Blatant frantic last minute attempt to update Blog before assesment today...

It would seem I've been a little lax in posting on this which probably doesn't bode well for today's assesment. So I'm going to attempt to catch up on the past month in a oner.... here goes.

Since we last spoke, I have mainly been working on my project which I've chosen to do with H&M as the client publicising a clothes swapping/recycling event. Here's a very rough idea of what the logo will look like, I'm going for a more patchwork, Tracy Emin/Lizzie Finn idea, but this gives an idea anyway:

I've also been finishing off my 100 collages, here's a photo of me doing some which also illustrates the chaos it caused to my flat, pretty messy business, I'm still finding bits of paper in random places, found a bit in my cereal packet the other morning...

We also finally, after a lot of waiting, finished our letterpress project:

Here's the wishlist of companies to do work placement with, it's not finished yet and is obviously a 'best case scenario' list.

http://www.wolffolins.com/
http://www.motherlondon.com/
http://www.clinic.co.uk (I went and spoke to them on our treasure hunt day thingy)


I think that's all the college stuff caught up with. If not, I'm sure I'll find out this afternoon.

John Paul Thurlow

I'm loving this exhibition at the KK Outlet in Hoxton Sq at the moment by John Paul Thurlow. His re-drawings of magazine covers are amazing. worth a look if you're passing by.

Project!

In the time since my last post we've been given our major project, the variables our group were given were, Client: Global Corporation, Target Audience: 15-20year old Inner city kids, Message: Be 'Greener'. It's a bit open and vague, but at least you can play around and tailor it into something that would interest you.
  I've been researching 15-20 year olds and what green issues concern them or might interest them and thinking about what global corporation would interest them in green issues or would have an interest in 15-20 year olds. So I've been doing a lot of brainstorming a little of which has been about brand recognition and what brands do the age group use/aspire to use. This short animated film 'Logorama' that won an Oscar this year was great for prompting me of brands that we all recognise and gave me a good starting point.


Logorama from longandboringname on Vimeo.

 I'm almost settled on my Global Corporation and what aspect of becoming greener I'm going to settle on, so I can start focusing my research.

Interesting Article

Click here for an interesting article about the future of logos.

That is all.

Typography for Paul

Here's my first couple of examples of typography out and about that Paul has asked us to post on our blogs over the next couple of months...

Construct Rebellion

Wool

 

The Liberated Press

Paul emailed us about a call for entries for a publication called 'The Liberated Press' which is a seasonal fold-out poster/newspaper handout thing which is made by Liberty's Department Store  which also happens to be one of my favourite places to wander round on a lazy afternoon in town, it is an oasis of calm and beautiful things in an otherwise horrible, busy, tourist-filled hell of a street. So I was quite excited by the project and eager to get started on some ideas. We were due to meet with Paul and someone from the Liberty's design department for a walkaround the store on Wednesday so I spent a bit of time in the library beforehand researching the history of the shop. It was pretty interesting stuff, I won't bore you with details apart from my favourite fact which is that the Timber for the building was taken from 2 ships called HMS Hindustan & HMS Impregnable which is a pretty cool name, it's given me loads of ideas already and the walk around was also informative and looking at all the details of the building was really helpful.

Long time no see...

Erm, so it seems it's been a couple of weeks since my last post so I'm going to try to do a recap of the past couple of weeks, that's if I remember everything, I am getting on a bit you know.

Letterpress: I've now had a couple of workshops in the letterpress studio which is quite an amazing place, we were split into groups and given a typeface to do a single page spread in a newspaper on it. We got Playbill, which if you didn't already know is the one used in all the wild west type posters, Wanted and Saloon signs etc. So far we've mainly mucking about, experimenting and getting to grips with how it all works, which I've really enjoyed, I like things where i get my hands dirty and that certainly happens a lot there.

One of my experiments

VCT: Has been pretty interesting the past couple of weeks, we've been discussing how to talk about images and aspects to consider, we've read the first of John Bergers essays on "Ways of Seeing".  We all brought in images to talk about, mine was this image I found in the Guardian Magazine:

Guardian Magazine Image

 

 I chose it because it had a Coca Cola logo in it, which automatically alters the image, bringing in questions about consumerism and advertising. Not sure if I'm going to use it for my essay or not yet.

OUT & ABOUT: We went to see The Museum of Everything with Paul which was a collection of Peter Blake's collections, curated by him. I really loved it, a strange, weird and wonderful collection, of curios, circus finds, posters and Trinkets. I especially loved the Taxidermy room with tableaus made by the Famous Taxidermist Walter Potter. They were quite amazing and detailed. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take photo's of anything so you'll have to make do with a rubbish google image to give you an idea:

Rabbit School.

OTHER CLASSES:  Darrens Ideas class was good and taught us other methods for coming up with ideas for briefs, I like the more ridiculous things we had to come up with and we were set group briefs which seemed to turn out ok and gave us a taster of things to come. Pauls Typography class was good, I'm quite interested in Typography but am still a bit lost with it so it was good to really look at letter forms and dissect the letters.


So, that's us all caught up I think, I will try my best to be a bit more diligent with this. Sorry...

I think there's a Giant secretly living in my flat.

I woke up the other morning to find these shoes in my living room, I don't know who they belong to but I'm guessing his name's Goliath?

Sunflower Seeds

On Saturday, me and a couple of friends were wandering along the South Bank and found ourselves in The Turbine Hall of Tate Modern where we found that loads of people had completely ignored the signs saying it wasn't open yet and gone  into the new installation by Ai Weiwei, called called Sunflower Seeds, it looks at first like the entire floor is covered in sunflower seeds but as you walk over them, you realise that they are stones which turned out where made of porcelain and individually hand painted to look like sunflower seeds. It's quite relaxing to hang out there, lie down and chat... that is, until some very red faced security guards came and shouted at us to leave and made us feel like naughty six year olds.

Whilst I'm on the subject...

I found this really interesting talk by David McCandless on TED about information graphics, well worth a watch...

Visual Complexity

I've always been quite interested in information graphics and today we had a couple of 2nd year students talk to us about their work, one of whom was interested in this too. It reminded me of when I found a book in a library from the 80's which had all sorts of graphs and information graphics which i really loved and found quite beautiful and interesting. In our drawing class last week, Darren told us about a website: visualcomplexity which showcases info graphics.  I've only had a quick look so far in my lunch break and found some great stuff...

Some of the Collages I made....

Smiles

Leg

Hands

Robbie

We were asked to take photo's of 'interesting things' around the Studio.....

A view from the studio window (with ladder)

Scalpel blade

Drawers

Umbrella Bag

Chain

Wheel

Screen Screws

The First Week

So, the first week is over and a new one is about to start so it's about time I posted about it. Last week we spent a day going over different aspects of blogs (hence this one). On Tuesday, we took photo's of things around the studio, talked about what made a good photo, looked at other blogs like: Itsnicethat, manystuff and ffffound, and we learned the basics of setting up our own.
On Thursday, we had our first VCT class where we looked t the relationship between images and words and the way that images work with each other and how their juxtapositioning can change their meaning. We were given one of John Berger's essay from his 'Ways of Seeing' series to read for the next class which is all about semiotics and is pretty interesting stuff.
Friday was spent in a drawing masterclass with Darren who taught us other ways of approaching drawing objects then we looked at collage and do's and don't with that, we did quite a few and have been set the task of creating 100 postcard sized collages which should be interesting, if a little messy.

So far so good, lets see what next week has in store...