Somerset House – Pick Me Up

From my last visit to Pick me up exhibition in Somerset house I left the place feeling so inspired. Pick me up is an exhibition that selects the work of 13 international up and coming illustrators and graphic artists who have graduated or set up their own studio within the last three years.

What I loved the most was the typographical work. It’s one of many reasons why I decided to go, after reading about this exhibition in Creative Review. I am very fascinated about type and distortion.

 

 

 

 

 

On my way around the exhibition I was pleased to find that the artist I featured in my Grafik Takeover Magazine George Douglas had his work in the exhibition. George Douglas is based in Edinburgh currently on his final year at Edinburgh University. His work is collage based and he loves playing with found images from magazines.

Saddle stitching with thread for the first time using very simple equipment

For a while now, bookbinding has been something I’ve wanted to try out but felt it was difficult. After watching a  video tutorials I felt it was easier than I thought and it’s possible to do this without spending any money. For this type of zine I’ve decided that saddle stitching is the neatest and more successful option. The equipment I used was:

• Black crochet thread
• 4 Clips
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Pencil to mark
• Extra thin awl

From this experience I’ve learnt that trying new options can pump up the quality of your work. As well as give you ideas for future projects and inspiring fellow students. 

‘Am I convincing?’ Poster has been featured in Ficciones Typografika

Joana Santos, Andrew Sosnowski, Michael Ahrain, Ficciones Typografika 1162-1164 (72”x36”). Installed on April 17, 2016. “Burning Questions” by students from Press Pass Studio led by Angharad Lewis and Sarah Boris at The Cass, London Metropolitan University. More: http://ficciones-typografika.tumblr.com/

This poster ‘Am I convincing’ has been created to answer some of my burning questions, as a final year university student a lot is in my mind. To start off, these burning questions began growing when I started doing research for my dissertation, which, is about whether university guides and supports students through a successful career path.  I knew that the education system was made in a way that it does not support children’s intelligence. According to Ken Robinson when children are very young, education is not helping them develop their creativity because they are being forced to pass academic subjects, such as English, Maths and Science rather than being educated. More about this topic will soon be uploaded on to my dissertation link.

Creative process grows in imaginative minds

This message can be interpreted in many different ways. It could be an inspirational quote ‘Creative process grows in imaginative minds’ however in this video, the purpose is to show the reality about the education system. We will see two different perspective views throughout the view. Keeping more to the reality, ‘Creative process dies in confused minds’ will be a replacement at points.

Music

Music is possibly the most important element of this video because it is what withdraws the attention of viewers. A simple way to make sure the right to use an artist song is granted is by visiting free commercial websites.

I’ve tried to think about ways of adding interesting sounds, for example while type is moving or disappearing. I believe this will make the video more interesting and exciting visually. In my previous post there are some photos of type animation that I’ve created. As each letter appears and moves in the frame, a sound of a clock ticking will appear. The reason why the clock sound works for this is because it creates suspense and excitement about what will happen next.
Screenshot from the video of myself stamping a message.

After showing this video to my studio, I got really nice and useful feedback on how to push this idea further. One of the suggestions was to leave it outside for the rain to destroy the paper. I’ve gone a slightly different direction by using black watery block paint instead because after trying to spray the paper with water it would not show much results. The letters did get a little bit runny black ink but that was the most I could get out of them.

In the photo underneath, I experimented with spraying the poster black and then letting the ink drain on the floor. There was a little bit of black ink left in the container, so I had the idea of covering the words that are not important. ‘Creative minds’ were the only words left, creating a question mark around the words made it look interesting. At the same time the question mark looks like the head of someone which related to the words.

Let’s make it real – manifesto

My manifesto focuses on what is graphic design and why people have the wrong understanding of what we do.

In order to challenge myself I’ve decided that the only way to  show that we are creatives who write their ideas on paper rather than sit at their laptop all day was to make my manifesto by hand  without any sort of digital media. The only time a computer will be required is to put the images together in indesign to make the booklet and to export the photographs used in this manifesto.

Since I was not allowed to use a computer at all for the design, it meant that I could not use digital type for this. The way I overcome this problem was by buying letter stamps to write down my messages. I scrunched up the sheet of paper before stamping on it to create this texture look to it. I am really pleased with the outcome because creating this poster has taught me that nice work can be produced with very simple materials and techniques. I must admit before starting this project I was very concerned with how the ideas were going to be executed.

Letter stamps that were purchased for this brief.

Brighton University Show 2013

The evolution of my burning question.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Sketching to scanning to print making.

It’s been a long journey, but the question still remains. Am I convincing?

To make the question even more interesting I have decided to explore my burning question using different print methods. So we was given a brief at week 3 to produce a poster design that best expresses my burning question. Firstly I wanted my question to be hard to read which relates to the question itself. I explored different printing materials because I felt it would help me understand the question and perhaps answer it eventually. Paper, texture, ink, colour choices.. It became fun to produce these posters. In fact it gave me a greater chance of understanding the question and hopefully get some answers. At times it felt as if i was answering my burning question. By that i mean, how far can I push this idea. Am I happy with it? Shall I try something new? Shall I screen print it? Or shall I spray paint it? What colour to use? What paper texture and so on..

Am I convincing? Developed mono prints

After debating with myself what print method to use, I’ve decided to make both mono prints and screen prints. I think it will be a nice contrast to show Sara next Tuesday (November 24). I’ve been working with a variety of materials, it’s been exciting to experiment with different paper textures. The results were fantastic, I prefer the textured paper to normal paper. In the photo above I used handmade paper made in India that I found in the art shop. I really like the contrast between the black and the beige paper, it certainly works better with a darker background colour.

CIP: Educating the next generation

So, It’s been a few days since I last posted. I’ve been extremely busy generating a new project. It’s part of CIP to produce a video.

Task: Based on Kickstarter

-> create a video 1 min minimum

 

On Friday we were in groups of 4 and we shared some of our ideas and had very useful feedback. To be honest I knew exactly what song I wanted to play in the video however my concept was still a bit unfinished. I wanted to combine this video with my Final Major project but I was not sure how it would fit. My final major project is going to be based on my dissertation. I want to explore the education system and how it is effecting some creatives. Therefore, for the video I will explore education and creativity. It is going to be a very simple video because I believe it will be more effective. The song that will be played in the background is going to be a classical music played in the piano by Yann Tiersen – Comptine d’un autre ete. It’s a very beautiful song – one of my favourite.

 

Here’s a few photos of behind the scenes.

Camera: Canon 5D mark ii. Lense: 18-75mm