Laser Printing

At the start of the day we were taken around the prototyping room and shown the different machinery and equipment that are available to the whole class. We were going to be using the laser cutter to create a design from either our name, piece of poetry or etc. I decided to laser the design I created for my album cover (type layout week) as I felt it was simple but would be effective for this task. I also wanted to develop this design further and see how the work could be created with different materials. During the designing stage I decided to cut out a circle shape to give the work another feel. to use the laser we had to create the design in illustrate using a template that we downloaded from the Ravensbourne intranet. This when I could play around with size and edit the colours of the letters/shapes to determine how the laser machine would cut out of draw out the words. Black would etch the letter out, blue would draw out the design and red cuts out this area. I used a red circle on the outside to cut out the main circles but blue for the rest of the design which will draw the outlines of my word.

 

Below are the four different outcomes I created with the laser machine. I first used wood to draw and cut out my words. This outcome was my favourite of the four as it has a very organic and natural look. The black and brown colours compliment each other well - I like hoe the outcome looks like a wood carving - accept with only fine lines. The second outcome was made with cardboard. This material is a lot thinner and has the distinctive ridges inside therefore the outcome was more delicate. Like the wood the cardboard has a nice colour that works well with the design - however because the cardboard was so flimsy it tore parts of the letters out. Although I don't hate the outcome as it has these nice folded lines along the paper. The last material that I used was a thick plastic Foamex board. At first I set the laser a bit too powerful hence why the material looks so burnt and the letters were cut completely out. I decided to retry this material with a lower power setting and the outcome was a lot more successful. The material left the laser drawing with a brown which I liked. The hardest part of the day was setting up just the right settings for the laser however I was able to understand this more after I used the machine more.

 

 

 

 

Research

I decided to research the topic of animation as I have an interest in this topic and would like to take it in degree. I started with finding as may books in the resource room that looks at animation and the industry - I first looked into the early history of animation.  There are lots of ways of animating from mechanisms from the past to 2D animation and now to 3D. I wanted to look into the animation of the past and the processes of how animations are made (all types of animation.) I really liked the hidden work and art that is put into the planning process such as storyboards and 3D nets without texture as it is so beautiful in its self - these works are often not seen by the audience however they can have some of the most thought behind it and an array of different ideas. When designing different thumbnails I took inspiration from the books that I found in the library. The idea that I decided to create (into the final book cover), I found inside a book that looked at different past animation techniques. The picture was of a phenakistoscope (a disc that turns giving the illusion of animation). I found that this was an interesting concept to symbol animation.

 

The finished book design is above. I decided to create a simple design - I have used the colour palette of green, black and white.

Indesign and Photoshop workshop

In this workshop we had to create a film poster in Photoshop and InDesign - it had to be promoting the new film being released in 2014 around the global news story of the Chile miners being trapped in the mine for 33 days. The title of  the film is 'the 33' and this is all we were given to create our posters with. I started by first writing down initial ideas of the possible film poster. We were then given time to research into the story images and videos from the true event as this was the only reference that we had for the film. However when researching we knew that we needed to aim to create this for the screen. I found the image above and really liked the look as it was a photograph of a television with the live footage of the miners. I thought that this concept worked well with the news coverage that the event received at the time. I also like how the television project light into the dark background - as a symbol of hope.  I really like how the cave merges to the background which I intended to convey the darkest that the miners would have to be surrounded in for that long period. To further emphasis the digital television photograph that I used - I decided to used this digital looking font (New Courier). However after I looking at the work I realised that this remained me of a clock counting the time (which creates this suspense even without watching the film.

Calligraphy

For this workshop we were given the chance to experiment with using the ink and the paintbrush to create calligraphy. It was really interesting to learn the technique and to capture the classic style of calligraphy. Throughout the day I collected a pile of different experiments, alphabet tests and sentences created from poems I had collected.

album cover

type layout

colour and illustrations

Finished manifesto

 

The finished manifesto that I created was made up of quotes from my previous diaries that I kept over the last decade. The quotes that I picked are all personal to me, which is what I like about this piece of work. Diaries are a personal and secret documentation therefore people can read this manifesto, yet they will not fully understand the meaning and emotion behind what I have written; hence making it a personal manifesto. The diary entries that I have used are all different - some focus around the main topics in the diaries I have kept and others are things that inspired me reading through them (such as: "You have to look after the things you got in life"). In addition some of the topics I look at are also silly but remind me of my childhood such as my declaration of my love for carwashes. When designing my finished manifesto I designed the outcome with lots of thumbnails - during this stage I realised that all the quotes I had selected to work with had words I could emphasise like a secret code (from my childhood self) to the future me. I decided to play with scale of these words to make them stand out - I found that this also played around with my personal twist on normal manifestos that often have these themes. The words that I highlighted were: "Love, wish, look and hope" I also made other parts of the text bolder and larger to emphasise a phrase within the text.  I decided to align the text so that the information in confined within in a rectangle. I used a large amount of blank space around the main body so the manifesto is not so busy furthermore it draws our eyes to the centre and to read the text. The layout is meant to show the same pattern as how a diary is read (lines.)

 

After creating the main body I had a crit and after that discussion I thought of different ways of using colour and exploring different ways of presenting the manifesto to the public. One idea we came up with, was understanding how my past self would have viewed the look of the manifesto (in the black and white form) and what would have made me attracted to the design as a child. I experimented with using my favourite colours in the background (red and purple) because this is something we would have cared about as a child (favourite colour). I also looked into the different materials that would have attracted me to the work. As a child I was very creative and would make things with art and craft therefore felts, furry textures, glittery paper and stickers would have gotten me excited over a design like this. As a child text didn't really interest me unless it was decorative and simple. I also thought about making the design into a diary cover and putting my entries behind the design (above). I really like this outcome as it is so simple but translates my whole concept very well - the manifesto is within the pages of my childhood. I thought that another interesting idea could be making the design into vinyl (smaller) and sticking the manifesto on the pages of my diaries as I used to stick stickers all over my books. Lastly I tested colours of the text also - one of my favourite outcomes was the fading effect of the words as it gets to the bottom of the manifesto which represented the memory fading and my life changing over the years. In addition it helped to determine where one quote started and ended.

Diary

After researching into already existing personal manifestos I made a braindstorm of different ideas that I may possibility develop. I used my personal history as a starting point to understand who I am. I remembered that I have kept lots of diaries from my childhood aged 8 and up. From reading these old diaries I as able to find out what I was like as a child and remember the events that shaped m have recently read them all - I found out I cannot spell as a child (or even now) and thought that it would be interesting to create a design made up of old quotes taken from my diaries. This way I can take inspirational or funny stories and make them into a personal message that can be applied today.
Below I have scanned in  entries of my diary from 2004 (when I was 8 years old.) I used to draw a lot of things in my diaries and this included with emphasising different words like the word 'kill' which I drew in red blood writing. This could become an interesting concept if I were to recreate some of this typography through digital and hand made means. In addition it might be nice to pick out one liners and create a series of images for this.

Review and developments

Finished idea

This is the film poster that I created for our film. I decided to take the idea from our first idea  as I felt that it was one of our strongest. Furthermore I felt that hand idea displayed a lot of symbolism which is key in any revolutionary poster. Over the years revolution posters mostly have striking imagery for instance in the time of the Russian revolution most of the posters were bright and conveyed their message through image because most of the audience it was aimed at could not read. Furthermore the use of image can be powerful and relate to the audience well. In the image above I decided to take inspiration from my research into Stefan Sagmeister, Amanda Palmer's video 'the way back' and the Daft hands music video which show the impact of writing on skin. Putting text on skin can suggest a lot of symbolism. I decided to use red text because it is so bold an stands out on the skin of my model. I have used the hands in a revolutionary expression to emphasis a need for change. I did photograph this image portrait however it didn't work as well when looking at the rest of the body so I decided to keep it landscape even though it isn't the normal film poster. If I was going to redo this I would have added more information on the arm - looked into different typography and make the overall work a lot neater.

Finished Film Revolution

Above is our finished video based on the word revolution

Filming

On the day of filming my group assembled but we decided to make a change to a small detail of the film. Instead of using long consumerism quotes we wanted to using slogans from large companies and change them so it twisted the slogan e.g. instead of the mcdonalds 'i'm lovin' it we would have 'I'm loathin it.' We each made 2-3 poster stickers in the morning before going around filming. The filming process was probably one of our best days because we worked really well as a team. We were able to listen to each others ideas and rotated the work well so we all got a chance of making, filming and appearing in the film.

Day 2 Story board

On the second day we were developing the stories. Although originally we were going to use the hand idea - another member of the group suggested a second idea which the rest of the team seemed to like also. So we made another brainstorm and wrote down some more concepts. The final idea was on consumerism (a modern revolution) the whole film would be footage of use putting posters around different parts of the Uni and outside. This was to show how consumerism is everywhere - you can nor ignore it as you are constantly surrounded with it. This film would be shown more of a campaign for others to stand up to this issue. our storyboard below shows how we will be creating the film. The first frame shows the title and a definition. This is because not many people know what consumerism is and this is part of the problem. The next few slides shows the opening - we wanted to play with the word consumerism to 'con-sum-one' to emphasis our views of the film. The remaining footage is of us placing the posters everywhere with a last 'f**k consumerism' to leave a lasting note.

Project 2 - Revolution Brainstorming

On the first day of the graphics pathway we began the day with watching a film on the type: 'Helvetica' this film featured the views of graphic designers, typographers and etc. of this type and their opinions on whether it is good or bad (such as Stefan Sagmeister and Neville Brody). Helvetica, as I learned is one of the most used types and can be seen almost everywhere within in the design world. I really enjoyed watching the different views on this topic and the passion some of designers had for the type as well as if they loathed it. It made me think about the way I decide on my typography in my own work and the impact that even a simply type might have on the overall piece.

After watching the film we were divided into our groups. I was put into group F which was made up of 6 people however on this day only two other people from my group was present. After we ha met each other the whole class came together to pick a 'word' which we would be creating a film with for the rest of the week. We got the word 'Revolution.' At first I wasn't sure what to make of this word as I knew there was many roots which would focus on power to the people. The other two people and me created a brainstorm of different ideas.

When we were brainstorming we wrote own everything that we thought of when we first thought of revolution - the first things that did come to mind were revolutions that took place in history - in fact this covered most of our brainstorm. We also looked into the definition of the word revolution so that we could see different ways of approaching it. For our second page we put down different ideas for the film. At first we looked into just using typography and audio from past revolutionary leaders to create a kinetic type film - however we decided that it would work better to use images to. I then suggested trying to play around with images by merging the revolutionary leaders together (e.g parts of speeches are merged together so that it would show how history has developed.) We then thought about using stop motion to aid our film because it could give it a unique style. We thought that hands have been used a lot within revolution - as well as symbolism as it had to e something that can be relatable to the audience - we wanted to place text on our hands for each revolution and then move it around to animate the movements.

 

Graphics Pathway - project 1

One of our first projects was to produce a poster that reflects the subjects that we enjoy within in graphics. I found this really difficult to do because I'm still not to sure what direction I want to go into within the graphics pathway however when creating this poster I created several thumbnails. I decided to choose the bottom design because it displays the areas I would like to look into. I really like the composition and the lines I used to extend from the bottom word. However I'm not fully pleased with the outcome as I feel it isn't as exciting as I hoped. I used a simple type to work with the simplicity of the rest of design. If I was going to change this piece I would have liked to play around with the background - maybe even seeing whether it would work with photographs of different scenes. I would have liked to explore the line idea further too.

Summary of the Pathway Rotation - six weeks

Overall I have explored so many different pathways and different ways of working in the at and design field. Each subject offered something different and I really have enjoyed looking into each subject and learning how to create a variety of outcomes. I tried  really hard for each subject to achieve in the tasks. My favourite week was graphics and I feel that this is the topic that I will be choosing at the end of the six week rotation. I feel that the graphics was very appealing to me - I enjoy designing and coming up with solutions in a design sense to problems. I felt that graphics had a lot of variety and I know that my skills can be put to use. The most challenging part of the week was the fashion and textiles as we had a lot less time to experiment with the samples we would be developing - I found it difficult to come up with ideas without planning however I did like the practical side and the fast development period that fashion offered. Anther course that really interested me other than graphics was LMB because it has a lot of designing and planning which goes into the finished product - I really enjoyed making the storyboards and coming up with our own ideas. Over the last 6 weeks I have learnt that I can adapt well with new environments as well as getting work done - I feel I have grown as I have been exposed to the different areas and the different was of working.

3DD Pathway - Weekly Review

During the 3D week I explored many ways of designing and creating for 3D. And throughout this week I found myself trying to make things that I had no idea of doing. It challenged me in everyway and tested my skills which I liked - I liked that I didn’t know what I was doing as it let me fully experiment and be free with the creations I made. During this week we were given many different tasks to achieve, these include: creating a paper sculpture to hold a water bottle, creating a cardboard structure to hold my weight, making a spaghetti structure, and making a large bridge. And out of these, I was only successful with a few – however with my failures I was able to learn what went wrong and how I could avoid the same mistakes in the next tasks. It felt really good when I was able to create a piece that worked well. 

When I was working I often got comments from the students and teachers around me about my work I was making or had made. These comments often helped me to improve the piece I had made for instance when trying to produce the protective shell for the spaghetti task I found that after discussing the task and getting the reaction from what I had made - I realised that it may not have been strong enough and so used pillars to hold up the structure. Often times my tutors may hint ways that would improve the strength of the piece as well as things not to do. When my water bottle carrier didn’t work my tutor explained that this was a good idea even though it did not work – he suggested that if it was mad out of a stronger material it should have worked. This helped me when creating my next piece and guided me in things I should and should not do. 

One of the things that I have learned from carrying out these tasks was to plan before carrying out the creation – even if it literally meant just thinking about the factors that are needed to make it a success and the factors that could go wrong (such as what would be on it? What is the most effective way to make the material stronger? The height, how will it stand and etc.) This week was very practical; I had to learn how to come up with quick solutions to a problem. For instance when creating my structures I had to think of ways to make it stronger or for fixing a wobbly base.

I think that the work I created succeeded (even if it some of it didn’t necessarily work) because I spent time designing and planning the look and figuring ways to improve the use of the structure. I tried to make my piece look visually interesting to respond to the tasks we were set – and because I tried to experiment each of my work shows a unique look. If my piece did not work I often felt disappointed – I wanted to make something that didn’t work (so I instead thought of improvements for next time.) Another aspect that I didn’t like about my work was that sometimes it wasn’t measured out neatly and this meant that some times it looked a little messy.

I found planning and then making quite hard to do because most of the time the plans that I had couldn’t be made because of the material was unable to bend a certain way or etc. I also found the lack of materials hard to do because it meant I had only one or a couple tries at making a piece I had never made before. However I found this exciting at the same time and meant I had to make it (I wasn’t to hung up on ‘I don’t know what to do’ as I had only one chance. Most of the time I was making what worked well when I was making. The task that I found most easy way the spaghetti structure – this was because we were given more time in planning and making which let me explore lots of ideas before actually creating. I also really liked the material even though it was delicate it was something completely different. In order to save time I could have tried planning most of my tasks a little better and measuring the material I used a little more, in order to prevent any mistakes which could cause later problems such as the balance. By planning better I will be able to come up with a clear idea that will drive my work instead of sometime improvising. Overall I really enjoyed the excitement of the 3DD week as it was very practical and tested many skills. 

Building a Bridge

The class was put into six different groups and instructed to create a bridge that would span the

length of the room (separated with two tables.) The bridge also had to be tall enough to push a table in the centre. There could only be two points on the floor where any of the materials could touch the ground (the support legs for the bridge.) We had 2 and half hours to do this until the bridge would be tested with a remote control car - if the bridge could let the car travel from one side of the bridge to the other without any accidents this would prove the bridge a success.

 

We were given the materials to create the bridge from and this was all we were allowed: 10 sheets of A1 card, 30 bamboo sticks and 2 rolls of duct tape. In my group there were 6 people and before we started creating we came together to decide what we were going to make and where we would be starting. We looked to our paper bridge exercise for some inspiration however had difficulty to find any starting point. We then decided to look at the materials and see what we could make from what we were given. The bamboo sticks would have been an 'obvious' element to use as the bridge's legs so instead we decided to come up with alternative ideas for how the bamboo could be used - as well as giving the bridge a unique character visually. We thought that the road of the bridge could use the bamboo by crossing the sticks over each other to make a structure that would be both strong and visually interesting however we realised that this would be difficult for the car wheel's to travel across and we would need to cover the design up any way.  We then thought about wrapping the bamboo together to make a track (with two of these bunches) - however another challenge we found was that the bamboo wasn't very flexible when it was taped together so it would be nearly impossible to arch the bamboo to create a bridge high enough to fit the table. Instead we decided to use the bamboo as the first slope for the bridge and then to use the card as the legs and main road. We created the bamboo slope first. After creating the 'track' we needed to decide how to support the bridge - the legs.

When we were planning the legs we wanted the card to serve as this support. We decided the strongest shape would be a cube. From our previous exercises of supporting weight we understood that the best way to support weight was to have a strong base. Therefore we planned the cubes, we later decided to add a twist by turning the cubes in different angles to create a stacked look - I really liked this part of our bridge since it was a bit different than simply piling the cubes straight. Furthermore it meant weight could be spread out more. To keep the boxes together we cut slits so that we could fix them strongly together. We used 5 boxes on each side. We didn't face many challenges when creating this part of the bridge and  felt we worked especially well as a team during this part of the task as we were each given jobs - measuring, cutting and assembling the boxes together. We were able to create the legs quite quickly. The only real problem we faced thinking of a way to keep the boxes together however I suggest we add slits so they are bonded together. We later had to add more cubes (it was originally 8 boxes but we added another 2) for more height.  

 After assembling all of the cubes and creating the legs we laid out the pieces that we had created to see where our next move would have to be. Above you can see that we laid down the bamboo into two sections to create a 'track' that the car wheels could sit either side. We leant this onto our boxes and they were able to balance but we knew that we had to attach these pieces together so it would fall apart when weight was put onto it. One of our tutors suggested that we cut into the top of the cube leg so it would stay in place. However we had trouble with the angles when trying to do this because the boxes have been stacked in an unusual way. Instead we used the duct tape to place the bamboo onto the legs. Whilst creating this part and looking at this photograph I feel that this part of our bridge looks very unique, I like the look of the bamboo tapes together because it looks so organic against the cardboard boxes. I like that the bamboo is leaning onto the boxes. If we were allowed more bamboo we would have continued to use it for the whole bridge. After this picture we decided to play around with the angles of the leg - we were going to play the leg at an opposite angle to the bamboo by cutting a section of the card from the bottom square. This way the leg could balance on its own. This was very challenging as the angle had to be measured correctly otherwise the whole bridge would fall to one side and collapse. We were able to balance the leg with help of the bamboo which was taped onto the cubes. We only did this to one leg as we didn't have enough time to do both - it was a very lengthy process of cutting the right angle. If were given more time I think we could  have balance both legs out giving our bridge an even more appealing and unusual look.

From the beginning we planned to have a tunnel - this was because we knew we could not use bamboo for the main road and would have to have a simple cardboard as the structure. So in order to add the character we had given to the legs and slope we wanted something a little bit different.  We cut out the tunnel with different sized strips of card that bent in the middle. We was going to cut out designs into these strips like windows however we had a lack of time. If we were going to redo this part of the bridge we would have spent more time in giving the tunnel these designs. However I do like the triangular shape that is created throughout the tunnel - the sections in between generated shadows within the tunnel that was a very beautiful detail. When we assembled this part of the bridge it was clear that the bridge was almost finished and for the first time actually looked like a bridge. We used several bamboo sticks and taped them together to create the length of the bridge. We made two of these which we taped to the bottom of the card so that there was more strength in the middle of our bridge - this bamboo would help to straighten this part and prevent it from collapsing in to itself (stop it from being flimsy.) At this point we were given lots of compliments by people outside of the group for its unique look. It took several of us to lift this part of the bridge up and tape to the bamboo slopes either side of the legs.

The last thing we had to do was to place brackets either side of the slope so that the car wouldn't drive of of the track before getting to the other side. This was pretty simple to make. Once the main part of the bridge was out onto the legs we realised that they couldn't support this part of the structure - we needed more support. And in order to sustain our bridge we had to add more legs - which we did with four extra bamboo on the inside of the legs. After this and other small details the bridge was completed just in time for the end. Overall I am really happy with how our bridge turned out - we were able to challenge ourselves and use our skills to get the bridge completed. I felt that our bridge looked the most sturdiest as we discussed together how the car would fit and cross our bridge safely so added details such as the bridge to protect the car. I was surprised with how well our team worked we got on very well. We could challenge each other ideas or suggest better ones which meant we all were able to have a say and express our opinions. No body was 'slacking' but we all wanted to help each other and find jobs to do even if it meant simply assisting. We were all efficient with time however at the end it was a little bit of a mad rush to get everything done (however so were many other groups.) To improve our time management we could have planned in advance different sections for people to focus on instead of deciding after we had finished one section.

When the time came for the car to drive over our bridge were all nervous although secretly confident because we knew we planned in great detail for how it would turn out. The slope enabled the card to climb up the angle with ease as the wheel's followed the bamboo tracks easily. As the car got to the start of the main road it travelled at the fastest of any of the other cars - this was because the tunnel protected the car from falling of and the tutor felt at ease speeding the car through the tunnel - however the speed the car was travelling at meant the car flew out of the other end before it could travel down the slope and fell of. Nevertheless our bridge worked! It was a success.