Design Diary by Nathan Monk

Longwill School for the Deaf - Immersion

Today I went along, with Smile, to Longwill School for the Deaf to start discussing the new project....

Moo Cow Music

I bought band for the iPhone. I’m glad I didn’t pay £6 for it. It’s naf. ...

The drive of my life

I was up at 0800 and I got in at 0130. Long day. I did the wedding photography job I’ve talked...

The Wedding Photographer

Today I have been “Nathan Monk: Wedding Photographer”. It was for a friend, and...

Teenage patients enjoy new artwork

Posterous falls at the first hurdle

Nope, I still love tumblr. Posterous means well but lacks crucial features. No embed for my website,...

Posterous

Just discovering a new service to maybe even take over my tumblr account. Check out...

Web Design for BIAD Students

General Information I offer the chance to get your very own portfolio website up and running. The...

FAMFAMFAM

Digital Workflow

How do you work? I find myself with my mac or iPhone most of the day and because of this I always...

Twitter made 404 errors cool with the fail whale. Dropbox...

The new smile site went live the other day. You should...

The latest analytics for my facebook fan pages. Helvetica...

This week has been crazy-long. Smile has been working for...

Wire & Twine : Here to Make Friends

Ridiculous Design Rules

FF Meta Serif - Mini site

I think I may have found the first corporate gifts for...

“Basically, there’s nothing going on the city, was my...”
— Stef Lewandowski » A...

You cannot write this stuff. Genius.

Then I will soon be leaving. Thanks for railroading me into...

Helvetica Neue LT 75 Bold Baskerville SemiBold Helvetica...

Self branding is inevitable

Alex Bermingham on Self-Branding

Alex Bermingham: Nath hows it going, just keeping some more healthy discussion going! Just read your tumblr attack on personal branding - I know what you mean about letting your own work show for itself. and you are def onto something with the trap of over doing it with extensive idents and whatnot. But largely I don't really agree! Everything, including people, are branded every day - in our daily lives, in the media, and especially in design. Branding's rarely just a logo or an ident, it's a whole visual identity and the associations that go with it. I think whether you left the Monk logo on your site or not would probably not have made a massive difference - your brand qualities of clean swiss styles and eternal love for helvetica are still very strong on there without it! I have been playing around with personal branding over the summer, but they are all still just ideas that will have most probably changed radically by graduation. My philosophy on design is that uni is the best time to experiment, take risks and have fun too. Clearly one should be far more careful when it comes to exit plans and the final year show, but ultimately you're always gonna be branding yourself. HA sorry for the rant! Keep up the good work
Nathan Monk: Interesting slant and you raise some valid points that I hadn't thought about. Personally I still stand by my decision; I think as art students, giving yourself a second identity that purposely sets out to sell one person as an ambiguous entity will inevitably fail. I agree that in other avenues the pay-off can be a very different affair. Your point about people being branded is correct. I believe that I may have been a bit vague with my post (I tend to rush them out). There is a difference between purposely branding yourself as a wholesome body, and letting your beliefs, outlook, attitudes, work and educational attributes etc. mould the way that you are perceived. However, I was only aiming my post at art-students. A brand requires the user to create a personal, emotional and/or value-based bond. I believe that this takes time. I see loads of art-students try to create a constructed identity via websites and social communities. I remember very few. By saying this, inherently I admit that a handful of these brands do work and I remember them, but at the same time this would suggest that it is based on the amount of time that I am exposed to them for. I would assume that the amount of time spent at ones portfolio would be founded on how good their work is. Perhaps we could create some sort of mathematical equation for brand effectiveness? ;-D I guess it comes down to a calculated risk. Do you brand yourself and play statistical roulette with isolating your audience or base your career/portfolio on content and you as a person and risk boring your audience to sleep? I agree with your philosophy, university is a sandbox, and if we mess up now, it essentially has little consequence. One thing I would say is that brands will come and go, but your work is a much more permanent fixture. I've also remembered that you go by the pseudonym of Royal. I do hope I haven't caused any offence as this wasn't my intention in any way. As I mentioned, I have completely different opinion on branding yourself in other areas as the end game is almost always more successful. I hope that it didn't come across as an attack, it was only meant to be a spur-of-the-moment thought and it bears no personal ties in any way, shape or form. Im liking the design discourse we have here. PS My love for Helvetica is SO eternal! PPS Have slightly redesigned my site again this week. I think its slightly better now. Have a butchers.

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