OUGD104 Self Evaluation

Well. Its been a whirlwind!

What Skills have you developed through this module and how effectively have you applied them?

I think my skills in typography and paper crafting, also idea generation have improved and also my interest in type. The type skills have developed mainly in illustrator with kerning and line spacing etc and I think they have been applied pretty effectively and this has started something for me. I have sparked for type and have been doing allot of research into it. I want to produce some Type lead projects in the near future! Although, I think there was allot more potential for more skills to develop but I didn't take advantage of all the sessions and projects as well as i should have done necessarily.

 What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process? 

I have done more photography then I generally would and also allot of collaborative research, such as collecting examples of everyone in the studio's handwriting and also signatures. This helped push my lines of enquiry forward in the what is a line brief and lead to some interesting experiments, and I also think this lead on to the idea for my final resolution. Without my collaborative  research, I wouldn't have got to where i did with my what is a line resolutions.

What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

I think content is a strength in the what is a line resolution and also the layout. This will definitely help me in later projects and is something i am starting to grasp and utilize and want to develop further. 

Earlier will also commented on my perspective drawings, though minimal he said I have a good "sense Of Perspective" This made me wonder why I didn't do more of the perspective drawings. The few I did, I actually really enjoyed, and i think it would beneficial to develop on to push my illustration, (especially digital) forwards and improve the overall aesthetic and accuracy of them.

What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?

My weakness at the moment is definitely the fact that I always seem to limit myself in terms of variety of media. because using different medias can really transform work into something really special. The marker pen in my comfort zone, and in allot of respects i need to ditch it and pick up some different mark making tools, as well as use CS4 better, just to make my presentation of work better. For example, the what s a line final has some distorted text on it due to how i was using indesign this does make the presentation look sloppy form what was a nice loking Pdf until i noticed it. I also need to stop rushing things and put more thought into initial idea generation and also research in order to give myself a better line of enquiry and be able to push my work forward in terms of design and also context.

Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

Next time I will: 1.  most definitely do more initial research and keep things to more of a concise point instead of going off on crazy tangents which in the end, only waste time and dont actually get anywhere.

2.-Cliche- manage time during long briefs more effectively and put the time aside to do work often in order to build up a strong resolution and back work.

3.Experiments using different media. This would transform my work into something different and also broaden the lines of enquiry in terms of where i want projects to go.

4.FOCUS! i would benfit from this because my work would improve!

5.dedicate more time on long briefs instead of doing the odd hour, spending solid amounts of time creates solid amounts of work and that is something that would have greatly benefitted this project.

How would you grade yourself on the following areas:

(please indicate using an ‘x’) 

 

5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor

Attendance 4

Punctuality 4

Motivation 2

Commitment 2

Quatity of work produced 2

Quality of work produced 3

Contribution to the group. 3

What Is A line final resolution

Two pages from the PDF, The PDF is entitled Legibility of type, and explores and challenges the legibility of type. The PDF is also educational and teaches about anatomy of type, point size, tone of voice, and type character. I have printed out a hard copy of every page of the pdf, because i couldnt find anywhere to upload it at the time being. There are 10 pages in total. Im going to persist with the uploading of the actual pdf!

What is a line type developments

These were done prior to the pdf development, was just experimenting with different mehtods of distorting and enhancing lines of type. to explore legibility of type.

Photography, Viscom

Without Flash

With Flash

Macro Shot

A couple of selective focus Shots

Long Exposure

What Is a line- book content research

Examples of pre existing content I have been finding useful to fill and puch my book content forawrd.

What is a line, Final Proposition

From my most recent crit feedback I had some mixed responses, from this and my research and development, I think it is necessary to produce a small book about legibility, which is more educational, but still has an aesthetic and experimental viewpoint ( so I can use this as a means of doing typographic experiments and include samples of colour layering with text and also word layering and repetition.)

Pages I will be including in the book are:  

• Anatomy of upper and lower case text
  
• Ancient fonts/ Examples of legibility from the past
• Word Recognition
• Case legibility
• comparing legibility of various typefaces
• experimentation with text layering, scaling and repetition to question legibility.
• Examples of handwritten text and signature and comparisons between hand written text and also digital typeface based text.

This content will tie all my research and developmental work together and also explores the use of line in the literal sense of the point that text is comprised of a series of lines and patterns and our brains recognise these patterns as either legible, or illegible.

The Images above are developmental examples of where this has been going over the last week or so. Depending on how much time I have during this week, I would like to bind the book in an interesting way and spend a good amount of time on final presentation. If not I will have to produce a mock up which solely focuses on content and aesthetics of the content, to give an idea of how the final resolution would have looked.

What is a line research - type and legibility.

Typeface: Firefly By Troika.

The use of simple shapes and strange anatomy of the type makes this font clearly more legible in lower case than it is in upper case, a good example is the letter "E" in both cases.

An end of year design exhibition brochure by Trokia.

The lines of text in different colours are attractive and draw the eye to it, but the main feature of this piece of design is the stark black text up the right hand side of the work.
A Page from a design book by Troika.

This book has some graphic and typographic headings and sub headings, making the subject of the Dps or Sps clear, you dont even necessarily have to read the content to know what it is fully about...

What is a line - photography research

Hair line
Exaust lines
Show an aircraft's position in the sky

Lines of light

What is a line Statement of intent and artist research

I've been collecting signatures and bits of handwriting over the past few weeks and I've come to the conclusion I need to be looking into legibility of handwriting either compared with and just juxtaposed with typography, I have also been doing "lines" You know, like you did where you were in the shit at high school, I found this by Fudgegraphics which is really nice and seems to have the same idea...

Im thinking of using the message "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog" because its the classic legibilty phrase and it also uses every letter in the alphabet. This idea lead me onto starting to play around with childrens handwriting textbooks and how legibilityimproves over time with the gaining of knowlege and experience.

Anyway as for the final piece I was thinking of doing a series of screenprinted canvases , one with type, another with type and hadwriting, and another with just handwriting, as a sort of visual comparison and juxtaposition between totally legible and ether less legible or totally illegible. Its finally starting to CLICK.

What is a line? Statement of intent

I started by looking into graffiti tags, for the continuous line quality, then since the crit, I've been collecting signatures and autographs, and also looking into if a signature can reflect the writers personality.

I want to look into alphabets and typefaces that are maybe similar to handwriting and graff tags.

Depending on where the research takes me, I might produce one/ a few alphabets or typefaces, could be influenced by the tags signatures but also the hieroglyphics and symbols I have been researching and collecting. I want to leave this fairly open ended at the moment, so I will post up another blog in the near future that is less vague.

Peace!

Came across this

Really like it, I incorporated the main symbol in this piece in one of my tags in the little book I was working in. Some really good utilisation of line. Boshank

What is a line? continued

My previous post was focused on graffiti mark making. As the quote I am responding to is "A mark indicating connection, boundaries or postion" , I wanted to also look into other uses of line, be in ancient, instructional or gestural. but all with a common clause, all these methods of mark making are seemingly relevant to social communication in some way.

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics are interesting to me because they are interpretations of language through iconic line Eg the papyrus leaf representing E or I. Hieroglyphics were presented to the educated masses in the same form graffiti is, so a tenuous link.
Line is also often communicated in the form of instructional information to make instructions clearer to us in a visual and often linear way, It is known most people respond better to visual instruction.
Musical notation is comprised of lines and dots, and runs across a line to document, where melodies fit into each other and  other things like tempo etc.
Road signs are in a way capitalist graffiti, you are forced to follow their rules. ANYWAY, they are also comprised of lines and most of the instructional qualities on the signs themselves are linear.
In the broader sense, I think all these methods of mark making, relative to communication are all similar to tagging, opinions of tagging aside for the moment, as for now I'm just looking at it for its linear qualities and how the lines connect, or dont connect in accordance for the artists personal and visual end result.

What is a line?

I chose to respond to the quote "connection, distance or baoundary."  At the moment Im focusing mostly into the connection side of this, I have been producing a book of tags and words that have been produced without (hardly) taking the pen off the page, or trying to simply connect all the lines. Anyway, in that vain, Amber showed us this, which I really liked, and also thought was relevant to my research with the tags, because of its linear qualities.

http://www.thedirectorsbureau.com/media/archive/GM_GoldenCage.mov

I wanted to put the video on here, but it wouldnt let me, the link works though.

Ive also gathered a bit of secondary imagery Relating back to my tags.

Photoshop session 1

Granted, I missed the first photoshop workshop, but i think I've caught up. This is the first ever photomontage I've ever done that's ever looked like anything.  The colour balance is wrong for some obscure reason, the blues should be orange and yellow, but i think it looks pretty nice in blue anyway...

Fairly happy with it, I'll probably be doing alot more of this now I've got photoshop at home!

Peace out homeslices

Tuesday's art

On Tuesday I had a bit of free time at the start of the day, and with no work to do or hand in, i decided to do a canvas. Looked like this ...

Just flip your head horizontally to the right to see it properly. I had a wee problem with uploading the image i had edited.

peace out I'm off to take some photos.

Are you visually educated?

Every Tuesday eve for the past few weeks my group have been having visual studies. It's cool we get to cut stuff out!

On a serious note, I'm finding these sessions really helpful - For one thing they are getting me back on the ball with my illustrations a little. Did this in one of the sessions:

I had to visually communicate two words, one being "Bear" and the other was "Scary". I really liked it and wanted to further it as an illustration, so here it is: