I had my tutorial on Monday where we showed a draft of our A-Z of Graphic Language PDF. I was really nervous before as you just hope that the tutors like what you are doing and think your doing well. My tutorial was with Darren and Philipa, who I hadn’t shown my work to yet.
The tutorial went well though and it was much more laid back than I thought it was going to be, as we just went around looking at other work individually and then the tutors looked at it a bit more while we went out of the room to fill in a questionnaire.
The main point of the tutorial seemed like an analysis of where we are and what we have been doing, viewing others work, sharing opinions and giving each other feedback and generally on just where we should go from this point to develop it. So overall I found it very helpful.
I new I had to improve my layouts which is one of the main feedback points that I got from the tutorial. I had miss interpreted the meaning of consistency, I thought this meant keeping everything consitent in the layouts but it means more to keep 1 thing in the same place and maybe have the same sized column bars but move them around the page and make the pages more varied with more energy.
Other points:
layouts-more asymmetrical and dynamic
Type-look at more big letters and smaller captions.
Look at reducing the script font use, its good on the huge capitals. Look at Vaughan Oliver’s book Viseral Pleasures for good use of decorative type
Not enough pace and change
Look at Children’s books, good ones at the Tate Modern
However really nice ideas and images, keep going
So now I really feel excited to have more direction in which to take my ideas and progress with the PDF. I will look into different layouts, typography, continuing creating new ideas and finishing off the pieces for my PDF.
“Leeds-based agency Propaganda has produced a haunting animated short in tribute to Sophie Lancaster, the young Goth who was kicked and beaten to death by a mob in August 2007 in Bacup, Lancashire…” (From Creative Review)
Sophie and her boyfriend were attacked, just because of the way they were dressed. This video has been created to raise awareness.
“It is a collaboration between Propaganda, French illustrator and animator Fursy Teyssier, band Portishead (whose track Roads provides a suitably emotive soundtrack) MTV, and make-up company Illamasqua – who fully funded it.”
“The key message of SOPHIE: Stamp Out Prejudice, Intolerance and Hatred, Everywhere – hence the commissioning of this film.”
I have been influenced by many different designers and just other peoples work through the project, which has then help me develop ideas and concepts.
I was going to develop part of a workshop I did with David, with our shoe box collection, by creating a screen print of one of our line drawings. Then I remembered a piece of work I had seen by Helen Musselwhite, created by paper folding.
I had seen it in Creative Review and had also read a bit about how paper folding has become popular. So instead of creating a screen print for this certain piece, I decided to try a bit of paper folding.
Then funny enough just a day or two later I read some more about paper folding in the current issue of CR and there was some beautiful work!
Created for the front cover of Form magazine.
For fashion brand Hermes.
For Starbucks ad.
The three above are by Yulia Brodskaya, a Russian born illustrator. They are so intricate and beautiful. I love it because it is a bit more unusual and still looks so well finished. I definitely want to create another piece using paper folding, with more of this kind of style, for my project. I have a few more letters free to create designs for.
Below Jeff Nishinaka. Paper sculptor, who has been working with the material for many years. Most of his work he creates is in pristine white.
Today I completed a screen printing induction at University. I have previously done screen printing before at Ravensbourne but I wanted to refresh my memory, actually learn how to expose an image onto a screen and learn how to use the equipment at LCC.
Our tutor was great and the induction went well, I just hope it goes well when I go to do it by myself in the near future.
There were just a small group of us for the induction and we chose any sort of image to then photocopy and see how to expose it to screen. All of our images went onto one screen, I photocopied the Christmas tree from the latest issue of Creative Review. I liked all of the small detail making up the inside of the tree. Then we all had a go printing the screen with all these images exposed onto.
I completed the induction as I would like to do some screen printing for my A-Z Pdf project. I am using alot of hand crafted techniques and different processes and want to include some outcomes created by screen printing. Now I will be making some final decisions on what I want to create, in what colour and on what material.
To improve and build confidence, it just takes practice, experience and learning the technique.
My work on Friday was all around spray painting. I am really pleased with the outcomes from the spray painted work, some of it is finished and others I will now be working with more.
It is definitely best to just delve in and get creating. This leads you to realise what ideas have a good outcome to them, how your idea is actually realised, to have different work to experiment with and also new work and ideas get produced from it.
Now I have finished one piece and have some more to work with.
Here is the progress of my day:
The photos aren’t the best but better quality ones will be taken for my final pieces.
On Monday I did some dark room photography. I had completed the induction in my 1st year and had really enjoyed it and liked the outcomes. So because I wanted to use different processes in my project, I decided I wanted to do some dark room photography, also because I had enjoyed doing it. I hadn’t done any dark room work since the induction, so kindly Harpreet reminded me of the process, as I didn’t want to go there and muck anything up.
The idea behind the photograms is that the character to my story, Alice , has been collecting interesting objects along her journey through the enchanted forest. However when an Ogre swoops her up and off her feet all of the interesting objects she has been collecting, fall out of her pocket on to the forest floor. So I wanted to create some photograms, with different objects just scattered, as if they have just landed there.
This photogram was taken on old photo paper, which is why the colour is more faded. I like the effect and texture of the paper, created by it being years old.
About three of the photograms on the new paper didn’t work out. (I bought new A5 photopaper after experimenting with the last piece of the old paper). I like how on the 3 that didn’t work out, you can still see tiny bits of the objects. On this one above you can see the most.
Test strip.
There is even more interesting detail when you view them in real life and up close. Some of the objects have turned out really nice, with a great effect being created. Now I will experiment with them more, take some better photographs and put one of them into a spread to she how they work.
A few weeks back I entered a competition for ECCA-London, where the task was to write up to a 100 word blog on…. what would we do if we were given a free tenner.
I am very pleased to have found out on Tuesday that I am a runner up! As well as winning £50, I will be writing at least two blogs entries for the website in the near future. This will help build my blog writing confidence and provide me with some more good experience.
Here is my entry:
With the tenner that I was given, from the kindness of ecca-london’s heart, I would jump with joy and blow it on sweets and films. Only kidding, really I would fly to London and visit the special ‘Everything for a £1 when you have a free tenner shop’. I would purchase; a trampoline, bouncy castle, swimming pool, swirly slide, rollercoaster, chocolate stall, ball pond, dodgems, music and a maze, all for a £1 each! I would set this up in Hyde Park, where everyone would come and have a go, resulting in hundreds of pounds being made for Charity.
My first tutorial, where we talk about our ideas, show our work, progress and see others work etc., took place last Monday. Mine was with Steve Lloyd and during the tutorial I showed all the work I had, spoke about the type of work I want to do for the project, which is print but didn’t have a firm theme that I wanted to go with for it. After the tutorial it pushed me to start actually looking into ideas, so my original idea of fairytale/make-believe become more prominant in my mind. I started looking into this on the internet, thinking that maybe it would lead me onto a different theme but it didn’t and I began to realise that this is the theme that I wanted to work with.
Decided theme now was: fairytale
Now I just began compiling ideas, looking on the internet at fairytales, work relating to fairytales, ideas for the PDF and then words that i could possibly use for each letter of the alphabet, creating a list.
I new that I wanted to use different processes to create the pieces for each letter of the alphabet. Then I also wanted to create a little story that would run through the alphabet, so on each spread would be a part of the story, featuring a word beginning with that particular letter. Then with this I would link the piece of work I was creating, into the story or create them to be relevant with the story.
Basically I wanted to show my interests; which are print and hand made graphics and then create a little story with the theme of fairytale, that would be different, interesting and a little funny. I hope that this will be a different idea and will appeal to the tutors just for being fresh, interesting and different.
Plus, the VCT that I had decided on going with, that has to link in with our PDF work was ‘Found or <Find>’. I new straight away that this VCT lecture was the one that I was interested in and it links in with some of the kind of work I want to do for the project. I can use old ideas, old work to print over or cut a stencil into, all the materials that I have collected over a long time, new objects that I find, old pictures and so on.
