Never Undervalue the Power of 'Word of Mouth'

Last night me and a bunch of friends went to our local pub, The Chemic Tavern in Woodhouse, Leeds. Which is just around the corner from where we live. We found the place pretty much as soon as we moved into the area and have been regulars ever since, they host a brilliant open mic night every Thursday, where there are often some really top acts playing. Last night was a really great atmosphere, the music was fantastic and the people were their usual friendly selves. The headline act of the night were 'Skinner & T'witch', who are a really great folk duo heavily influenced by many styles of music, most notably of which flamenco. As a guitarist of 10(ish) years, I was astonished last night to see and appreciate such a high level of musical ability and skill being performed with such technical precision, not to mention passion.

The couple were selling CD's last night after there gig, and whilst buying one I got the opportunity to sit down with them and chat about many things including my appreciation of the flamenco style guitar playing, but more importantly the design work that was executed on there album design. We got talking about their album artwork and I eventually told them I was a graphic designer and recognised the effort and understanding that'd gone into it. I also left them with my name and email address, and invited them to involve me with any potential future work they had in mind.

If you don't ask. You don't get.

Even if they don't end up getting in touch, it was a pleasure meeting them, and I massively enjoyed their performance. So really, there was no harm in speaking to them.

Incidentally, last night was the first time in a while that I realised having business cards on me at all times would not be a bad thing...

I used to do it in the past, so why not now? I'm in the strongest position in terms of my design capabilities right now, I'm always learning new things and improving across the board. I can even remember being a few months fresh out of GCSE's at school and having business cards on me in my faux leather wallet ready to give to friends and people I met on the street. That was four years ago. So there's really no excuse for me not to be doing it now. I really should put an order in for some...

So again, back to my main point: As well as introducing myself to one potential client, I also introduced myself as a fresh-faced designer eager to get external work to the owners of the pub last night. Like I said, I spend a reasonable amount of my free time in there with friends, so it only seems fitting that I share my potential services with them. That worked out okay for me too, one of the owners took down my personal email and mobile number and saved me under 'Declan Design' in her phone. She also mentioned they needed some generic posters for the pub advertising quiz nights, open mic nights, closing & opening times etc. and I was only too eager to get involved.

It's about making connections.

So all in all a successful night, it just goes to show how even though we're extremely well connected to potentially everybody else on the planet what with social & digital technology, (which is great by the way), it's naive to assume that this is our only means of communication. There's nothing like shaking someones hand, explaining to them the service you provide, giving them a business card and building a bridge for a potential connection purely based on face value. Old fashion means can still be the most effective.

So building on this, my next step now is to get some business cards designed and ordered. Which realistically could be achieved in the next couple of days, I have all the content I need, it's just a case of sleekly executing the design in Adobe and getting them printed.

Here's something that will get me motivated to get some business cards made:

Also, purely just for entertainment purposes, heres a little snippet of the night we had last night. It's a clip of my personal favourite song from Skinner & T'witches setlist last night: you can find these guys on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/skinnerandtwitch?fref=ts

London Studio Visits Planning

From the 15th - 17th of January, I'll be in London. One of my favourite cities in the world. We've been recommended to go as a course to visit an exhibition at the V&A that's happening while we're there. As well as this, I've started to look at creative agencies that I like the look of, I plan to contact them and try and arrange some studio visits.

http://www.thestable-london.com/a-list-of-creative-agencies-in-london

The link above pointed me in the right direction for a lot of studios that caught my eye, I've selected a couple to show here. Again, I plan on emailing these studios within the next week, well in advance of my trip to improve my chances.

The Importance of Planning

Recently, I feel as though I've broken my way back into the creative lifestyle I used to be wrapped up in. And it's definitely down to method, scheduling and time management. Yesterday what I did differently was get up (as normal at around 7-8), shower, get dressed, ate. Then I cracked on with degree work. For as long as I could, literally just smashing it out (Obviously remembering to make time for eating and socialising). But really just getting on with stuff. I think I managed to get to about 7 o'clock, at which point I was proud of the amount and standard of work I'd produced in that time. Then I switched off from that. I decided that I'd done enough work, and it was time to get some down-time. But here's the real trick, I structured this too. Not to the extent where every minute of my day was accountable for, but so that I wasn't just lying in bed, or trawling through YouTube looking at "the top 10 most shocking conspiracy theories" for 5 hours solid. I made time for the other creative things in my life that I enjoy, and then I did them.

It's worth mentioning at this point that I've invested in an absolutely brilliant lifestyle app: 'Balanced'. All this is, is essentially a lifestyle app that aids me in tailoring how I spend my time. It allows to me to input the things that matter to me, asks me how often I'd like to be doing them, and then gently prompts me to get involved with it. It really is what it says on the tin, and already I feel as though I'm pursuing a more active, well-rounded and balanced lifestyle. I've actually recently surprised myself with how many hours there are in a day, and I definitely feel as though not only am I on top of my academic work, I'm also filling my spare time doing all the other things I love. Here are the list of things I input into the app:

• Get inspired
• Write in journal (daily)
• Read a book (3x a week)
• Listen to music (4x a week)
• Get creative
• Be thankful (Bit cheesy, but it never hurt anyone...)
• Catch up on the news (daily)
• Learn something (daily)
• Read a magazine (4x a week)
• Call family
• Get drunk with friends
• Study
• Paint, draw, illustrate etc.
• Go for a walk
• Cook something new
• Take a risk
• Meet new people
• Unclutter my life
• Call/Catch up with an old friend
• Watch a film
• Listen to a new band
• Travel
• Eat somewhere new
• Be spontaneous
• Write a blog entry (3x daily, including 1 PPP post)
• Chill out
• Take a great photo

That's a lot of stuff to do! But not unachievable, and I certainly feel like I wouldn't be doing these things if I didn't enjoy them. I feel like I'm on the right track to owning my own personal, professional practice.

Contacting Sergio, My Favourite Fashion Blogger

Today in studio we're focusing primarily on PPP, so I've started to make considerations towards people & studios in the creative industries that I'm interested in and want to be a part of. I've decided not to limit myself by singling out purely Graphic Design studios, I feel this is far too narrowing. I'm a creative person in many aspects of my life, so I want to contact not only designers, but musicians, successful business people, and fashion bloggers too!

Sergio Ines is my favourite fashion blogger. He's the creator of 'What My Boyfriend Wore', a project that initially was sparked by his then girlfriends Instagram account where she uploaded him and his 'dapper dexterity'. He now has thousands of followers and continues to influence people with his style. I emailed him a little earlier, simply asking if I could set up a little Skype interview. I explained how dressing sharp is something I'm passionate about too, and how any questions I would ask would be from the angle of a student, who was looking to look the part, without breaking there wallet. For me that's massive; and I've generally found that you don't have to spend £1000s of pounds on outfits to look good. I've found that I generally decide that an overall outfit looks good, because of a sense of many decorative interconnecting elements that work harmoniously together. There is a practice in this though.

If all goes ahead, and I do get the chance to speak to him (fingers crossed), I'd like to pitch an idea to him. I want to tell him about an idea I've had involving a potential section of his blog that focuses on the student representation of mens fashion. I'd love to be able to contribute to this, and see massive potential in terms of Graphic promotion work that I could provide. We'll see how this unfolds in the future.

Here's what I wrote to him:

Hi Sergio,

I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Declan Bell, a 2nd year Graphic Design student studying in Leeds, UK. I'd like to express my interest in your blog, and tell you that you and your engagement with mens fashion has been a massive influence on the way I dress and style myself for the past 2(ish) years. I've noticed too though, that not only do you have a keen eye for style in mens dress, but in visual aesthetics too. Your graphics on WMBW are always presented in a very clean and sharp style, with attention made to design principles, which is always nice!

I'm contacting you because I'd love to pick your brain about a few things, mostly fashion, style, and general taste in life. If you don't mind me asking, where is it you are based? Not that miles are much of a problem in terms of communication anymore, what with Skype interviews being commonplace now. If you were able to take the time to set up a date where I could ask a few questions, perhaps for 20 minutes or so, I'd appreciate that massively!

To give you a bit of background, I'd be approaching questions from the angle of a student, and I'm sure you can appreciate that because of the economic stigma attached to students, as much as I'd love to be able to wear Hugo Boss, Burberry and Armani, I simply can't afford it at the moment. One day perhaps. So again, my own personal style manifesto is simply of dressing sharp, and making an effort to abide by my own tastes in style, but without breaking the wallet, and certainly

I'd love to hear back from you, but appreciate that you must be busy.

Regards, Declan

Feel free to look me up on Facebook, Twitter @DeclanBell, Instagram (which I'm only just starting to appreciate the awesome power of...) declanbell63

New Blogger Format

I've decided on a new blogger format that streamlines my entries down the left hand side. I think it makes my posts more accessible, and gives it a more compact feel. The downside is that I did have a consistent feel to all of my blogs, what with my personalised minimalistic banner at the top of the page. I'd mentioned this in a much earlier post, and I don't particularly want to lose this part of my blog, however the dynamic templates for blogger are quite limiting. I do know however that you are able to input you're own CSS and override the stylesheets they use on blogger. If I get a bit more clued up on this, it could definitely be an option. Who knows, maybe before long I'll be a coding wizard and be able to come up with templates on my own!

Motivational Posters

I've decided to give myself an intervention. To bring me out of the creative rut I've been stuck in for a while now, I'm going to design some motivational posters. Possibly typographic. As well as giving me that extra boost to crack on with stuff, if I make it visually pleasing too, it'll be even better. Something that I can look at and feel proud of. The last time I've had that feeling was a couple of months ago, which is far too long!

I'm thinking of a couple of themes already, one I could do is: "Do a blog post everyday, and everything will fall into place."

In the meantime though, check out this photo of the Trinity centre Leeds I edited to appear as if it were a small model.

Link between Journaling & Blogging

Since getting back into the swing of university lifestyle, I've relearned and revalued the importance of establishing a clear link between the creative journals I keep, and my online presence through my PPP blog. I was quickly flicking through it last night when I suddenly realised: "Shit. I take a lot of notes. I could make entire blog posts out of some of the paragraphs I've scribbled into here". So I'm going to do that. Setting up that connection will massively boost productivity, because let's face it. Online blogging & creative journaling, they aren't enemies, they're simply singing the same song on two different octaves! And it's not just going to be useful for PPP either, I make countless notes by hand in studio whilst others do the same or frantically type into their laptops, so getting up to date with my thought processes in other modules will be certainly beneficial too.

So to start with, heres a quick round up of the stuff that's going on in my creative life: (I may go on to expand on some of these with their own blog posts if I feel it's necessary)

- It would probably be beneficial to do a round up of last years PPP, to reflect and build upon this and to assess how I've changed as a designer. It's also potentially worth sitting down and reading through all previous creative journals from last year too for the same reasons.

- I aim to do a quick write up on here about how my new living arrangements have influenced, boosted, and hindered my creative drive. I've got total freedom now, and that's sparked some interesting things that I look forward to sharing.

- Because of the freedom I now have in my living space, it's given me the opportunity to visually demonstrate the thought processes I've had and organise them to make them look more interesting, and seem more achievable. But I'll talk more about my genius system of thought & idea representation in a separate blog post, and I'll write up the individual ideas I've had in blog posts to come.

- I want to get a roll of white paper to make an infinity board, to bridge the gap between amateur and professional photography at home. I can't stress just how much the importance of quality photographs mean to me. They're so useful for representing work.

- I have a new app: 'Balanced'. It helps me focus on the productive and creative parts of my life, and do more of them, as opposed to lying in bed doing nothing. Procrastination can go f**k itself.

- I've been watching a lot of lectures and motivational videos on YouTube and Vimeo, it's definitely worth giving a quick write up on here for each.

- I'm going to start integrating more of my own lifestyle and what I choose to do in my free time into my PPP blog, and try and make an understanding of how it's relevant to my practice. I want to talk more about books I'm reading, documentaries I've seen, films I've watched, new bands I'm listening too, technologies I'm pursuing, magazines I'm keeping up with, my decisions and choices when it comes to fashion & style, gigs I'm going to see, my thoughts on what's happening in the news etc. And I think the best way to tackle this is to commit to doing at least one blogpost on creative life through my PPP blog everyday. This attitude will hopefully feed through into other modules too.

The last point is especially important. And not just for academic purposes, but so that I can concentrate on being a reasonably interesting person on top of all this. PPP is just a formal way of me scribbling down a lot of my creative thought processes. It's important to me that I do well academically, but at the same time it's about finding that balance. Enjoying myself, and stimulating myself with interesting stuff is important to me too.

MVMT Watch Brand

Today, whilst browsing for watches online I came across a reasonably new brand: MVMT. They've been featured in GQ. There main USP is that they've spotted that high end brands overvalue the prices of their watches to the point where it's ridiculous. This is what they're saying: "Quality timepieces crafted with a refined attention to detail: Timepieces that flow seamlessly into your lifestyle, without breaking your wallet." I like that. So I thought, why not contact them? Why not express my interest and see if they get me involved with any promotional work? So, I dropped them a message. 

If you don't ask, you don't get.

Hi Guys,

I came across MVMT in GQ, and you caught my attention pretty much from the get-go. Not only do I think the watch designs are beautiful, I also think you're absolutely bang-on with your attitude towards high end watch makers and how they massively overcharge.

As well as a watch enthusiast, I'm a 2nd year Graphic Design student, and I want to extend my interest to your project. I'm sure you understand just how important the Visual Representation of a brand can be.

I love my job. Designing with intent for mass communication is always exciting. However when you're designing for something that you fully endorse, it makes it that bit more engaging.

Feel free to email me on the address I've provided. I'd love to be involved in any promotional work you've got going on, even if it's just for an opinion. You may already have a team of designers on board, in which case I only wish you every success in your movement!

Regards, Declan Bell

Bookbinding Workshop

This morning was my first bookbinding workshop. I've bound work for projects before, but I've only ever checked youtube tutorials for guidance. Today I broadened my knowledge of binding, I attempted a simple saddle stitch booklet, a concertina booklet (that definitely didn't go to well), and a japanese fold book.

It was a lot of fun, and I definitely feel more confident in making booklets.