Design Principles the Basis of my Design Learning

After we came back from France we moved to Cornwall and that is where things really started to take off for my business.

I clearly recognised that there was a need to learn more about Design to fine tune my skills and it turned out I was in exactly the right place in Cornwall as there was so much opportunity to learn.

I chose a course, Design Principles Degree Module through Cornwall College and the University of Exeter. It was a pretty intense course where I would learn about design ethics, how to take my designs from nice to seriously engaging and really eye catching. Very exciting!

During my course we spent quite a bit of time learning new technology in the form of Adobe products, Illustrator and Photoshop and I really enjoyed getting into those. It certainly opened up lots of doors for me in terms of what I was able to do for my web design clients.

Producing a magazine cover, 2 page spread and an advert was part of my course. I have always had a Chocolate Labrador (2 at one point) so the obvious thing for me to do was an article on the history of the Choccy Lab. I absolutely loved doing this and the thing I recognised about myself was that I do my best work when I love the subject. Hence I have recently focussed my web design on creatives and artisans – this is a very broad category from dress designers to sculptors and jewellery designers to cake makers; the clients I really love to work with.

My Magazine

Here are some of the images from the magazine I created with my back page advert. This gave me so much pleasure and taught me so much about spacing, using white space to make things stand out, using Fonts to create impact and the joy of blending colours.