City in Flux
David Lynch
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Steve Powers
Eric Drooker
> fresh look on familiar place > how we only take in what is necessary and dismiss or completely ignore the rest > she talks of taking her dog for a walk and how she and the dog are experiencing a totally different street “Minor clashes between my dog’s preferences as to where and how a walk should proceed and my own indicated that I was experiencing almost an entirely different block than my dog. I was paying so little attention to most of what was right before us that I had become a sleepwalker on the sidewalk.” > how do other people see the city? the same streets we walk? what do we miss? > Horowitz takes 11 ‘experts’ along the same street, individually, to get their perspective > her toddler, an exploratory exercise in touching and tasting textures and surfaces, pointing at sights, pausing to absorb the tickling brush of the breeze > infants see everything new, everything is exciting to them, nothing yet distinguished
> artist and reconstructionist Maira Kalman, talk to policemen, movers, a mailman, churchgoers, and the social workers tending to a halfway house. > they cease to simply coexist with their fellow citizens and, for the duration of the walk, live with them instead, attend to them with presence and curiosity, see them > typography nerd Paul Shaw, “dull, tedious words” that bombard us from storefronts, billboards, and computer screens nearly every waking moment have an embedded meaning in each letter, they set a mood > geologist Sidney Horenstein, the city suddenly becomes not a sterile “man-made” object but a thriving ecosystem of living and once-living landscapes > field naturalist and insects advocate Charlie Eiseman, a keen awareness that the negative space of the unseen is itself a source of rich information > senior wildlife scientist John Hadidian, the main distinction in the city’s life is that between day and night, and a remarkable amount of wildlife floods
the seemingly humdrum city streets once the sun averts its gaze — pigeons/sparrows/ squirrels/chipmunks/raccoons
“
Right now, you are missing the vast majority of what is happening around you. You are missing the events unfolding in your body, in the distance, and right in front of you.
“
Alexandra Horowitz: Art of Looking
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
Lynch’s photographic series ‘The Factory’ all hold a mysterious quality, edging on eery at times, he creates this atmosphere through the use of black and white photography and by shooting from low angles and through objects. The scenes themselves contain an element of strangeness due to the fact that he is photographing an abondoned factory. Perhaps exploring the more derelict side of a city might throw out some interesting designs. In terms of photography skills I’m not exactly a pro, but I think that my novice photos may be improved through the use of photoshop. Lynch’s photographs are all in black and white, a technique that might be useful to use within my photo edits as this may be partly the key to the strange feel to his photographs.
Following on from my research into David Lynch’s photographs, I came across the strange world in which this film is set. Gnarled and twisted buildings are what give this film an eery feel, whilst also creating a false sense of reality and even dreamlike quality. Perhaps this might be an interesting technique to explore within my experimentation, creating a small set might be a low-budget way of achieving some of this technique. Light and shadow play a very strong role in the overall outcome of this set. The sharp, elongated shadows are really what makes the set look so good, without the use of harsh false lighting the design would look like exactly what it is, a lowbudget painted set.
Analysis
David Lynch
Steve Powers
Eric Drooker
Alexandra Horowitz
Going in a quite different route to the work of Lynch and the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, I’ve taken a look at some more fun pieces of design work. Powers work has been purposefully placed in the same spots that graffiti would be seen but his work holds more meaning than graffiti does. The collection of works I’ve researched have been grouped under the header ‘A Love Letter To The City’, a title that really showcases what they are all about. The designs themselves are aesthetically pleasing and often clever, almost infographic styled.
Eric Drooker’s novel ‘FLOOD! A Novel In Pictures’ has a sense of comic book styling whilst not being so true to that title; with far more harrowing scenes and a sense of darkness about the images. The scenes themselves are quite flat, with little in the way of detailing, this is especially done due to the use of the majority of black and slight white contrast. His images actually remind me of lino printing due to this flat kind of appearance. It might be interesting to create some lin printing using images of my chosen city as the basis and see how the prints develop.
I found the idea that Horowitz explores a really interesting and fun way of looking at the city; it’s a different approach that I probably wouldn’t have considered, however, now that I have read her thoughts it has given me some great inspiration to explore the parts of the city that might not normally be focused on by everyday passersby. I would like to explore the beauty in the odd places, perhaps alleyways, doorways, secret spaces, hidden parts of the city and even the colours that make up a city.
Derelict
Hidden Places
Perspective
City
Ideas
Skylines
Typography
In
David Lynch
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Research
Flux
Steve Powers
Alexandra Horowitz
Eric Drooker
York:
Photography
I decided to photograph different aspects of York that I took as influence from my initial artist research; derelict/ run-down/ hidden places/ typography/ skylines/ textures. The images that I’ve taken don’t particularly reflect York as an individual city but rather demonstrate particular aspects that may have some relative similarity to that of other cities aspects. In terms of the quality of the photographs I have taken, they were taken solely on my iPod so are pretty rough and perhaps some quite amateur. I’m hoping that editing in Photoshop will allow me to give the images a much more professional quality, however, I think that the less than ‘perfect’ overall look might influence the type of designs I develop from them.
Primary Research
Skylines
Primary Research
Derelict/Run-down
Primary Research
Textures
Primary Research
Typography
Primary Research
Doorways & Alleyways
This was a really simple stage set up with a box without a lid placed on it’s side and slits cut into the upper section of the box. The little paper cut-outs simply slide through the slits and are held in place by a half centimetre thick sliver of paper. I took the above image and broke down the foreground from the background and those inbetween, to then sketch them out wonkily with elements of Caligari’s set also incorporated. Each layer was cut out and slid into the box to build up a little set. I then took a light and shone it from a few different angles to acentuate certain parts of the design.
Experimentation
Creating a set
Experimentation
Photo Manipulation/Enhancement
Experimentation
Photo Manipulation/Enhancement
From editing my photo’s quite simply in Photoshop, I decided that I wanted another way to enhance and create something visually interesting. Taking the ideas of hidden aspects of the city, and people not looking at certain parts of the city (Alexandra Horowitz) I thought that perhaps looking at working with colour and an illusion kind of aspect might produce some interesting results. Simply looking on YouTube for Photoshop tutorials on how to create a kaleidoscope using your own image I came across this really simple way of creating pattern. The idea with this particular method is to create a pattern swatch out of it at a later date, hence why
the end designs weren’t too amazing. I created some examples using my photography of York, I played with the colours and some other aspects of the images before turning them into kaleidoscope and also afterwards. I’d like to develop a more intricate kaliedoscope that works far better as a singular piece rather than as a repeat pattern.
Photoshop Tutorials
Kaleidoscope - Simple
With the creation of the previous kaleidoscopes I again searched YouTube for how to create kaleidoscopes using Photoshop, but this time selected a method that created a more complex and interesting outcome.
I developed a couple of outcomes using two of the same photo’s I’d previously used for the more simple kaliedoscope. I’m much happier with the outcomes of this method and think that I can probably progress somewhere with this idea.
Photoshop Tutorials
Kaleidoscope - Complex
Whilst in the process of creating a kaliedscope image I went to reposition the image I wanted to transform and this happened to the document. It must’ve been a glitch that occurred at the time of creating this piece, but I thought that I best document this as it has inspired an idea I want to develop into my kaliedscope designs. Due to the numerous colours that have blocked onto this image, I began thinking about working with a colour spectrum of the city. Colour spectrum would tie into Horowitz’s idea of looking at other aspects of a city that you may not notice yourself, and would also really make the kaliedoscope’s stand out.
I selected a number of my photographs that I felt represented the visible colour created when light is shone through a prism. I cut each image down to best showcase that particluar prominant colour for the image and simply strung each image into one long like to try to highlight how the colour varies through the city. The overall look of this ‘timeline of colour’ is rather amateur, but it does highlight
some interesting aspects, such as the amount of certain colours within the city. I think it would be really interesting to transform the most prominant coloured images into kaliedoscopes to produce designs that reflected both the colours of York and the fact that we don’t generally notice them (through the disorientating effect of the kaliedoscope)
http://searchpp.com/prism-light-spectrum/
Colour Spectrum
Colour Spectrum in Kaleidoscopes
Avant Garde Influence
In terms of creating some form of final piece for my project, I wanted to have a design style that I could incorporate/ interpret throughout my final piece as whatever I create will need some form of typography and layout on it so I wanted to stick to a particular design style to keep consistancy throughout. I’ve selected to use the Avant Garde movement to influence my final piece as I want to create a slightly sophisticated outcome, especially with the creation of kaliedoscopes which could be seen as chidlish due to the reference to the childs kaliedoscope toy. I don’t want to completely replicate the Avant Garde style because I want to give the design a twist that’ll represent my own style as a designer. In terms of this I did a bit of research on the traditonal Avant Garde designer Herb Lubalin and then also took a look at one of my favourite design companies NonFormat. Non-Format are an example of how Avant Garde can be used in a modern way
and this is the type of overall outcome I hope to achieve myself. An Avant Garde style typeface is going to be essential to create this feeling of sophistication so I’ll be sampling a few different typefaces to determine what might work best for headers/ main titles etc. I will more than likely use helvetica neue for my body copy as it’ll keep a clean look throughout without overpowering an Avant Garde font.
Avant-Garde
Herb Lubalin
Avant-Garde
Non-Format
Avant-Garde
Non-Format
Thumbnails
Kaliedoscope Booklet Cover
When developing the thumbnail ideas, I thought that perhaps I could create a sense of movement for the kaleidoscopes to use as a background for a main page. I tried motion blurring in photoshop when the kaleidscopes were all lined up. I was not impressed with this result though, the images were far too blurred and the overall design was just too flat.
I remembered the final scene when you won solitaire on the computer and decided that I wanted the images to appear as the cards did. I simply copied the image over and over at different heights and slightly to the left/right. This resulted in a slightly better design, however, not one I wish to further.
Motion Blur
Helvetica Neue
York York York York York York
York York York York York York
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On the right hand page I’ve collected together three typefaces with an Avant Garde feel that I thought might work well for my final piece. I’m particularly intrigued by the ‘Avant Go’ font, it strays from the more traditional appearance of an Avant Garde typeface but may be interesting to work with in a layout. The other two typefaces are relatviely similar and simple, but despite this, simple is often the best option. I’ve sampled Helvetica Neue on this page in all its different weights, and also sampled a piece of body copy. I think that Helvetica Neue is going to be the best option for body copy and other text on a page, it’s going to sit well with a more elaborate font and not over power it.
York York York
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TeX Gyre Adventor
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Quinfo
Avant Go
York
York York York York
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Typography Styles
York’s
Colour Spectrum in
Kaleidoscopes
Yorks’
Colour Spectrum in
Kaleidoscopes
York’s
Colour Spectrum in Kaleidoscopes
York’s Yorks’ Colour Spectrum
Colour Spectrum
in
in
Kaleidoscopes
Kaleidoscopes
York’s
Colour Spectrum in
Kaleidoscopes
Interactive Installation
Olafur Eliasson
I created this simple window installation by printing my kaliedoscope designs onto A3 acetate sheets and taping them on to one of the large windows in the studio. I’m impressed with the overall look of the kaleidoscopes. They work far better as opaque pieces as they allow the viewer to look through them into the city aswell as at them as whole.
Kaleidoscope Window Installation
I came across the ‘view master’ when searching for view finding ideas on Pinterest and it sparked some interesting ideas that I could perhaps explore. Taking the reel and placing my kaleidoscope images into each of the square sections could be something that I could use as my own view finder that could be taken away by a viewer and physically used in
the city to look through and see the city in this distorted way.
View Master
The issue that would arise if I were to go forward and use singular discs to look through is that they might be too small to make a big enough ‘view finder’ to look through. I’ve tried out a singular image in the disc which looks interesting but does loose the kaleidoscopic look as it’s breaking the image down further.
I decided that perhaps an interesting take on the view master idea might be to incorporate just the flat image into a concertina booklet idea. I’ve mocked up how this might look using illustrator.
View Finder
Using one of the typical Avant Garde stylings, I’ve extended a piece of the type to create a vertical line that runs down the page and creates a focal point. Continueing the straight lines of some Avant Garde designs, I’ve tried to create a diagonal line using only type. I’ve used words that are all associated with looking and seeing to create the line. The idea behind this is to subtly hint at what the inner poster is about.
I didn’t feel that the vertical line of text was working for this design as it just looked too randomly placed in the composition. I’ve therefore used the same concept of using words associated with looking, but instead created a focal point using typography in various diagonal angles.
The ‘York’ with the extended section of it seemed to be taking over the design too much. This wasn’t required though because the typographical focal point is also very strong in the design so the two were competing for the viewer’s attention far too much. I had originally had this typography at opacity 40%, however now that it is the sole focus on the design I decided that I could put the opacity back up to 100%.
Poster/Booklet
I wondered if the typography might work better on the opposite side of the design, and I also felt that perhaps the white of the design needed extended right through that middle section. This left me with a clear divide between where the typography stopped at what would be the fold of one of the sides. I felt that it was best to extend the text onto the side to tie the design together as a whole, rather than dividing it up too much. After trying the type at the left hand side I reverted back to using the right hand side as it just seems to work best there. In both of these examples I’ve incorporated my York and it’s extended r into the front of the design.
Poster/Booklet
White Overlay
Pale Red & Blue Overlay
Bold Red & Blue Overlay
Bold Red & Blue Overlay (Opacity 50% & 40%)