Sunday, November 24, 2013

week 4 - calligraphy

In calligraphy, we worked with paint brushes and ink to create words and sentences in a calligraphic style. The flat head brushes worked the best in making the letters thicker at the bottom, in the traditional calligraphy style. We started off by writing the alphabet, capitals and lower case letters, with the paintbrush, this naturally causes the letters look like calligraphy. I then experimented with writing my name and various sentences to practice the writing style. The aim was then to create a bottle label for an alcoholic beverage. I decided to focus on a lager brand named 'Silly and Tone's Lager'. This was inspired by some of my relatives with these names that make lager in their home in Sussex. 

week 4 - word play

The next day we spent time playing with words. We were given an alphabet in different fonts and influence of a book of word plays. I created six boxes with different words hand done. This was then supporting work to creating an album cover of a made up band. I created a band called 'Cramped' with the album name 'A Delicate Flow'. With this idea, I created an image with the text on using both photoshop and inDesign. I then put it on a CD using these programs as well.


Monday, November 18, 2013

week 4 - illustration

Today we were concentrating on colour and illustrating text, we started off in the morning by creating a colour wheel of primary and secondary colours, moving on to doing colour charts. We then created our own illustrations with paint using only colours from one chart we creating. We did three of these illustrations to use three ranges of colours. For the text I was illustrating, I used a religious poem printed on glass, which is part of a collection of vintage projecting pieces I have recently been given. They are different religious texts and poems with beautiful patterns and detail surrounding them on glass lined with lead. I used the lyrics of each verse to inspire my paintings.



This illustration is from a religious poem, this is the verse:

Smooth let it be or rough,
It will still be the best,
Winding or straight, it leads
Right onward to Thy rest.



week 3 - book cover

On wednesday we were sent to the library and given a brief to look for books on subjects that we are interested in for degree. We were then to create a book cover for a book inspired by the already existing ones we found in the library. Out of the choice of themes given, I decided to do some research into packaging design as it is a field I am interested in studying further in. I found the packaging design section and had a look at some interesting books, I took into account how the covers were designed, front and back. We were given a template sheet to allow us to explore a range of ideas, I finally decided to do my book cover on tea packaging design. This is because I have always found some tea boxes and packets beautiful and it was inspired by a book I found on biscuit boxes.

After some experimental designs, I ended up with this final design on paper.


Editing this on the computer, I came up with my final design of the book cover.



Saturday, November 16, 2013

week 3 - photoshop and Indesign

Using these two programs, we were to make a movie poster for the film coming out in 2014 about the 33 miners who were stuck underground in 2010. It was to be shown on the tube like all the posters seen on the escalators. We searched the internet for photographs on the subject and picked the best one for a poster. I edited the photo in photoshop, cropping and changing the levels etc to make it look better for the poster. I decided to use a still taken from TV because I felt it had lots of meaning. This was the original photograph:


The picture was pixilated as it had come from TV, I smoothed some of it out but left the obvious blur, this is because I like the honest, real effect it has on the poster, showing that the film is depicting a real story. After doing some research on movie posters and what makes the best ones, I put the edited photo in InDesign, added text and discovered some tricks from the program, I ended up with my movie poster. 





Thursday, November 7, 2013

Tate Modern- Mira Schendel

I recently visited the Tate Modern to see the exhibition on Mira Schendel's work. It was amazing to see how much variation she showed in her work from paintings to prints to installations, one of the main themes I noticed explicitly was the interesting use of shape and form. She was very in to simplicity of shape yet made it complex with material and visual display. There was much use of letters in her work, a specific favourite was the jumbled letters on paper hanging from the wall as a collection, complimenting each other in their placement. 





Also looking at her smaller work, she created some inspiring booklets showing type in different forms. She created shapes of letters and made words through pages. The way she put things together and experimented was very clever and relevant to typography of today. 





Graphics - week 2

For the second week of the graphics pathway, we started a project on creating our own manifesto. At first this was confusing as there was no official theme, the manifesto was to be 'personal'. It took me a while to think of a good idea and a detailed brainstorm in my sketchbook, but I came up with the theme of dance. I've been doing dance since I was four so I am quite familiar with it and it has become a common part of my life, I have always loved it which is why it is personal to me. The manifesto will simply encourage and inspire people to include themselves in dance more frequently, in any form.

After some planning, I made a draft of the manifesto as a poster. At the end of the day we put everyone's draft posters/start to a poster together on the wall. Everyone took very different approaches and there was a large selection of ideas.





I needed to make my manifesto less literal in explanation, it need to be more self explanatory and less detailed and all over the place. I produced a range of layout ideas in my sketchbook to find one that was right for the theme. I also took a series of photographs in movement of people in my dance class, in their natural environment. I experimented with placing these photos in and around the draft layouts.

I decided what I was going to write and what photograph I was going to use. After trying out many fonts, I picked one that worked best with the poster.
This is the photograph I picked for my manifesto before it was edited on photoshop. The image was done with my camera on very slow shutter speed to create a ghosty dynamic effect.


After some drafts I decided to do some more research on actual magazine covers. I like the look of the 'the gentlewoman' magazine because it concentrates more on the actual photography and subject matter rather than the title and graphics. Seen as the photograph is quite strong in itself I wanted to use minimal text so that it did not take away from the image. After editing it in Photoshop and InDesign, my final manifesto looked like this:






Saturday, November 2, 2013

GRAPHICS PATHWAY week 1

For the introduction week of the graphics pathway, we started off my being put into groups and given a letter with a theme to create a film. I was put in group N with the theme of 'TIME'. We brainstormed the theme in depth and came up with many ideas of how we can represent 'time'. 


After some chatter, we decided on the idea of change throughout time. This included decay in fruit and food, cooking, change in the days, seasons, streets and general movement through time. We made a storyboard of a simple outline of the film in six frames.


We decided to all film something different at home and put them all together by editing on one computer on friday. I chose to film cooking. I set up my camera in my kitchen and thought of food that physically changes whilst cooking. One idea I had was frying bacon, so I took some footage of bacon in a pan. It got to about 10 minutes long to be broken down for the  movie. 


Another obvious change in cooking is water boiling. I filmed a pan with water boiling from cold.


On friday we then put the film together with IMovie. In class we also filmed an apple turning brown with a bite taken out of it and created a one minute movie of how things change throughout time. We posted the movie on youtube and showed it to the class. The film is found through this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2nONjqHcU0

Each person in the group also made a poster for the film about time. I did mine on photoshop and went for a minimalistic poster.


These are ones from other members of the group: