Working in Digital Media Week 7
Todays guest speaker was Fiona Kelly. Fiona is a digital media designer with a degree in Interactive Media. Fiona began by speaking to us about ‘intelligent stealing’ and the big debate over when is copycat…ish work stealing and when is it simply inspiration?
An excerpt from the following quote by independent film maker Jim Jarmusch was mentioned…
Jim Jarmusch - Film Maker
Fiona uses many sites for inspiration, I’ve came across those sites too and they are great for tutorials and learning new trends!
Smashing Magazine
IStockphoto (stock images/illustrations…)
Fffound Image bookmarking
Del.icio.us Book marking
Digg Social News Website
WordPress Templates Site Templates
Along with a few other designers, Fiona founded Fat Kitty films and her logo for the company led to her being approached to design a new retro site for motor business Scooter Island…
Scooter Island company website
Fiona usually starts by compiling a moodboard when beginning a new design! A collection of illustrations/fonts/general layout/style/ colours and shapes etc. Whatever is relevant to her request… In her own words, she’ll then set about taking bits from here and there, but ensure the end product is of her own creation.
Other designs can be found at Glimmer Digital Design
She passed around some cool little ‘Moo Cards’ too, kind of like a mini business card… Again, the importance of networking was stressed – attend seminars etc, attend the opening of an envelope even – just put your name out there! Luckily she is at a stage now though where she can be a little more choosy over campaigns, sounds like she has come across a nightmare client or 2…
About intelligent stealing tho…I suppose if it wasn’t using other peoples ideas as a foundation for our own we’d probably all still be living in the stone age anyway! We are faced with so many ads on a day-to-day basis that surely get stored in our deep subconscious and surface on occasion. I’ve never really thought about it but it’s obviously widespread anyway. Like fashion in clothing, design tends to have seasonal trends and fashions too… Swirls, flourishes, neon vector shapes over photographed images, silhouettes against strong colours (Ipod???) are in half the posters I see! All these started somewhere, I doubt each company suddenly had the same ideas… that would be quite some co-incidence…
I agree to a degree… If a design fuels your own creativity and inspiration then fair enough, as long as isn’t a blatant rip off – but instead forms a basis on which you can go off on your own tangent. Without a complete lack of originality…
On a side note, seeing as the film maker Jim Jarmusch was mentioned here is a clip from one of his short movies starring Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, I’m a fan of both but particularly Tom Waits!
