Tonight Mathew I'm going to be...

Brief: to recreate an iconic photograph of a person but you still had to be recognisable as yourself.

After much deliberation I decided to undertake David Bowie's iconic album cover Aladdin Sane. I love his music and really wanted to attempt the image, especially as we took the photos in the studio; being able to use a professional camera and lighting.

Here's the final image compared to the real thing.

Partick Burgoyne - On Liking

On the 25th Novemeber I went to see Patrick Burgoyne the creative director of creative review give a talk as part of the typographic circle's series of talks.

He spoke about why we like and don't like design and how you come across difficulties when dealing with clients who just dont like your designs and possibilties to overcome these.

He spoke a lot about the psychology behind the idea of liking baked up by experiments that people had conducted based on for exmaple how we come to love a particular song and ultimately hate it after listening to it too many times.

I found this so interesting sinceI've always had a love for psychology and it tied in so nicely with graphic design - making me realise sometimes people are just not going hate what you do no matter what you say.

At the end of the talk he did a kind of question and answer session with the audience. They were bribed with limited edition moleskines and they told their stories of difficult clients and how they overcame issues with them.

One guy told the story of his boss who happened to be colour blind. The team showed him their idea which he hated and said come back in half an hour with a completely different colour scheme. So they went away and did nothing. Came back and showed it to him again and he absolutely loved it.

However a vast majority of people agreed that as long as you provide a narrative as to how you reached your final conclusion people SHOULD be interested in your ideas and what you have to say. This will definitely be something to bear in mind in the future.

At the end we all got a really nice poster where you can hang it either way up depending on whether you want to dislike or like something.



Overall i 'liked' the talk.

Building and destroying comic sans b

Another induction our group took was a 3d workshop where we had to build one of the top ten worst typefaces out of wood. I was assigned comic sans b and although i am pleased with the final product i still hate looking at it.

From doing this project i feel far more confident in using the workshops and in experimenting with materials; it would be inetersting to see what other materials you could end up making type out of and how you could photograph 3d type.

Here is the working process. I decided to make mine fairly small; i liked the idea of being able to carry it round with me when we have to finally destroy it because you never know where you might end up!

To begin with we had to stick a cutout of our letter onto the wood and then cut about a milimetre away from the edge.









After cutting out the middle i then had to sand down all the edges.



Playing around with the final products.





I then decided to vacuum form my letter so that i would have a mould to fill for my second destroy letter where you could use any material as long as it is white.




However, the purple plastic was so strong that my b was literally stuck inside the plastic and there was nothing else i could do but to cut it out and ruin the mould. So i had to redo the vacuum forming with a thinner white plastic.



And here is the final b being painted and photographed.

Letterpress Workshop

On the 12th November our group went to Graham Bignell's letterpress studio in north London. Our class is creating a piece for his exhibition. Our piece is called 'The Cockney Alphabet' and is a play on the alphabet you learn when you are a chiled i.e. A is for Apples B is for Bananas and so on.

I was given the letter F and my sentence was F for Lump or as it would sound Heffalump.

I found the day a really interesting experience I had never done letterpress before and it really made you think about layour and white space and the choice of typefaces and how they are perceived by others and what they convey.

The physicality of letterpress was also really interesting, compared to being sat in front of a computer screen you literally have to build white space . It also gives you a greater appreciation for those who still use this method and those who had to use it in the past and in my eyes it has heightened my appreciation for it as an art form in itself.

Although it was frustrating at times when certain sizes weren't available or the white space wasn't working correctly it is something i would definitely want to try again and experiment with further.

Here are some photos of the studio.







Initial prints trying to decide on a font that felt lumpy or overweight in some way.



Two really interesting stamps i found; the Fat Boy Slim logo and the Zero 7 logo.




My final block with the full text and border in ready to be printed.



Our group's alphabet all on one sheet together.




My prints from the choosing of the letter 'F'. In the end i decided to go with the one in the top right because it really felt the weightiest and had no sharp edges; it felt like everything was spilling over.



I then tried out two variations of the 'for lump' text; one which was also very overweight and the other which contrasted greatly accentuating the heaviness of the F.



I then experimented with borders and really liked the rounded lines. I felt it sat nicely with the F. In the end i went with the fatter text for the secons piece of type so the whole piece felt very heavy and lumpy.

Wow and Flutter

On the 14th Novemeber I went to the Onedotzero adventures in motion festival at the BFI. Over the weekend there was a series of screenings showing the latest in motion graphics and film. Each screening was themed and I decided to go to Wow and Flutter

'sharing the most innovative and surprising new work across motion graphics, character animation, typography, animation and experimental works from fresh talent and celebrated masters who blur and explode traditional notions of what moving immage can be. and international selection from a programme now synonymous with forecasting the future of moving image.'



Although the screening was about an hour and a half it seemed only a few minutes. There was such a vast range of techniques and styles but also some were inentionally humrous and some of more a serious nature.

A few that stuck out to me were

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

for the amazing animation skills and the ability to capture such emotion within an animation

CHOP CUP from :weareom: on Vimeo.

for the ending

and



just because its funny.

Our Shrine

New Brief: to produce a shrine in pairs. The shrine will combine the two passions presented in the 'I Just Adore' project.

I have been paired with Sofia which means our shrine will consist of gigs and fat cats.



We will progress more with this project during the week; coming up with ideas of how to combine the two.

I Just Adore

The Brief: to give a three minute independent presentation to the year group enititled, 'What I'm Passionate About' or 'What I'm Just Nuts About'.

At first I found this project quite difficult. There are many things which I am interested in for example shoes or the colour red, but i didn't feel i could get up and say im just nuts about them. but the one thing which I am passionate about, music, at first just seemed a little bit obvious to do a presentation on.

I then thought about just choosing a particular song or an artist. It was only when I went home for the weekend, I started rumaging through all my old gig tickets I thought it might be nice to do something with them since for me they are an important part of why I love live music so much; having the ticket to keep years after you went to the event.

In the end, after much deliberation about what I was going to do with the tickets, I thought it would be nice to portray my experience of going to gigs through the tickets.

Here's the final animation.

Also massive thankyou to Miriam and Pepe for repeptitively moving tickets and flashing lights!

Logo Project

The Brief: to produce a symbol which communicates study in higher education.

The first task was to collect together 100 logos which are linked by a theme. It started as computer related logos then moved onto internet service providers since there were so many!

We then had to produce 100 logos of our own. Some of which were made during a day drawing workshop and some were done on our own. Out of these 100 1 was then chosen to be worked on.

For me, it was the inky line in the second row down. I think the some of the other logos were just shapes that had kind of lost their meaning...logos trying to be logos. I think I had also used regular circles far too much; the smudge had a nice analogue feel to it with a sense of movement.

The themes I was working with were using others to help improve your own work and gaining knowledge as you progress through the course and having a sense of momentum when working.
The chosen logo but more refined. Testing out thickness of line size and filling of the circles, the length of the logo and using anologue or digital circles.



After showing these, it was felt the logo looked to much like a comet; the line down the centre just wasn't working. After many more attempts i began to layer up the lines of ink i had done to give it more depth and so the grain became more obvious. I also made sure there was a more gradual gradient. I think it really progressed from the comet stage and am really happy with the result.

Final logo: Acquiring knowledge and skills as you progress through the course and keeping a sense of momentum when working.

Double Page Book Spread

After an initial introduction to Photoshop we were then set a project; to design a double pagebook spread in pairs using the layout to interact with each other across the pages.

We had use of a green screen so we were able to incorporate backgrounds taken from other location and extract ourselves easily from the screen.

Me and Sam decided to play around with the idea of reflections. We took our photos in a large mirror and swapped my reflection with his.

The second aspect of the project was to create a an effective replica of a book or magazine because it can be used as an interesting way to show your work.

So after making the image we then had to place it into a photo of a magazine and had to add shadows and highlights to make it more realistic.

The original photo of the magazine

The magazine with the background extracted
The magazine with the text extractedPracticing the shadows and highlights
The final image to be placed in the book

The final image.

The Unilever Series: Al Weiwei (The Seed Exhibition)

Yesterday I went to go see the newest piece to take over The Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern by Al Weiwei.

It was amazing to see the millions of replica seeds but yet frustrating that you couldn't walk on them because of the dust. Even being able to touch them would have added an extra quality to the exhibition.

There was also an accompanying film showing the process of making the seeds. Taking over a small town in China, it was funny how all the workers had no idea what they were making and painting the 'seeds' for and how 'the seed man' had almost turned into an urban legend in the town.

I found the exhibition interesting yet i felt it needed something more; to stand in the middle of the seeds i think would have helped communicate the idea of the individual in the masses far better.

Here is a link to information about the exhibition