PIN PICKS / 13

Things that have been inspiring me lately, all found and collected on Pinterest...

1.  It finally looks like summer, so of course I'm thinking about new dresses. This chambray sun dress would be perfect for the seaside...
2.  This photo-lined envelope as part of an branding project by Eliane Cadieux.
3.  The art of Adam Juresko - the hand-drawn type on this is amazing.
4.  This light / airy / cosy looking corner of an interior.
5.  I've been inspired by web design recently - it's so much more open to good typography and well, good design than it used to be. I recently discovered The Goodones online magazine which is an inspiring example of what can be done with the web.
6.  This packaging (especially the typography) by Steven Schroeder.
7.  I love little details; this barcode used on spaghetti packaging is clever and cute.
8.  These lovely geometric print moleskines from Brika.
9.  Dreaming of adventures, the seaside and taking photographs... [ pin ]

CREDITS: original sources / owners can be found by clicking-through the pins linked

PROJECT / JOURNAL

Excited to share some more recent work! I had a bit of fun with this one, trying out some different materials and techniques to put it together - and I'm pretty pleased with the final result.

The project was a 'Professional Development Journal': a journal documenting my development as a designer. I  focused on 'top tips' I've learnt, important things to remember like to 'stay creative', go 'back to basics' every now and then and to 'learn from the past' (below). I hand-drew every one of the 8 section's title pages, which seemed to take a lot longer than it should have!

We had to report on certain topics - my 'learn from the past' section was a report on a design talk and I chose Alan Kitching's letterpress talk, pictured above (I posted about this here!) Because of the transparent / overlayed qualities that you can achieve with letterpress I printed his work examples onto tracing paper. Something I've enjoyed experimenting with this year has been using 'traditional methods' to communicate my ideas, not just good typography and images and I think this especially came together in this project.

In other news, I've been working on mocking-up a design for my portfolio site, which has been a 'coming soon!' landing page for too long now... Take a little sneaky peek over on Dribbble!

For now I've added a PDFolio (see what I did there... ;) ) of my work - feel free to check that out too!

DESIGN:  © Joanna Hobbs
PHOTOS:  me / University of Hertfordshire

SPRING TULIPS

My favourite thing about Spring is the explosion of colour - it's strange how you get so used to bare twigs and then it seems all of a sudden everything is green. And the arrival of Spring has been more than welcome after finishing Year 2 of my degree - after all that hard work, it's been nice to get out and about to enjoy the sunshine!

Earlier this week we spent a lovely afternoon at Chenies Manor tulip festival, getting in a sunny mood with a stroll around some pretty gardens, yummy tea + cake and the chance to chuck on a summery dress (not quite ready / brave enough to take off the tights though) and take my new fedora for a spin. How cool is that huge bird cage by the way?!



It was also nice to be able to use my camera again; a busy uni schedule + miserable, rainy days meant it's been sitting around for a while, only being used to take photos of my work. Sticking my lens into some colourful flowers and a beautiful setting was a lot more fun! Definitely enjoying being able to just wander around, explore and take pictures again.

What I wore: dress (not in stock, but so many pretty dresses!)  +  hat

COLOUR LOVE / FLORAL SCOOPS

Those of you that have got Vol.7 of Kinfolk magazine probably recognise these photos from Parker Fitzgerald's Floral Scoops. I love this photo story, with its' mixture of ice cream and spring floral pastels - perfect for a bit of Colour Love!

DOWNLOAD: Floral Scoops colour swatch here *
PHOTOS: by Parker Fitzgerald

* compatible with Adobe CS

PROJECT / MOUSTACHE BAR

You may have already seen some of these moustaches hanging around on here, here and here. I mentioned that they were for a themed event and well, that event was held just over a month ago now - yes, I'm a rubbish at keeping up-to-date on my blog - but with all my deadlines having been completed and submitted, I can now start sharing some of the projects I've been working hard on! Starting with the Moustache Bar...

The brief was to promote a 'pop-up event' - that is, an experience that is around for only a day or two. My team's idea was to set up a themed face-painting stall at a club night in our student union, and the chosen theme was moustaches! Something a bit silly and fun. We used social networking - Twitter, Instagram and Facebook - to promote it to students at our university, so it was called '#FACE_OFF' to take advantage of tagging posts with the hashtag.

To promote the event I drew some moustaches and gave them names that suited them - the moustache above definitely belongs to a 'Frederick' right? All of the type was hand-painted, scanned and vectorised - I wanted to keep a handmade feel and it was important to keep everything fun.

A bit of pre-event fun on preparation day! See those little paper moustaches? We stuck them on cocktail sticks and gave them out to promote the event!

I also designed some signage for the night - a moustache bar menu and price list and a competition poster, including photos of us all looking a bit silly sporting moustaches from our prep day! (You can see me in the snap at the bottom next to the blue flyer...)

The event was good fun and it was great to see so many people get involved! A couple of photos from the night: a finger-painted moustache, moustache straws and the #FACE_OFF team!

Design: © Joanna Hobbs
Photos: me + the #FACE_OFF Instagram feed
Thanks to: the #FACE_OFF team, all our volunteers on the night and everyone who got a moustache!

More: poster detail on Dribbble.
See also: free moustache wallpaper download here. Which 'tash are you?

SHOTS / 02

+ all images from my dribbble

I don't share enough of my own work on this blog. I always have the intention of posting about projects I'm working on, from the initial stages to the finished things... But for some reason, that never happens. I said in my last post about dribbble that it's great for sharing bits of things you're working on, so I'm using that to try sharing the progression of my projects more on here in little Shots!

ONE A bit of type with doodles for a title page in a journal. The project is a 'professional development journal', documenting our thoughts on design subjects, our future hopes and placing ourselves in the professional design world. I'm making mine a sort of graphic design student's handbook with little tips I've picked up from the reports.

TWO A 'moustache menu' for a face-painting event with a moustache theme! Which 'tash are you? I mentioned this project here and used my moustache drawings for wallpapers in Friday Freebies... The event was a couple of weeks ago now and I'm working on a post (with photos of the event and final designs) all about it, so keep your eyes peeled for that!

THREE A cookie recipe in a bag! This was for a recent mini-project at uni; the brief was to create a sequential story as a folded leaflet that communicated the story - using only one piece of paper. I used this recipe and made a cookie bag that unfolded into a step-by-step recipe poster.

FOUR Work in progress mock-up of a chalkboard sign for the interior of some tea rooms. This will eventually be a menu board. I've also been working on branding, packaging and editorial design as part of a team for this project; it's been a huge (but fun!) project and I'm currently working away on this for the deadline in two weeks...

MORE: see these in detail + other things I'm working on here.