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.