How have the my influences and inspirations changed? & Research for "Its upto you brief"

How have the my influences and inspirations changed? & Research for "Its upto you brief"

Going back to the beginning of the year (Tasks on inspirational designers & the why am i here task) and my presentation about my journey through the first year I noticed one huge change that I think has really helped change me.

My knowledge on graphic designers was limited on the outset of the course, and been an image based designer I preferred designers who were quite illustrative based on aesthetics rather than concepts. To show the change I am going to show an example of the designers that used to influence me when I started and the type of designers and design that influences me now. 

I had limited resources to look into to find designers, only relying on ones I had been told about in college or found in outdated design books in Wakefield College library.

Before
Was influenced by people like David Carson, abstract post modernist design that I actually despise now. Absolutely hate his work I really don't understand his concepts with the visuals he presents, the guy is far too big headed and I think he does all these things just because he sees himself as a Pioneer, and everyone just accepts his work as "great" due to his celebrity status. 

http://www.davidcarsondesign.com

Creatives like Kate Sutton were a big influence to me in terms of how I used to be quite an image based designer focusing on traditional mediums. 

http://www.handsomefrank.com/illustrators/kate-sutton/

I still appreciate the work of I love dust, unlike the above 2 designers who don't really influence me. What I like about this agency is the way in which they give typography a very illustrative feel, but I think there aesthetics have a lot more meaning rather than just looking nice. Typography design is something I want to develop in both a professional area (e.g. making a fully functional typeface) and more image based (playful typography)

http://ilovedust.com/work/seven-deadly-sins

Another agency I used to be fond of was Vault49, due to the mixture of mediums they use in there work. Now i just see it as busy, showing off how much technique they can cram into a design without considering concepts. Just a miss mash of digital, photographic, 3D rendering, illustration based work. 

http://www.vault49.com/portfolios/cgi/709/adidas

After
After been introduced to design blogs I began to understand and recognize better design examples to influence my practice. Before as mentioned I was a very image based designer who had no real conceptual thinking behind my work. Now I really consider concept over aesthetics now and understand that simple design is much more functional and ideas are easily communicated. 

Looking into alot of blogs I have found much better examples of design work to influence my design ideas from. This selection I have included here is going to influence my "its upto you" brief for my personal branding/information pack.

All the examples are functional, this demonstrates my change from been an aesthetic based designer to a concept based designer.

Minimal and simple, demonstrates my change from someone who spent hours/days/weeks on an image to make it look OCD perfect and detailed, to a designer who tries to communicate my ideas in as clear, concise and simple a manor as possible. 

Love the simplicity throughout all these examples.

Love the use of bold colors within this simplicity for this example creating a nice contrast to give a simplistic design layout more impact. 

http://newgrids.fr/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/135-1e1573bbba8600087ddf785453e4528d_ncdKE8iu_l.jpg

http://www.aisleone.net

Such simple, ultra clean design by Pentagram, a design agency I have recognized to be amazingly successful through clever and clearly communicated concepts.

http://tundrablog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/jigsaw_2013-07_mf11748-copy.jpg

http://tundrablog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/FP_SWAP_POSTER02_1675.jpg

I used to enjoy designing typefaces so I want to bring that back into my work but in a more professional, neat and well communicated concepts through considered aesthetics that represent me as a person. 

Going from a designer who liked traditionally drawn mediums I much prefer these simplistic, neat vector illustrations now, there much more versatile and can be applied across a whole brand name in different contexts, styles, colors and sizes and still work to communicate the idea/brand clearly. 

http://wadejeffree.com/Function-Engineering

I like Apeloigs playful yet clear and neat aesthetic within this typeface sample. I see work like this as an opportunity to add my image based illustrative touch to typographic work again like I did in the outset but in a more clear, concise and conceptually driven way.

http://www.apeloig.com/typographie.php?cle=Drop

Love the abstract aesthetics here created by the positioning and layering of simple typographic elements. 

http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/graphiquants