Milano

Milan Design Week, pretty much a must see for all designers and design enthusiasts out there. This year a group of 17 of us from university thought it would be a good idea to see what all the fuss was about, this is a snapshot of what we saw...

A Boob bed.. only in Milan :) 

Amare - A Stool For Amy

This was a project we recently did at uni where we had to design a stool for another person on the course. My client was Amy Bicknell.
The stools name comes from the latin of my clients name, Amare, which means beloved.

The stool itself was constructed from American Oak and finished with an oversized cushion. The pattern on the stool was also designed by myself and drew inspiration from textile designers such as Skinny la Minx and Orla Kiely. The design was then screen printed on to white cotton and attached to the main frame of the stool.

This was a really fun project and Amy was a great client to work with.You can check out her work here.. http://amybicknell.co.uk/

My New Favourite Purse

I'm not really a 'purse person'... I tend to just throw the essentials into my pocket or my bag and wonder later on why i cant find my bank card.

Last month however, the rents went to Lisbon and brought me back a present from their travels - a purse made out of cork.

I pretty much fell in love with it as soon as I saw it, it's really soft and it's made from cork which is a really sustainable material. It's not the most attractive of purses but it's the natural material that makes it unique.

And it's just big enough for all the essentials, so technically i shouldn't be losing anything any time soon...

Whilst hard at work...

Working in a student bar does have its benefits now and again and this time its noticing the re branding of Corky's vodka shots.

Previously the graphics used made the brand look slightly amateur and juvenile even though it is clearly a product for adults.

Personally i think it's the choice of font, it seems asif it was a school project for a 15 year olds graphics class. 

The new graphics are a lot more sophisticated and it actually looks like a real, serious brand. 

There also seems to be a lot more thought put into the decoration - you want to take a closer look at the bottle - something which rarely happens with a bottle of alcohol i'm sure!

This rebranding will definitely do a lot of good for the product - appeals to a much broader audience, not just students!

A Homemade Christmas

Every year my dad insists on a homemade card for birthdays, fathers day, christmas etc. So this year I thought i'd go a little further and make the family baubles for the tree :)

They cost me about a £1 each to make and are made from 2 part 8cm plastic baubles, card, foam, letter beads, string, cling film, tinsel, gems, ribbons and sewing pins.

I started off filling them with things which represented each person, so for my sister I made a mini theatre mask as she is involved in theatre design but it got too complicated for the rest of the family.
So, I decided to make individual flowers for each person instead :)
For my dad - a shamrock
For my mom - a tiger lily
For my elder sister - a rose
For my younger sister - a daisy
And for me, a calla lily

Not only was it cheap but it's something which will last longer than anything I could have bought for them :)

The Monster Engine: David Devries

Apparently we are most creative when we are children and i couldn't agree more, how many adults do you find freely scribbling on freshly painted walls?

For illustrator David Devries, his nieces scribbles in his sketchbook provided a base for some pretty cool monsters, take a look...

check out his website as well...David Devries - The Monster Engine

Now all i have to do is get my little cousins to draw up some furniture for me... watch this space. 

Jumping on the bandwagon...

Ok.. so a few people i know have started up design blogs so i thought i had might as well see what all this fuss is about and share with the world what goes on in this tiny brain of mine.
So i'm Jinnie McNamee, currently in my second year studying Furniture and Product Design at Nottingham Trent. Born in Birmingham (apologies in advance for the accent) but now living in Nottingham.  I design for all the generic reasons, i like to be creative, i want to make a difference, yada yada, but mostly because i don't know what else i'd do, except maybe write but as you may soon come to realise i'm not too great at that either.

I'll be posting things that inspire me, things that i think are pretty cool and also my own work and projects so happy reading, stick around, i might be famous one day.

:) Jinnie