We were set a brief of taking 100 pictures, e.g 20 of people, 20 of places, 20 of textures etc.
At first I just wanted to take images capturing mostly texture/ textural stuff, but that broadened as the journey did. (I went on a little journey for a day, up to kirkstall Abbey, walked around in kirkstall, and in Calverley countryside, also near where I live.)
Here are some of the best ones, and also others i did'nt get a chance to print out to bring to the session.
After taking the images we took them into the studio and in groups of 2 had to arrange another persons photographs into catagories, after doing so, were given a subject matter relating to your catagorised pictures.
Mine was "Man made v.s Natural" so i was put into a group which had similar themes, then we had to solve a problem. Ours was, people are confused as to what type of Christmas Tree to buy. So we designed some "informative" postcards, I'll post some flicks of them up When I have some.
Well, mywallet suffered I can tell you that for sure.
only kidding, well I'm not but anyway.
Two weeks ago we were set the mailshot brief in which we had to produce a series of ten identical mailshots and post one to the gang up at blenheim. My theme was Recession, linking to the last brief, and well I think What I was doing came across ok, in the crits i got some good feedback.
My idea (very briefly) was to send off a light hearted but informative wallet stylee mailshot which had some handy tips of cutting down spending costs indise, targeted at anyone who spends money on living, using the strapline : Moths in your wallet? - It could well be a parody of a credit card advert out there somewhere...
The message was fine and I enjoyed making the first few, but money (ironically) fell very, very short. So I couldnt afford to finish all of them perfectly.It's something i really should have thought about, bearing in mind my subject matter, but you live and learn. It was mostly little things here and there like printing out more stuff for the cover etc but Just know I intended to!
So here's the finished article which i sent off on Friday:
Im pretty happy with the end result, coul'dve been better.
So here's the resolve i was talking about doing before ...
Its pretty much what I said it would be, thought of yellow is a stain and then ran with the fish thing, Im liking the end result, could have probably drawn it better but yeah! There wasnt really a specific reason for choosing a fish, or it smoking, just through my design ideas, a fish was the best character to stain as it looked the funnyest the worse it got, and as for the ciggarrettem well everyone knows a smoker ends up pretty yellow after a good few years of smoking. (I'm not yellow im nice and peachy.) ANYWAY!
...here's the 10 image sequence depicting Nico the Fishwolfshark's Introduction to Nicotine:
The Images have been doubled up (for scanning ease) So the sequence goes the top one, then the one below it, and then the one next to the top one, and so on.
The Crit at the end of this brief was'nt really the nicest of crits and I think it got to a few people, but anyway it intailed having the work we did as a colour group judged by another colour group, and the party with purple this time round, was'nt so sexy.
After the work had been judged it had to be removed from display on the wall in order of Who's work communicated the concept they had created best. Mine was taken down second to last, which is cool and our Irish wonder boy willy came a noble first, bit his work well deserved first place cause it did the job, he did a series of warning posters depicting hazardous situatios involving yellow fruit and other foods, t'was good, im sure its up on his blog so have a look!
And thats the end of that chapter, a short entry, but good things come in small packages as I'm sure you've all heard/needlessley ridicule...
I'll explain, At the very start of the course, we were each given an object, which was of a certain colour, mine was yellow, we were then told to collect 10 more objects that were different shades of yellow. At the time i wouldn't have guessed why, but this became apparent the other week.
The time came to bring in my objects, and we were put into groups, which were everyone with the same colour object groups, then we had to arrange our objects into some sort of colour wheel, which catagorised the objects we brought in. It was a blag to be fair to decide what to do with all the yellow, yellow objects...
But this was what we eventually came up with:
I don't know how obvious this looks tonally from the image but it looked pretty nice when we'd finished it.
After doing this we then merged our little spectrum with everyone else's different colour spectrums to make one, MEGASPECTRUM
Thing of beauty... Just watch the video...
There must have been about 500 objects or something like that. Quality.
Then we got together with some complimentary colours, and had a big sexy party. It looked like this...
The one below is definitely my favourite, cause its sort of more conceptual than the others...
A day in the life of a yellow...
We've just been given a brief on Concepts and ideas which links to this, as it's about our given colours and what they could be represented as coneptually. I'll do a full post on this later on when I've got more stuff on it, what i've got is a little on the pants side right now, except for my concept and ideas!
Think: YELLOW IS A STAIN
... The idea I've had is to produce a series of illustrative images featuring something becoming progressively more stained yellow. At the moment the first idea branching off from that is a fish smoking, and getting yellower and shrivvelling up and dying. Should look mint.
Or something like that :) Anyway, I'll do a full post on it when its finished.
.. well not all things, but the typeface i made for her
I tried my best to communicate her shyness and aspects of stubbornness as the point was to visually communicate a set of character traits which represented my client/ group partner. I did this by using the linear shading, i thought that helvetica (despite its massive genericness) was an overall happy looking font, so on a personal level i think i tackled it quite well, as the words i chose to put across visually were, Shy, Stubborn and Happy. When it came to the crit, the feedback I Got was good because the group reckoned the font would come across visually better in context. So, i'll probably carry on with it and maybe write her name underneath the alphabet, in the same format as I did the badge. So yeah my client (heather!) seemed to like it so all is well.
And heres the badge Heather made for me :
I think it communicates the chilled out side to me, but it needs a little work i reckon. Don't get me wrong though, its a good Concept... - sweet.
- Swiftly closing the book on that chapter,
SCREEN PRINTING
Had my second print session at Vernon street with the living legend that is Roger, The camp Southern Hardman haha, he's class man. So yeah, In this session me and the "gang" were doing screen prints of The mono- prints i was talking about in an earlier post.
In this post, i have some special guests to talk about what screen printing is, and here he is, Mr Willy Asken and Mrs Emma Price broadcasting live form the Dry Dock!
Big lols ! A few pints had happened prior to that explanation but i think thats a pretty damn good summary - Yeah so basically You're just pushing paint through a photo sensitive mesh onto the paper or whatever surface you choose. You can also overlap colour as much as you want, which is what we were doing with Cyan and magenta.
Here is the actual printing process in a series of images, and then the final results...
So, you use a squeegee to press the paint through the meshed frame onto the paper,
... lift the frame up to push the ink back across ready for the next print,
... then fully lift the frame and remove,
... and then you've got your Print!
Heres mine.. Im not too mad about it cause, well... looks a bit shit really doesn't it.
I think the initial image I used was too heavy with its black tones so it doesn't work that well but still, o.k for a first attempt at screen printing using typography!
First of all i would like to greet you all with a:
"Happy Hangover,"
Hav'nt posted in like a week or two, but I hav'nt had very much free time ever. Trying to get a job (which is now a toss up between Burton and Sainsburys,) doing the work and making beats, canvases and trying to find the time to spend with the people I love, heh.. This first month of BA graphics has been a a hectic one for me. I don't go out at the moment due to lack of money and I.D, so in the hours I spend being a lonesome nictonite hermit, I've been documenting my work a bit for once, So i thought i'd take hold, and document my life / brain a bit. "Sowt it aaht"
First off, I was in the Mac Suite t'other day, sort of boredom surfing, but the boredom Youtube viewing lead me to something I hav'nt seen before and I thought was Quality. Proper class. Just watch it man.
Beautiful. With the blood, the moving and the woah...
I dont know who it's by but its the iconic marsellus wallace scene from Pulp Fiction.
I just wanted to put this up because its really relevant to the current brief I'm doing. The brief is about getting to know a person, but also creating a visual outcome to represent their character. In this case, thats a name badge. The type in the video has so much character and really ties in with that audio as a perfect visual match, and I want to have that strong visual match to represent at least one side of my partner.
That's where I'm slightly stuck.
I think the words i got that described my partner, described two sides of her, So i've been a little blagged as to which side to represent. I'm working it out with notebook work and made quite a bit of progress on a worksheet on friday, I'll Post it when I have a flick of it. Speaking of flicks of work though, I have got some images of the work i produced through the past few weeks to show and tell heh.
After the first group project we did, I got on with printing an alphabet, using only two shapes, My shapes were: Square and Semi- Circle. Here's the result...
Them Brown ones's mine...
Yeah so i like working like this and most definately and defiantly do more of this. Anyway, here's more of my work. Print, Photography, Digital and Illustratory based.
Two of the ten A6 Letter "Rs" I did to visually communicate the word "extend". It was good, the end of that brief was admittantly a bit of a mad rush but I think I like it best that way.
Anyway Following on from that, here's some of the print stuff I did in the workshop at Vernon Street. I know Roger felt my pain... Mono - print is.. sorry to be rude, but pure boring pants. Hate it. Give me screenprinting or etching anyday... non the less heres 1 example of what i was doing.
Mono Printing is done by using a plastic plate which you ink up, then use positive and negative stenicls of whatever you want, in my case letterforms, to prevent or add ink to the image. I think the above print looks a bit like a Drum and bass album cover or something. hehe. Anyway mono printing is'nt as bad as i said it was earlier, it gets really quite theraputic what with the constant cleaning, and inking and turning of phillip and John's handles....
Anyway I digress, here's a mashed fish.
- Drew it in Ben's notebook the other day, heh... I wish I had one for a pet.
Anyway my computer has decided to pack itsself in, so I'm going to give it a rest and make a brew, might make a beat too, as that does'nt require internet! Shall Post later
This is my first ever blog post, so apologies if its pants, I've been sat thinking about how to do my first post inventively, but unforunately I'm a little dry on the ideas front right now.
Anyway, I'm going to use this blog to record my life for the next three years I suppose , which I probably wouldnt have thought about doing if I hadnt have joined the BA(hons) Graphic Design Course, so that's cool. Im going to get straight into it and lay some of my most influencial artists down to give a bit of an insight into what I'm into...
Jeff Soto.
I've Followed Jeff Soto's work for ages now, and i really like how he puts across what he's thinking onto surfaces. His use of colour really appeals to me, and his images have a variety of text and image, which work really well when used together.
Soto's Work is very sleek and polished, and appeals to me because of its strong visuals, the image below, "One night Show" Is a satirical image showing a zombie tupac. The colour really gives this image character. The red and green emphasise the images rotten feel..
Gary Taxali
Recently I found this artist and what he's doing really appeals to me because of its vintage, 1950's look. Despite its vintage look, Taxali's use of graphic design still manages to keep his work looking contempory. The First few images are commission based works done for an author and a musician.
Taxali's work varies from vintage design to Contempory type design for companies, like the one below...
EROSIE
Erosie is a Dutch street artist. I love Erosie's work simply for the fact that the guy is obsessed with bicycles, he draws bikes with such character he really should get more credit.
Ice Cream For Free
Amber gave us a presentation on some various graphic designers, she mentioned ICFF, a Dutch graphic design company and said how they're pretty good at designing event flyers and things like that. Their style really appealed to me, so i thought I'd have a look for myself.
For Nike: I'd wear this stuff if i could find it on a t - shirt, its really tactile and interesting... Here's some other stuff by ICFF that I thought was interesting.
Sleeve graphics for albums looks really good in this style, and is something ill have to look into more later.
Two of the ten A6 Letter "Rs" I did to visually communicate the word "extend". It was good, the end of that brief was admittantly a bit of a mad rush but I think I like it best that way.
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