Project 4: The Design Process

For the next two weeks, we have been looking at "the design process", this involves, poetry and calligraphy, fonts, grids and layouts, abstraction and colour meaning, research and information, 3D prototype labs and illustrating stories.
The idea of this 2 week session is to gain an understanding of the basic fundamentals of graphic design and the ways in which it can be applied to our work.

I have already looked at the 3D prototype labs which involved using a laser cutter to create a final piece and an InDesign session which I found hugely enjoyable.
The InDesign session had its own seperate "mini" brief to create a poster based on a film called "The 33" which is due for release in 2014 and focuses on the chilean miner disaster of 2010. The reason for creating a poster based on this is the vivid imagery which emerged related to the incident and also the fact that there is no existing film posters for this film (at time of writing).

I found both of these sessions extremely enjoyable and they enabled me to gain more knowledge into different processes of graphic design which I will be able to apply to my work in future, I look forward to experiencing the remaining 3 workshops next week.

Below is my finished film poster for "The 33":

 

Project 3: Manifesto

This week, we were given a brief to create a personal manifesto based on aspirations and experiences.
I chose to look at racism, although not directly relatable to me and neither an aspiration, nor an experience to some extent for me, I believe racism is something which everyone can relate to somehow, whether its something we have experienced ourselves, something we have put others through, or something which we have witnessed on tv or in a film.
Racism is a problem which everyone has seen or heard about potentially on a regular basis and therefore I chose to express this theme by looking at one of the most inspirational, history changing speeches the world has ever seen, "I Have A Dream" by Martin Luther King Jr.
The speech itself was not my main focus to begin with and I chose to focus on the phrase "I Have A Dream Today" although the meaning was lost without the entire speech to add purpose to the sentence. I then created designs based on both the "I Have A Dream Today" phrase taken from the speech and the entire speech itself.
This lead to a very intriguing poster-type manifesto which my tutor really enjoyed during the crit session with my fellow classmates.
The poster draws your attention with the bold background text which in turn makes you want to stop and read the entire text which is overlayed on it. (See Below)

However, overall, I feel I did not explore this brief as thoroughly as possible and instead settled for a basic idea which had a striking outcome despite its simplicity. I aim to explore my ideas in my depth in future projects to give me a solid basis from which to create more interesting and captivating work.

Below is my final manifesto:

Project 2: What Does The Group Say? Graphic Film

For the second project of the Graphics Pathway, the brief was to create a graphic film based on a specific word which we were given by our tutor. Mine, in this case, was "Juxtaposition" and this project also allowed me to express my creative ability alongside fellow members on the graphics course in a group scenario.
After getting off to a slow start and much deliberation about the general direction and ideas surrounding the theme of the film, my team decided on creating a sequence of scenes based around the most basic definition of the word "juxtaposition".
This allowed us to create a series of short scenes which contrasted certain elements of life, including "young vs old", "fear vs courage" and "male vs female".
Overall, I feel this project worked well in terms of the group dynamic and the final outcome, however I believe, my team skills need to be improved in the way which I pitch my ideas to the rest of my team and my team management skills, given that we have not designated a team manager for the duration of the project.

For the second part of this project we were asked to create a poster which is representative of our film.
I simply chose a scene from our film and applying minimalist styling, added the word Juxtaposition to the bottom right corner, this allowed for people to question the poster and make the connection once the film had been viewed which I believe was effective, in that, people were interested to find out what the film was about in order to understand the poster. Therefore, both element combined helped to explain one another.

Below is my finished poster and link to view the short film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA9-GMjD1Kc&feature=youtu.be

Project 1: Self Directed Study

For the first project of the Graphics Pathway we were asked to construct a poster including a created artwork, a picture of ourselves and a brief description of our interests and hopes and aspirations for this course and beyond into the future.

Below is my finished poster:

Summary

After spending the last 6 weeks working through the rotational stage of the Foundation Course, I have been given the opportunity to realise my potential and to gain more of an understanding and an insight into the practises undertaken within 3D Design, Lens Based Media, Graphics and Fashion.
I have therefore chosen to continue working within the graphics sector of this course as I believe this is where my skills are strongest and it is also the area in which I have the most interest, in particular typography.

Fashion & Textiles, Rotation Week 4- Final Garment

In our final day of fashion and textiles we were asked to create a finished garment based on our previous days experimenting with different patterns, textures and where the garment will be worn.
Although I focused on headwear throughout my research, I eventually decided to make body wear in the form of a chest/shoulder piece because I felt my designs for headwear were better suited to the body.

I then had to find a model for my garment, in order to present my piece as it would be worn by a person.



Fashion & Textiles, Rotation Week 4- Patterns and Textures

Progressing to our fourth and final week of rotation, we had Fashion and Textiles.
Our first task was to create different textures and patterns by manipulating paper in various ways, e.g. ripping, folding, cutting, twisting etc.
We then had to duplicate one of our patterns twenty times, this would then lead on to creating a piece of clothing using not only our own paper forms but the forms of others in the group as well.
These are just some of the strange but effective pieces I created

Lens Based Media, Rotation Week 3- Story Boarding

As we progressed to the second day of LBM, a recurring theme of story-telling and narratives became apparent.
From the first day our drawings had a different narrative depending on the framing used and on the second day we had to draw characters which we both knew and were made up, alongside places of imagination or places we had seen/visited.
These drawings would make up the characters used in a short 6-frame story board which we then presented to the group.

Lens Based Media, Rotation Week 3- Framing

Coming into the third week of the "Rotation Stage" we were able to try Lens Based Media.
The day began with a presentation about the subject, then we were asked to select a photograph we had taken and to draw it on A1 paper using pencil

This simple drawing was then used as the focus for framing. We were asked to rip/cut/fold pieces of paper and frame sections of our drawing to given different effects which added a new perspective to the drawing and was able to give off an entirely new meaning depending on which section was framed by the paper.



Graphics, Rotation Week 2- Faces

To begin our second week of the Rotation stage, we had Graphics which began with a task involving drawing people in our group using our left hand, with our eyes shut, holding the pen in our mouth and as a continuous line drawing. This lead to some funny and childish drawings but was very interesting to provide a new perspective to the way in which we draw things.

 

Moving on from this we were asked to draw the ear of the person sitting next to us, we then placed all of our drawings together in a group presentation to compare the different drawing styles and the varying display of media, colour, style and complexity used.



3D Design Rotation Week 1- Spaghetti Structure

On our third and final day of the 3DD pathway we were asked to create a structure which would support 3 balls without them touching eachother or the table using only spaghetti and glue guns.
This project as particularly tedious when trying to fuse together pieces of spaghetti with the hot glue running within burning distant of our fingers! However, it was a very fun task, and although not my favourite I learnt a lot about designing a product before making it. The importance of sketching initial ideas rather than jumping straight into the task allowed me to think in detail about my structure and create something which would meet the specifications given

As a class, there were some very interesting and almost unbelivable designs

 

The second part of this task then related back to the paper manipulation of the first and second days in which we had to create a casing for our spaghetti structure in order to protect it from a basketball and also a rather heavy plastic cutting matt.

It is safe to same my casing was not strong enough to resist both forms of destruction, I could have improved by using a more structurally sound design, as opposed to the layering on top of my original structure



3D Design, Rotation Week 1- Bridge

On the second day of the 3D Design Pathway, we were asked to create a bridge which would be able to support the weight of a toy car, spanning a specific distant and using only 10 sheets of car, 30 bamboo sticks, elastic bands, and packaging tape.
This was a fun project which enabled team work and the chance to bounce ideas off of eachother and gave everyone a chance to have their input.

 

After creating paper models of different formations to help inspire us to create some unstereotypical bridge designs, we then had to construct a replice of our bridge using the described materials above.

Although the initial ideas were very different to our final bridge, we created a bridge which may not have been the most visually attractive but was practical and featured something which no other team had used, liftable end sections to transport the car safely back down to the table.