Nat Hobson

Dot Gain Blog

Nat — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:58:43 +0000

Just doing a bit of research for one of my University projects and stumbled across this blog. It doesn’t seem to have been updated for a good 6 months, but I certainly enjoyed the visuals! Across between some clever ideas and some just stunning graphics.

Check it out (click)!

A clever solution to something ordinary…

Nat — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:17:44 +0000

As this article reminds me, it’s not always an obvious problem that needs a solution. This is a great example of a solution to benefit, rather than solve. The original article can be found here.

Industrial designers sometimes make the mistake of thinking that certain product elements are written in stone, or that they just aren’t worth thinking about. And sometimes it takes a set of fresh eyes to see an exceptionally simple yet innovative solution. That was the case when Royal College of Art student Min Kyu Choi re-imagined the bulky UK power plug.

Folding Plug Design

Multiple Folding Plugs

Now that’s clever thinking!

Sugar Calculator Website

Nat — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:09:17 +0000

As part of my university work, I had to produce a system with and outcome as a website. Mine was based around calculating sugar content in breakfasts. The site implements HTML, CSC, php, Javascript and jQuery. A live preview of the finished site is available at www.lotechdesigns.com/sugar.

Smashing Magazine

Nat — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:02:40 +0000

To kick off with my new ramblings blog, I thought I’d start by directing everyone in the direction of Smashing Magazine. I check Smashing Magazine daily and find their information to be very, very helpful. Personally, I browse through regularly, ignoring posts that don’t apply to me and take a careful look over the ones that do (most of them to be honest!). It’s got something for everyone involved in any creative field, specifically graphic design, illustration and photography and also some specialist areas such as CSS coding. It also offers some note worthy articles on things such as freelancer to client relationships and general advice about being a good designer.

All worth a good once over and a read I say!

Pet Dentists

Nat — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 02:54:38 +0000

A website produces for a company specialising in veterinary dentistry. Implements HTML, CSS, php, Javascript and jQuery. Website can be seen live at www.petdentists.co.uk.

Business Card

Nat — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:12:17 +0000

I needed a new business card and this is the result!

Stroud College Prospectus

Nat — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:06:34 +0000

Designs for the Stroud College 2009/2010 prospectus. Final design as main image, alternative below. Logo/identity also created by me.

Poster!

Nat — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:21:34 +0000

We’ve been back at Uni for 3 weeks and already we’ve got our first deadline under our belt. Our brief made it sound much more complicated than it was, but in essence it revolved around the Danny Boyle film Slumdog Millionaire. Our goal was to choose a theme and take between 1000 and 1500 words of information about the film, which could be about anything, and make it interesting. What would make people actually want to read 1500 words about the film?

The focus here was on concept, hierarchy, typography skills (such as careful font selection and font formatting), execution and overall aesthetics. My solution: Ditch the obvious idea of choosing a theme such as poverty and making it look grungy and dirty and instead focus purely on the information I have chosen and present it in a clear and enticing way. The other part of the brief was that we had to use a system. There had to be some sort of logic and method which related to our theme. My chosen theme was morality and my way of showing morality was size. The bigger something is, the more moral it is, simple. For my text, I wrote my own character biographies and then found a synopsis/review that I liked, which came in at about 1200 words in total.

My poster is an A1 print

Poster Overview

Poster Detail

I also designed a few bits that I liked but didn’t include in the final design, but I’ll show them off anyway!

Vector Elements

Feedback from this project was very good! I had a few criticisms for my previous draft, the main one being that it was overly complicated, so I cut some parts out, re-arranged a large amount of the elements and created some more negative space so it didn’t feel crowded. After being printed out full scale (A1) and being pinned up, I was extremely happy with the out come and it really does stand out on a wall, just as intended.

Current Projects

Nat — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:00:21 +0000

Well, as I’ve not been particularly good at updating my blog, here’s some images of some freelance work I’m doing at the moment. I’m currently working on two veterinary websites, neither of which are actually live yet, but I thought I’d keep the blog up-to-date with my design work and I’ll post up the final results of the pages with some live links.

This first website is for the Animal Medical Centre located in London. It features a sliding content box. If you click on the thumbnail you can see an animated preview. My work for the AMC includes a complete re-brand including the new logo, new colour scheme, website and all other materials for the business such as business cards and letterheads. These designs are not final and only contains dummy text.

Animated Slider (click)

AMC

This website is for the Animal Medical Centre located in London. It features a sliding content box. If you click on the thumbnail you can see an animated preview. My work for the AMC includes a complete re-brand including the new logo, new colour scheme, website and all other materials for the business such as business cards and letterheads. These designs are not final and only contains dummy text.

AMC HiRes

My other project is another veterinary website for Pet Dentists (which is associated with the AMC). This project is just the website and a few materials for the business, the colour scheme and logo have not been changed. Again, these are not the final designs and only has dummy text for now.

Pet Dentists Overview

Pet Dentists Navigation

More updates on the way when I can provide them!

Flash Animation

Nat — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:27:58 +0000

I had been very eager to start learning Adobe Flash. I have had some very basic previous experience with the program, specifically rotoscoping. However, this was a chance to produce a full animation.

Our requirements were simple, pick any fact that represents an imbalance of some sort and make a 20-30 second animation that represents this. After some in depth talk in our tutorials, it became obvious that the approach that would work best would be to not literally show the fact but rather, show it in a less literal way. One thing I was certain on was that I wanted to go for a cut-out style, based around static images. This meant that the important part of my animation would be the camera control and movement within that animation.

The fact I settled on was that year on year, Michael Jordan earns more money from Nike than their entire Malaysian workforce combined. I storyboarded a range of ideas and started work on the one I thought would be the strongest. However, after completing the basic animation I decided the idea was in fact not strong enough for my final piece. My final, submitted piece was in fact my second go at the animation based around a totally different idea to my first one. This is how it ended up…

Flash Animation (click to view)

I’m actually very please with the final result considering this is my first attempt at a real flash animation in a program I was previously totally uncomfortable with. I think the sound track I chose to accompany the animation works well, and the lyrics tie into the theme of the animation. I’m particularly pleased with the use of the camera, which is almost entirely controlled through actionscript (v.2). I’m very much looking forward to tackling another animation project, especially web design orientated.