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.  

The story of SUPERCONE!

The short 5 day project we got on Monday incouraged me to use my instinct more, and as a result I think I may have gone a little crazy with the project and created charcters and senarios that were not as relevant as i had origionally thought.















I got really into the fantastical world of comic books and started playing with type faces and comical charcters I could potensially use. I found out its easy tp create the charcters, setting and layout, but its the context and the relevence of the charcters that got me into a bit of a pickle to judge!

As I had followed the idea of the orange coulour being a warning coulour as its bold and viberant, I then dicided the theme of the charcter was going to have to come from a big orange warning of some kind. So the next step was to somehow get my hands on a cone to acutally start photographing and eventaully sustain a belivable charcter with. This became aparant to be a whole lot harder than I had even thought about. Not only did I have to treck around Leeds looking for a suitable orange cone candidate, but when I eventaully found one, it turned out they were banned from my halls so I was unable to bring it in. I eventaully found someone with one hidden in their room, and thats when the real solid work begane. Me and my flatmats started playing around with ideas and then got to a point were I was a ble to draw a story board from the images I had produced.

This project was probalbly my most enjoyable so far as it had the biggest boundarys of potensial ideas I could produce, next time mayb ill let it make more sence for a veiwer. Well I learnt a lot and thats always got to be important! also createing superhero's who do acidently look like flying penis's has got to make a few people laugh.

Print

Heres just a few images from the print session we had. Really enjoyable. Definitely will be going back soon.

Towards the end of the partner project

The final results of the partner project turned out quite well. I felt the final result met the brief but in my own opinion I wasn't satisfied with the way I displayed the final piece, so I will be re doing  it straight away. I had the strong theme of the urban "gangsta" which up close was clearly shown but from a distance looks a little messy although that was the look I was going for. The chains worked better on some of the letters because of the exposure I was able to get from the photographs when I traced them.

I really liked the lettering my partner created for me. It was spot on my personality in being "special" and very much an individual.  Its me in a nutshell!

The Colour project

The new project was started by us all bringing in 10 items of our own and eventually creating an order which eventually could merge with all the other groups who had different colours. Whist experimenting with other groups and colour themes, I then began to focus on a few specific objects whilst changing many aspects. The small orange fish became my best tool as I enjoyed the slightly unintentional off focus effect it kept making. 

Project about our partner

The new project was a little bit of a challenging one I have to admit. After being given a partner who was potensially one of the loudest in the class, I started to really try and capture and create good words to describe him bearing in mind that he was likely to be very generous and over confident about himself.  In the end I was a lot more able to work with the words that I gave, becasue as I predicted, my partners use of the words "ravershing" and "classy" didnt really apply tot he way I saw him. So I worked with the more extreme words given such as humerous and gangsta.  On the side Iv'e shown some images and ideas I started to think up.  I made them "G" as the term goes, like gangsta! and I tryed to use a cigerette packed to enfasise the statement with an exclamtion mark. 

The alphabet soup project

I got the word layer in the alphabet soup project! most understandable one, SCORE!

I was quite exited about this project as I havent really tryed hard to explore the boundries of typography. Even on the foundation course I did I somehow managed to avoid studying it. This project I found more than the other let me be more spontanious and exploratory with the idea of type and letter form. As I was going back home during mid week for a religious festival, I new I wouldn't be able to get as much as I could done at home so I started thinking about it before I left. Could i be creative and think 'outside' the box. maybe create some sort of object symbalism which you would naturally think of when you think of layer for example a cake or high story building. 

Then I started thinking on the lines of the actual image and the context of the letter oppose to the imagery. I also wanted to explore the idea of using negatives. I then started creating simple lettering and intensially makeing the background layered and interesting. This was effective but only to the extent of knowing what to do as a image on a page. As far as the brief goes I feel the idea I had began to expore with the background being stronger doesnt work as its the actual lettering we need to make the words or phrases that I suppose we are eventually going to use in class.

As far as my work went this week it definetly wasnt my best. But the course says we need to learn from mistakes, which is what im going to do. This experience has tought me to think and brainstorm my ideas more and then actually following then through shouldnt be that hard.

So we had our first assignment, what would happen if there was no I! Tricky..... .but only at first! After brainstorming ideas and thinking about the kinds of message and audience we would have, we collectively decided on a comical skit, and as none of us being modest and still a little shy wanted to actually be in it, we started to think about finger puppets! To be completely honest I was completely relieved and thrilled my peers had a similar sense of humour as me, with a similar desire to focus on the important points in completing the required brief. So yey for me!!!!!!! 

The puppet idea gradually formed into our desire of creating a whole news cast to explain and introduce our thoughts an ideas to the brief. The filming of the puppet show was actually really found interesting to do and as tedious as it was at times we all found it fun to create the characters and work with new formats and even strangers on the street to help us with the shoots. Although all the visuals were effective and the points we wanted to make were physically produced in the skit, the voices I felt let us down. We worked hard on trying to make it all fit together s well as we could with appropriate characters to fit the voices but in doing that the information was all passed to quickly. BUT IT WAS STILL EMENCE! I actually couldn't have worked with a better group, we all worked so hard and really put our creativity and personality into it. Basically everything immature was on my behalf............ he he . 

Here's the final piece:

As nervous as i was about the first project and also working in a team or group with other people, I felt it actually turned out great. Wouldn't take this first group teamwork and group bonding away for anything!

Heres just some images of the development process....