I’ve added a couple of more projects to my portfolio — an iPhone application of Cuppa, naturally entitled Espresso and some concept designs for the Benefit Cosmetics blog I’ve been working on at Code.
I’ve had a little refresh and tightened up my portfolio on Cargo, visually and work-wise. I’ve decided to eschew designing myself a portfolio site (I’ll inevitably tire of it anyway) as I like the familiarity of Cargo and its interface. In a similar vein to viewing my friend’s profiles on Facebook — which naturally have the same user interface and follow the same content structure — right now I actually quite like the idea of people’s portfolios having the same UI, letting you focus on their work a lot easier.
Games
Video games have quite an influence on my work and I’m generally very interested in them and their industry. Since around 2001 I’ve designed, built and edited numerous games websites (the ones with news, reviews and the like), each with varying degrees of success. The last was entitled ‘An Extra Life’ (which coincidentally died) — I plan to redesign this very soon, purely as a process to envisage what I’d want from a games website and to improve my web design skills. Should be fun.
I shamefully haven’t written anything in a while as I’ve been internet-less while moving into a new apartment. I have got around to redesigning my Cuppa site though, which will be completed this weekend. Now, as for building the actual thing…
I created this back in August as part of a job interview. The brief—design a brochure for a new office development and name it too. The iconic grim, restrictive office cubicle crossed with Metal Gear Solid-style (corporate) espionage inspired me to create Escape—an office development and a decree to leave your current drab workplace and move to this fancy new open-plan one.
The execution is a little poor but I enjoyed creating it—particularly the little cardboard cubicle. I also wrote copy for the inside pages and the straplines on each page, the latter of which I quite liked:
Escape to an exciting new office development
Escape to a contemporary, spacious new home for your business
Escape to Lloyd Street North, Manchester, M15 6SE
Don’t judge a book by its cover, especially when the book is wrapped up in an 80s-style textbook eyesore. Brilliant Copywriting contains brilliant copywriting and will probably help you write brilliant copywriting. It’s an inspiring, motivating guide to how to best approach briefs, it’s a book full of useful writing tips, it’s a journal with insightful interviews with some of the best copywriters working today and it’s a showcase for its writer’s—Roger Horberry—brilliant work.
As you can read, I am quite impressed by this book.
An old idea for my portfolio. The homepage is a story of my graphic design shenanigans from Uni to Code and clicking a particular word or sentence would take you to different projects. Looking back, the writing is a little stilted and clumsy but this story/journey concept is something I’m keen to explore in future. In fact, here’s the wall of text itself:
Well hello there, this is the graphic design portfolio and inane story of me, Ben Haddock. If—hopefully—you’re as nosey as I am, I suggest you check my LinkedIn and Twitter profiles to see what I’m up to and to discover when I last ate. Had a good gander?
Right, let’s briskly skip past college and the beginning of university and have a sightsee around San Francisco, São Paulo and Tokyo. Sorry to disappoint both you and myself, but I haven’t actually been sightseeing at any of those places. Moving into my second year of uni, I branded a Victorian-themed store in New York, built (and maybe played with) toy sets for Hamleys, explained how to wear a t-shirt and shifted my grammatical tone of voice, because I’m sometimes quite reckless.
The summer holiday brought upon a clapperboard-inspired identity and my envisioning of ‘the milk of the future’. I then had my first work placement in Manchester at Drumbeat, where I did some comedy web stuff. This was promptly followed by a placement across the road at 999, where I completed some bits for (now sadly defunct) Love Saves the Day. As the cold weather encroached, my love for all things video gaming birthed An Extra Life.
I entered my third and final year at uni working part-time at Drumbeat, which was fun. Uni-wise I concocted many cryptid hoaxes with Bigfoot and the gang, explored the fine art of the moustache, dared people to try Spam and invited everyone to explore my portfolio.
Following my laborious (yet worthwhile, of course) education, I sat down with a hard-earned cuppa and then planned my hunt for an elusive job. After coming close with my ‘office escape plan’, I completed a work placement at Code Computerlove, creating ideas for Global Underground, trick or treating for Matalan and for a public relations boutique. My time there was rewarded with a permanent position, which I swiftly and gratefully accepted.
Advertising in Chatroulette
Advertising agencies have been quick to grab this bull by its exposed horns and use its captive audience to their advantage. Ads for Harley Davidson and Purina cat food (the latter is just a concept) are simple and static but users’ reactions to them seem to be positive (they are after all more visually pleasing than the likely alternative) while FCUK used Chatroulette very well as a tool to entice their customers into gaining free wares.
I’m certain this is just the tip of potential advertising in Chatroulette—recent ‘research’ sessions show many websites advertising through it in a manner akin to the Harley Davidson ad, but they seem to be peddling things probably not appropriate for this blog. This is quite crucial though—would brands want to be associated with the kind of content and the particular reputation that Chatroulette has garnered? FCUK’s tongue-in-cheek chat-up challenge fit perfectly with the ethos of Chatroulette and clearly appealed to its male customers but perhaps that’s the same reason why other brands have shied away.
Irrespective of a moral compass, there’s a big idea lurking within Chatroulette and I’ll keep hitting next until I find it.
I’m currently knee-deep in Code’s social web activities, organising some sort of unity and purpose between all the online profiles and accounts, sorting out media for them, writing blog posts and (probably tomorrow) persuading others to write for the blog. It’s fun stuff, I’m enjoying it even more than I thought I would.
Code were pitching for music label Global Underground (which we won) when I first started my placement back in August. To keep me busy I was asked to design a site idea—it’s not particularly brilliant but it got me into the swing of things, web design-wise. The aim was to reflect the energetic, layered, textured nature and composition of the music through the site’s design.
