Nighttime Creations

Ready, set, GO! ..and go, go, go

2009-07-27T18:59:00.002+01:00

Above are some of my favourite shots I took while experimenting with my first roll of film on my new Lomography Action-sampler. Some of them are a bit underexposed, and there were a lot more I took that just didn't come out, so I'll be investing in some decent ISO800 film for next time.

On another photography-based note, I've just ordered a Fisheye 2, so instead of waiting until i go away I'll probably be messing about with that soon.

Have it your way (even when scoring in La Liga)

2009-07-25T12:29:00.004+01:00

Like many of you, I'm a fan of a good marketing gimmick- done tastefully of course. I found this rather interesting piece for Burger King yesterday. It even comes with a how-to guide!

I'm not really sure if I like it; yes I know it's worth a chuckle, but does it do much more than that? Not really. Then again, does it have to?

I guess it's been done now, so what's next? Ideas on a postcard please (I promise if I ever use them on a live brief I'll give you credit, honest)

All's quiet on the western front...

2009-07-14T12:19:00.003+01:00

After taking a couple of weeks off after the fun-filled month of placements and endless train journeys that was June, I've decided it's time to get back into being creative (this also gives me a distraction from the dreaded dissertation).

I've always been a fan of photography, so after Uni suggested we do 'creative' things this summer that wasn't just advertising, I've become slightly obsessed with buying cameras. I splashed out the other day on a new digital one, with HD video recording- so keep an eye out for some film projects coming soon- and have just bought myself a Lomo ActionSampler from ebay. 4 images, one negative, over 0.66 seconds. Should come out with some interesting stuff, so keep checking back for that!

I'm also scraping some pennies together for a Fisheye (yes, I've been on the Lomo website a lot!), so really looking forward to that coming soon.

Things what I done learnt...

2009-06-29T12:11:00.002+01:00

Well it's been another mental week and a bit! The week at CheethamBell went really well, thanks to PK and all the guys there who made us feel welcome and got us in working on a couple live briefs. Paul as also kind enough to get us in touch with the CDs at BJL, Tom and Pete, who made some time for us to go over our book- a few similar comments that we'd heard in previous were made, so keep your eyes peeled for new additions/edits to the book soon!

After a false start on Wednesday (yes, yes, we went on the wrong night!), we finally made it to Leeds last Thursday for the Brahm Sh! awards...and not only were we pleasantly surprised enough to come away with first in the Advertising category, Creative Advertising also picked up 2nd place, as well as Tom from Graphics picking up 1st in the Design category! So a good night all-round...although it was slightly marred by hearing of the death of MJ (whilst sitting in some dodgy 70s bar in Leeds- we were, not him)

So after a few weeks of agency work I thought I'd compile a little list of insights we've got from life in the working world. A lot of them may be absolute rubbish, but they made me laugh at least..please feel free to add any more you can think of!

Have an idea, work through it...you'll soon realise if it's shit
Fight for your work with the accounts team
Don't show anyone other than same-level creatives your sketchy ideas, do a mood board at least
Don't take one person's opinion as gospel
Have a fucking break. You're not a machine!
Post-work, Friday night banter between Creatives and Handlers is classic, and you'll learn a lot
Don't criticise the brief too much, but do it, and then do your own thing (within reason!)
Your uni book means absolutely nothing once you graduate...maybe even now...do you want a degree or a job?
Yorkshire tea and Nobbly Bobbly's are perfect creative pick-me-up. Just not at the same time
Jonathan from Spotify is.....well, see here
Try not to kill anyone from the agency with your Mac power cable
Don't get complacent. Enjoy the moment...but what's the next step? Next brief? Next award? Next job?
Always triple-check you're going to the awards on the right night!
Don't take your drink up on stage with you if you do win
Copywriter or Art Director? Decide now...damn student
If you thought it was tempting to sit and trawl blogs all day, try sitting in an agency with 10 other people who've got time (well kinda!) to find even more amusing/pointless/disturbing/er...advertising, things to look at.

That's me for now. Updates soon x

Here's my card...

2009-06-18T11:37:00.000+01:00

Over the next week I'm all over the place; interviews, holidays, placements, awards nights (yes, I know, it's such a hard life being an advertising student), and only yesterday- in the middle of an interview- did I realise that we didn't have a business card! And when someone from McCann Europe asks for your card, and you dont have one...it's time to get a move on!

We've got one in production at the minute, but I am tempted to call Josh and get him to stop the printers, 'cos look what I've found!

This has been making the rounds on the blogs at the minute, thanks to Ben & James for bringing it to my attention. In a strange twist of fate, Ben & James were also part of the interview team in the Brahm Sh! Awards I was at yesterday. (I think) Everything seemed

to go down well, apart from the lack of cards to hand out, and now it's just a waiting game to find out how we've done next Wednesday.

Quiet You!

2009-06-16T09:53:00.003+01:00

Well...where to begin? It's been a long week since my last post, so much has happened!

The rest of the week with LOVE went down really well, the feedback we got on the live stuff we worked on went down really well. And the promo stuff we did was well received- we've got a mocked up version of one of them made up, but have to wait and see if it's going to be taken further before putting it up on here!

On Thursday we went over to JWT/CheethamBell for another book crit; we'd only gone there in the hope of getting 20 minutes of their time to go over our book, we ended up finding out on Friday afternoon that we'd been offered a placement, starting next Monday! Which is 'citing, if anything!

Another piece of surprising news was that we'd been shortlisted (along with another 4 teams from Lincoln) for the Brahm Sh! awards in Leeds. So I've got to go down there tomorrow for an interview and to show our book, then the week myself and Josh are in Manchester working, we're going over to Brahm HQ again for the awards night- best get our shoes polished!

Talking to a song bird yesterday

2009-06-07T17:57:00.003+01:00

Wow, a week down already! We've had a busy busy week, both in and out of work. A lot of our time was spent coming up with promotional pieces for Love...a Yeti playing hide an seek in the street, office ten-pin bowling...as well as a new Umbro TV spot, and an identity and branding brief for new a new youth centre here in Manchester (again, don't really want to say too much about live briefs the agency is working on)

One of the highlights of the week was the last-minute Oasis gig! We managed to get hold of tickets for £15, and may even end up making a profit out of it after Liam offered refunds because of the fanny-on with the generator...scorrrrrre!

More blogging on work next week, think I'm about to OD on fruit so I'm a bit shakey and off for a lie down! Peace x

All you need is LOVE

2009-06-03T23:35:00.003+01:00

After a fun-filled start to the morning (Josh knocked over some funky plastic wall in the agency that we struggled to put back up without all the pieces popping apart again) we finished off our hotel ad ideas to run them past Simon tomorrow.

After destroying some kick-ass burrito from Barburrito, we went back to the agency and had a book crit from Phil, which seemed to go down really well (or maybes he was just in a good mood 'cos the sun had come back out for the afternoon). He then set us on with some live briefs that they are working on or going to be working on now at Love...not really sure what they'd be keen on me having on here so not going to say much at the minute...but I will say there's some exciting things in the pipeline; all will be revealed soon! You never know, we could hit on some creative genius and see our work all around us by the end of the year (hey, we're allowed to dream aren't we?)

Also, a big thanks to SImon at Love for trying to get our name out there and get us some more book crits by giving us a mention on the Love Blog- check it!

It must be LOVE

2009-06-02T22:08:00.003+01:00

Apologies for heavy use of the word 'Love' in the next few posts, but those of you who actually bother to read this will know that myself and Josh have now started at Love Creative in Manchester...and I need something to entertain myself on the bus on the way home, waiting for everyone to decide if the bus that stops at every stop is really the one they want to get on.

Yesterday we started and got to meet everyone on the team (must be better at remembering people's names) and then began to a bit of work on a brief that Love were pitching that day, just to get us rolling creatively. We kept working on it today, coming up with the banner ads that the client asked for initially in the brief, and then spending the afternoon trying something a bit different (I-Spy books for businessmen anyone?)

Being stuck inside on days like this is never the best, but one addition can always make any warm day so much better...the good old Nobbly Bobbly! mmm, retro ice-creams always help with creativity, definitely.

Summer-summer-summertime

2009-06-01T21:44:00.004+01:00

When I was a kid, this used to mean 6 weeks off school, not having to get up until after 12, football in the park, and (when I was really young, pretending to be bin-men and fixing kerbs with Andrew Fawcett from over the road). But enough about the games of a privileged child from Durham, let’s talk about what this time of summer is really about: YCN commendations! (next year will be D&AD I keep telling myself!)

I completed two briefs this year, working with Neil on ASOS, and Josh on o2. Below are the ASOS print/48 sheets we did, and then the o2 piece, with our proposition outlined in the image. Much to our surprise, our o2 entry was commended, and can be seen in the next YCN book published sometime later this year. Updates soon on what happens next (exhibition/professional development/world domination).

ASOS w/ Neil:

o2 w/ Josh (commended in YCN book)

The fun doesn’t stop there though folks, myself and Josh are in Manchester now, we started at Love today (will blog about that soon..either tonight or tomorrow...rather tired right now). We’ve also entered our Language work into the ‘Brahm Sh! Awards’, with the shortlist/interviews with judges for those announced on the 17th June...so wish us luck! x

Butterflies

2009-05-23T23:19:00.002+01:00

A 40 second intro to a piece of narrative myself, Josh and Ruud wrote for the Art Direction brief.

Illustration...Music....Mash-up

2009-05-22T15:02:00.005+01:00

Having a quiet day sat in the house today, getting a bit of artist/illustrator research on for our PC brief. One of the highlights of the day is from Andy Miller at Koma Design. I found his work while looking through some of Love's archives (can't hurt to do as much research about my soon-to-be temporary employers as I can, can it?)

Now, I always like a good bit of music to keep me going while sat around all day, and Aeroplane have been at the top of my 'uni working' playlist for a while, especially their cover CD for Mixmag a few months ago. But I think their talent's shown off even more in their minimix for Annie Mac last Friday...thanks to the joys of Hypem, I found a copy of it for download (not really sure how to embed a track, so here's a link to the blog I found it off)

Aeroplane Minimix 15/5/09

Keep your eyes peeled for YCN entry work I'll be putting on here next week. Results/Commendations out Monday! Peace x

I’d like to thank...

2009-05-21T11:24:00.004+01:00

This is a post I debated about how to write without sounding big headed for, ooh, all of 2 minutes, before I thought ‘no, we deserved this, I’m going to tell everyone, and might even stick my tongue out at everyone as well!’.

Ok, maybe I wasn’t thinking exactly that, but I always struggle to tell people about this piece of work without feeling as if my head was growing a slight bit when I mention the competition win. Way back before I’d even started this blog, myself and Josh began work on our entry for the MPA Roses Student Creativity Awards 2009. The brief was set by Harinder at Love, in Manchester (more about them later). The creative process went very smoothly, in fact within a few days of getting the brief we pretty much had our strategy/idea in mind, and then it was just a case of coming up with the best ideas and then art directing them to as high a standard as we could. It felt as if we’d never get there, but earlier this year we managed to get all the niggly bits down and the work sent off.

To be honest I think we’d put the competition out of our heads due to more major work on YCN briefs and dissertation stuff, so it was a shock when someone text me saying congratulations! We’ve got a placement starting at Love in a couple of weeks, so will be blogging a lot more about that soon.

Henry, don’t look at me like that!

2009-05-21T11:20:00.003+01:00

No, not a reference to Russell Brand and his infamous run-in with our favourite domestic product with a smiley face, I’m just sick of Hoover now! Gyles always said we’d end up hating the products you have to advertise...and I think he’s definitely onto something. They told us it wasn’t a final major project, but it blatantly was...4 weeks in teams of 4 working on a full campaign with two creative outputs (2 TV, 2 radio, 2x3 48 sheets, 2x1 print, and 2x1 Direct Mail piece). Not complaining about the workload, I’m sure that was quite generous compared to what we could have got, but was still a nice and busy way to end the year.

Working with Josh, Ruud and Brooke, we got off to a slow start but then managed to get cracking and it all came out very well. Overall we got a 1st, so cannot complain about that at all! Below are some pieces from both campaigns.

Colour my life with the chaos of trouble

2009-05-21T11:17:00.002+01:00

It wasn't just advertising we covered last year, Digital Design gave us a chance to develop other skills (and also to carry-out time consuming tasks with other deadlines looming) I’d started in college. What you see below you is the fruits of taking a quick picture outside our humble abode, tracing and scanning it, and then dusting my graphics tablet off and going for a digital version of marker pen sketches...it made me see how much better sketches look with a quick bit of colour, and made animating storyboards for film/TV work a lot more visually appealing.

Help! I need somebody, not just anybody...

2009-05-21T11:13:00.002+01:00

The pieces below are from the Digital Design & Depiction unit for the Citizens Advice Bureau. It gave me lovely memories of back in the day at college, sat in a ridonculusly warm Mac suite having to put up with waiting for print-outs of every, single, small, detail that I changed on a double page spread. But still, it didn’t hurt to get to grips with In Design this time, instead of having to put up with the temperamental program that is Quark Xpress!

Every little helps.

2009-05-21T11:09:00.003+01:00

Yes I know these ads below are a blatant copy of Tesco’s, but that’s the whole point! Part of the copywriting bit of the Design for Advertising unit, myself and Josh had to take the style of Tesco ads and create our own Christmas versions.

Now just try imagine some friendly Cock-er-ny geeeza saying it, and we’re almost there!

When visual worlds collide

2009-05-17T12:44:00.003+01:00

Mmm pizza. Writing this post at quarter to 1 on a Sunday when my parents have gone out, leaving me with no Sunday dinner, is probably not a good idea! (I thought we were meant to get treated when we got back from Uni now and again! pfh)

But anyway, before I shoot off to try and scape together something from the fridge, here's something me and Josh, my partner in all things creative, cooked up for another Design for Advertising brief. (sorry, that was a terrible pun, I'll be sure to burn myself when making dinner as punishment for it!).

The idea was to combine the worlds of 'pizza' and 'delivery' which was a bit of a challenge as there is so much overlap already, but I think we gave it a good shot.

Using the environment

2009-05-17T12:31:00.005+01:00

I know Al Gore reads this blog religiously, so don't worry Al I'm not telling people to start using their 'An Inconvenient Truth' DVD as a coaster! It's just the name of the brief given for our Design for Advertising unit.

The idea behind this concept to advertise Heat magazine was thinking what Heat has (gossip, celebrity news etc.) and where people would talk about this. Public transport is the ideal place to target consumers, installing large vinyl sheets onto the windows of buses, trams and trains to make it look as if the window was steamed up, and people had written 'gossip' on it.

Retro is so now.

2009-05-17T12:20:00.005+01:00

It's only taken me about 3 months to do it, but I'm finally getting round to putting some work up! The first piece is in response to the brief of using a past illustration/design style to advertise a product. The product I was given was the Philips Philishave. I had a look into the company history, and saw that the Philishave was first introduced in the 1950s; this was also the time of some very interesting work from graphic designers such as Saul Bass (keen readers will remember my blog post from January talking about some of his work). I decided to illustrate my ads in this style as I thought it a) reflected the company's history and b) didn't look half bad either.

Excess. Is. Ok.

2009-05-17T10:52:00.003+01:00

I've got a free full day today, damn the current economy that requires my girlfriend to work and earn money instead of being free to spend days wandering around the park or having BBQs (saying that, the weather isn't the greatest at the minute). So instead of spending my day sat around getting my arse handed to me by 14 year old kids on Call of Duty, I plan on chucking a few pieces of my work onto this here blog.

But first, just thought I'd share with you a clothing company that's trying its best to drain my already depleted bank account dry. EIO Clothing is a company based in Lincoln (where all the best new talent is!), but they've not been confined to this glorious county, instead they're out there supplying quality clothing to the likes of Doherty, CSS, Klaxons, Jaymo & Andy George...and probably a whole heap more that us cool kids don't even know about yet!

They've just released an exclusive Moda t-shirt, which seemed to go down verrrrry well. The young gentleman at the top of the page is one part of the multi-talented crew behind Moda, who seem to be doing no wrong at the minute. A residency with a certain Mr. Tong in Ibiza this summer, continually selling out a 1600 capacity venue in Lincoln, a Moda tour later this year, and Jaymo & Andy's monthly show on Radio 1! Check it...

Anways, this post seems to be going on and on and on...so I'm goin to sign off here, go grab a cuppa, and get back to blogging about what you're all really here for...my work (well, that's what I tell myself...hoping people actually look at this!)

Peace x

Our Sun is dying...

2009-05-08T13:46:00.002+01:00

No need to panic, I've not suddenly become a leading physicist here to make you all forget about swine-flu...I just thought I'd share with you my favourite film of the minute. It's Sunshine from Danny Boyle; I'd heard that it was a bit of a let-down, but thought I'd spend a cheeky couple of quid (cheers HMV) on a film to watch on my mammoth train journey down to Cardiff last weekend.

Needless to say I was very impressed, the cinematography is amazing, and there are some really amazing shots. Yes, a lot of them are CGI, but I was still blown away by some of parts of this film. The story-line is a tad far-fetched, but then again it is sort of sci-fi, so I'm not being critical for that. The underlying messages about humanity, and what it takes to make us lose it, is very interesting.

It's got a pretty decent soundtrack as well (and for those of you who like a good bit of electro music, check out James Zabiela/Nic Fanciulli's Essential Mix as 1+1 from August 2007 for some brilliant samples, and some 2001: A Space Odyssey ones as well)

And the winner is...

2009-05-06T12:00:00.003+01:00

Well, the results are in! After another work-filled year, the end of 2nd year has come and gone, and I found out my fate yesterday. After waking up early feeling decidedly sick with nerves (or was it swine flu?), I made it into Uni for my tutorial, with some surprising news! I hadn't thrown the past year down the drain with a major load of stress and wasted layout paper, instead I came out with two 1st's and two 2.1's over my units! It worked out on average as a 68.5 (1.5 off a 1st...obviously didn't slip enough cash to the tutors) which I was very surprised and happy with.

So after just over a week off from thinking of Uni work (apart from the worries about results day yesterday), it's time to get back into it and sort out our book out! We've got a placement at Love Creative starting on the 1st of June, so got some extra briefs yesterday to work on and put in our book. An interesting one for Sarson's Vinegar's web presence, and a delightful one from the head CD at BBH- 'make PC's cooler than Mac's'- she called it the impossible brief, and I don't think she was kidding...but it's a challenge we're going to take on and see how we go!

Best crack on and wake Josh up now, time to get motivated and creative again!

Throw those curtains wide...it’s looking like a beautiful day

2009-04-28T13:32:00.009+01:00

The title of this post isn’t exactly true- due to a slight hangover, a bad head from a freezing cold shower (our power went off, so the boiler packed in), and a decidedly grey day in Lincolnshire and Durham. But still, second year is over, I’m going home, and have fallen in love with the latest Elbow album. Stuck between a few tracks, but this is my favourite song of the day, ‘One Day Like This’.

I’m writing this while on a train to Durham from Lincoln, it smells like weed and I think Neil is on the verge of passing out, why we decided to drink when we had to be up for a train I don't know. On the plus side there have been no delays...so far...*touch wood*

Apologies to everyone wanting the nice weather to stay around this week, I handed in all of my work at 8:50am, and the rain started around oooh, I dunno, 8:55am? The last piece of work I cracked out on Saturday was for the Design for Advertising unit, and the brief was to ‘depict benefits of a product as a 3D model’. I chose Pearl Drops, and I wasn’t too happy with the original piece I submitted for assessment, but re-did it for this final assessment and I’m happy with how it came out.

I'm still alive

2009-04-25T23:18:00.003+01:00

So it's been a grand total of almost 3 months since I last managed to get a post on here...and this isn't even a real post, it's just me procrastinating making a decision on my digital portfolio! Just thought I'd fill you in on the Steven-shaped hole there has been in this blog since late January.

It's been a fun-filled Semester B, involving what feels like massive amounts of work but in retrospect doesn't seem that much; competitions, blood, sweat, a few tears, finding a new distraction in Twitter, finding a new company that seems to insist that I spend all my money on their t-shirts, music from here there and everywhere....oh and lots of train delays.

So I've got my 2nd year hand in on Monday, then just a nerve-wracking week until I find out just how badly I've done. In that time I plan to have a nice relax at home with my girlfriend, go and see Ross Noble again (very excited about that), get my flippers on to go camping in West Wales, and last but not least...try blog a lot more than I have done recently (can't blog less I guess!). Will put up my favourite pieces of work from this year, as well as anything else I've found to fill my days with.

Until then, here's a video sent to me the other day which has given me another idea of how I can spend my time now that I've not got Uni to work on 24/7

Retrooo, retro, retro, party-rockin!

2009-01-30T14:04:00.004Z

So I've still not got around to putting any work up, uni times got a bit on top last week... afew interesting briefs and whatnot, lot of work but also a lot of fun :-)

On my way home for a quiet weekend with a certain lady, off to see Russell Brand spout some linguistic rhuubarb on Saturday night which is 'citing... if anything. Sat on National Express' finest rolling stock (now passing Darlington, loverly!), and managed to pass the journey by looking into some designs to take inspiration from for my digital design unit. The poster above was created in 1955....55! Never seen the film (must get round to that sometime), but the poster is certainly one of my favourite even though it is 54 years old. If you have a spare 10 minutes or so, take a look into Saul Bass- you'll be surprised by how many film posters/opening titles are either his, or seem influenced by him.

Anywayyy, that's the little Steven Dodd cultural review for the day. Will see what gems I can dig up on the journey home I guess x

Here we go...

2009-01-27T18:18:00.000Z

"and they're off!" *adopts typical Wacky Races style voice*

Sooo...I thought I should actually start a blog so you guys can see what work I've been getting up to the past few months at Uni alongside sitting up 'til the early hours doing not lot. Apart from watching Youtube clips of Mikey from Big Brother getting hit with a ball, and debating whether I can fix the sofa without the landlord finding out I broke it, we've also been doing a bit of work!

I plan to put my favourite pieces up here when I can, along with other random bits and pieces that I've found like music, ads or artwork (and yes....probably Youtube clips too). So subscribe, or check back now and again anyway.

Steven x