Growing up as a Graphic Designer in London Town

Mariana Lobão

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Contents

IntroStarting Off On The Right FootHistoriumA Picture Of Evolution

Colophon

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INTRO

My relationship with graphic design is not something I’ve started this year. I have been ‘living’ with it since 2007 the year I started a graphic arts course in High School. Still, this was the most important year in my life yet. Last August I’ve accomplished something that I’ve been dreaming of since I was 13-years-old. I’ve moved to London. Better yet, I moved to London to study graphic design, with hopes to become a wise and skilled designer. Like my dream of moving to London, my blog was something that had accompanied me since my adolescence to the present day. It obviously changed its form and web location throughout the times, but my necessity of reporting – using words, photos or drawings – the events of my life or pure thoughts about random and less random things was always there.Once I started the FdA Design for Graphic Communication program I was asked to begin a blog where I’d state events somehow related to the course. At that time I already had a blog named Holy Wolf which I started in 2008. I decided to have my “student’s” posts in this same blog even though

it was a bit conceptual at the time. I wasn’t used to add text on my posts, which led me to make a change a few months later.My initial goal was to try and describe what it felt like changing my lifestyle, meeting new people, explore a new city and combine that with my student’s affairs.

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STARTING OFF ON THE RIGHT FOOT

Anti-Design Festival

In the beginning of the first term I was only living in London for about a month so everything was still very new to me. More than a college assignment I looked at the blog posts about the course as an intermediary between me and my friends and family back at home. This way they could also follow my studies and that was the main reason for having two languages in my posts then. On my blog this entrance into the university life is very clear – all the sudden I started adding big amounts of detailed texts about the events, instead of inspirational or

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photographic/illustrative like my posts used to be so far.So at this point my old blog had transformed into a series of articles about my school life, leaving behind the posts my visitors were used to read which led to a lack of interest of the general public leading it to become a ghost blog.Even though the blog was very important to me for externalizing good future memories, I wasn’t having a response. Either way I kept posting about the curious moments I was living at university. Sometimes when I’d post on my blog about a given event I’d make an illustration of it, or twist it up in some way. I remember posting about keen moments on my student life like the first workshop, the first contact with my colleagues and my first Letterpress experience.One of the most interesting posts I’d say it’s “The 5 Design Agencies I’d like to work with – in no specific order” because it required me to do some research about creative agencies and studios in London and elsewhere. Also, it was a very good opportunity to see how studios distinguish from one another by having strong different styles. I tried to gather 5 studios that really appealed to me ant they were PNTS studio, iWant, Ill Studio, Toko, and I Love Dust.

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Letterpress project

Ill Studio

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A PICTURE OFEVOLUTION

My blog is a very precious thing and as you go through the posts you can clearly see my evolution as a student. During this year I’ve experiment a lot of new techniques which I think was the best thing about this year. I’ve started with Letterpress with an induction that I did in the very beginning of the first term. Going through the blog you’ll find posts concerning other techniques (some new to me some not so much) like screen printing, collage, lino cut and dry point (even though I haven’t made a post about this last one).It is also clear the evolution in my “illustrator” skills. I’ve posted some illustration works I have done for school assignments like the Ditto Press project, and others like contests and some just for the kicks of it and even my website design itself, which makes it very nice to go back and see this evolution.Another less fortunate reality that is visible in my blog is that the amount of posts has decreased. The truth is that “free” time has also shortened since October and I find posting on the blog very time consuming specially because I had to edit the post’s HTML code every time. Still, I think I did a good job and I “put out” everything I thought was necessary since I didn’t want my blog to be busy and boring, au contraire, my idea was to have it very light and vivid all the way and transmitting my ideas

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IllustrationsFear the Owl,Basquiat for Say My Name Brand &The Hair is the Richest Ornament of Women for The Liberated Press

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as a designer at the same time. My blog also evolved in other ways. Since last October I’ve changed the blog three times, but I had good reasons to do so. At first, as I said before, I decided to have my “student’s life” posts along side with my blog that I was running for quite a long time, Holy Wolf – holywolf.marianalobao.com – but after sometime I realized that I was only using this blog for university and that my blog had lost its previous ‘feel’. Therefore I decided to create, in January, a brand new blog for university-related posts only. That blog was Say What – saywhat.marianalobao.com – and besides projects or work related things I would also post about inspirational design that I’d found around. Trying to manage two blogs at the same time worsened the time issue, as it was obviously a lot more difficult to keep two blogs at the same time. And this led me to my final and current blog “situation”. I decided to change the platform (from Blogger to Word Press) and have both blogs in the same present location – blog.marianalobao.com.

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Colophon

blog.marianalobao.com

saywhat.marianalobao.com

holywolf.marianalobao.com

Historium’ Captions

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Bycicles in Front of LCC

First Week at LCC

Newspapers (Narrative Work-

shop)

Collages (Image Workshop)

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Out & About

Typograpphy Workshop

Letterpress Machine

PPD outdoors session

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The Liberated Press

ScreePrint bed

Print Club London’s Shop

Ditto Press Protype

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Fanzines Workshop at Yearn Fest

Mail Art

Pick Me Up London

Fanzines Essay

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Lino Cut Piece

Mono-Printing

Sketchbook

Amos at KK Outlet

Typefaces

Estilo

Georgia

Mariana LobãoLondon 2011

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