Networking

I have been emailing studios over the Easter holidays, I began with the studios that I identified in a previous PPP task as places that I would like to go to/ have a certain affinity with (http://c-shuttleworth1114-ppp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/6-tasks.html)

I have managed to sort out a 2 week placement in June with Big Fish who do a lot of work with packaging which is something that I am very interested in (http://www.bigfish.co.uk/)

I am also in contact with somebody at The Chase where I am trying to sort out a placement in the Manchester or Preston offices. Some other agencies that I am considering contacting for over the summer are:

http://wash-design.co.uk/?site=wash

Who are a small design agency in Preston that have done some interesting work

http://www.robot-food.com/

 Who seem to be relatively small but work with big clients


http://www.fatmedia.co.uk/

This is a web design company which is very daunting as my web skills are quite poor at the moment but I may contact them to see if they could use someone with my skill set  and hopefully I'd be able to take a lot from it.

Self Branding

Over the past few weeks I have been working on creating an identity for myself as a designer, I wanted something that would stand out against the majority of modernist and 'robotic' kind of branding, such as:

etc.

I have decided to stick with the name of 'Shuttlefingers' as this is memorable and would get more search results that Chris Shuttleworth, who sounds like a bit of a bore anyway.

I wanted a simple but bold logo that could be used for a variety of applications, after a few attempts this is the basic idea that I decided to stick with:

To make my business cards unique I wanted them to fly through the air, which would suit the 'shuttle' theme. I initially wanted the finger to be perforated so that it could be popped out and fired somewhere and the user would be left with details on the rest of the card, however I didn't have the means to produce this in a professional way so I decided to look into firing the whole card.

The plan was to hole punch the card and feed an elastic band through it so the user could fire it.

This is the finished design of my business cards, before ordering them I tested firing some business cards with the free pack that Moo send out, I was initially going to order rounded corner business cards but when I tried firing them they just span around and hit the floor, the only option that had enough rigidity to make the cards control themselves in the air was the 600gsm Luxe cards that flew through the air like majestic eagles. I also discovered that making two small cuts in the sides of the cards rather than a hole in the centre made the card fly straighter and easier to control.

These are the printed cards & giant pop up finger:

Shuttlefingers HQ