Category: Barcelona

barcelona – studio visits – mayuscula + slow art works – 1/2-03-17

Whilst visiting studios, I wanted to spend time listening and engaging, and not spend all my time writing stuff down with pen and paper, which would have been very time consuming. Instead I made very brief quick notes on my phone of things I wanted to take from the visit, be that some advice, something that inspired me or things going on in art and design that i should research and keep an eye out for.

Following are the notes i made at Mayuscula:

-Be brave / no pain no gain
-Pressure makes different work /focus / time waste
-Serious branding for companies, their livelihood is in your hands so don’t fuck up their business
-Multi lingual projects
-Laser cut notebooks
-Don’t stick to your comfort zone and then your skill set will be expanded
-Don’t be scared to propose things
-Consider culture in design
-Consider timings with projects – complexity – is it achievable??
-Of festival
-Continuity – fluid design
-Small details (hexagons throughout companies branding)
-Branding is business – helping people communicate and sell
-Don’t disregard the clients wishes and ideas – show options where you’ve considered it and talk them into your options
-Mainly use Illustrator / (editorial) in design + illustrator
-After effects for animation
-Client relationships last years – connections
-Patrick Thomas
-Fill your portfolio – fake/selfprojects
-Travel
-Planning increases the chances of success
-Localise/internationalise

Here are my notes from Slow art works:

-Do not be defined to one practice
-Define your own creative area / more than copying – taking inspiration and working alongside ideas rather than taking other ideas
-Our point of view is individual and unique – that cannot be copied
-Be nicer’ written on the bottom of mac screen
-There is no easy road leading to Glory’
-Don’t just stick/start with the computer
-Printing/stamping/Lino/texture
-Instagram gives a mix of individual taste and professionalism
-Everything is in the details – card type, feel it and think ‘wow’ 100% cotton card
-Tomato collective
-Personal projects are important
-Learning new things and documenting them – not majorly linked to design and illustration
-Lengthy projects – continuous
-More than one logo – one can get boring, they get tired of it easily. ‘Liquid identity’ don’t let one thing define you
-Yostock/vostock
-Make internship applications personal – don’t pre write emails, Skype?
-Tapias museum
-Boxer union (reminds me of jollies socks)
-Jason lee

I also had a slot for the Hey studios visit, but the group I went with lost the rest of the group and got completely lost. We were walking around in circles for 45 minutes and only realised we’d actually walked past the building twice already after the group had finished their visit. I was frustrated as this was my first choice, but i was still able to have a peek at the goodies they gave to the tutors for us to take back to Brighton.

Over all the studio visits were really impactful, and I left feeling very inspired and had more of a taste for what working in a design based company could look like.