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valwoodhouse Skyhooks 10 ft banner: Beanstalk 2, Adobe Illustrator, college project, 2008. The idea of the little stick figures interacting with the logo became a theme I continued for the rest of the Skyhooks project. More about that when I upload my next batch of images!

valwoodhouse Skyhooks 10 ft banner: Beanstalk 1, Adobe Illustrator, college project, 2008. Illustrator's 'Little Sprout Green' became the official Skyhooks colour, thanks to the winning design in the stationery task. By turning the logo on its side I found my next inspiration - Jack & The Beanstalk.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks 10 ft banner: Skydive, Adobe Illustrator, college project, 2008. Windy weather became my next influence. Skydivers leap from the Skyhooks logo, in front of colourful tornado-inspired swirls.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks 10 ft banner: Rainbow Dots, Adobe Illustrator, college project, 2008. My 1st banner idea was to match my posters. Here the C, M & Y dots cascade down, eventually matching up to create the illusion of the rainbow colours.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks A3 poster: Rainbow Wide Shot, Adobe Illustrator, college project, 2008. This version created itself by accident, as I liked the look of all the shapes overspilling from the page that were just going to get cut out. It gives the impression of all the work going on in the background so you can see the very best bit.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks A3 poster: Rainbow Stripes, Adobe Illustrator, college project, 2008. I used a textured line for some versions, including this one, to soften the very bright blocky effect. Here I'm showing you 5 of the 15 variations I came up with, all based on the rainbow.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks A3 poster: Rainbow Text, Adobe Illustrator, college project, 2008. This variation explains the CMYK formulae. Overlaying the colours leads to the optical illusion of seeing the correct colours in places. This version was chosen as a project winner but the college forgot to get it printed for some reason!

valwoodhouse Skyhooks A3 poster: Rainbow Angles, Adobe Illustrator, college project, 2008. As 'Skyhooks' was a fictional design company, I played on the idea that, no matter what colour you see in print, you're really only seeing cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink. So my rainbow colours were reduced to C, M & Y in the correct percentages.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks A3 poster: Rainbow Dots, Adobe Illustrator, college project, 2008. Following the stationery task I posted earlier, we then turned our attention to posters and banners. I stuck with the weather theme I had used for my stationery and based my posters round a stylised rainbow.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks Headed Paper 4, Adobe InDesign 2008. Stationery design may seem a bread-and-butter job to graphic designers but knowing how to combine artistry with practicality is a vital skill to have.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks Headed Paper 3, Adobe InDesign 2008. It doesn't mean to say the right hand rule can't be broken. A design like this version can work very well providing the word processing template is set up to match and window envelopes aren't used.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks Headed Paper 2, Adobe InDesign 2008. The secret to good notepaper design is to remember that the most blank space on a letter is on the right hand side, especially at the top where the logo can balance out the address. Graphics that stretch down to the body of the paper should allow the text to be readable.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks Headed Paper 1, Adobe InDesign 2008. As someone with admin experience, I felt very well qualified to design the headed notepaper. Having used plenty of the stuff in my time I know what makes it usable instead of just artistic! I created these designs by overlaying a dummy letter to check that the positioning works.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks Slip & Card 4, Adobe InDesign, 2008.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks Slip & Card 3, Adobe InDesign, 2008. With a classmate already winning the 1st challenge to design the logo, the 2nd task was to incorporate this into stationery sets. I finished 3rd in the official vote (and 1st in an unofficial class vote) for my designs evoking dramatic sky colours.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks Slip & Card 2, Adobe InDesign, 2008. The project had a competitive edge, as the idea from each brief judged as the best by the tutors and other college officials was adopted as the official group design and carried forward to future projects. Some of these would be professionally printed for our end-of-year exhibition.

valwoodhouse Skyhooks Slip & Card 1, Adobe InDesign, 2008. Our major final college project ran for 3 months. We were to work together as though we were a high-end design studio called Skyhooks and had to design every element of our identity and promotional material.

valwoodhouse Bodoni Thistle Badge, Adobe Illustrator, 2009. Eventually I added another flower to the designs to make them into a set of 3 for submission to another project.

valwoodhouse Bodoni Dandelion Badge, Adobe Illustrator, 2008. To accompany the tulip (and because I had just one space left at the bottom of my layout sheet) I created a matching dandelion. This one isn't made from my name but I did use a secret message as my starting point!

valwoodhouse Bodoni Tulip Badge, Adobe Illustrator, 2008. 'Val' in Bodoni Objects, which is an excellent font for creating elegant flowers.