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XMAS CARD DESIGNS

XMAS CARD BRIEF

Ashley Thomas is a surface designer, above is some of her wallpaper designs, the palette has a frosty winters morning feel and the shapes remind me of burbles and other festive themes. Below are some of her Xmas card designs, their is a similar theme recurring in her work.


Ashley Thomas is a surface designer,

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Mel Smith has a beautiful range of Xmas card designs. Designed with a rather simple palette, motifs and silhouettes Mel Smith has managed to create rather complex designs.

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Here are some of Max and Sid's festive Xmas cards, again I'm a fan of the simplicity of these cards, the matte block colours and quirky nature of the designs.

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I'm really pleased I found this stationary design company Redbean designs. Their roots are in surface design and have a lot of designs in vinyl. I love the contrast in colour and the silhouetted images.

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Corkscrew - Jenny Mok


Xmas Card Design - Jenny Mok

Above are the designs by Jenny Mok, her corkscrew design has elements of a Christmas theme but not in value, they seem quite psychedelic, while her Xmas card design takes on a different style seen her work but is much more Xmas themed.

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Love the geometric form and innovative idea of this Xmas Card by ico design, by taking what people often use to post their cards to form the structure of the tree.

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I ♥ these Hackney Xmas cards, here's their design in 2 colour ways, their simple, modern approach was design when this style was at it's peak in the market.

Room/Storage Dividers

Lori Weitzner has designed this delicate, organic open web room divider, from South American fig tree bark. I like how it pixalets what it's dividing.



Susan Bradleys outdoor wallpapers, cut from stainless steel are at the height of innovative design. They're beautifully visualised in these photos.


Another of Susan Bradley's designs, this is one of her bookcases but I can visualise this on giant scale in a room, where it folds to floor it would create the floor space within the room divider.


Monica Forster is an Interior designer and specialises in furnishings. Here is 'Forest' her contemporary room divider, with the aim of bringing nature into the home. The metal rods hold 'petals'. It comes in 3 colour ways. Laser cutting the shapes out and applying them by hand to metal rods could achieve this look. I think with my design it would look nice on much finer rods, so it gave the appearance of floating roses or galloping horses depending on which motif I used.

Amode is a contemporary furnishing store for the higher end of the market. Their designs are mid way from functionable to contemporary installation. This bookcase/room divider looks like it's taken inspiration from the game Tetris. It suits both purposes as a bookcase and interior statement.



Another clever little piece by Amode, this inside out bathroom cabinet has etchings of what might be inside. How far could you go with this idea? What things could you playfully hint at what's being hidden? Seen as I like the idea of being interactive wouldn't it be great to have a cupboard with etch a sketch's as it's doors.


Working with the concepts of scale and space, structure and surface, Deepa Panchamia designs sculptures and installations which make commissions for interior spaces in the UK and abroad. The lightness of the fabric allows an interaction between the installation and wind and light. It'd be lovely to see what movement this installation has and how shadows and light bounce off it's surroundings.



Bloomming were designers are the light faceting room divider, it currently no longer in there products but I found this on Trendir where I came across loads of other innovative room/storage dividers. The jaggared shapes allow light to hit and bounce off at different angles.It also has lovely flowing dimension making this piece quite decorative and with more purposes other than to divide or conceal.

Cherry Tenneson Report

Tenneson and Dale

Cherry Tenneson made signs, for the NHS, job centre plus, exhibitions and various others, using vinyl letting.
She developed her skills from working in a factory and stemmed from that into developing that skill into art work. You can see a link between her work she's done for signs and that of her own art work, there's alot of structure between the two, organisation, she follows rules and order, colour and tone (Tenneson says she uses vinyl primary colours in her work), other influences are of Pop Art, Minimalism and Politics, which concur true.


Tenneson works with a partner and together their design name is Tenneson & Dale, above is of one of their pieces 'Order Order' 2006, is of 26 canvas's worked with vinyl, they form a grid which has been influenced by the nature of Politics. The colours in the canvas's represent how many members were in each group, demonstrating the election groups. This was exhibitioned in Cornerhouse, but they didn't use all the canvas's defeating the meaning behind the work.

Below is another of Tenneson & Dale's work is 'Librarians of the House of Commons' 2006, it demonstrates each Librarian of the House of Commons and how long they were in parliment.


Working with Vinyl and Vinyl Lettering


We were shown a demonstration on working with vinyl and I luckily got to produce my own, above is of a letter T applied with the same techniques Tenneson used, below is the outcome when font's are over layed, it was quite successful but not all together smooth, you can see where they overlap quite clearly but finer vinyl can be used to it is less noticable.


The smallest font for vinyl letting is 12mm at it's best for exhibition purposes or signs, Aluminum 1.5cm and PVC 1cm. When applying vinyl to make it equal with no bubble, a roller is best to use as it gets a more accurate finish. Roll with font facing upwards so it doesn't slide.
Paints and drawing on vinyl is achievable if oil based.

Vinyls are best left in a cool place so they don't stretch and lose their quality.

Fred Aldous Report

Fred Aldous Laser Cutting Facility
Fred Aldous Ltd
37 Lever Street
Manchester
M1 1LW
www.fredaldous.co.uk


Fred Aldous is a design, craft and art supplies in Manchester, they offer laser cutting services to local designers.

Files for laser cutting need to be Illustrator files (.ai) and saved at version 8.
As long as you have the appropriate format the set up cost is £5 and the cutting services are charged at £1.00 per minute. A higher charge is incurred if Fred Aldous needs to amend the illustrator file if it’s not compatible to the laser cutter.

Cutting with the laser was a simple and quick process, all of our designs were put onto disc and sent to the laser cutter, approx 8 designs were sent at the same time and it took about 10 minutes to cut (£10). The image above is of my design, it was tested on (top L-R) wood and felt, (bottom L-R) card and plastic mirror.

The laser cutter was able to pick up quite fine detail, but probably no less than 2mm in width would work as the fibres would burn through. As you can see with the wood, it burnt slightly in the laser cutter, this is alright if you'd like to incorporate that into the design. Also to take into account is that the felt comes out just a shade darker after being exposed to the heat.
There are 7 other fabrics you could laser with such as, plastics, foam, cloths (leather,suede, hemp, cotton), magnetic sheets, papers, rubbers and Teflon ranging in types.

I learnt that it is best to stick strictly to Illustrator when it comes to working with a programme that only deals with Illustrator, as I has produced a design in Illustrator in a 'Special Effects' mode which enabled me to open and work with it in Photoshop too. As it has been dragged into Photoshop instead of opened via Illustrator into Photoshop it lost it's quality, pixalating it. When it came to laser cutting my image the programme found it difficult to read and it had to be amended but it still wasn't right, this left the outcome of my designs unsmooth around the edges particulary on the plastic mirror, but this is something I now know not to do.

Overall the outcome was successful, despite the error in my design as it gave me an understanding of what the laser cutter could do. There is a vast scope as to why and how you would use the laser cutting technique. Laser cutting is a quick, simple and relatively cheap method of producing design outcomes on almost any surface fabric, it can also laser cut on to already acrylic printed fabrics,

Critical Studies - Linda Florence

Linda Florence has produced an innovative idea which has been successful with collectors and high end companies. The design from the Scratchcard Collection, 2005, uses metallic foils, leathers and other exotic materials which create a floral wallpaper with an engaging quality. Consumers get to engage with a ‘scratchcard’ mimic with their wallpaper, scratching back the foil on the wallpaper to reveal colour and pattern underneath. Florence clashes historic revival by using the traditional motif with a contemporary and thought provoking idea.

For years wallpaper has served a purpose of decorative only, to hide cracks in walls and to smooth surfaces, this type of design demands the consumer to give the wallpaper attention and gives another dimension to wallpaper by allowing it to be interactive.

The gold and silver foil, give the consumer a sense of expensive and higher status much like how it has done for hundreds of years, which began in 17th Century Chinese wallpaper designs. Gold in wallpaper has for a long time been a status of empowerment, but Florence’s re-take is much more a fashion thing, there is a great sense of parody in her work.

Linda Florence is inspired to re-create the 17th century belief of status and empowerment through wallpaper, her title for one of the Scratchcard collection ‘Morphic Damask’ hints at this, ‘Damask’ is a long time used wallpaper technique for flocking and just the very means of the gold motifs and flowery indicate this, as well as relating a scratchcard to her work. In today’s society we focus a lot on get rich quick schemes, I think juxtapostioning the two and in a parody way is her thought behind her work.

With programmes such as ‘Changing Rooms’ and ‘Property Ladder’ the econminy are very much in the moment of DIY, this sort of DIY, reveal the pattern yourself would be very appealing to the market at the moment.