I'm making a satchel

cardboard templates 

drawing out the pieces

 

two layers for base of bag, saddle-stitched together

Apparently I've finished university FOREVER. I'm so sad it's over. We've still got to hand in all our work in a couple of weeks, put up a degree show and do New Designers in London so it's not quite goodbye yet but I miss it already. Despite this, I've been working on a project that has filled me with unexpected amounts of joy. 

Working with leather is a bit tricky, but when you slice through its buttery softness with a sharp knife or set your first rivet it's just the most exciting material.  I chose a beautiful dark tan leather and brass fittings - and so far, so good. I wanted to make a portrait-format rectangular satchel with backpack straps, to carry my laptop around. I love the old school satchels around at the moment but couldn't find any backpacks in a similar style. I am beyond excited to see how it turns out!

Good Sport

 You won't need to know me well to know that I'm no great sports fan. This editorial from GQ magazine (which until this week I suspected was a slightly porno lads' mag) was therefore well out of my comfort zone. It was about a film about the West Indies cricket team and loosely references the team's logo, but is mostly about a tripod made out of wickets. I hope it works.

Cover Design

This is the finished cover design for my Penguin Design Competition entry. I really struggled with how to represent the complex themes in One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In the end a simple and graphic family tree seemed best, enabling me to choose some slinky typography to make it look grown-up. I'm rather pleased with it.

Dear Mariella

This week I worked on an editorial piece about bereavement. It was a moving article about getting past the pain of losing a parent and carrying on with life, and it really wasn't easy to think of a suitably sensitive way of dealing with the subject. I hope I've done it justice but I think the colours are still a bit blah. Hmm.

Watching films

This weekend I had fun watching Frida, with Salma Hayek. The colours were gorgeous so I did a little colour study. This could possibly be my new favourite thing to do. I wonder what films I should do next. Any tips for wonderfully colourful films?

Matters of the heart

This is the editorial I set myself this week. Romance. Tricky stuff. The story was about the breakdown of  a relationship because of his addiction to pornography - I thought it would be a challenge! I hope you get that the self-pitying anglepoise is her, and the blue light from next door is him at his computer, the dirty rascal! It's darker colours than I'd usually go for but I think it needed it.

Hope you have something fun planned for the weekend - and Happy Mothers' Day for Sunday, yummy mums! xx