A brief look at last year

After doing so much this last couple of months of this new course, I took a look at the kind of work I did last year and how different it was. We had a lot more time for resurch in foundation I found. I did mine in London College of Communication in Elephant and Castle, which Is best known for print as it used to be london college of printing.
Heres a quick look at some images from last year, and the fairly random and obscure work I came out with......... (Im just preparing you)








As you can probably tell we were given a project of studying a Shakespeare play creating an advertising campaign to go see it at our local theatre. I instantly chose Titus Andonicus as It was the most gory with a staggering 26 deaths throughout. The play consisted of many blood realated scenes and the imagery then progresed natuarally into an older audience. The series of posters and even objects such as costers were produced as a set which could be shown in a pub as it was too gory for kids.



Incase you were wondering, within the play, two of the charcters are killed and put into a pie and then kindly given to their mother who eats them with no idea that she is actually eating her children! NICE!



Last year I had a little dibble dabble into a bit of textiles too, which intensionally or not ended up looking a little bit creepy. But bloody relevant to the tone I was trying to create. This wasn't my final major project of last year but definetly my favourate and the one with the most effective imgery!



Just a nice drink in the student union......... with a few new costers!--- Can I just also say, all these drinks were not mine!

Sugar Sugar?

The "No news is good News" project started with the heading from the newspaper "You cant force someone to be healthy". The project quickly developed from looking at the article as a whole, which consisted of more of a fashion element, to something completly about staying healthy and eating properly. My ideas and opinions went on continuously into how I could express my opinions on good eating.

A lot of my ideas came from staying in New York this summer. I worked on a camp with 14-16 year olds who were constantly being given sugar and stodgey unhealthy food. I felt the side effects showed a unbalanced and unhealthy level of mood swings which consequently ment us as the leaders and counsellors got most of the bad end of that deal! Although I new going to America there would be much more junk food options, I felt the idea of healthy eating was compeltly obolished in a way. from my persepctive the majority of these problems came from the huge amount of sugar the kids drank at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Cristal Light which they drank, was basicly crystals (looked like a tub of sugar) which was simply put with water. The effects were a very radient and bright couloured drink which looked more like chemical toxic waste!

Obviously my opinions were about the saftey of other people and not necessarily looking out for my own well being, but growing such a strong bond with these children this summer really has made me pasionate about trying to keep to healthy eating. Seeing the effects it has and the close similarities to ADHD which a lot of the american kids had and had to take medecine for, made me want to prove how bad sugar is. 

After investigating many, many, many different options to how I could go about this project and perhaps even use the idea of subliminal advertising, mainly in the USA , I then decided to just focus on something that would potensially make more sense. Coke bottles full of sugar it was!

This was an attempt of creating love hearts that are bad for you. One each individual one is said a small witty comment about how bad the sweet is and facts about how much sugar is in them. It was very effective in showing irony as the comments were all produced on something with a heart which made it that much worse! Ironicly I had to make do with the hearts I had because I actually ate the other two full packets of them. Thats when I thought of "Love your'e heart".





With help from possitive feedback I got for my sugar in a bottle idea, I then carried on producing various photo's and a selection of little characters and images in my workbook. As I was going for a younger audience I thought it may be a good idea to start out putting the images into relevant catogories.



The final sugar bottle pieces.....

Visual literacy

Gilbert and George first sprang to mine when talking about statements with literal meaning. The title of this piece is called "Flying shit" and its literally and image of that. With no subtlety to even base their work on, Gilbert and George are one of the most contriversial artists as they really do try and express how they feel about subjects, which isn't always pretty!

I think a good graphic designer would always have a double meaning to their work but there would have to be one obvious and one subtle so you have to stay interested in the work. I tend to natually use this technique and as a result I normally tend to create a piece with contradicting meanings. Ironic work is my favorate, it confuses the audience who are trying to understand my way of thinking.