Marylin Chiaverina, Illustration and Visual Media.

​For the last few months I have been focusing on my self-initiated project Lin Trips. Here is the Brief:
I plan to create this webcomic by collecting from memories or talking to my family about theirs to form the short narratives. I plan to publish these on Webtoon, a platform for self-published comics, which is easily accessible both in the UK and outside.
My webcomic will be in a Tim Burton’s style mixed with my own as I believe this will make the webcomic peculiar enough to be noticed and will also represent me as a person and push my art skills further as I usually not use this style of drawing for projects. The artwork will be both created digitally and analogue as I believe some of the markings/colours are beautiful and fit the art style well, and will be advantaged by the digital work, I would also like to experiment further to decide the ratio between the two.

Lin Trips was born from my desire to create a webcomic and my Thematic Project: Migration as a Graphic Narratives where I have explained what brought my family in the UK.
The characters I created for the project were all happily excepted by my family. As a result, I decided to spend more time on them so they could look decent.

​These are the initial designs sketches.
The sketching was a challenge. As a perfectionist I had problems remembering that I should have fun not stress myself out. The book: ‘Things You Think In A Bar’ by Tim Burton made me finally calm down and stop stressing on how everything needs to be 100% perfect.
In every step of the way on recreating the final designs I had constant feedback from my mum and sister, as they were their representations. This process was both stressful but also rewarding since the feedback was always supportive.

The next step was the title design. Here a few:

​Thinking back this part was the most experimental out of all the work I done so far, not sure if that is a good thing.
The tape title won the favour of everyone that I showed it to, so it become the template for the official title.

​Reflecting on this, the choice was perfect. The design suits Lin Trips well. I believe so because the title represents me, on how clumsy it looks and how it is straight up in the title: Lin Trips, it supposed to be messy and experimental.

Collecting stories can be time consuming as I am a chatterbox when I start talking. This brought a small delay. The first time I had to go through the process of asking my family if they had any funny stories to tell resulted in me talking over an hour with my mum. Taking notes was even worse because my handwriting is messy and sometimes, I struggle to read it as well.

Emotion sketching was relaxing and turned out to be greatly helpful when it come down to me creating the webcomic. Here some:

The first episode: Introduction had an awkward and time-consuming way of making. It started with small visual to help me create better sketch layouts, I made four of them. These would have been copied, two panels per page. Next recopied onto tracing paper to be scanned in, the next step was to make it digital and fixed up on Photoshop. The reason why I chooses this software over than Illustrator is because I like the first one’s brushes collection more.

​When completed I tried and failed to colour the first panel, this backfired as you can see:

​After this I decided to go less extravagant and do a black, white, and red colouring. This was a good second plan as it looks nice and fits the style of Lin Trips better than the first attempt.
This episode had a lot of errors and it took a lot of work and time to be completed. I am planning to fix and republish this when I have time to spare.

​The Second Episode: The Mirror Accident had the same formula as the one before, but this time around I was only able to create three different layouts for it.

​The other difference was my unsuccessful attempt to create one page out of the several one-page panel I have been working on.

​This too will be corrected later one when I have time.
From week 4 onward the layouts and style were set. I dropped the coping in bigger two panels in one-page system I had and the tracing paper altogether to create panels as the story required instead to have a set measurement. The ‘formula’ now used to create them is: get the first sketching done while reading the story, then modify them in a panel sequence. Show people the end results and ask them to choose, take the successful layout and modify it on Photoshop, shade it in, sign it and prof read it before publishing the episode.

I am currently using this way of working as it is quicker than the previous one. This is in case if something happens, for example I got stuck and having a few lateness for publishing the episodes, this style makes it easier to catch up.

Failed episodes.
I currently own 3 unpublished episodes. This is because not all make sense and/or are funny. One does not make any sense in the English language, one can be funny only with a wider context, the last one does not make sense to other people. These examples did slow down my production a lot unfortunately.

​Next Step:
I will read more carefully what has been suggested on the review of the formative assessment and make choices based on them.

Foteini Spyridakou 
Graphic and Media Design 

​For the past couple of months I have been doing freelance work for a startup company in Ireland. It’s a small organization that is looking to tackle a specific issue regarding hygiene and oral care. There is not a lot that I can disclose about the project due to the nature of the company not have gone public with it yet, but it has been a very interesting experience so far. 
 
This job presented itself to me at a time when I really needed something to help me find my way again. Around the summer months I was going through a lot of personal struggles, which pushed back a lot of the planning I had in mind for my year off on DPS. A couple of months before leaving for summer break I had heard about this project through friends and had offered my help if they ever needed it. And a couple months later in all the darkness there came a light in the tunnel in an opportunity that not only gave me a new and very much appreciated experience, but the very needed time for healing and finding my passion in my work and self again. 
 
They took me on board to work on the product design aspect of their mission. I was given a general idea of what they wanted before hitting the drawing board. 
 
To begin I have to say I have been very lucky. The people I have had the pleasure to work for are very understanding, and transparent with me. What’s very different about working with a startup such as this is that you get to interact with the “big boss” as they say in movies. The people with the vision, and the drive. It allows you to create a relationship with your employers that I have only heard about, but never seen. I have talked to these people, seen them, exchanged emails. Its truly a special opportunity, I don’t think I can even express it correctly. And its truly an honor, because its such a unique experience, especially for me as a designer having an open playing field, being part of something entirely new, and partaking in the building of this company is a big responsibility, but so much fun. 
 
Working freelance came with a whole new set of challenges. To begin with I was undertaking a product design project. I have a history in product design, due to taking Design technology in High school, but after two years of only doing graphic design I appeared to be a little rusty. I had to give myself sometime to familiarize myself with the process. It was a fun and exciting new challenge with many areas for self-improvement, but at the same time really challenged my self-control and time management. I no longer had a traditional schedule to keep me consistent. It was now my responsibility to keep track of my contributions to the project, but also myself. I had to make sure that I was staying on top of my work, while taking care of my personal health. I had to be a boss, a parent, a tutor, a hazard, a mess, a tornado. I saw the good, the bad, and the ugly. The days I felt motivated, and the days I felt like everything I was creating was a total disaster. But that was the fun in it, seeing the disasters turn into good learning experiences, and finally outcomes. 
 
I have had the opportunity to expand my skillset as well through this freelance opportunity. I had to produce prototypes for the clients, and in order to do that I had to seek out the help of 3D printers. A form of technology I had never used before. Started by completing the induction at UAL, and booking my first session on the 3D printer. From there I was off producing prototypes. However, like the rest of my journey so far there were good and bad days with printing. Some days I would get a complete print, while others the print would fail. And other days the print would fail for a number of days, which often set me back since I couldn’t report back on time to my clients. 
 
But as I mentioned, I have been lucky, my clients accepted the failures with me and waited for the successful prints. And when we had successful prints we all got so excited as this project was coming closer to becoming real. And with the failures also came good things. 
 
As I spent more time in the workshop I started to become more comfortable and more knowledgeable with the 3D printers and the staff. They taught me how to change the material, and what warnings I should look out for, and any questions I had they would help me out. I’m very happy I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the staff and play around with this new technology. 
 
As of right now I have sent my clients my first prototypes, and they have been approved so my new task is to work on the logo of the product. So I guess I have got my work cut out for me. 

​I am Inés Mencos, a design for Art Direction student who has started a DPS internship in McCann in Madrid. For those who don’t know, McCann is a worldwide advertising agency with offices around the world. However, for me, moving to Madrid is coming back home. Having started the 9th of September means I have not yet had time to grow in the company, yet it has made me realize a few things about the industry.
 
I have been accepted as a full-time Trainee, which means I am able to participate in briefings, attend meetings and present ideas for designs. This week I undertook two briefings with my ‘tutors’ – An Art Director and a Copyright – which meant I would be able to attend and participate in brainstorm sessions and meetings with the clients. The first brief consisted in creating a sports campaign that alluded, yet not mentioned, the Olympics that are coming up; a challenging brief. I am not a great sports fan which meant I was useful as I represented a target they were trying to reach. This campaign has great cultural connotations as sports is a huge part of Spanish culture (just as I am writing this the entirety of the office floor is grouped around five computers watching the basketball game). However, sports is part of our day-to-day life, its in our language, the way we live, and the way we feel about our country. Even though you don’t watch sports, you live it some way or another. Yet, besides football, other sports don’t have as much finances to promote their work, which is why this campaign is so culturally emotional.
 
Working in advertising means you always have to be on top of news, behaviors, and debates. Taking into account actual debates and facts when creating campaigns and advertising spots is fundamental to avoid backlash or create opportunities in earned media for brands to interact with actual themes and debates, facing the future. That a brand faces the future is basic in its communication as it will help it grow commercially, politically and socially. It is also necessary to be on top of advertising trends and movements; to encourage action, to promote open-mindness and inspire social action. It is crucial to remove a brand from forwards-facing political interaction, it can greatly and negatively affect its perception, which has the ability to harm it economically as working in an advertising agency means you have to distance your personal political opinion if it can interfere with the brands’, and if so, speak up before taking up a project.  Collaboration is key, in communication you are never alone, and a good team is needed for achieving results, brainstorming in the workspace, and learning to leave work in the workspace is something that I challenge with often.
 
Having returned to Spain after 3 years of living in the UK is an interesting adaptative experience; to get used to a different work and study environment, timetable or cultural relationship to work is an interesting challenge to undertake during this DPS year.

​Charlene De La Cruz
Illustration and Visual Media
 
During this DPS year, it feels like I’ve just graduated and out having to find my place in this world. I didn’t expect to feel like this but now I think about it, I don’t know what I was expecting. There are times where I seriously regret doing the DPS year but then I look at how I was at 2nd year and I need to go on this adventure. This time last year, I had no direction into what I even wanted to do after I graduate and now, I feel like a more mature person through the ideas I have now on where I want to be in the future. There are still mistakes I do that I need to learn from such as how to use blogs more often and as a way of self-evaluating. Blogging is a massive part of my course of Illustration and we get graded on how we look at our craft and analyse it daily so before going into my last year, it is something I must practice on.
 
One element of my craft that I wanted to work on in DPS and is something I have been certainly working on in the first few months was my Portfolio. I need to make my Portfolio a lot stronger and work a lot harder to compete in the Creative Industry. To achieve this, I have been I am currently working on a few commissions from friends and some companies This is helping me expand my Portfolio on different types of Storytelling and also give me experience in working with Clients and the way I should communicate with them. To also strengthen my Portfolio and Skills, I have decided to explore Graphic Design online courses to improve my work and broaden what projects I could take on in the future.
 
After my last blog, I was working on 2 projects which were both at university. One of them was a print project for the Scene-Stealer Collective I am a part of and the other was a collaboration with an MA Screenwriter to do the posters for his TV show “Temp Ting”. I have just wrapped up these projects and I loved the experience of working with people with the same passion and motivation as me. As I have a major interest in Films, the Scene-Stealers Collective is helping me grow into a drawing style that I would like to carry on and experiment with. The Collective has given me a platform to show work that I am passionate about and this style of work interests me as it’s reinterpreting someone else’s work/movie. I enjoy how I could change the scene into something that could have been a better angle to a movie scene. 

​For the Collaboration with the MA Screenwriter at LCC, I produced a main poster and 6-episode posters for his TV Show “Temp Ting”, each poster represents an episode, to display at the Degree Show and for Pitch Visuals. From this experience with Temp Ting, I have learnt how to deal with clients in the ways of keeping them updated and asking if there are any changes in the TV show. The Screenwriter I was working with had to change his episodes and as I was working on his episode poster, I had to start from scratch in September. I loved working on this project as I was working with someone with the same mindset and ideas which was very beneficial, however, I know it isn’t always going to be like that. I was extremely lucky with who I got as a client and I need to be prepared that, next time, I might not be so lucky. I enjoyed how I was able to experiment a lot with imagery because no one has done a poster for his show before. It challenged my imagination as the Scene-Stealer Collective is something I am used to doing and there are many alternative posters for Movies I look at in the Collective, while this project made me think of perspective and things that haven’t been done before.
 
As I am nearly finishing off the planned projects, I have planned my Self-initiated project which I will start in December and is a follow-up project from a 2nd Year Self-initiated project that I want to develop more. It is influenced on campaigning against the Stigma of Mental Illness. This project is influenced by the success of Extinction Rebellion and I am experimenting with how I can make my Campaign more interactive.  I have also reached out to the Production courses and asked if they need any help and a student has come back to me about working on their Film Project in December which is something, I would love to be involved in. I really would like to get some experience in Production to have a feel of it and see if it is something I want to pursue. So those 2 projects are planned to keep me going for the next few months, although, I am still searching for internships to explore my options.

Daisy Aldridge
Illustration and Visual Media

Two months into my DPS year and looking back I am not exactly meeting my ambitions that I had planned in the second year proposal.
I thought I would be doing internships, yet I feel I am in an even better place freelancing and putting my skills to the test. Although, not having the structure of a 9-5 day can be scary, going from university life to making my own hours was a bit of a shock to the system to start with as I found myself losing routine, sleeping in, and not knowing when it was work time and when it was play time. As I have progressed through the past two months, I have figured out how to make the most of my time (a daily planner has been my saviour) and the benefits of freelancing…
1 - I can work where I want! (to an extent)
2- I’m in control of who I work with and what I work on (all those first and second year unfinished projects are making a comeback – I don’t think they were expecting to see the light of day anytime soon)
3- Flexible hours are a god send after all. I’ve figured out I can go for lunch with my nan on Tuesday; it might just mean a bit of late night working to make up for it!

I still plan on applying for internships and explore different avenues in the new year, but for now my plans are to continue focusing on my personal practice. Often, I have a tough time delivering projects, due to myself lacking the required production skill. I’ve found that the having basic skills of the tech, apparatus and equipment around you is essential to producing great work. I want to use this year to play around with my skill-set and build upon it, look at enterprise, sort out my portfolio(s), refine my visual language and set my own briefs (and deadlines) so at the end I can go back into my third year feeling more confident as an illustrator with added tools under my belt.
​
​‘’Juggling jobs is like having ten plates on the top of long poles. As long as you keep spinning the poles the plates do not drop off. You run around spinning each pole just in time for it to not fall off, and be ready to dive to catch the one behind if you forget. ‘’ - Phil Cleaver.

​I find myself in a fun new situation where I have three projects I expect to finish within the next week. It’s a whole new ball park for me to be working on more than one design job at a time. At first it was slightly daunting to have someone relying on me (me?!) to meet their deadlines and their needs, but with a lot of excessive note taking, list making and time management I have been making my way through it. I have had to learn to chase down supplies, organise meetings, build and deliver presentations, and fill out health and safety forms.

This year so far has helped me greatly to overcome my anxiety problems. I have been pushing myself to overcome my fear of presenting and I have let myself have the confidence to put ideas forwards in group projects (as a result this has helped me get a better opportunity in the work being done). Thinking about working on these live projects with others made me worried initially, but I have come to understand that having been chosen for the job in the first place means my presence is important and thus my ideas are too.
​
Daisy Aldridge
@illustrateddaisy

by Karol Tylke, IID

^That could sum up the last few years of my life. In the second year of uni, I felt like that’s how my first year was supposed to look like. Now I feel like that’s the point I should have been in a few months ago.

I haven’t started any internship yet, which, from an outsider point of view, puts me behind a lot of people. Which doesn’t change the fact that personally, I have made huge steps towards developing my practice - I finished my portfolio and started applying for work

Yay! Sounds ridiculous at this point, but it took me forever to get there. When I look at it now, all my work that’s presentable was created since March 2019. Comparing myself to this time of last year, I have infinitely more work to show, and finally, I can explain what I do and what my skills are. 

I could say that it’s a shame that I haven’t had any professional practice yet, or that all this time went to waste, but really - whatever. I have never pushed myself as hard as now to create, and if it wasn’t for DPS, I don’t know if I would have had this motivation. Also, there’s still plenty of time in the year, and I’m gonna make sure to make the most of it.

I’m currently working on a live brief with MA Screenwriting from LCC which involves creating a poster for a movie. And even though it has been a huge step out of my comfort zone, I’m really glad I took it. It’s one of the first times when someone actually depends on my work, and I can’t let them down, and this experience had taught me how to fight a creative block and not give in to stress. 

The screenwriting project has also given me the motivation to explore drawing and illustration - something that I’ve been trying to do for a long time, but what was always replaced in my schedule with activities that I deemed more valuable. It’s been really fun to do this, and nothing motivates more to learn new skills than deadlines. After this project is done, I’m planning on starting to work on my Self Initiated Project and engaging in more live briefs, to gain more experience while applying for internships.

Another thing that I’ve started learning recently and is giving me a lot of fun is 3D modelling in Cinema4D. 3D graphics is something that fascinated me for a long time. I used to stare at renders created by the likes of Peter Tarka and scratched my head while trying to figure out how they were created. Having the insight into the world that has seemed so distant and difficult to enter has proven to be really satisfying, and I’m hoping that those skills will greatly improve my practice and my ability to execute ideas.

It’s the middle of November now - 2.5 months into DPS. I didn’t expect them to pass so quickly, which makes it more important than ever to seize the moment and opportunity. I’m hoping that to the next party, I will finally arrive on time.

Francesca Adani
Illustration and Visual Media

Since my last blog post I started to work for an advertising agency in Berlin called Dieckertschmidt. It is definitely a big change compared to my last internship, it much more serious, more work and more responsibilities. I do like it even though it’s pretty intense, I get to work on so many different briefs and do different kind of things. I feel like I have already learned so much in a week, especially in terms of software knowledge and composition. 
Something that definitely surprised me is how tiring it is to work a full eight-hour day (I finally understand why my parents seemed so tired after a day of work) I thinks staring at a computer for consecutive hours really tires my brain. I know however that to succeed you need to work hard so I am really motivated. I still don’t know if advertising is my main interest, also I have only been here a week, but it is definitely very fascinating, and I want to learn more about it. I’m glad I had the possibility to come here and explore this field and I know I will learn so much by the time I finish my internship.
The only thing that is kind of hard for me is the language. In the office everyone speaks German, except me, which I don’t mind because everyone always speaks English when talking to me, but the difficulty is that all the text I work with is in German, and the same for all the folders and names of the files, so sometimes I do struggle not knowing what things say; but I’m sure I will get more used to it as times goes on.
Another thing that surprised me is the fact that I thought I wouldn’t be able to do any illustrations, as I mostly work with layout and mock-ups, however I have already work on a few briefs that include designing more, which I’m happy about. The reason why I wanted to do this internship was because it was more of a graphic design position but also been able to do some illustrations now ant the is very nice. A brief that I’m really enjoying is about creating a movie poster for an upcoming movie called ‘takeover’, I had the opportunity to experiment in creating the design of the title and the composition of the poster.
Another thing that I surprised me is not to be scared to learn and ask for help. I was a bit worried when I first started out as I don’t know that much about graphic design especially in term of software skills, but I have learned not to be scared to ask for someone to help me out, because in the end the people you work with don’t expect you to know everything. The senior art direction, which is the person I work with most of the time, is very nice and friendly, always willing to help me out and teach me new things. So far is been a great experience, it’s hard because I work all day but, in the end, I do like what I’m doing.

Claudia Ostafijczuk-Wydrzynska
Graphic and Media Design 

Since the beginning of October I have been working for a document experience startup company. Their main goal is to turn PDF's into something more interesting and collect analytics as well - like what page the reader got to, did they click on any of the links/widgets and if they even opened the document. I can describe their platform as being in the beta stage as there are still many bugs and things that need changing. When I started, I thought that this internship would mostly be editorial design made using mostly Indesign and other Adobe software, as they do make presentations and PDFs and put them through their platform to make them interactive. Although once I actually got to work it turned out that the work I was given has to be done in... Google slides. Why? Because the owners want every member of the team to have access and be able to change the documents. "Ok.." I thought while getting started on the document. After some time I was getting more and more annoyed by how un-precise Google Slides were but I got through the document and did my best to somehow set the text on an imaginary grid line and made the elements stand on a document grid. At one point I made a document in Indesign and tried to sneak it onto the platform hoping that after seeing how much cleaner the file turned out they would let me work using Adobe, but I had to make it in Google Slides later anyway.

I started this internship hoping that I can practice Adobe software and get better at it at the same time making myself be better prepared for future jobs and projects which is why for the first month or so I was very upset with myself, the internship, the company, literally with everyone. "Why didn't I start searching sooner?", "Why didn't I make a better portfolio that would have got me a better internship?" I asked myself. 

But now, 2 months in, I am trying to look at the positive side as every experience teaches us something new. Working for this company gives me a look into how a business is run in the early stages and am I happy to be involved in the process, as my actions do affect how the company will be seen by clients. While making documents, I also have to look for certain bugs on the platform that could make potential client's lives hard and find ways to work around them - which requires creative problem solving and also is fun to do as I am quite passionate about technology. Even though this internship isn't what I thought it would be, I know that I have made progress and will make more and more progress even if I don't see it straight away.

That being said - stop focusing on the bad things and bringing yourself down, find positivity in everything you do and use it to keep going forward!