Tag: Designer

08
Jul

Looking for Freelance Designers/Web-Designers

Hi folks, due to lots of lovely creative projects, we’re looking for designers/web-designers that can help us out over the next couple of weeks.

If you know your way around WordPress (and possibly Elementor too) give us a shout, we’d love to hear from you…

Thank you please.

Benedetto

Benedetto is an enthusiastic creative and business person.

His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft – A Design & Branding Agency based in the heart of Glasgow.

He is thrilled to manage a great team, work with brilliant clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.

31
Oct

Talent Alert

They do say variety is the spice of life – something we know all too well at the loft.

One-Stop Shop, Full-Service Agency, Multi-Disciplinary Design….

How about ‘Composite Service Propositions’ – for those of you that want to be a wee-bit fancier with the words?

Whatever the terminology, we do like complex and intricate creative challenges and we’re just so happy to be able to offer so many different things to so many wonderful people in lots and lots of different sectors.

All the obvious things too – graphic design, website design, branding, etc.

But also more interesting and obscure items – ‘Brand DNA’ ‘Accelerate’ and even ‘Brand Love’

I mean who wouldn’t want to create some love for their brand?

Despite all the business chat, we mainly wanted a reason to show off our lovely new service icons and to create a wee Talent Alert for the exceptional work of Chloé Davenport, a newly graduated student from The City Of Glasgow College.

Amazing work Chloé!!

We’ve already seen what you’ve sketched out next for us – which we also can’t wait to share…

So it’s ‘Back-To-Work’ for us. Creativity knows no bounds…

Benedetto

04
Aug

‘Designers-With-Soul’

At the loft we’ve been working with MCR Pathways for a number of years now.

For those that aren’t in the know, MCR Pathways are an incredible charity that exists to ensure that ‘every disadvantaged young person in Scotland, gets the same education outcomes, career opportunities and life chances as other young people.’

They mainly do this by providing supportive mentors who meet the young person for one hour each week at their local high schools.

In the past, the loft has provided creative support and work-experience opportunities to the charity. However, amazing designers Reiss McLeod and Laura Campbell have taken this not one but several steps further. They’ve passed their exams, did their training and are now fully-fledged mentors. Pictured here in their favourite haunt (Paesano Pizza,) they will both commit one hour a week to help their mentees create a better life for themselves. An absolutely wonderful commitment!

They meet their mentees in a few weeks time and are incredibly excited to help a young person as well as make a contribution.

‘Designers-With-Soul’

We salute you both…

If you would like to help a young person and want to get involved in mentoring, please check out… http://mcrpathways.org 

 

24
Jan

Marek Brol | Design Highlights 2017

‘Soulman!!’

That was the name we gave the incredibly talented Marek Brol.

As January draws towards a close, we are using the rest of the month to celebrate the creative achievements of our team. Marek Brol joined us in March of 2017 and it’s to safe to say that we were bowled over by his desire, creativity, and intensity. Marek did many wonderful things for the loft before sadly departing back to his homeland towards the end of the year. Although Marek’s no longer with us in the studio, the memory of a wonderful person, lots of great times, and some staggeringly beautiful work remain with us. Acts of creativity that we are truly grateful for. We can’t wait to see what Marek does next, but in the meantime, these are his highlights of 2017:

SOCEX 2017 Brochure

1. SOCEX 2017

The first thing Marek did for us at the loft was the beautiful SOCEX 2017 brochure. A person who loves the symbolic and meaningful, Marek got his teeth into the project with a drive which immediately impressed us. He thoughtfully and intelligently built on the SOCEX visual framework which had been established with previous publications but he breathed new life into it with a serious of super-dramatic backdrop images on various pages, eye-catching colour scheme, and an impactful front cover. The cover shows a menacing hooded figure against a backdrop of several of the conference themes constructed as a mosaic. Instant Impact! Marek, as with all our projects, was ably supported by the team, but this one really does have his personality all over it.

Hot Desk Campaign

2. YOUR CREATIVE SPACE

One of Marek’s greatest talents was his ability to use bold creative ideas to bring just about any subject to life. The loft last year was offering hot-desk spaces in its large South Block studio and one of the greatest challenges was the presentation of a space which would be originally sparse and empty until used. Marek, along with his colleagues, beautifully used the idea of putting props such as your ‘laptop, photo, and creative family’ into a beautiful descriptive drawing, complete with annotations, which truly brings the scene to life while selling that all important element of ‘individuality,’ so important to creatives. The campaign was a huge success, with enquiries being received to this day, we believe, due in no small part to Marek’s wonderful illustration skills.

Fedrigoni 365

3. Fedrigoni 365

Fedrigoni is one of the world’s most celebrated, famous, and successful paper manufacturers. Designers from all over the world aspire to use Fedrigoni in the projects they work on. In 2017, they had the idea to create a book which celebrates some of the UK’s most prominent designers and design studios, giving each of them a date of the year to creatively represent. Safe-to-say, we were absolutely thrilled and honoured to be given the opportunity. The 27th of May was the date they chose for us. The only condition of the brief was that we had to use black paper, silver ink, and the number had to look like the date being represented. As always, we wanted to give the illustration some meaning and found that the 27th of May is a celebration of ‘Japanese Navy Forces Day.’ The full team put forth ideas and Marek eventually took it on, beautifully illustrating a ship with the hull creating the number ‘7’ and the number ‘2’ being represented as a swan. As it says in the book, “A coincidence of the natural form of the sea, resulting in two contrasting elements unified.” We’re all delighted with the final result.

Arcman Billboard

4. Arcman Sub-Brands

Real design sensitivity is one of the hardest things to achieve as a designer; the understanding of those nuanced details which can make all the difference when creating things. Marek has a rare sensitivity which belies his younger years and this was never shown to greater extent than with his creation of the Arcman sub-brands. He created a full range of icons for Arcman, bringing each of their services to life — welding, fabrication, installation, etc… Each of the different icons show the person doing their craft, but where these particular figures shine is in the dynamism of the poses, the drama of the light-shade, and the careful interpretation of the details such as the sparks of the welder. Real design sensitivity indeed. This wonderful concept image where the welder is working on the letter ‘A’ is beautiful, memorable, and truly eye-catching. An image, which eventually spawned a full series, was used endlessly with different communications by the brand as the year came towards a close and most importantly something that was loved by everybody.

A fitting end to a wonderful year — we wish Marek the very best of luck and can’t wait to see what he does in 2018.

16
Jan

Laura Campbell | Design Highlights 2017

Last week we were delighted to kick off our series in celebrating the achievements of our creative team in 2017. We started with Reiss McLeod and this week we are delighted to be taking a look back at the exceptional work of his ‘partner-in-crime’ Laura Campbell.

Laura Campbell, a graduate of ‘Gray’s School of Art’ in Aberdeen, joined our team in March 2017 and what an incredible year she has had. Laura quickly became a go-too person for creative ideas, managing the ever-intricate print process and finally adding some much-needed video to the loft’s social media presence. Such was her deftness with social media that the young lady, we once thought was quiet, became our ‘Director of Noise.’ A role she has led with absolute distinction since.

Laura is multi-talented – a person who is comfortable at all stages of the design process, a keen developer/illustrator and somebody who the clients often rave about, she is one of the most trusted members of our team and is also great fun to be around too.

These are Laura Campbell’ highlights of 2017.

Tradeprint

1. Tradeprint ‘People Behind The Print’

One of Laura’s biggest successes of 2017 was her fantastic work on the ‘People Behind Print’ campaign for Tradeprint. Tradeprint is one of the country’s largest providers of online print where their team helps large companies, organisations and agencies with their printing requirements. They have incredible geographical reach, an extremely wide variety of products and most importantly their print coaches – Laura very skilfully acknowledged the value of the ‘print coaches’ in a commoditised market flooded with competition.

She built on this by creating a range of beautiful concepts with the print coaches being at the heart of the campaign, they were captured with simple portraits, expressive poses and then some beautifully creative mixed-media collages using Tradeprints own stock. The concepts were all Laura’s while working with Tradeprint brand Director James Barrett Bunnage and photographer Malcolm Cochrane on a range of materials spanning print advertisements, social media posts and beautiful landing page micro-sites. One for each of the print coaches. Top work indeed…

VRU Scotland

2. VRU Scotland ‘Street & Arrow’ Display Stand

Laura, with her cohort Reiss, played a pivotal part in the development of this unique and very special display-stand created for VRU Scotland’s ‘Street & Arrow.’ ‘Street & Arrow’ is a programme led by The Violence Reduction Unit to help people make the transition from leading lives of crime back into employment. As part of a wider creative project and the opportunity to do something different for a trade show, Laura captured the chance to bring this incredibly interesting piece of work to life. Created in record-quick time, you will see the transition of the individual from criminal to worker in the artwork, the spray-painting of the characters carefully produced on actual chipboard and Reiss and Laura celebrating a remarkable day’s work. All carried out from the warehouse of a good friend. Not your typical trade-show stand. Not your typical day at the studio but a wonderful result.

Scottish Leather Group

3. Scottish Leather Group Sustainability Report 2017

This was the second Sustainability Report we created for Scottish Leather Group after a successful 2016. The team were asked to take the concept of sustainability forward and Laura duly obliged. Her concept of ‘using less ink’ with the text, graphics and mainly the images of the brochure was seen as very fitting for a document celebrating some remarkable achievements by the company regarding its sustainability. The image of leather off-cuts on the brochure shows this concept to beautiful effect – once again with the exceptional photography of Malcolm Cochrane.

Geckotech Calendar

4. Geckotech Calendar

One of Laura’s biggest achievements of 2017 was the design of the 2018 Geckotech Calendar. Geckotech Solutions are a company which supplies clients with access engineering solutions including industrial rope access, confined space entry and the installation of temporary working platforms. She worked closely with Nancy Pearson from Geckotech Solutions and Ruth McFarlane of Exactaprint where she selected the most eye-catching images available, sensitively developed them with a ‘Black & White’ theme with very dramatic orange accents and once again managed a very intricate print process. The final calendars were wonderfully received by the client, their clients and all involved. Yet another exceptional outcome for our Laura.

Research Scotland Infographics

5. Research Scotland Report on the 14:19 Fund

Infographics have been round a long-time, starting with everything from the pie and bar charts used in office packages on original PCs, they became more widely popular in recent years to tell longer, more complicated and intricate stories in an easier, friendlier and more digestible way. They are seen everywhere today from business plans to product instructions to the communication of complicated financial information. At the loft we have been very much at the heart of the development of the infographic and how they are evolving, particularly with motion graphics. Laura took the original infographic concept and gave it a new lease of life with the combination of high-impact visual photography to create images of tremendous effect. The infographics Laura created for Research Scotland’s reporting of ‘Inspiring Scotland’s 14:19 Fund’ are some of the freshest and most exciting that we’ve seen and been involved in a long time.

It’s safe to say that it’s been an absolutely incredible year for Laura and we could easily have created another week’s worth of materials.

Looking forward to seeing what she creates in 2018!

13
May

We’re Hiring a Designer

We are looking for a designer, and quickly! Holding an open-day this Monday for portfolio reviews/ interviews at our new South Block studio. Perfect opportunity for a graduate designer who wants to come and bring their ideas to life with us. Please pass on or help us share…

Thank you, the loft team.

https://theloft.co/designer/

 

12
Jun

Welcoming CHRIS NEWTON

Hello all…

We are delighted and very lucky to be welcoming talented Design Superstar Chris Newton to the loft for his internship.

photo 4

As is common practice. We thought we’d make him feel right at home by putting him directly under the spotlight and firing a load of questions at him…

Name? Chris Newton

Date of Birth? 07/08/87

College? Clyde College

Favourite Piece of Loft Work? (Only kidding, don’t answer that…)

Favourite Designer and why? Steven Simpson – ‘The good man inspired My Day of the Dead Website.’

Favourite Design Tool? It’s all about InDesign and pink pens.

Favourite Font? BEBAS

Tea or Coffee? Coffee please 🙂

Favourite Studio Music? The Black Keys or The Kills or The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s. Anything on X-FM really!

What do you want to be when you grow up? An Adult…

Chris has thrown himself right in at the deep end here at the loft. We look forward to working with him and getting to know him better…

Check his exceptional work out at http://chrisnewtondesign.co.uk