Hi all,

Acuity Designs has just started a facebook group; giving you all another way to spread the word about our services and stay in touch with all things AD from our projects, to updates on fresh blog articles and posts!

Acuity Designs on Facebook

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• April 12, 2009 -- British Legion Flyer (0)
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Hi all,

recently we had the opportunity to respond to some questions put forward by Alex from Crazy Leaf Design… you can read the interview here:

Interview between Crazy Leaf Design Blog and Acuity Designs

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Royal British Legion have been very happy with our continuing work for them, view the latest print project on their website:

British Legion Print Project

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How essential is a design degree to a designer?

Having gone through the process of formal education in graphic design and illustration (and paid the accompanying expenses) Many designers have often had to ask themselves the question: ‘was it worth it?’

The simple fact is that, with the evolution of the internet to a level where intellectual and technical resources are freely available, those wishing to break into our industry have at their fingertips the necessary tools and know-how to make a start. Fortunately, the majority of professional designers aren’t selfish with their knowledge, and a huge number of blogs and articles will address issues such as common layout mistakes, and advice on getting work print-ready etc. So the theory of designing can be ‘self taught’ relatively easily, and it’s not just a case of accessing the necessary tools online, but not knowing what to do with them.

However. Something to be said for formal training is that you can learn a lot better by doing. You tend to remember methods of design practice if early on in your education a tutor has been able to drill it into your thinking. One good example being when I was studying for a foundation degree we had many sessions focussing only on principles of hierarchy. Nothing but old school cutting and pasting and enlarging on a photocopier. Ultimately these methods, which may have seemed tedious at the time cemented an understanding of hierarchy in my thinking that would never have stuck so well had it just been some advice that I read say, in a blog post. (think the karate kid, painting the fence.

Of course there’s a middle way between being completely self-taught and investing thousands of pounds and several years in a design BA. Many institutions offer short, part time courses or evening classes that can really be useful as they equip you with technical skills to make a success in the design world, but most importantly they provide the mentoring aspect that can help to establish good practice early on in a designer’s career.

Extra Links:

http://www.lcc.arts.ac.uk/courses/further_education.htm

http://www.chelsea.arts.ac.uk/shortcourses/

http://www.gold.ac.uk/icce/shortcourses/

Do you think you need a degree to freelance?

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Delicious 100

We have been gauging the quality of our articles by the number of people that delicious bookmark them, aswll as their features on other blogs etc. The article: What to Charge for Design Work? just reached 100 bookmarks the other day. Wooot!

Subscribers 50

Thanks to the loyal faithful who are subscribing to the blog, who have now reached an insurmountable 50 people! haha. Gives us an extra incentive to keep adding to the blog; hope more of you decide to join the club!

WDF Website of the Month Winner

We entered a website that we designed recently ( Fraffiti Resource into a monthly competition of web design on the Web Designer Forum and are winners for October. The results were voted for by the community of web designers on the forum.

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Prince’s Trust

We have applied for, (well, we are filling out forms) for Prince’s trust Funding. The Prince’s Trust is an organisation that gives grants to start-ups etc, so hopefully we get a nice injection of capital for equipment and marketing etc. Watch this space.

Portfolio Update

The Logo section, Web Section and Print Section have all been updated with one or two new pieces of work.

My Ink Blog Feature

Andrew, over at My Ink blog was kind enough to upload and feature one of our tutorials on his blog. You can see it by viewing this page. . Have a look around, it is a great site, we used this t-shirt article as reference for the designs we are creating for Graffiti Resource.

Graffiti Resource Poster No.1 of 10

We are hoping to create a set of 10 Posters for Graffiti Resource, for its online store. Here is poster number one’s latest draft ( any feedback ):

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Hi all.

As a side project, myself and Ashley had been working on a graffiti gallery / resource site to profess our love and opinions on graffiti on you all. Have a look, let us know what you think, and enjoy the writing on the wall.
Graffiti Resource

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Just keeping you guys informed on everything Acuity Designs related..

Illustrations for Children’s Book Published

A while back, illustrations for a childrens book commissioned by Macmillan’s Children’s Books were completed. We received the copy of the work this week, you can buy it here. Below are some scans, (sorry for the quality) that we took from the book to show you all.

Photoshop Creative Magazine

We entered the photoshop creative magazine forum competition where users where given the freedom to create any image around the title = “movies”. you can view my entry here. I had fun! They announce the winner soon, so we’ll let you know the winner etc.

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A little round up of the week’s action for us.

Ifoh Designs: Friday’s Five Inclusion

An illustration of ours (Future) was included in the Ifoh Designs weekly round up of the top 5 pieces of work in various categories. Friday’s Five

Vandelay Design Blog Competition

We took part in an online competition ran by Vandelay Design, and where announced winners. Thanks to templamatic and Vandellay Design. View Competition

Money, Money, Money

We were contacted almost a fortnight ago by an investment company asking us if we seeked capital.. yadda yadda yada.. so we e-mailed them back, a nice vague and ambiguous e-mail as we weren’t really sure what they were offering us.. Turns out they specialise in helping start-ups get investment and equipment etc under entrepreneur schemes and the like. We meet with them this week!

New Work

We have work overflowing the hyperthetical pot this month. So the portfolio should be getting a very healthy boost sooner rather than later!

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• October 2, 2008 -- Site Launch: Graffiti Resource (0)
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