New Visual Language- Form Follows Function

AN EXPLORATION OF MODERNISM AND POST MODERNISM

CONT STREETGRAPHIC

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CABINET OF CURIOSIT

EARTH ARTEFACT TYPOGRAPHY MANIFESTO

TENTS 4-11

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TIES

12-15 16-21 22-23 24-25

STREETGRAPHIC

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B

rief You are required to research into the graphic language of the street, how imagery, artifacts and ephemera of all kinds bombards the senses with visual messages and experiences. You are to demonstrate your ability to select suitable subject matter for translation into graphic experiments. Your research can be either static, moving image, Internet, installation or a mixture of all. You should be able to demonstrate multiple ideas and employ a range of media and methods appropriate to the demands of the project.

W

hen we were first handed our street graphic brief, I was stumped as of what I could do, so after a quick mind mapping session with my peers and a couple of tutors I decided that I would begin my travels looking at the typography of the street, road signs and road markings, and thinking wouldn’t it be good to see what peoples reaction would be to a change of typeface, colours, spacing etc on the road signs. This led me down the road of researching into Margaret Calvert who was one of a group of designers tasked with a complete overhaul in the design of britains roadsigns, changing the letters to sentence case with each word being capitalised rather than all the letters as had been done previously.

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his work then got me thinking about how these changes would effect me and my daily life whilst driving. Which intern made me think about my daily routine when I got into my 14 year old Ford Ka. My typical journey isn’t like anyone elses, or so I thought until I spoke to Tracey in one of the studio sessions about my idea and she sympathised greatly.

With all the malfunctions and inconsistencies with my car I decided to create a small info graphics explaining each malfunction as well as some of the things that I had to concentrate over more than other drivers may have to.

CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

B

rief In the same way that certain artists attempt to capture experiences, or ephemeral moments of time in their work, as in the boxes of Joseph Cornell and animations of the Brother Quay, you are required to use your personal experiences to build a cabinet of curiosity or shrine. This does not have to be a literal physical cabinet but can be virtual, physical or static. In the first instance you should collect written and visual information based around your personal experiences and interests.

“Derive ideas from the world around you, from your own background, from your childhood, from relationships with others, from the social and political environment. Don’t be confined to a pond...in which the water is always in danger of becoming stagnant”

A

Ken Garland.

s soon as I read the brief and it said take inspiration from personal experiences, I started to think, what from my life would be worth encapsulating for everyone to see? I took 2 different paths, the first idea was a shrine to Formula 1, as I am an avid watcher of all the races and take a substantial interest in how the cars work and especially the way they look. My second idea was using the phrase “Cabinet of curiosity” literally, and pulling together something that was always at the forefront of my life when I was a child. My Toys. After looking back at my childhood I realised that the category childhood toys wasn’t enough, when I was thinking about what I used to play with, I noticed that there were 4 distinct locations where I would play with toys and that each location has different toys. The 4 places were Home, 2 Grandparents house and my Aunties house. As you can see from the images I have created a box that looks like my childhood toy box, the green lid is the same lid from my own personal toy box, which I managed to salvage from my auntie as she had been using it for my cousins toys for a number of years.

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he reason I chose my childhood toys, as the focus of my cabinet is that they have always been a big part of my life, the main categories that have had an influence on my life are construction toys such as Lego and K’NEX and vehicles as I am a huge lover of cars. My childhood toys were always a big part of my life as when my parents were at work I would spend a lot of time at my grandparent’s house playing with all sorts of toys including cars, Lego, planes, Lego Duplo and brio train sets.

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ven though I am very happy with the way my final piece turned out, I wish that I had got alittle more research under my belt before I made any choices as I believe that it would have been better if I had.

he original idea was to place some sort of frame on to the from of my box, but I thought that the addition of a door would increase the curiosity of my piece thus fitting itself better to the outcome of the brief. One thing i was trying to keep was that it is a toy box, i wanted to be able to have the individual pieces to be free moving so that they can be picked up, but this wasnt possible as i wanted to keep things in their place. So i settle for double sided tape to hold the toys in, but it was only after i had stuck all the pieces in that i thought about using velcro to hold the pieces down as this would give the best of both worlds, allowing the viewer to pick up the toys and look and play.

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For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk, we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas enabling people to work together ... to build the impossible. M ankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking ... and its greatest failures by not talking. I t doesn’t have to be like this. O ur greatest hopes could become reality in the future with the technology at our disposal - the possibilities are unbounded. A ll we need to do is make sure we keep talking”.

Stephen Hawking

DEVELOPMENTAL MINDMAPS

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he reason why I chose to base my project on the science and technology of earth was because it shows the evolution of human intelligence, from the first wheel and internal combustion engine, to todays cars. As I was looking through the original images from the voyager probe, I noticed that there was very little in the way of technology, which to me is the defining point of the human race, our technological advancements in the past century. At the turn of the century we couldn’t even dream about an aeroplane, and 60 years later we put a man on the moon. It is the same story with electronic equipment aswell, in just 40 year the portability has increased, along with speed, efficiency and style.

T

heoriginal idea for my final outcome was to create an animation where the earth rotated in the centre of the screen, pop ups would appear containing images and text explaining that what it is, the pop ups would also appear next to where they were invented, or the home country of the inventor/ discoverer. I unfortunately had to change my idea to an info graphic piece as I do one have the sufficient skills or access to adobe aftereffects.

The images you see double up as info graphic pieces as well as thumbnails of what my animation would have looked like, which I am planning on undertaking over the summer.

I

started off by mind mapping things to do with science and technology, and after I collated a number of categories, I whittled it down to documenting the advancements in our technology, as I believe this is the human race’s biggest achievement to date and to anyone or anything that may come across my piece I thought it would be good for them to know what we as humans are capable of, intellectually. After I had started the work I realised that the science portion of my comparison was not going to work, this was because once something has been discovered, you cant really improve on it, it is what it is.

MY TYPEFACE

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s part of our course, throughout the year we were given small briefs along side our main studio briefs, this was the latest brief we were given, all about typography. In the first week of this mini brief we were introduced to 3 typographers, Erik Spiekermann, Cyrus Highsmith and Kyle Cooper.

We were originally shown these typographic designers to see how they worked, the way they liked to design and what sort of works they had designed, as we needed to choose an application for our own typeface. We were given a selection of pieces of work form different

artists and designers, we were told to select 3 from about 20, sketch out some initial ideas for each piece we chose, we had to use the shapes and forms from these images and find characters within the images then create a full alphabet. I chose pieces of work

by Wolfgang Weinhart, Josepth binder and Herbert Bayer as the inspiration for my typeface. I used his Four Segmented Circles (1970) using the idea of the concentric circles as well as the segmented circles as part of my type design, which you can see here. I chose my own colour scheme, as I didn’t want to copy his.

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reat design is invisible.

edoing things isn’t always a bad thing, it can help pull that one amazing design out of your imagination.

24 sking for help isn’t cheating, its classed as development of ideas

eople only ever see your final article, (please turn over)

owever, the design steps that lead up to the final article are still vital.

f you no longer go for a gap, you are no longer a racing driver, Ayrten senna.

This philosophy can be applied to the world of design aswell

ut and stick can be your best friend, aswell a being very therapeutic.

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MANIFESTO

his was a short 4-week project based around my theory; I had to create a design manifesto, which is shown below. I decided to use the typeface I designs as a drop capital in my manifesto to tie my pieces of work together. I like the way my manifesto turned out as I was going for a collection of statements, kind of inspirational that can relate to most things and not just design.

o not procrastinate, it gets you nowhere

25 4 ducated colouring in, what many people believe graphic design to be

tep back and look at what you have achieved, then get right back to it.

ntermissions are a good thing, they help you to get your creative juices flowing.

et out and about, see things, don’t keep yourself locked away. Fresh air helps a lot

ever forget where your love of design came from, mine was the building blocks of life, LEGO.