Ligature Strangulation

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.

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?

Toilet paper. Highly useful, yet inappropriate as a gift.

Someone to 'ave a gander at:
www.marcjohns.com

Bit of post-it fun.

Academia found me unsuitable.

I have always somewhat prided myself on my essay writing abilities, and held no worries facing the singular essay we were required to pass this year. That was right up until the night previous to the essay’s hand in which I could possibly admit to feeling slightly worried if not entirely stupid and dim-witted for putting it off for so very long with such boorish complacency.

I chose to do my essay on an image that I picked entirely at random, that of Jude Law in a masculine pose clad in Dunhill clothing. Luckily for me, the picture was crammed packed full of signifies that I could bleed dry to fill my 2,000 word count, creating one of the most boring and repetitive reads I have ever had the misfortune to create, and I’m sure Dr. Anna felt the same way for she had the misfortune of reading the monstrosity.

With a brief comparison to a vulgar, sexist advert for some masculine product, consisting of a scandalously clad lady in a compromising position, I managed to scrape together some half coherent argument that women are inherently submissive and we are doomed to live our days in the shadows of the man folk.

Unsurprisingly I managed to just scrape a pass, at an utterly humiliating 42%, which I only feel comfortable announcing on this site because I am fairly safe in my assumptions that no one would put spend their time reading my irrational ramblings on this dingy little website, no more than they’d have liked to have read my unconvincingly feminist essay. I’m sorry you had to read that.

Good night.

FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH

We are in the mist of a 6 week course of flash lessons, without which I would have been completely and utterly lost. I hear a lot of our class complaining about the pace of the lessons, and calling them pointless, but I guess maybe they don’t have such an unbelievably loose grasp on the whole flash programme.

My only possible complaint is that I find it a seriously difficult staying awake after 5 o clock, actually, that’s rubbish, I find it difficult to not nap after lunch, but I have had to learn to live with that since I left play school. For me it would have been better organised to be on a Thursday or Friday morning, when I’m alert. But then I would have complained about having to come in for the morning, when it could have just as easily been on a Wednesday evening.

Maybe I just like complaining.

Final Outcomes

Amnesty International final outcomes

Amnesty Evaluation.

Considering, that before I started this unit I had not heard of Amnesty International, gaining the knowledge of what this charity does and who they help was the first thing I learned. After finding out what they did, the second item on my agenda was to work out which issue raised, I felt strongest about and what I wanted my campaign to say.

The part of this project I had the most trouble with, was working out what to base it around and the fact that we had to avoid all political views made everything a lot more complicated.

I decided to tackle this problem by using a process of idea generation where I wrote down a list of words with which I associate Amnesty International; with a list of subsequent words I associate with them.

We had a talk with an Amnesty International representative, Barry Tempest, which in my opinion only proved to complicate matters further. Although he obviously had the best of intentions, I found it difficult to be convinced by what he was telling us. I don’t know whether it was just a bad presentation, but I found it hard to see the change happening and felt the money the charity was given could be used to make a bigger different if it was other wise utilised.

The most important thing I had to remember about this project was to take a professional view and to forget any personal opinions I may have towards the cause. I am working as a designer, and it is not my job to show my opinion, but the opinion of those I am representing. Of course, in the real world, I would not have the opportunity to choose the subject matter with which I am working; therefore, the problem of choosing what I believe in would be removed completely.

I chose to base my project around children’s rights, knowing that subjects referring to children are emotive by default. I conducted some research into children’s rights issues raised and was shocked by the statistic, “26 children have been executed in Iran since 2005.” Of course, most of the so called children were 16 and 17 and most of the male law breakers were rapists and murderers, but what shocked me the most was the crimes the females were meant to have committed.

Dina Parnabi was executed at the age of 16 for smuggling illegal literature into her school, Atefeh Rajabi Salaaleh was sentenced to death after allegedly having sex with an older man and Mona Mahmudnizhad was hung for teaching Bahá’í children classes. These incidents in Iran have caught the attention of the media, as documentaries have been made recently concerning these women. I was also very disturbed about the method of execution used in Iran, a slow and painful hanging, death by asphyxiation where as most countries now favour the method where the victim is dropped and their neck is snapped by the rope, resulting in almost instant loss of consciousness. In public executions in Iran, a crane is used to raise the victim above the crowd by the noose around their neck. Most countries use cranes to build homes, Iran use them to carry out unfair, savage capital punishments.

After reading about these inhumane and brutal killings in Iran, I began to doubt my previous convictions that capital punishments can be used as a swift form of justice. If nothing else, this revelation has been an important insight and I feel that I have broadened my sights and acknowledge the evil that can be committed lawfully.

Generally, this project was far more challenging than the text and image unit, this was due not only to the thought provoking subject matter, but also to the freedom given to us in the course structure to direct our own work. In the last project we had much more strict guidelines as to what was expected of us, we had numerous workshops, and the work was directed to include many experiments with techniques, where as in this topic we have a chance to push our work towards a final outcome however we felt appropriate. I enjoyed the freedom this method gave to me to explore my ideas, but this route also gave me chance to flounder unproductively.

I went through a desperate stage at the beginning of this unit when I had no idea how to carry it forward. Those around me seemed set in what they were basing their project around, feeling strongly and safe in knowledge of what Amnesty did, as I crawled closer to a state of desperation.

Then, suddenly one night, with no warning whatsoever, I was struck by a kind of divine inspiration, and after hours and days of searching around for an idea, any idea, I was able to carry my work forward, progressing and developing it into, what I hope was a coherent format.

What I found most successful in this project was my idea development. I started with a very vague idea and was then able to push it forward and expand it until I was left with what I felt was the best design I could produce. A lot of my ideas came with images that weren’t appropriate to the Amnesty International brand, pictures of hangman’s nooses and children’s feet dangling above the gallows, vulgar shock tactics that hindered the message I was trying to get across instead of supporting it.

For this project, we were encouraged to do little research as to create out own individual, original idea and not to be tainted by the adverts that have already exist. If I did this project again, I would probably dismiss the advice to minimise research, and go ahead with it anyway. I feel that I only produced my idea when I grained an in depth knowledge of the workings of Amnesty, and if I knew about this sooner, I feel I could have had my idea sooner, with more time to work on it.

In conclusion, despite the initial teething problems, and the issues I had with the charity, I feel I have overcome my personal views and designed a convincing poster, and am happy that I didn’t have to resort to any obvious images to do so, instead relying on symbolism and a more subtle approach.

If I were a shoe, what would I say?

Here are some shoes I drew.

Fayre Tray Vitamin D.

Oh, you're gunna love this one.

Black Box, yet another intensive day of concentration, breaks and little bit more concentration. Somehow, I always get put into the same groups, which I guess isn't too bad, we can all take our normal rolls, me somewhere in the background, occasionally giving a bit of encouragement to appear like I have any input at all.

Our groups favourite bit of work of the day happened in about 10 minutes, but oh, it was a doosy. We were given a product that we had to illustrate in some way, not too obvious, not too cryptic. And somehow we thought we were being so witty and ingenious when we thought of this idea, thinking back, it wasn't big, and it wasn't clever.

Fayre - Tray - (vitamin) D Barn - Naan - AAARRRRGGGHHHs.

Brilliant, you're going to have to imagine the images, because it would take up far too much space for me to upload all of them and that is just unnecessary.

Well, I'll get to the point, when we switched products and successfully guessed our cryptic clues, we had After Eights, and it was our job to think of an advert to promote it. This is what we did:

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.