Take that

Postcards. 100 done and dusted origggggggght.

I LIKE

BLOGGING.

It provides the perfect oppurtunity to share crazy rediscovered music found on my ipod whilst playing cards with my flatmates. Good video too. 

Typography

What is typography? Well, out of the choices given to us, I personally liked the definition that typography is the management of letters. However, given other ways of describing the word also made me think more about what typography was. New ideas were further explored by questions given to us by Paul, which we had to try and answer in the first task of the morning. For example, we were asked: do we need spaces between words and do we need punctuation? After attempting the first task, we then had to analyse a variety of letterforms by choosing one to then scale, invert, section, layer, outline, deconstruct and then recompose.

'Recompose'

Later on, we then had to write our names by tracing on to the baseline as carefully as possible, this took me longer than most(!) As this was done on tracing paper, I decided to take a photo of my work with a pattern behind it, which I then retouched a little in Photoshop.

After lunch we were given a worksheet and the task to explore type by rendering or tracing the words. from the typographic specimen. Out of the list of words, I chose the word 'soft' to experiment with. I thought the outcomes were satisfactory and fulfilled the brief, however they weren't the most dynamic or exciting looking. I think this was to do with the choice of word, as the type had to match the meaning. If I were to do the task again, I would perhaps choose 'Hard' or 'Down' to explore instead.The end of the day was a chance to have a look at everyones work, which I always really enjoy doing, and sum up what we had seen and learnt with Paul. I think there was a lot to be taken out of this workshop, and I will definitely use some of the techniques used in other work.
 

'Composition'

'Repetition'

 

Layout//Out&About

L A Y O U T

In the morning, we had a Layout workshop led by Jo Spencer who is actually a working Graphic Designer who teaches on the side. Jo basically gave us all a tutorial in the program 'InDesign', which was really useful as although I have worked in InDesign a little before, I never had tutoring in it and am definitely still a novice! As well as learning the basics, we were guided through how to make a page layout and how to convert it in to a PDF file, something that we will have to master to be able to progress in the course. Below is my experimentation in InDesign, oh and the text doesn't mean anything so no need to try and make sense of it!

O U T  &  A B O U T

The afternoon session was led by Paul, who took us to the 'Museum of Everything', located on the
corner of Regents Park Road and Sharpleshall Street. As soon as we got there, we were a little disappointed to find out there was no photography allowed whatsoever. In fact, there were warnings of £1000 fines and DEATH inside the museum, so I safely obeyed the rules.

I did however take a few photos on the way to and outside the museum...

'Make tea, not war', Souvenir from the M.O.E, Outside the M.O.E

Once inside the Museum, we wandered around Peter Blake's exhibition, which featured collections he had started from the age of 14, something I think I should perhaps get started on, if I ever want to present a collection as impressive as his. There were a variety of things on show such as circus memorabilia, dolls, mirrors, rocking horses, taxidermy (the list goes on..), which was a really unusual collection and not something you ordinarily come across. I copied down a quote from Peter Blake that I thought was quite representative of the exhibition and summed it up well, he said, 'Exhibition 3 is as much about the emotions and memories hidden in each object, as it is about the objects themselves.'

I M A G E

I'm working a little backwards here...

We actually took part in the image workshop with Darren last week, however due to the untidy state of my room, the misplacement of the camera hindered the blog updating. Anyway, camera found I am now able to upload some of the things we were taught and what I took away from the workshop. As well as learning to draw (again!) and mapping, collage was the main focus of the day, and the most enjoyable for me as I have worked quite a bit with collage before out of choice. 

Darren also casually mentioned that we would need to complete a further 100 postcard sized colleges in our spare time, how kind of him. Below are a few examples of my work in progress.

Narrative workshop

To start off the day in David's workshop, we first completed a task to do with cropping images. The aim was to choose 9 images and then, working in groups, crop them to produce different effects, for example cropping to enhance the emotional impact, cropping to define etc.

We then had to work individually to produce two narrative sequences consisting of three images found in the newspaper we had to bring along with us. I found this quite hard, as my chosen newspaper 'The Times' didn't have a lot of choice concerning suitable images. However, I think that my narrative sequence did fulfill the brief and looks quite successful.

The final task of the day, was in my opinion the best part of the workshop. We had to cut out all the images, headings and sub-headings left in our newspapers and then apply the headings randomly to selected pictures, giving different meanings to the images. After everyone stuck them up on the wall, it was fun to see what everyone had come up with, and evident that humour was the most popular thing considered whilst making the collages.

These were two of my preferred outcomes from the final task of the workshop.

I Wonder

Last night, I was fortunate enough to be able to go and see a talk by Marian Bantjes at St Bride Library, a designer who I have respected since discovering whilst researching my first ever design project. Although primarily talking about the launch of her new book, 'I wonder', Marian also discussed her life as a designer and some of her views on the industry.

 

 

 

Something Marian Bantjes said that interested me was about her approach to her design methods. Bantjes mentioned that she enjoyed work with organic, flowing forms, however she enjoyed visual alignment and balanced work, as 'structure and order are calming'. Another intriguing comment made was that graphics is now too used to simplicity, therefore complicity is a wonder.

Something to bare in mind, perhaps?

Oh yes, before I forget, who was I to meet at this talk but the editor of Eye Magazine, John L. Walters. Cue stumbling over words. Oh dear.

Hello!

As a dedicated blog reader, I have always wanted to set up my own, however it seems something important always managed to get in the way, (magazine reading, TV, eating..). Now, however, it seems like I have no excuse but to write down all the stuff in my head on to this blog and I personally see this as a good thing as everyones head need de-cluttering once in a while. In this blog I hope to document my journey through the course, but also to find out who I am as a designer through other artists work and various exhibitions. Ahh here it goes...