Interactive Mind Map References:
"Generate Stroke"
https://vimeo.com/80670865

Artist Research: Linkin Park

Waiting For The End is a 2010 music video by Linkin Park for their 4th album, A Thousand Suns. The video is an experimentation of composting, animation, 3-D tracking and design by a company called Ghost Town Media.

Screen Shot Stills

The video is created using a layered effect by putting the clips through several times into software, to get the broken look and the "burst" effect from the video. The blue-hue toned colour is then placed over the top finally. Sytheneyes is used to attach objects to the band members, particularly the 3-D enhancements and geometric lines.

I selected the video because of the special effects used, they remind me of constellations especially in the way the geometric lines pan out across the band members; I wanted to re-create this for my own work, possibly looking at doing something similar for photographs or a map of myself, looking at Grayson Perry for inspiration. 

Similarly, Gabriel from itsknowone, created and collaborated with Ghost Town to create the SFX for their concerts for the A Thousand Suns Tour, and the video. Although they don't align with the music, I like the broken effect from them and the repeated use of overlapped videos. Gabriel has also worked alongside Marvel for the Captain America videos.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/29303105/Linkin-Park-A-Thousand-Suns-2010-Tour

http://itsknowone.com/70843/6061899/selects/captain-america-winter-soldier-feature-film

http://www.motionserved.com/gallery/925204/linkin-park-waiting-for-the-end

Seminar: Typeface

To reflect on our lecture on typography, our aim was to create 6 different unique fonts to 3 letters (I was given HIJ)
I initially struggled with this because of the way we were given this on-the-spot, I'm quite accustomed to researching into typefaces/typography before hand and then designing something based off inspiration; however it was quite interesting to come up with different designs for each letter. Particularly, I liked my cursive J and removing sans-serif from each font (which I like using), especially with H, I tried looking at different ways to present sans-serif so used triangles.

My favourite concept is the J with the line through it, this is really simple but works well, I also like the H with the stripes through as it looks more interesting to the eye than just a standard letter, with the lines coming off from the bottom.

Sketchbook: References

• http://www2.astronomicalheritage.net/index.php/show-theme?idtheme=17
• http://space.about.com/od/astronomyspacehistory/a/timelinec.htm
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation
• http://www.slac.stanford.edu/econf/C0908211/pdf/talk09_vulga.pdf
• http://www.impawards.com/designers/ignition_print.html
• http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/the-last-of-us/
• http://www.worldofmerix.com/

Lecture: Typography

"Font is what you use, 

typeface is what you see."

In our next lecture, the focus was Typography. We were introduced to a few quotes which were interpreting type; the idea was to provide us with a definition of typography (that it is a way of communication and provide feeling) and, summarized below, that good typography usually does not stand out in comparison to bad typography.

In the lecture, we looked at the comparison between type and font, and also the use of kerning, tracking, leading and the differences when they were increased/decreased, and focused on the different terms used to describe different parts of a font. For example, we looked at serifs and sans-serifs which make the end of a letter and the differences between that.

In the history of type, we went from the beginnings and early design of typography that was made purposely for aesthetics, all the way to new modern types, such as Railway, Template Gothic and Helvetica. Our particular focus was how these were then a form of their own graphic style, typography was quickly becoming a way of presenting things instead of just being associated with graphics. I especially enjoyed this section as I love typography and it was really interesting to see how it had evolved over the years. This lecture then led onto our seminar which was to experiment with type and create our own font faces, which was a lot of fun.

Lecture: Animation

Lecture: Urbanized

Urbanized (2011)

In our lecture, we were shown Urbanized, a 2011 documentary film by Gary Hustwit. The focus of the film was to "change people's ideas about something", and to show the use of architecture and the different shift of changes cities are influenced by depending on the city.

The film starts out with a voice over, saying that 'everything we see has been designed and planned'. We're shown several unique locations; Copenhagen, New York, Chile, Brazil, Detroit, Brighton, Cape Town, Stuttgart and New Orleans. The idea of the documentary was to show how architecture has influenced each individual place: New Orleans was severely affected by Hurricane Katrina, so a lot of the land that was being built upon had no set plans, as this was originally not meant to be un-occupied land. It "allowed architectures to have a lot of fun" with the plans, because there was no requirement to be met.

 

http://www.iwishthiswas.com

New Orleans was a good example of architectures and designers communicating with the community to gather their opinions on what they wanted their city to be like, such as the I Wish This Was project. The idea behind was to place stickers in derelict buildings or ones that the community did not appreciate, placing a sharpie marker so they could write their opinions on what they wanted the building to become in the future. This is effective because of the anonymity; they would be able to write their real opinion on the building and what they wanted it to become, and because it involved the people of the surrounding area.

This is an example of many places and the people in it who have been affected by architecture in the city. The documentary shows many examples of different concepts that cities have approached the community with or simply built around the way their city moves. This is shown in Copenhagen, Denmark; the huge cycling aspect of the city meant that they wanted to encourage this even more, due to its health benefits and influence on the enviroment.

 

Copenhagen, Denmark

The solution Copenhagen provided was to evenly space out bike lanes to each other lanes. This would then mean they would be: side walks, for slower pedestrians, bikes, parked cars and then the actual car lane, filtering out the more speedy cars so thus would reduce crashes. Overall, 37% of Copenhagen arrive on bicycles - the designers have made this fairer to the people who use them instead of forcing cars and cyclists to share one lane.

Overall, we were shown many examples of creative solutions to problems in the documentary, as well as the darker side to architecture/building (such as protests in Stuttgart over the removal of a train station, which was described as "really like civil war") and it's influence on the government. Stuttgart was a prime example of this, as the influence over the government trying to remove the train station voted them out of office, giving Stuttgart an entirely Gren Party president.

The film showned the power of design in all it's forms, especially in terms of visual communication, and touched a lot on how design can be shown entirely in different ways based on the POV - some people agreed, some disagreed, which made a much more interesting documentary to watch. It allowed us to view how design big or small can make such an influence on a city and shapes the world even today.

After Effects: Novel 2

James & The Giant Peach

To conclude my introduction to After Effects, I finally placed together my frames from Photoshop into After Effects, a software I was completely new to.

The introduction to the software proved quite time consuming as I'm quite used to using Photoshop and image editing software, the comparision between the two was hugely different to what I was used to. Although I've experimented on Premire Pro, Movie Maker before, a lot of this was trial and error, as seen in my video.

My overall reflection of the video I created was that as the video progresses, it does develop in skill. My expectations of myself, and thus the video, meant I was required to Google search a lot of the steps needed to progress in the video. An example of this can be seen in the "a novel" section - I wanted the transaction between frames to be smoother and at a quicker frame rate, so I took about learning how to use effects (CC Wipe etc) on my own and how to apply them. This also granted me access to a lot of shortcuts, such as pressing "T" to view Opacity levels on each frame.

This took an incredibly long time to do, as we also had to get to grips with completely new software and produce a ten second video with audio. I obtained audio from the Youtube Audio Library, which provides free copyright audio; I sifted through to more positive/upbeat audio to reflect the novel and it's upbeat pace.

The video itself I'm not entirely happy with, however for the first attempt I feel I've learnt a lot from researching and listening to Sara. It's not 100% perfect, with particular focus on at the end, but I also took a lot away from the session and introduced myself to After Effects.

Lecture: Convergence

"the property that different transformations of the same state have a transformation to the same end state"

Our lecture revolved around the topic of Convergence. Converegence is to "change and unify" and "forceably bend together", so in the Graphic Design sense it could be merging two subject means together and creating something else. For example, converging Animation and Graphic Design together would be a prime example of convergence.

 

William Burrough, Cut-Ups 

We discussed and looked at William Burrough, who popularized "cut-ups" in the 1960s; although this orginated from the Dada movement. The concept behind the technique was to take found words/texts and cut up to recreate more a different image. The idea behind taking found images and creating something new was not unfamiliar to me, as this is usually what I end up doing in the form of digital collages and graphics.

I liked the concept behind using newspaper cuttings to create our own different interpretations into cut-ups, as this was a different way of approaching it that I'm used to. It would look less perfect than doing digital collages, however I liked going through the newspapers and creating my own different words from what we were given. Although it wasn't 100% perfect, I liked this technique immensly. My interpretation of this lecture was to place this back into my own work, by using cut-ups in the research sketchbook (which I start beginning to do in Maps etc)

Lecture: A History of Graphic Design

Our lecture this week was a 'brief snapshot tour of The History of Graphic Design'. We looked at the beginnings of graphics; plus different styles of art - art nouveau, deco, typography, constructivism to name a few. Although condescend down considerably in comparison to the actual timeline.

Our focus was on different types of artists for each time period, for example El Lissitzky, Joost Schmidt whose work was very modern for the era it was developed in. Particularly I liked focusing on each era and seeing the comparable differences between each one, as depending on the movement and time period (World War II etc.) it would reflect on the graphics given in that period. 

Information Design was something we focused on in the lecture as well. It's aim was to 'show unambiguous pictorial language that doesn't require a verbal equivalent', keeping a minimalist pictorial style that would then be translated to words depending on the picture. Otto Neurath, Isotype: International System of Typographic Pictorial Education, was the main influence of this design and of public information.

As the years develop so does the style of Graphic Design, relying heavily on the culture around it to influence it, shown in Jamie Reid's work for the Sex Pistols of the 1970's, and in 1990's David Carsons work was shown as influence for typography. Whilst it's very interesting to see the way Graphic Designers are influenced upon during the era of their time, we also looked at the development of the font Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) which was influenced by the Constructivists. 

Bass Saul

This lecture was hugely informative to me, it was interesting to see throughout each period the developing changes and you could see where each artist took inspiration from. 

Seminar: Graphic Styles

Using the library as my secondary resource, I decided to research graphic styles in more depth instead of picking one and reseaching that entirely. The book, "Graphic Style: From Victorian to New Century" by Steven Heller and Seymour Chwast, is updated every few years with more modern graphic movements, such as Street Art and Hand Lettering.

My chosen focus was "Victorian" style of graphics, which was taken from the Industrial Revoultion. Because of the economical downturn of the 19th century, wealth became the sole interest after the Revolution;

"Between the end of the eighteen century and the iddle of the ninenteeth, the once profound English sense of social, civic and artistic responsibility diminished. Wealth became in effect for motivating cultural force"

The artists referred back to the Victorian era as a sense of power/wealth and decided to use this to improve the standards of aesthetics (So in contrast to the Industrial Revolution) This movement was partically not developed and an invention, but responded to the state of the economy and the mean to gain wealth back.

 The movement has been under critic because the Victorians taste confused designs and functions, meaning that they were over-complex and not simplified down. Artist Critic and architect Agust Welby wrote;

"How many objects of ordinary use are rendered monstrous and ridculous simply because the artist, instead of seeking the most convient form and then decorating it, has embodied some extravagance to conceal the real purpose for which the object has been made"

I also learned throuh reading that the Victorian style influenced advertising in particular with graphics, and started the idea of using them together. It was a way of presenting "rewards for the Victorian life-style"

Altough this is a old movement (spanning between 1820's and 1900's) it is particularly influencial because of the 'circus' style themes of text and the use of advertising, which is used hugely in the 21st century. The book also showed expansion on every other movement and proved an interesting read, I really enjoyed presenting it to my peers.

Lecture: Reflective Thinking

The aim of the seminar was to produce a reflective piece on something of our choice; mainly focusing on our current sketchbook or blog work.  For the introduction, we were given a situation and two different interpretations of the situation, each written in a reflective view about what could have been improved. The example was of someone late to an exam and their points about what went wrong and how this could be improved for the future.

Building on this, we looked at how although the order was chronological from what happened, it didn't necessarily mean that it was a good reflective paragraph.

I chose to look at my sketchbook and current research work and reflect on this:

What did you do:

"Research on my sketchbook blog, reflect on seminars to look back at what we've learned so far. I wanted to link this back to my sketchbook. With research,m the main process of my work is to always worry and not coherently present myself to people. To solve this and prevent it, planning on taking a break is beneficial to me, support from other peers and using planning methods (lists, note taking etc) is always advisable to me. I'm applying this to my current work by looking back and starting to visually plan out what I want to do, whilst also constantly referring to my peers for assessment and ways to improve my sketchbook."

Physical Process: Location Drawing

For our process and production session, we explored around Huddersfield town and practiced our location drawing skills. Whilst this was not related to the course, it was nice to do something similar to my art foundation routes, and going around and exploring using perspective was good practice for me - My biggest problem is not being able to work quick enough and struggling to submit anything that isn't perfected.

These were drawn in quick time segments and whilst I kept abandoning a lot of the sketches to start out with, I was quite happy with how some of them turned out, mostly because I don't think I'm that good of an artist. My particular focus, on the LLOYD's logo and horse, stood out to me because of the way I've filled in the logo using small sketches/etches from a fine liner. 

I particularly struggled with getting the perspective right, this was hard for me because I couldn't always do this as quickly as possible and ended up rushing a lot of it. Although rushed, I am quite happy with the outcome, and attempted to trace sections of my work using illustrator. 

Finished Page

Sketchbook: Space

 

For my sense of place, I wanted to expand upon this and not stick to anything on Earth. I decided upon space, as this something, in my opinion, that we rely on far too much and don't appreciate it. My means of research were to look into the discoveries in space and try and create some form of visual representation of portraying it, maybe an info-graphic or a mind map, that would display information about space or the most important discoveries (Water on Mars etc) but would be something that would be much more than just a list. I wanted to focus heavily on the fact that this information may not be the most interesting, and how I would go about making this interesting to look at and read.

Space was something that was quite hard to narrow down; the amount of information we were provided on Space meant that trying to focus on one section was hard, I tried to come up with the most pivotal points for space and focus on our own solar system to make this easier to research. My focuses were on constellations, discoveries in space and any graphics that would relate to space.

I also took to researching films that were featured/relied on Space as it's setting: Interstellar, Gravity, Alien and WALL-E were points that I looked at - I wanted to also look at the graphics/fan art inspired by the movies as a way of researching them, I loved looking at the minimalist posters and ones that told the narrative in a way that wouldn't spoil the movie.

Overall, my ideas for Space were to present some form of timeline, info-graphic or video that would promote more awareness of space and the discoveries around it, I liked focusing on simplistic graphics and constellations as a way of making my work look the part.

Artist Research: Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry - Map of Days

On my focus of maps, I chose to approach this in a more emotional point of view than the literal sense of the word map. By doing so, I looked at Grayson Perry, an English artist known mostly for ceramics. For a programme titled "Grayson Perry: Who Are You?", Perry met up with individuals across the country and decpited a self portrait of them; using ceramics, tapestry and painting to portray them - the idea was the "portraits" were not meant to be taken as just a drawing of themselves, but more of their personailties and traits.

His work is something that I've been inspired by, particularly his response to the map and how he creates his own interpretation of it - I would like to do something similar, maybe reflecting my life or including people in my life that branches off; I want to experiment with graphic styles or do something that requires a lot of time and effort, as usually I'm quite quick on Photoshop. I'd also like to possibly delve into making it interactive, or printing it off into a huge scale.

The Channel 4 Programme showed many examples of how Perry reflects a much more personal response to the work; his Map Of Days is a self portrait which shows street names coming off and important landmarks about his life, he writes traits about himself and the attention to detail is remarkable, shown below.

Sketchbook: Maps

Maps was one area of topic I wanted to look at in my sketchbooks. Maps, taken both literal and in the emotional sense, are a perfect example of Place: they guide us around our day-to-day-lives, and can also be interesting pieces of art work.

My possible idea for maps was to look into artists who make them more creative than just a informative object; I was looking to combine the information provided by maps and a graphic style that would be visually more interesting to look at. Pinterest was my main point of research, this granted me to access to so many more artists who use maps in unique ways. An example was Zero Per Zero, graphic designers who created colourful and creative ways of looking at metro lines across the world, such as Tokyo and New York. This was a primary example of my focus, because it combined beautiful graphics with information that was useful. If I was going to combine the two together, I would use this as inspiration, it's minamilistic and provides a lot of information without being too crowded.

Typography in graphics was another area I wanted to look at. This was particularly minamilistic and, with the right font, looked beautifully designed - Nancy McAbe created a map of the world using typography, labelling each city in each of the countries. Whilst at first this is simple, the more you look into it the more interesting it becomes, as a lot of information has been packed into the map. McAbe also stats adding colour to create something that looks visually beautiful.

My ideas were to combine both information and emotion, as such I looked at Grayson Perry's work as I possibly wanted to go down the route of making my project more personal, looking at myself and researching graphic design styles to inspire me into creating a map that was both aesthically pleasing and something that was reflective of me.

http://weburbanist.com/2011/05/30/creative-cartography-15-artists-transforming-maps/

Seminar: Mind Maps

With Richard, we looked at artists who used mind maps or posters to explain and rationalise the process of creating work. For myself, I was really drawn to the more humorous side of the mind maps, particularly ones that had little pictograms next to them or were presented in a more visual way.

For my own process of work, I took inspiration from what others had previously said around me and what I thought of myself; although I am quite critical it allowed me to realise the "mistakes" I make in my own work and the processes I should change to improve upon my work. This was clear when I realised everything I do, I do back to front, processing the final piece only a few weeks into the project. This is quite reassuring for me to do, but prevents me from looking at a lot of ideas for a brief and limiting to me to what I can do. It also prevents me from researching anything as I've already selected an idea and means a lack of wide research.

I really liked this exercise as it made me rationalise my thought process a lot more and realise I'm quite motivated by one idea/piece of work, and not through lots of researching. It was also quite fun to add a humorous twist on top of this.

After Effects: Novel

As an introduction to After Effects, we explored From Form - a design studio who makes short films and motion design. Their video was filmed using both digital and hand-crafted work; the transactions were eye-catching, colourful and humorous whilst getting to the point.

 For our own project in After Effects, I chose the novel James and The Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl. The aim was to make a 10+ second clip using over 10 frames for a short summary/intro to the novel. Created in Photoshop, I focused on orange as the primary colour. My focus on transaction effects was for them to be quite choppy and relevant to the novel (the peach and the ladybirds across the screen),

Saul Bass's Posters

My work felt very similar to Saul Bass, who was an graphic designer most famous for this style of work, which was based around silhouettes and simple, colourful layouts. The minimalist style is still eye-catching and Bass used shapes and text in a creative way which would clearly display the plot of the film. After I'd researched him, I decided to incorporate this into my work, by adding textures and playing with layer styles more.

InDesign: Intro Poster Task

Today we were given an introduction to InDesign; a Adobe software used mostly for print publishing and for its clever use of master pages to create a consistent layout.

 We were given the basics on text, pen tool, shapes, colour, gradients and grids. Although a lot of this was similar to Photoshop, it was beneficial for me because of the re-explanation of some tools and the grid introduction. It's similarities in Photoshop meant I didn't feel too lost in re-creating a poster, as such, I decided to go home and re-create my own using the information we were given this afternoon.

 InDesign makes it a lot easier to create a layout which requires a lot of measurements and alignment (for example, the poster I had to re-create needed the grid to align the text)

I was quite happy with the product, although surprised at how long it took me to re-create the poster. I especially liked the simplicity of it, such as the use of negative/blank space and the block of rectangles representing volume on a stereo. It's simple, but very effective.

Lecture: Genealogy

In our first seminar, we were given the word "Genealogy"

the commonly understood emergence of various philosophical and social beliefs by attempting to account for the scope, breadth or totality of ideology within the time period in question, as opposed to focusing on a singular or dominant ideology.

This was presented to us in groups which allowed us to explore the potential possibilities from a saying, for example, our group looked at the possibility of everyone being obsessed with themselves. Although a silly idea, we were able to come up with potential solutions/products quickly in the time given - we also expanded this look at how this would effect the economy, social circles, appearance and industries (such as fashion etc)

Allowing us to quickly come up with ideas in less than ten minutes serves as good practice for pitching ideas in the future on the graphics course, as well as this it shows the potential to take one idea and all the "branches" that come away from this - one idea could be taken and expanded upon immensely if you look at it from several points of view and how this effects the environment)

This seemed like a pointless exercise at first although I benefited from being able to group up and talk to people, as well as quickly brain storming ideas which I'm not usually accustomed to doing.