He receives comfort like cold porridge.

Bazza, Bazza, Bazza…

What to say? At least before I was forced to listen to Barry Tempest I didn’t know who Amnesty International were, now, I just don’t want to know who they are. Yes, I’m sure he means well, he probably cares deeply about helping someone, anyone. But I just can’t see how this little man from middle England and his middle to old ages friends can possibly even think that they’re making a difference in these barbaric countries he claims to know so much about.

Amnesty claim to be this massive, international company that works day and night for the welfare of those less fortunate than us, those living in countries with oppressive regimes. These stamp collecting, Tupperware partying, plaid wearers are taking time out of watering the geraniums to do something helpful and worthwhile for the little fellows. We’’ be there to write a letter of complaint, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll write another letter of complaint. And I’ll keep doing until you become just so darn sick of me writing you letters in a language you don’t understand you’ll let the poor sod go.

That’s the British way to do things, asking politely gets you everywhere, and if someone loud and obnoxious comes into the room, what will we do? We’ll pretend we can’t see them, then whisper about them behind their backs, perhaps even writing a letter or two to Terry Wogan about it.

Amnesty have turned politics into a world wide Points Of View. They’d better be really careful, otherwise we might start queuing.

100% of all people who save money will die. Eventually.

End recession.

With the country's current economical climate, a brief centered around the recession seemed like an up to date, topical activity. At the beginning of the day, we were put into groups and given the words “Spend more, save less” to do with what we may.

My group seemed to have no trouble at all brainstorming and getting multitudes of ideas down onto massive sheets of paper, but the problem came when it was time to turn these half formed thoughts into something tangible that we were willing to stand up in front of the class and try not to humiliate ourselves too much.

Starting with big, grand ideas, tramps with foreboding signs predicting the end of the world, meteorites, grave stones, talking shoes, it all seemed so promising. But as the deadline drew closer, and all we seemed to have to show for our days work was an A2 sheet covered in profanities and sexist slurs, suddenly everything became just a little less funny.

Somewhere along the line, Helvetica wormed its tricky little way into the mix, and instead of trying to accompany our sheet of vulgarities with unsophisticated images, we decided to put our faith in what we seemed to be doing so well, in the form of a purely text based campaign incorporating a mixture of our humorous catch phrases thought up to persuade people to “spend more, save less”.

To Conclude...

As the first project of the course, this project was always going to be a daunting time. I set out with the determination to do the best I could with the brief given.

In the first few weeks I was intimidated, to say the least, by the abilities of my course peers, slightly disheartened I was hesitant to feel confident with my own work. As the project progressed, I began to receive positive feedback from the very peers I initially feared and my confidence in myself was fast on the increase.

A major milestone in this project for me was our group activity day of Type and Tape. Having the opportunity to interact with classmates who I usually wouldn’t, gave me a chance to understand that everyone else was feeling the same way as I am, and my initial fear was replaced with a steely determination to push my work forward and not get left behind.

The way this unit has been set out helped me first get to grips with what was expected of me, and second, complete said work in the allocated time. I kept a time plan of what I needed to do and when it needed to be done by, which I found very helpful in my personal time management.

At the time, my least favourite part of this topic was our experimentation with paper illustration. Becoming frustrated and embarrassed by my outcome, I was quick to settle into a negative mindset which I had to work to overcome. After looking at other’s work I realised I had been approaching the brief in the entirely wrong way and after gaining more understanding though research and peer guidance, I was able to produce a piece of paper illustration that I am proud to call my own.

The group trip to London inspired a lot of my work this project and by happy coincidence, spawned my character Howard. This trip helped my to think about the project differently; taking my sketchbook to an unfamiliar environment inspires very dissimilar feelings to sitting in Poole Quay where I feel comfortable and close to home. I think a fair deal of my work this project has been inspired by a feeling of threat, be it fear of my peers abilities, or fear of a new environment.

I can gladly say that since the beginning of this term, I have become a lot more confident in my work and myself. I would say my greatest achievement was familiarising myself with Quark and managing to produce a book by myself, where two weeks ago I thought Quark was a type of cheese.

The weak point of my project, in my eyes, is the lack of digital fonts. A lot of my work contains hand rendered typography, or abstract methods of creating text with tape or paper cut outs, but I think my work could benefit from deeper research into digital font design.

Overall, I feel this project, considering it to be the first of the year, has been a great success. Having produced a full sketchbook that I am more than proud of is more that I could have ever hoped to achieve in my first two months here. Hopefully, the rest of the year will be just as successful.

Howard goes to London.

Howard doesn't get out much, and when he does it's just to pop to Tesco to get some Milk.

The great paper cape.

On a recent trip to a local kiddies library, beside looking like a bit of an odd ball, I discovered a wonderful little book by an author and illustrator by the name of Oliver Jeffers. After a little research I found out he is a fellow Visual Communicator, graduating with a degree in Vis Com from Northern Ireland. His work includes children's books such as 'How to catch a star' and 'Lost and Found'.

I especially liked his new b ook, 'The incredible book eating boy', impressed with his method of layering his images up, using lined paper, checkered paper and even pages from old books to form the background of each page.

His work relates well to the text and image brief because of his unconventional use of typography, the combination of handwriting and a typewriter font makes the book childish and nonthreatening, but with a charming quirky character about it.

In this image, Jeffers has incorporated the narrative into the architecture of the the image, making it a part of the illustration, opposed to an addition to it.

Yesterday's paper telling yesterday's news.

Our trip to London turned out to be every bit as arduous as expected. Thanks to the predictable British weather, the day was overcast, cold and generally miserable, a perfect day to traipse around central London.

We set out with the Design Museum in mind, but as we got further away from our drop off point, and closer to lunch time, the time seemed to dwindle. With an impending critique on Monday, we decided to utilise our time in a new environment, doing quick sketches, taking numerous pictures, trying to record our feelings on the place and eventually finding ourselves wondering down downing street.

Trying to look good limits my life

"Trying to look good limits my life." - Stefan Sagmeister.

Sagmeister creates some of the most visually exciting and confrontational work of the 1990's. He abandons formal constraints, disregarding social barriers, resulting in work that isn't always entirely acceptable. Below shows the result when Sagmeister was asked to design the poster for a lecture he was giving in Detroit. Instead of creating 2D, throwaway graphics, he proposed his assistant should carve the details into his very own flesh. The image proved eye catching and memorable.

As well as appreciating this sensational image for its aesthetics, the piece also conjures up feelings of awe, inspired by a man so dedicated to the visual arts and his work, that he could actually carve the message into his skin. This works especially well, given the context being a poster for a lecture, casting his students work ethic to shame.

There is limited attention to detail in the design of the font used for the text on his body, this is a reflection of the method of production. As each stroke cast would have been painful, it would have been sensible to avoid overly complex fonts or designs and limit the amount of strokes used.

I admire this piece the most for the use of unconventional canvases. I can see strong similarities between Sagmiester drawing on himself, and graffiti artists projecting their thoughts onto the building of a city. As soon as an artist uses a different canvas, be it a human body, a building, a tree or any other aspects of the environment, it gives the piece a more tangible feel. It brings the piece away from the sterile white walls of art galleries that so many of the masters are displayed on and makes it more accessible to the masses.

This piece is a contradiction to our modern throw away culture. Advertisements and poster graphics have only moments to grab your attention and get their message across before they are cast aside and thrown away. Carving the message into a human being promotes a much more permanent idea that the image will be there to stay, and can't be thrown aside so readily.

I definitely won't be forgetting this image anytime soon.

Alga Detroit Poster - Stefan Sagmeister

http://www.sagmeister.com/

New course, new friends, same old AIB.

I started heading towards the beginning of this course with a sense of foolish complacency. I, stupidly, thought that due to the fact that it was in the same location that I had been in for two years, the course would be the same and everything would be just fine and dandy.

This couldn't have been further from the truth, yet I can't stress enough that this is in no way a negative statement. Surprising even myself, I have thrived on the new environment, the new challenges, even the realisation that I’m not best in the class any more! In some ways this jolt of reality is exactly what I need. I have coasted through the last year with a dull sense of complacency, bored and uninspired by the course, but now, surrounded by a new group of creative young minds, I have rediscovered a healthy love of competition, striving to better myself even if it requires late nights and early mornings.

Our first few briefs have been daunting, set in an unfamiliar and foreign format that I’m doing my very best to get my head around and my nose to the grind stone. I was firstly surprised to see that this brief included an outline of what we have to do with our time! Despite there not being any kind of strict time guide lines, this is still a lot more help than I’m used to!

Our very first PAL session was today, which I found to be a great help. As well as them being lovely folk, our pal leaders seem to really want to help us. I felt free to raise any issues I had about the course or the course leaders in a save and completely confidential environment. This session also helped me to realise that despite I might have a few issues with the brief, with the time keeping aspects, with the quality and quantity of work expected from us, queries about our lectures, but it helped me most just to know that everyone in my class is going through it too, and there are lots of people milling around the building who are there to help.

The most helpful contribution I took from PAL is what exactly we have to do for PPRD, which is why I have set about my way to start this blog, a slick, convenient method of recording my thoughts and feelings on the course, any artists I may have been practically inspired by, or any excursions is don’t want to forget.

Until next time.