I saw this epicly long Freeview HD advert recently and thought it was very interesting, and probably their best advert to date. It shows a living room come to life whilst the occupants are out (because they can now go out without missing their favourite programs as they can record them). I like the dry humour and characterisation of the objects in the living room.
I found Owen Sherwood in an illustration book, and love the style and expression of his work. His website is a nice treat as well www.owensherwood.com.
I've been watching Channel 4's 'Seven Days' over the last few weeks, and have found it surprisingly enjoyable. What I thought would be a guilty pleasure to catch up on inbetween the documentaries I normally watch online, has actually quite interested me. 
I know it's been around for a while now, but does anyone else find the Waterstones rebrand a little peculiar? I might be being a bit sentimental, but I want to think about a book shop as a place of credibility and culture... Not somewhere I'd be likely to find new-fangled gadgets and young people... I want to feel like I'm learning just by being near all those books. I am upset to see the old serif typeface left in the gutter while that horrendous 'w' takes centre stage. Also I don't think the line 'feel every word' sits very well with the new logo, which seems immature and unfeeling.
I started my blog in January of this year, but I never really became a blogger or understood the blog culture until I started writing posts for the summer brief. It has taken me on a journey of visual delights and opened my eyes (even wider than they were before), to the world around me. The reason I started my blog originally was to post updates on my work, but when I got the brief I took the focus away from that and used it as more of a crit for looking at anything I’d noticed and found interesting, from the culture industry or popular culture, to the environment around me.
One of the most exciting parts about keeping this blog has been the way it has encouraged interaction between myself and those around me. I have found myself having long conversations with friends who I was unaware have been blogging for years. It also gave another reason for communication with my colleagues at the placement I was on over the summer. They were all so eager to give me inspiration and share some of their favourite blogs and design websites! It gave me an excuse to arrange lunchtime trips to galleries and exhibitions nearby, giving me another chance to get to know my workmates better.
Another aspect of the blogging experience I found particularly engaging was going out there and taking photographs of the things I found interesting in my day-to-day life. These were often things I noticed and thought about, but would never have had the incentive to capture them and document them without the blogosphere demanding input. My favourite of these trips was to Castle Market in Sheffield one lunchtime. My intention had been to capture some of the signage I had found so interesting within the markets, but I also managed to get some great shots of those people working and shopping at the markets, and got chatting to some really interesting people. I had to go and get permission to take photos (after getting reprimanded by security), and this meant I got to see the inner workings of the market and Sheffield City council.
I’d say I have become more opinionated about design and advertising over the last few months, at first my posts tended to be about things that I noticed because I liked them, but now I think it’s more about raising a debate and expressing opinions, be them positive or negative. Whenever I see a new advert, whether it’s press or broadcast, I immediately want to form an opinion and find out what other people think, a blog is a brilliant way to start these conversations. One of my regrets about this project is that I didn’t comment more on my peers blogs and other blogs I follow, I only started commenting on them properly in the last few weeks once we were back at university, but it would have been great if we could have all given our feedback and opinions throughout the brief.
One of my weaknesses as a designer is that I will often notice a piece of work, read about it and think about it, but I can never remember who its by or where I’ve seen it even if I can still see the design in my head. One of the great things about keeping a blog is that I have a strong incentive to remember those details, and write them down so I can write a post about them later. This has meant I have now built up a sort of journal of those things I have noticed which I can refer back to for inspiration.
I think my posts would have been helped by better explanations, the amount of text is lacking on a lot of my posts, especially those towards the beginning of the brief. I think I treated it more of a way of recording those images and ideas for myself than as a forum for expression and discussion, but I think as I have begun to see it this way my posts have benefited. I also think the text would have benefited by more thought and structure, a lot of my writing is very casual and doesn’t express my points very clearly.
One of the good things about how the brief broke the structure of the posts in to seven categories; books, films, architecture/places, museums, artist, websites/online and designs, was that this made me look differently at some of the categories. For example I’d had a pile of books I’d been meaning to read for a long time, and I made the conscious decision to make my way through that pile, not just for the blog, but because I wanted to get engaged by reading again as it used to be one of my favourite pastimes. The blog just reminded me of that. The architecture was also an interesting category, I’ve never really given much thought to architecture but once I started looking, I couldn’t stop. I now like finding out the history of buildings and the context and environment they were produced in. My favourite architecture post was about the Royal Armouries in Leeds. The fort-like building gives a great context for everything the museum has to show, and has a great impact on the landscape around it.
The research part of the blogging process was a crucial part for me. If I saw something I wanted to post about but couldn’t photograph it, I went online to get the images I needed. This often brought up more information on the topic so I could see other people’s reaction to the subject, and make more informed posts.
In conclusion, keeping a blog has been a valuable experience, and a habit I won’t be giving up any time soon. I would recommend the process to any design or creative student, as a way of collecting ideas and as a forum for discussion of those ideas.
I find the current Premier Inn advert incredibly irritating, and even a bit offensive. It's supposed to be promoting the idea of staying at Premier Inn for weekend breaks, and seems to be targeted at a younger market. What really grinds my gears about it is how every woman in the advert is holding at least one shopping bag... is that really what all women do every weekend? Shop? I'd like it if they didn't stereotype all women as living for retail and all men as loving sport. As for the part where the woman wears high heels and sunglasses for walking in the country... could they not have put any woman with an ounce of intelligence in this advert? I think it's supposed to be funny but I think it's pretty weak.
