It was an unseasonably warm mid-March day; the prospect of yet another group project filled the class with trepidation. Bodies trembled and quivered as we were torturously allocated groups using an unforgiving numeric system. Lost souls congregated, united by their pre-ordained classification.
“Three!” we cried, “Three!”
With little more hassle, we united, ready for another rousing day of Type Radio antics.
The first task to be completed was a brief chat with our guest tutor, Catell. We sat, pallid faced, palms moistened, stumbling with words to fill the awkward silence. With very little idea ourselves of where our project was destined to arrive, we struggled profoundly with trying to explain our ideas to a third party. We chatted briefly about few ideas and left the experience with little more insight than we had taken to it.
The next pressing matter which urgently needed addressing, where were we to sit? Well, the obvious choice on this globally warmed spring was somewhere we could bask; dabble in a spot of sun worshiping while we pleasurably pursued our project.
Predictably enough we began a spider diagram, being careful not to utter the politically incorrect term, ‘brain storm’. Our first idea, being the rather banal image of a radio, or perhaps a typewriter; typewriter, radio, Type Radio, get it? Taking a rather vital blow in being informed we couldn’t include images, we toyed wit ha few slogans, “No images, just type’, but thought this portrayed the wrong kind of idea.
As a group with mixed ideas we pursued the only path we all felt comfortable on, the designers and artists that Type Radio spends it’s precious time and cyber space to inform us of.
After a recent InDesign session, with ligatures on the mind, the idea of these aesthetic characters floated to the surface of our consciousnesses. With the abolishment of images, the idea of using type as the decoration as well as the information seemed like a clever solution to an injustice.
We slaved hard through the day, fatigues slowly consuming our young, malleable minds, horror set in when we realised there were not suitable ligatures to fit in with our theme. Tweeking the wording to include some suitable letter combinations, we settled on the phrase ‘spoken words’, followed by on type radio, to iterate the website we were advertising.
With a list of over one hundred designers and a vague layout in mind, we experimented with text positioning, colouring, sizes, we started thinking about festival posters, something everyone of our demographic would be all too familiar with.
We settled on a design placing the text in a cascading format, the names of the artists starting big at the top and getting smaller down the page, and with a splash of colour our piece was complete, ready to be ripped apart by the rest of the class in a group crit.
Friday, 20 March 2009
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Screen Based Communication
To say at the beginning of this project that I was a Flash novice would be like saying that Hitler was a slightly unfriendly fellow. More accurately, I would be inclined to throw well-documented psychological condition of “Flash-Phobia” into the equation. At the beginning of this project, the mere mention of the programme would alight a deep-seated, primeval fear in my very soul, but where I stand now, with the whole grueling experience behind me, I can only feel enriched by my newfound knowledge.
My first right decision of this project was finding a subject about which I was passionate – books - and managed to channel my own condescending arrogance into creating something that could be seen as useful. The idea of opening the eyes of the “I’m too cool to read” and the “I’ll wait for the movie” people to the benefits reading can have on all aspects of their life, was motivation enough for me to keep moving forward.
I found salvation from the highly concentrated computer sessions in the form of character design. This for me was my biggest success and I still don’t tire of looking at little book Harry and Lord Ignorance flying around the page on their broomsticks. After six weeks of looking at my own illustrations, day in, day out, managing to still laugh at the work makes me think it must be, at some levels, a success. For me, I think these simple characters offered a way for me to escape back to my comfort zone away from the harsh, unforgiving light of the computer monitor.
If you’d told me 6 weeks ago that I would soon feel comfortable using Flash, I would have laughed in disbelief, but now, though some divine miracle I not only feel comfortable using the programme, but am starting to enjoy it.
Through the entirety of the Flash evening course I seemed to be constantly a week behind everyone else in the class, but this didn’t seem to be much of an issue. I can now proudly state that I can complete both motion and shape tweens, as well animating frame by frame. I feel comfortable using movie clips, buttons and graphics, and its all the more satisfying because I had to try hard to learn these things.
Not only has this project added another much needed string to my bow, but also awoken my hunger for learning. Learning to do something, prior to which I was completely ignorant and unwilling to try, has helped me remember that I can learn new things if I try hard enough and made me remember that exploration is the key to success.
If I never leave my comfort zone, how am I meant to ever achieve anything?
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
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