Examples of work by Darren Spence

Hello, my name is Darren Spence. Here are some examples of my work. To view more closely, please click on the image and click again to magnify. To come back to my blog, simply click 'back'.

In July I won a design competition for designing a poster for an event:


Work during time with Force-7:

Humber Mouth Literature Festival, social networking material:
Facebook and Twitter:






Hull Truck Theatre, social networking material:
Facebook and Twitter.




LARC [Love And Respect Choice] campaign, social networking material:
Facebook and Twitter:






T-shirt concepts for Freedom Festival bid brochure:










Hello From Hull, social networking material:
Facebook and Twitter:












concepts - Redhouse Brasserie:





Quick concepts for Winifred Holtby & Tweendykes new academies logo(s):



Work for Paddock Cricket Club - Huddersfield:







Manor Farmshop logo's:

















Vital Hull - Football Forum webpage banners:

















The two banners which were used, in alternating home and away colours;




University Work:

Final Year university project.
This was a project I did for my final year at university. I decided to make magnetic interactive posters in a 'cut and paste' punk style, taking in influences from art movements I researched which I felt had either influenced punk art or been influenced by punk art, such as Pop Art, Symbolism, Surrealism, Dada, Situationism, Lowbrow, YBA's work and Stuckism. I used these styles to create posters criticising things which annoy me in life in a punk style so that they could be seen as offensive, yet in a 'tongue-in-cheek' manner.

I named the project - 'Taking a Pasting'



This piece of work is about how the government were happy to bail out the banks using taxpayers money, yet those same banks wouldn't lend money to caravan firms in Hull to help keep those same taxpayers in work. Many lost their jobs, many firms closed.



This piece is for the viewers own interpretation, but I think it pretty much speaks for itself, though I like to think the viewer may think it has a double meaning.



Great Britain is dead, long live Great Britain!



This piece is about cheap foods and how those on low incomes have no choice but to eat unhealthy foods due to it being the only type of food they can afford. Chicken fillet from the butchers for £4 or a bag of 50 chickets nuggets for £1?



This piece is about the decline of the independent trader.



This is about how I believe London is trapped inside it's own M25 bubble, yet those inside it do not realise. It is about how too much is centralised in London, the people within and especially journalists who are all based there, have an opinion of the rest of the country, despite never having visited.



This is about how everybody's lives now revolve around TV and the things which are shown on it. It is now the main topic of conversation and people are watching the wonders of the world on it, rather than going out and exploring them for themselves.



This is about the government being caught with their pants down. They propose soo much in the North, yet in reality provide soo little.



This is about how every city is becoming the same, with the same old chain shops. Nowhere is unique anymore.



This piece is taking a swipe at the people obsessed with no-mark 'celebrities' and those who's main goal in life is to become one.



This piece is about the slow, painful death of the Great British pub. The pub is dieing on it's knees for may reasons or other. I have chosen to represent the pint as a cocktail as people now only want trendy wine and cocktail bars and no longer go out to drink socially, which was one of the main attractions of a pub.



This is a Playstation 2 game cover of a virtual game I 'created' based on all the political parties. It represents that none of them care about the people they are supposed to represent, they only care about squabbling amongst eachother, unless you're the BNP, who only care about chasing ethnic minorities out of the country.



This piece has a double meaning. It is about how England is portrayed in other countries as a big open green space, with no deprivation what-so-ever. The other meaning is about how this country is now only producing cheap looking, lego-block type architecture, which are cheaply made with cheap materials and worse still, they're all the same design!!!



Kingston-Upon-Hull. The Forgotten City (since 1939). Hull was the second most bombed city in the second world war, yet barely received funding to rebuild. Places that were barely touched in comparison such as Leeds, Newcastle and Sheffield were given money to rebuild though. Then once Hull had rebuilt itself, with a prosperous fishing fleet, the government failed to back the fisherman in their fight in the cod wars, which saw the industry die and left many in Hull without jobs and no government help. Then saw the floods in the city, with other cities being flooded, but not to the extreme extent of which Hull had been flooded, yet TV and other media coverage didn't even cover the news on flooding in Hull. It took leader of the council, Carl Minns to state Hull is 'The Forgotten City' before the media paid any attention. Government action was slow and many people were left without suitable accomodation for years, yet when rural Cumbrian town Cockermouth was flooded and a bridge collapsed, government action was immediate. Then last, but not least, the neglect of the caravan industry in the city.



This piece speaks for itself. Owned (sadly).



This is about having to pay a licence to watch rubbish television programmes.



This is about how everyone today is a sheep, following everyone else to the same shops to buy the exact same thing as everyone else. all the shops are the same, selling the same thing.



This is about the death of Woolworths.



This is a piece of work I did to go with my posters. It is a mock-newspaper which I created to have the same effect as the posters;





Hull Coca-Cola;


To accompany a time-based essay;


Creation of a scene in a Huddersfield-based version of the film 'Metropolis', created by Photoshop collage, using original film stills and photograph's of objects in and around Huddersfield;




Designs for D&AD awards projects;




A 'Poet's Corner' idea I created to be situated in Kingston-Upon-Hull, described as "The most poetic city in England" by Australian author, Peter Porter;





These are some pieces of work I did for the first ever Love Music Hate Racism event in Huddersfield, working in co-operation with Huddersfield Students Union.

Gig poster for the event;



Web Buttons for university events page;






Plasma screen adverts;







I was asked to create some political-based, viral-type flyers for the event;

I stuck with the overall colour scheme of 'Love Music Hate Racism' (yellow and pink), but for the 'political' flyers I did research and found the BNP had been using military imagery and British icons, which I found many had been angered by, such as a story I found on an ex-WW2 spitfire pilot who was angered at their use of spitfire imagery, as he'd fought in spitfires to keep fascists such as the BNP out of Britain all those years back. I myself felt they had no right in taking imagery and using it as their own, so decided that a good design route would be to fight fire with fire by creating viral 'Love Music Hate Racism' flyers using 'LMHR' military images, such as a 'LMHR' war medal, British icons telling you to 'have pride (in who you are and where you are from) without prejudice' and modernised versions of old WW2 propaganda posters. They would be to tell people you can be proud of your country and be patriotic without having to resort to petty racial discriminations, which the BNP seemed to be trying to say you cannot do, making you believe it is 'un-patriotic'.





















Embrace logo - I was asked by a fashion student if I could create a logo for their virtual fashion label 'Embrace'. The label was to be for an up to date, fashionable clothing range for bigger, more curvatious women who could not normally get fashionable clothes due to their size. The logo had to have a curvatious 'feel' and look to it, so I did this by using a curvy font. I used the final 'e' turned in on itself with the 'flicks' interlinking to give the sense of 'embracing'.



Misc:
When my girlfriend's sister had a baby, I created this for the baby, Grace. Her nickname is 'Chompie' and the first time I saw her, I got it wrong and called her 'Cruncher' and it became a bit of a joke. I turned Grace's nickname and the joke into this piece of work as a momento.



Hull City:

Here are a few shirt designs, modernised club badges and shirt conversions I have created for leisurely purposes.












Kit conversions;
Here I have taken kits and changed them to show how they would look as Hull City kits.

Columbus Crew:


conversion - Columbus Crew-to-Hull City:


Philadelphia Union:


conversion - Philadelphia Union-to-Hull City:


Argentina Away:


conversion - argentina Away-to-Hull City:


Chivas USA:


conversion - Chivas USA-to-Hull City:


Djurgardens:


conversion - Djurgardens-to-Hull City:



Newcastle:


conversion - Newcastle-to-Hull City:








Hull City shirt designs:












Hull city fantasy Away Kit:


Iain Dowie as Mr.Incredible from The Incredibles, or should that be Mr.Incredible as Iain Dowie? Yeah, more likely.



Photo retouching work:

Here are a few pieces of re-touching work I have done, shown as before and afters.

Here are a few pieces of buildings I have cleaned up using Photoshop.







There are a few areas of re-touching in this example, namely the path/road and shop fronts.






This is a piece of work I did called "Safe Sonic". This work was to accompany an essay in presentation format on "What is the point of in-game dying?"

I chose to do this project piece to show how silly a game such as Sonic would be without the possibility of losing. I did this by taking the original stills then re-touching them in Photoshop to remove the dangers.

































Here is a piece I did for a logo which I created as the logo for the first ever Love Music Hate Racism event in Huddersfield.

The original is on the left and the re-touched version is on the right, again using Photoshop to achieve this result.



The above piece eventually became part of this;


Viewing tower:
Here I have added a viewing tower to a picture of Hull's waterfront, to show how it would look with a viewing tower in the style of one of the famous viewing towers around the globe.