Advocate/Mark Epton

I just found this website featuring the work of Mark Epton. His work has a commercial vibe and is quite varied. I think I will try to get in touch with Mark at some point soon to have a chat.

Ethical design
For 14 years I've worked with clients I'm passionate about – organisations and businesses doing good things. I use my expertise in brand articulation, visual communication and graphic design to help them make a social, environmental and ethical difference.

Walking the talk
Essentially, I sell ideas. So by default, Advocate has a light environmental footprint. What little electricity I use comes from renewable sources. I am part of the Carbon Watchers scheme to save energy, and this website is hosted on servers run by solar power. I use local, environmentally accredited (ISO 14001) printers and can advise on the best green printing practices. I’m based a short walk from Stonehouse train station with a direct service to London. And if I need to drive to a meeting I've got a fuel efficient car. Of course, I also recycle and I’m powered by Fairtrade organic tea!

Design Project

Joe recently showed me this website for a graphic design company called 'design project'. It's a beautiful, simple website with a slick interface which displays the well-photographed work perfectly. They've done work for all sorts of clients. Their typography and processes used are what originally attracted me to their work. They've done all sorts for big clients such as D&AD.

Brian Ponto - Email

I sent the Brian Ponto studio an email recently to get a quote for my design context book. The Brian Ponto studio produced high standard design for large companies willing to put design first. Clients such as the UN. I love their work and would love to get to know them and speak with them but I sadly haven't received a reply after quite a while and a second email.

Hopefully I will hear from them soon. Here is a copy of the email I sent. Each person I have contacted has been asked to answer just one question to relate to one area of my design context book.

Paul Buck - Zerofee Interview

Here's the email I recently sent to Paul at Zerofee in London. I had already spoke to Paul, he is a nice guy and has been very helpful with everything so far.

He was very helpful and gave me a great short reply which is exactly what I was looking for to fit in my small format book. Here is Paul's response...

Hi Jimmy

Right, here you go. Please note that I think this question can't really be properly answered in the space of a few sentences, but I'm restricting it here as I know you're not looking for a monologue. I guess you can consider this the 'easy' answer:

Most graphic designers can apportion some of their time to assisting charities, non-profits and causes/campaigns by developing an understanding of their objectives and giving them access to the same (or higher) standards of design that corporations traditionally enjoy. While some charities are financially-capable, the overwhelming majority are financially-challenged and, in experience, sometimes lacking the design ambition and understanding that brands and corporations have developed. This generally results in lower standards of graphic design being applied to their visual communications which, in turn, has a detrimental effect on the way in which they are perceived and understood. A generous and socially-minded graphic designer can apply creative thinking, design consideration and application and see it go a long way; hopefully, as far as creating a tangible benefit for the people the client seeks to represent and help.

Hope that helps. Again, I'm keen to explain that this is really a veneer and that the generalisation afforded by a paragraph doesn't really do the question justice!

Best,

Paul

Fraser Muggeridge studio

Another great website layout, this time from the Fraser Muggeridge studio in London. He has produced some great work over the years and he shows no sign of stopping. Beautiful layouts and working with type and grids well you can see the modernist influence.

Design Context Proposal

Themes & Areas of Interest

As part of the FMP for my Design Context I have been required to examine my areas of interest within design and I have started thinking and managed to come up with a few bullet points. I have found it easy to think of the first one or two but after the first few I have become more vague and it's turned into a wish list of personal goals more than areas of specific interest.

- Ethically Minded Design; People before profit, Sustainability.
- Positive; Every problem has a solution.
- Political; Wherever possible I will try and work for positive, good thinkers and do-gooders.
- Local; Encourage community and use of local resources and services through the themes and subject matter of the work I produce and through the use of materials in production.
- Typography; Type has always interested me, just when I thought I was interested in modernist fonts and strict typography I am finding myself wanting to explore through manipulation, process and materials.