one where you have to search for the doors!
Those who are regular readers may have read that I now love Drive and pretty much everything about it, from the cinematography to the soundtrack.
Before watching the film, but knowing I would have to resist reading it, I bought the latest edition of Little White Lies.
"LWLies is a bi-monthly, independent movie magazine that features cutting edge writing, illustration and photography to get under the skin of cinema."
And it's beautiful, I love it. I love the paper-weight, I love the graphic design. Urgh, I think I loved this issue nearly as much as I loved Drive. I also love that I pretty much agree with everything Little White Lies is saying, it's very rare for me to find a magazine that contains reviews that I don't want to chuck away, we clearly have similar taste in film.
I bought the Jan/Feb edition Black Swan issue, and I did enjoy it, I just was never able to get another issue after that. I think I may spend money wisely and subscribe because it's lovely. I really like that it's not too hipster as well, that aspect of it really appeals to me.
Little White Lies also sells prints, which are just as beaut, I have my eye on the Steve Zissou one, but for the next 24 hours you can get 10% off a print of the current Little White Lies cover of Ryan Gosling (below), just use the code: LOVEGOSLING10.
This is a pretty interesting commentary on the recycled and distorted nature of the digital age. The post cards of the Mona Lisa would all end up like this if everything had been digital from then on in. He turns in to some kind of weird alien by the end of it, so much effort though, it must have taken him a very long time.
On a related note, I won myself tickets to The Creators Project in London, 5 of them to be exact, the only bummer is that it falls on the same day as the Grad Ball, which I have already bought my ticket for and want to go to anyway. However, if some of The Creators Project event is taking place during the day, I may go by myself (as most people I would want to take would be in Portsmouth) and fob off tickets on people that desperately wanted to go, not that I don't, but I'm not entirely sure I won the competition fairly.
The idea was that you would comment on The Creators Project Facebook fan page and the selected comments with the most 'likes' would win the tickets, I got two likes and one of them was me, some got hundreds, maybe I just got pity tickets, I don't care, a win is a win and if I don't win tickets to any of the iTunes Festival shows I will count this as Fate's consolation prize, even if I really wanted to go to both. But then again, winning iTunes tickets two years running would be one serious fluke, especially seeing as I already got who I wanted and had an amazing time last year.
Today has been a pretty hectic day for e-mails, I feel like I've been doing them non-stop all afternoon. I stayed up a bit later than I wanted to last night sending out emails asking for work experience and I've managed to grab a position covering 'Malden Fortnight' for a free local magazine called, 'Village Voice', they won't be paying me but I will obviously get full credit and it might be fun to take in some local New Malden entertainment, I've written down the dates I want to cover in my diary already. Despite lack of payment, I'm quite excited about doing it because it goes out to all the houses round here and everyone will get to see them. I also got an email back from the editor for The Kingston/Epsom Guardian wanting dates that I would be available, I hope to hear back from him later or tomorrow. I knew it would be a good idea to try and start small, I sent out another email to Company as well but I think I'll be left with no response like the last time. My cousin Mark also emailed me a pretty good paragraph about the mild identity crisis' that mixed race people have to go through which I guess is how I initially felt but I've changed my perspective on it a bit since thinking more in depth about the project overall.
