THE BRIEF
After receiving the brief ‘A conversation’, I sat down to brainstorm in order to help me generate some starting points. The project requires me to research and develop a visual outcome that centres around the idea of a conversation. Why have a conversation? There are several reasons as to why someone may have a conversation. Whether it be to teach children, discuss, wish a happy birthday or just to express themselves. The list could go on. The topics I thought that could be particularly interesting to look into are: To teach; teaching can cover many areas and ages. Whether in nursery or university, or following a youtube video, or an adult teaching their child their first words. I think this could make a very interesting project if I research into the various methods and topics I could involve. I am interested to see if I could break the rules of teaching and approach it from another perspective. Would this work or would it be difficult to understand?
To express; expressing oneself is a personal thing to do. There are many forms of expression and this could cover a wide range of ideas. You could express emotionally; by confiding in someone, or creatively, through music or art. I think this idea gives me a very open path and would be a good choice seen as I am someone who expresses myself creatively. I like the idea of using visuals to communicate with people as there is so much I can experiment with. To catch up; I have chose this topic because it’s an everyday thing all over the world. People don’t realise but it’s probably the main reason people talk, to discuss how their day went or what they’ve been doing. This could make an interesting project as everyone can relate to the topic. I could translate worlds into visuals, or create an illustrative type piece that expresses the tones in peoples voices, enabling them to read it how it would be said. I would research into how people interpret these conversations and convey them to visuals.
FINDING A THEME
After looking at formatting and reasons why people have conversations, I began to brainstorm ideas that could lead me to what I will be basing my project on. I looked at many different aspects from who to research, what people are talking about, who the conversation is between and what kind of approach I could take. I am hoping to develop an abstract idea that would cause my audience to engage themselves with my work. I like the idea of a puzzle. Thinking about how people say things in different tones and how we interpret them can give different words different meanings. I find this interesting how drastic these differences could be and think changing the context of the same sentence could spark some reaction. Another thing to think about is how some words are spelt the same, for example: I saw Lucy today, or will you saw some wood for me? And how words have different meanings, such as can you bare with me? I feel bare. or I like bears. These all give me leeway to play around with words and mess with contexts. Another idea I think could make an intriguing approach is story telling. There are lots of areas I could research in this theme from children’s learning books, to iconography or the game pictogram. My general idea is that stories and words can be spoken through imagery. Been a graphic designer, speaking through visuals is something I am aiming to develop my skills in each day. Children’s books
are something I probably will look into as from a young age, they use all their surroundings to develop. When a child is too young to be able to speak, they speak through movement and learn through sound and visuals. I think it would also be thought-provoking to think about how we recognise things through logo, iconography and symbolism. For example, if we saw the silhouette of an animal, or the pattern of it’s skin, we’d quickly be able to recognise what it is relating to. I would like to experiment the limitations of this idea, and how little of something we need to see to be able to sense what it is trying to tell us. Finally, using conversation to describe something is something that could lead to a powerful outcome. To try describe something to someone is to try give them a sense of something, whether it be aesthetically, creatively, emotionally or to inform. I would like to find the extent in which I can interact or communicate with someone without actually having a spoken conversation. The topics for creating a description here could be endless. I could describe movement, an event, a feeling, a sound, anything really. I still feel a little unsure as to what path I will take and so I will research into existing projects and examples in hope to spark some inspiration.
FORMATS
This is the most exciting part of figuring out how I will be interpreting the brief as it will affect my outcome the most. In this mind map, I brainstormed all the formats I could think of in which a conversation could take place. I have taken my ideas from verbal, social media and written letters to behaviour, interaction with surroundings and story books. There is so much I can work with from here that I almost feel as if I don’t know where to start. The main words that have caught my attention here are invitation, zine, book, instructions and hidden meanings. These are all something I feel could make a powerful conversation. I would like to be able to tell a story or create some instructions in an illustrative way, however I really need to research into topics first to base my ideas upon. This will help
me to decide what format would be the most supportive in it’s context. An idea I have found particularly interesting as a starting point is the way people interact with things. During a lecture we were given an example of a conversation with a bike. This sounded crazy to begin with but after seeing the example (which was a zoetrope showing the paths in which the bike had taken in an illustrative way e.g woods, city), I thought it was quite clever how the person had taken such an abstract approach from such a plain brief. This has helped me to think more outside the box and so I will develop my ideas further once I have looked into the themes.
TYPOGRAPHY & EMOTION
After brainstorming idea’s in which path I could take for my brief ‘A Conversation’, I began to think about how certain typefaces can evoke emotion or idea’s can be presented through the lettering. I recently had a lecture on semiotics which is basically about how and why signs and symbols have meaning. We also learnt about colour been a factor of this too. This led me to think about how typefaces can portray attitude and meaning. My initial idea for this concept is to be able to convey the emotion, tone, context or attitude of a phrase, lyrics, or general conversation. There are many formats I could present this idea with from poster design, to an animation clip or greeting cards. But first, I will research more in to how this concept works and what type of work is already out there.
There are two aspects I want to look at when evoking emotion through type. One the dialogue which the sentence is written in. For example: ‘Waddup ;-)’ as opposed to ‘What’s up?’. This is a clear example showing how the same sentence written in different dialogues can give the reader a different interpretation of the sentence. The first example sounds much more casual and relaxed. You can imagine it to be a way in which teens / young adults would greet each other socially. The emoticon also gives a hint of playfulness, imagining it’s from a cheeky character. On the other hand ‘What’s up?’ sounds more formal. The environment would have a different feel about it, either a workplace or even sympathising about something. It implies a question rather than a greeting.
The other aspect is the aesthetics of the typography. An example for this would be types of music. For example, a punk band may use a jagged rough looking typeface, where as a electronic dub artist may use something more digital. Above is an example of using typefaces within music. Another example would be road signs. If you saw a ‘STOP’ sign that looked like the example above, would you stop? The script font seems light hearted, playful and friendly and is likely to be taken much less seriously that the typeface in bold capitals. The original typeface has a more confronting approach, it large contrasting text to grasp your attention.
What I’m pointing out is the fact that typeface can convey an array of meanings. To really get the tone and attitude of a design across and force the viewer to feel the emotions we want, we must pick a suitable typeface and keep in mind the personality and mood of the design. This will enable to communicate the true essence of the message you are trying to convey.
SPEAKING THROUGH TYPOGRAPHY
Here are two infographs I came across which quickly summarise which typefaces are related to which emotions and characteristics. I find this very helpful and it has saved me a lot of time having to create this myself. I can now go onto looking at existing uses of communicating messages using visual type and how I can relate this to my brief.
Above are some quick examples of how I see ‘Speaking through type’. All have a very illustrative approach which I feel supports the text given. The ‘Hot’ example is a really obvious one, basically illustrating the word by it’s meaning. This is a very simplistic approach physically speaking and I feel this could be something fun to play around with.
The ‘Yes maybe no’ example is illustrated in a different way. It almost shows the meaning but in a more subtle way which makes you think about the design and making it’s meaning more obvious. The final image is just illustrated type which gives you an essence of the quote. It shows the happy child like side in the first half the text, then presents another metaphorical meaning through visuals in the second half.
These are ideas I will consider when creating thumbnail initial ideas, showing different approaches I could take. This will help me to decide which gives a stronger purpose to my chosen theme.
A TRIP TO THE LIBRARY
I recently took a visit to the library and came across a couple typography books that sparked some inspiration. ‘new illustration with TYPE’ by Martin Dawber and ‘Hand Job’ a catalogue of type by Michael Perry. Both of these combined the had very interesting visuals, mainly involving hand drawn designs. Below I picked out some typography that I felt hand very supportive visuals in comparison to their messages. I particularly felt inspired by the ‘Okay okay.. alright’ image as this is the style I have had in mind. My idea is to create a set of illustrations and typographic pieces of dialect which show the essence of the tone and context of the conversations.
DIALECT & ACCENTS
My initial idea I am hoping to develop for my Conversation project is to create a series of illustrated typography designs which reflect how someone has said something. I want to be able to show the tone, accent and essence of the speech and so I have researched into how colour, type, and design can say something with meaning. Now I want to look into dialect and the difference against accents. This is because I when someone reads my typography piece, I want them to read it in the exact way it was spoken. Here I have found a clear explanation of the difference between the two meanings: • An accent is the way that particular person or group of people sound. It’s the way somebody pronounces words, the musicality of their speech, etc. • A dialect describes both a person’s accent and the grammatical features of the way that person talks. (‘Dialect vs. Accent’, 2011) If you would like to see an example of this, I found plenty on the Dialect Blog. Here basically holds a library of various accents and dialects, explaining each with text and info graphs. This could come in very useful in this project and there is so many different aspects they talk about. After clearing up the meanings, I will be researching into people’s accents and translating them into the most appropriate dialog. As I am originally from Barnsley, I know my accent pretty well. Yorkshire appears to have their own humorous language due to how strong it often comes across. This gives me plenty of quotes, sayings and figures of speech to think about. I will also be going out into busy public areas and listening to the accents around me, jotting them down for inspiration and research purposes. I feel this will be a good area to base it around as my University is also based in Yorkshire, giving me a wide target market that will be able to relate to my work.
SURVEY RESULTS
I created a survey of 10 questions asking the participants to translate common Yorkshire words/sayings into what they interpret them as. This is to give me an understanding of what people will easily be able to decode or know the meaning of, making sure I’m not giving out mixed messages when I come to designing around the chosen quotes.
signals to different people.
After receiving 100 responses from my survey based on Yorkshire dialect, I collected together the answers to give myself a better understand of what people interpret from slang in dialog. Here I had analysed each questions results and gave my conclusion as to how easy it will be to communicate to people using these terms.
Q7: Neither use o’ ornament: (Good for nothing) 24 people skipped this while 3 people got this wrong. This means over a quarter of people didn’t understand the term as only 73% of people knew the meaning!
Q1: Be’ reyt: (it will be alright) The results showed that 1 person skipped this question and 99% of the participants answered this correct. This would be a good figure of speech to base my designs around as it is understood by almost the whole of my audience Q2: On yer bike: (go away) 1 person skipped this question and 5 people got this wrong, leaving 94% of people understanding this phrase. This still leaves it as a possible use for my project as the majority of people know the meaning. Q3: Flippin’ eck: (Annoyed or surprised response to something) Again, 1 person skipped this and only 94% got this right Q4: Daft as a brush: (Silly) 3 people skipped this and 2 got this wrong. Making this phrase understood by 95% of participants. This is another quote I could use as it would have meaning to many people. Q5: Tha’ what: (Pardon? or could you repeat that?) 3 skipped this phrase while 17 people misinterpreted it. This leaves only 4/5 (80%) people understanding the phrase. I will not be using this in my work as it is possible that it will send out mixed
Q6: Ars’ thi bin?: (How have you been?) A whole 8 people skipped this questions and 11 people were confused, meaning only 81% of people understood the phrase
Q8: ‘Appy as a pig in muck: (contently happy) 5 people skipped this questions while 4 people misunderstood it. This means almost 10% didn’t manage to decode the phrase as only 91% were correct Q9: Was tha’ born in a barn?: (Close the door! or implying they are messy) 7 participants skipped this while 12 people guessed this incorrect. 81% knew the meaning. Q10: Is it ‘eck: (No it isn’t) 4 people didn’t know this one while 5 people got it wrong, meaning 91% of participants understood the phrase. Looking at these results, I am able to take out phrases that are misunderstood from my possible ideas as I don’t want to give out mixed messages to my audience. The phrases I will not be using are ‘Tha’ what?, Ars’ thi bin?, neither use o’ ornament, and was tha’ born in a barn’. This leaves me with 6 other phrases I could look into designing around. I feel I could have made my survey a lot more accurate by adding questions based on their origin and age group, however I feel I don’t have much time to recreate the test and adding more questions would have put people off getting involved. I hope this will be enough to be able to reach the majority of people who will be able to easily decode the Yorkshire phrases.
THE YORKSHIRE ACCENT & SLANG
I decided to take some time looking into secondary research of the Yorkshire accent. I found a quick explanation including some examples of dialect on Wikipedia, however I didn’t feel like this was enough to get my project rolling. My idea is to find a few common sentences often used in daily life that people will easily be able to relate to, then take these future into illustrations that have strongly supportive visuals. If you follow the link to Wikipedia, there is a audio example from BBC Radio 4 you can actually listen to to give you an idea of what the accent sounds like.
I then stumbled across a post of the BBC website that is a very accurate glossary of the Yorkshire dialect. There is a whole alphabet of words and phrases translated into English. I feel this has saved me a lot of time instead of collecting and creating my own dictionary. There are common words that you often here when in a Yorkshire town such as Barnsley, for example: ‘aye’ means ‘yes’, ‘in a bit’ means ‘bye’, and ‘owt’ is ‘anything’. Some terms are a little out-dated but I feel having access to them all gives me a wider market to reach out to. There are common sayings too such as ‘daft as a brush’ which translates to ‘stupid’. These could also give my project a humorous side rather than thinking straight to the point. A little like Marc Johns work.
Examples of the Yorkshire accent in other media would be band ‘Arctic Monkeys‘ or the film ‘Kes‘. The Arctic Monkeys are a band known for keeping their strong accents instead of pronouncing words properly in their lyrics. A good example of their music would be ‘Mardy Bum’ which begins with ‘Now then mardy bum’. You can listen to the full song by clicking this link. Kes is a film based in Barnsley in 1969. Throughout the film you can pick up on the broad dialect used giving you an authentic taste of how the dialect sounds verbally.
Finally, I decided to do some visual research on how people have presented the dialect across media. I noticed a few had used semiotics to represent Yorkshire such as sheep as tea. These relate to the area as we have a lot of country side and we are big tea fanatics, we even have ‘Yorkshire Tea’ named after us! I also released the majority used strong bold fonts to represent the broad accent. The ones that particularly took my interest including minimalistic visuals and illustrative type as they seems to be powerful in their simplistic aesthetics and you automatically read it in the accent from the written dialect.
COLLECTIVE RESEARCH
Sophie Calle: Venice Biennale ‘‘When a boyfriend broke-up with her by email, French artist Sophie Calle asked 107 women to read the letter and to analyse it according to their professional interest. It was set to music, re-ordered by a crossword-setter, performed by an actress, and probed by a forensic psychiatrist, amongst others. The resulting artwork called Take care of yourself (after the boyfriend’s parting words) fills the French Pavilion at the Biennale. Another example of Calle’s ability to create art from the intimate and painful details of her life is also being shown in Venice. It takes the form of a film recording the dying moments of her mother, while in an adjacent space a statement on the wall explains that on the day that Calle was invited to represent France at the Biennale, she learned that her mother was terminally ill. Calle spoke to TateShots about her work.’’ This relates to my projects as it shows the different ways in which a conversation can be interpreted. The letter was translated into various mediums showing how there are so many ways a conversation can be conveyed. Although I think this is a clever idea and truly shows the extent in which communicating the same thing can be made, I don’t particularly find this interesting as there are no outcomes which truly stand out to me. I feel it is more based on the way a person expresses themselves as we are all different and express ourselves in different ways. I am looking for a more visually spoken outcome to inspire me
Amnesty: Death to the Death Penalty This clip really absorbs the viewers attention. As the video starts, you’re not quite sure what it’s all about but feel intrigued to continue watching it. Amnesty is a charity organisation that aims to demolish the death penalty. It shows the various methods that are still used today, set up in a dark atmosphere with candle light flickering. It gives you a sense of sadness and unsettlement, playing on the audiences emotions. The figures are made of wax and slowly start melting. I think the candle represents the hope or the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ and speaks figuratively in itself, showing that slowly we can fight the death penalty. Combined with the sound I think this makes quite a powerful response to the topic and I find it inspirational that such a simple idea can lure in people and send out such a strong message. Phil Currie: Stitch This is another advert I was presented with during my briefing lecture. Although I don’t feel it strongly relates to the theme of my project – A conversation, I think the relation is to show us how we can take the simple things in life and shows them from another perspective. The video makes an every day walk seem much more unique and interesting by playing with the frame speed. It makes you notice small detail and is quite engaging to the viewer. This is a sense I would like to be portrayed in my work.
United Fakes: En Contra de la Linea Recta This is probably my favourite example given in the lecture. It shows the journey of bicycle through pictures in the style of a zoetrope but by using the bicycle tyre. The conversation here is between the rider and the audience about the relationship between the bike and environment. I really like how this is done because it has used such simple and obvious resources and turned them into a unique outcome. This also relates to my idea of story telling in an abstract manner and I find this quite inspiring to my project. I think the illustrations in this video are quite child like and messy and if redone in a more professional manner it would have been much more visually appealing. I like the fact the story is quite obvious in what it’s telling you. The bike at the beginning gives you a clear clue which becomes stronger as the video goes on. You really get a sense of where the bike has been and feel almost as if you have been on the journey yourself. It is something many people can relate to and sums up a day in 60 seconds. Aidrian Newell: Thierry Henry Aidrian Newell is a Manchester based graphic designer. This project is called ‘Scoreline’ and is based around the number of goals scored in major football games. It’s a mixture between mapping and an infograph. This is basically another example of how I can interpret information or a conversation. I could use this idea if I was to base it on a simple idea such as mapping phone call conversations
and the relationships of communication between countries. I think it looks visually engaging and would make the viewer want to know what it’s actually trying to tell you. This is something I will take into consideration when developing my idea as I would my project to invite people in and engage or cause curiosity. Peter Crawley: Love Will Tear Us Apart This example shows how audio can be turned into visuals by stitched illustrations. I think this is unusual take on mixing sound and visuals as it uses mixed media that isn’t really used in this design. Although I find this aesthetically pleasing, I think the idea behind it isn’t that exciting. It is basically the song’s sound waves stitched into paper. I feel the design is good but the concept makes it lack creativity. However, I have gained a little inspiration from the use of materials and simplicity. After looking through his portfolio, I found Crawley uses this style to cover a variety of things from self promotion to magazine covers and collaborations. His use of colour, linear work and typography has gained him recognition and commissions. He has used this technique for mapping journeys and promoting businesses and I feel this hand-crafting art is something I will keep in mind during my developing stages.
MARC JOHNS
Marc Johns is an illustrator who creates small watercolour and pen drawings that are often silly and non-sense. He has created visuals for companies such as Google, Wired and Tommy Hilfiger. I decided to look at his work because it has a very simplistic and friendly feel to it. I enjoy how he captions each illustration with a wacky comment to support the design. In relation to my project, I am thinking about illustrating dialect and feel
this is quite inspiring to the style I could take. I would however like there to be more to the image; possibly more use of stronger type rather than minimalistic, small with lots of white space. I have really taken an interest in the hand-ons approach and feel this will create a much more intriguing outcome. Johns uses quite a literal and humorous approach with his imagery, where as I’d like to represent the essence of the tone and voice in a more professional manner which the audience can relate to.
EXPERIMENTATION
After completing a bit of research into commonly used Yorkshire slang / quotes, I decided to experiment with thumbnail illustrations of how these sayings could be interpreted. These ideas are heavily influenced by Marc Johns humorous witty style. I looked at how he uses phrases and translates them through imagery into literal puns. I tested this here in the ‘Barnsley born Barnsley bred’ quote, transformed bred into another meaning, and again with ‘Flippin’ eck!’ which actually means ‘Oh my Gosh’. I found this experiment quite fun, however I don’t feel like it is something I want to take further as it doesn’t have as high impact as I expected. I would like to use stronger visuals and experiment more with type and emotion. Creating these small thumbnail images has also sparked a new idea. I could design a poster in the style of a child alphabet (a for apple, b for banana etc), but
instead use imagery to help people understand what the Yorkshire slang words mean. An easy example of this would be the never ending argument of whether a bread roll is called a bap, teacake, or bread roll! I could write the Yorkshire version teacake, and use an illustration to show what it means. Another example would be Tarrah, which means Goodbye, I could illustrate this with a hand waving. From this experiment I plan to create a survey to see how many people on average understand common sayings and slang. This will enable me to take my idea further as I will be able to see if there are any communication problems, and whether I would like to do a simplifier version for people to learn the Yorkshire slang or whether I want to simply give people the essence of our language.
KATHERINE STREETER
Katherine Streeter is an artist who creates unique and wacky collages often combined with paint. I came across her work when searching for inspiration for my Conversation project. She has worked for many top clients from Target to New York Times and even the Warner Brothers. I find it quite coincidental for her to be named ‘Streeter’ as I feel her work resembles a hint of street style with the use of bright colours and ‘I don’t care’ attitude. I what really draws me to her work is the fact that she looks as if she’s just thrown anything together but it works. It looks
personal and makes you feel intrigued to what it’s all about. I feel inspired by her use of mixed textures and contrasting popping colours, she seems to have an eye for putting things together that comply with each other. After looking through Katherine’s portfolio, I feel curious to how this could work for my project. Instead of basing my design around my initial idea of hand drawn illustrations and text, I can experiment with other media to give a higher impact and personal touch to draw people in.
EXPERIMENTATION (DIGITAL)
After looking at Katherine Streeters collages I felt inspired to experiment with her style myself. I really like how she throws things together and somehow makes it look like a child made them but good at the same time. Although Katherine appears to work by hand, I only wanted to test out how it may work with my theme and so I chose to take a digital approach. I have attempted to incorporate a hand crafted style to it by using textured paper, water coloured backgrounds, personalised fonts and acrylic paint brushes in Photoshop. I feel this works quite well as a whole but I’m not sure how I feel about it in terms of my project. I took a more literal approach for the ‘Appy as a pig phrase which I feel doesn’t really show the meaning of the term very well. I feel the bright colours and doodles
add a light hearted touch to it but it would have worked better showing some sort of happiness through facial expression. On the other hand I illustrated ‘tarrah’ as a woman waving goodbye with a handkerchief. I quite like this as I have experimented slightly with the positioning and sizing of each letter, hoping that the audience would read it in the tone it is spoken in. (tar-rah!), having a slight raise in vocal tones on the ‘a’s. If I was to take this style forward I would experiment further by adding my own personal hand crafted elements rather than digitalising everything. I think this would work better as I have more control over exactly how I want to create things.
EXPERIMENTATION (PHYSICAL)
After looking at my mood board I decided to experiment further with different collaging techniques. I used a variety of magazines, illustration, ink and other materials to attempt illustrating the figures of speech. I enjoyed this exercise as it gave me the opportunity to design freely and make happy accidents happen. I think ‘Appy as a pig’ works well as it has a neutral colour scheme relating to the ‘old fashioned’ sayings and shows the emotion through facial expressions. I also like the ‘Be reyt’ quote as its bright and ‘in your face’ with a relaxed attitude, however I don’t think it picks up the essence of Yorkshire very well. Through this technique I think I have decided that I may venture into playing with type for my jars instead, as small scale collages aren’t as effective. I could use the small space to make an impact with type instead.
NICK DEAKIN
Nick Deakin is an illustrator who’s work has a very hand drawn approach to it. He often draws free style and later develops his designs in Adobe Illustrator. I really like the simplicity of his drawings combined with his use of colour. The bold black outlines contrast against the bursts of colour and add a clean sharp look to it. I also find the patterns used within his type and illustrations create interesting textures, particularly in his monotone designs.
EXPERIMENTATION
Inspired by Nick Deakins typography pieces, I decided to experiment myself with lettering and illustration. I really found this experiment fun and found I could create some interesting pieces. Typography is definitely something I will consider for this project as not only can it be aesthetically pleasing but can help to imply meaning and represent attitudes and tone of voice.
INITIAL IDEAS
Now I have a clearer idea of what I am hoping to produce, I can look into what format this would be best suited to. Generally, illustrations are usually printed in the format of posters, greeting cards and other novelties. I do think that these would make fabulous posters, not only to represent my interpretation of the Yorkshire dialect, but they would make great souvenirs or gifts too as many people can relate to the slang. Above I have drawn thumbnail idea’s of formats I could produce my illustrative designs on. One idea that kept coming to mind was a simple poster print, either as a serious or all grouped together (like a chain linked display). I think this would be effective as posters can be put up anywhere. They are a decorative item and put in the right place they would draw peoples attention. As mine is based on the accent of many people in my area, I feel they are likely to catch their attention if I make them interesting enough as the dialect is something they would understand and feel drawn to. Another idea was to create a zine or a book. I have two versions I could create. One been a little book of illustrations simply made for the visual pleasure, while the other would be a guide to the Yorkshire slang. In my survey I found that some people didn’t understand some figures of speech as so by illustrating them and giving them examples of the dialect in context, I would be able to give them an understanding. I also think this would make a great novelty to have, and it would be fun for people to buy their relatives back at home or grandparents who were brought up with this language. I also had the idea of creating an A-Z style book, which would simply be a mini zine of slang, quotes or words translated into proper English, e.g W is for Watta ‘wha-ta’ meaning ‘water’. This would be a fun experiment and a humorous approach to educating.
An installation would hopefully get people to interact with it if placed in the right surroundings. I could design for a window display or the side of a building. On a larger scale is bound to catch peoples attention and with the topic been something people can closely relate to, it should bring a smile to their face. Postcards and a pack of cards was also another thought to consider as it would suit an illustrative piece of work well. I would be able to keep them together as a set and it would show an extract of my ideas. Postcards is closely related to the topic too as it would show the essence of Yorkshire through dialect and visuals and allow them to communicate with others at the same time, enabling people who haven’t visiting to get a small taste of our area. Finally, the last idea I thought about was created something 3D. Looking at my sketch book on the right hand page, there is a round object. I thought of the idea of a biscuit tin shape. Creating a tin would be an interesting approach, Yorkshire people are known to like their tea and a biscuit tin is closely related. Or a tin shape made from glass, showcasing my illustrations around the edge and proudly displaying the Yorkshire Rose on the top! This would make an interesting piece and would be for visual purposes only but may help people to think back or feel an emotional connection, even spark conversation. However, finding a round glass tin or having one made would be difficult and time consuming. Another idea I had for a 3D project was a small wooden shelf type of display. Having a gridded front would allow me to fill the gaps with my designs. This would act like a frame to my drawings but give it depth. I think my best idea’s here would be to create a series of postcards as I feel they would suit this format strongly, or to design to a 3D element as it would sparks peoples interest and make a great visual piece based upon the Yorkshire dialect.
LITTLE POTS OF YORKSHIRE
After thinking about what format I would like to present my work in, I was really keen on the idea of a tin with my collages around the edge. The idea was that you audience would be able to interact with the object by spinning it around, enabling them to view my take on the Yorkshire dialect. This would hopefully spark conversation with others, or if not, make them think about conversations they have previously had. However, after having a sleep, I came up with a new idea inspired from this thought. I had a quick search online to see what other products exist and thought about how this may work with my theme. My new developed idea is to create ‘Little Pots of Yorkshire’. These would be a set of mason jars. One idea is that I could label the jars on the front with the figure of speech I am illustrating, inside been a miniture model as supportive visuals. For
example in my sketch above, I have drawn a little mud pile with a happy pig on top to illustrate ‘appy as a pig in muck’. My other idea is to stick my collages to the inside of the jar and label the design on the lid. I feel these could work really well as they’d make a nice little set for decorative purposes. The idea I feel I will take forward is to create 3 -5 mason jars using collages and decorating the lids. This will be much less time consuming and inexpensive in comparison to making miniature models, and I feel it will have stronger visuals to create the essence of the attitudes of the sayings. My next step is to see what components I have available and begin further experiment with designing collages around the Yorkshire dialect.
PROTOTYPE
Before taking my ideas further, I decided to make a quick prototype to see how this would work. I didn’t want to waste any time as the deadline is nearing as so I made do with the materials I already had available. I washed out a candle holder and printed off my Katherine Streeter inspired collages. The jar had smoke marks on the inside which were very difficult to remove! When coming around to actually creating these I will be buying brand new ones to ensure they are high quality. I also quickly made a mock version of the design for the lid of the jar, as it didn’t come with a screw on lid, I had to make it like a jam jar cover. I think the design for the top was a little too bright in comparison to my collages but this will be changed when I come to developing my idea. I used the light from my phone to see what this may look like lit up from the inside. I also looked at how this may
turn out using small wooden chests which I would call ‘Little box of Yorkshire’. I don’t think this would be as effective as you would open the box to find an empty space. It could be use as storage however it wouldn’t be much of a decorative piece unless it was left open, even if i did decorate the outside of the box. I have decided to go ahead with my ‘Little pot of Yorkshire’ idea and will be venturing into the town centre in the next couple days to purchase an appropriate sized and lidded mason jar. I will then be able to design my collages at the correct dimensions and experiment further with the style. I am looking forward to how this will turn out!
DEVELOPMENT
I have decided to go ahead with my ‘Little Pots of Yorkshire’ idea which will involve a 360 collage inside a glass jar illustrating the Yorkshire dialect. Here I have sketched some initial ideas of how I may want the lids to appear. I thought it would be wise to include an image of the Yorkshire Rose on the lid to give it that extra home-like feeling. In these 3 designs this is the main focus, along with the name of my project ‘Little Pots of Yorkshire’. Pots as opposed to Pot as I intend to create a set of these jars. I thought about adding the title of which piece of dialect it is presenting to the lid, although I could create one lid for them all as you will
be able to see the Dialect on the side of the jar, thus not needing it in two places. I think my favourite idea is the first one drawn as it is bold and straight to the point with little distractions. I am quite keen on using the scroll on the second sketch as it adds a bit more to the image to draw the eye. To help me decide I think I will take all three ideas forward in order to see which will compliment the design the most. As I haven’t yet designed the collages, this could change depending on how well suited they are.
PROTOTYPE
Today I took a visit into the town centre to see what jars were available for my project. I found several different styles in various shapes and colours. However what I need is something that has smooth surfaced sides with no curved edges so that my design will fit in neatly and comfortably without having to bend the edges of the paper. The best ones I found were these two Kilner jam jars above. I purchased one of each so that I was able to test which would be the most suitable. I found that the gold lidded jar had less surface area for my design behind the glass as the top and bottom was slightly curved, while the blue lidded jar was mostly flat. What made me decide on the best jar for my project was the lids. The gold lidded jar had 2 parts to it (to help preserve the jam), which allows me to snugly fit my design in the top without messy glued edges been a problem. I think this will work really well for my project, I am just hoping that they are not too small to create a powerful collage design for the inner section. Below are the outcomes to testing how my designs may fit when I come to added it to the jar. This is just a prototype test to decide on a suitable shaped jar, I have yet to design my final outcome. Above are the outcomes of my designs for the lids of my jars. I chose to go with a brown textured paper background as they compliment the gold rim of the lid and have contrast against the Yorkshire Rose. I began by scanning in illustrations
and using live trace in Illustrator. I created my own font to give it a personalised touch and feel this works well with the hand drawn illustrations. It took a while to get the text to fit neatly around the edges and they still may need a little tweaking before they are finalised. I have definitely illuminated the speech bubble design as it is bland and looks child-like. I feel it is a hard choice between the other two designs but I am more heading towards the one without the scrolls. This is because the text appears bold and it has a much fresher look with less distractions. I am keen on the scrolls so I have no yet come to a decisions. I think I may leave these at this stage for now and begin my collages as I will not get a proper idea of how the design will look as a whole without them. Here is my first attempt at illustrating a quote for my jars. I have chosen an image of a happy pig rolling around in ‘mud’ as a literal approach to the saying. I used various acrylic and water colour photoshop brushes to give it that handcrafted look. I think these work really well as I am hoping to take a collage style approach. I used my own ink splats and typography I scanned in. I think to further develop this I want to add more elements to give it that layered up look and fill the the space on the left as half of the jar will have little imagery. I think I have managed to show the meaning of the quote in an obvious way and I’m looking forward to taking this further and testing this out on my prototype.
TYPOGRAPHY & ILLUSTRATION
Experimenting hands on with collaging made me think more about how effective type would be rather than creating a busy image on such a small space. Instead I have chosen to move on from collaging and begin looking at lettering and layout. The area on the jars is very small and so using text as the main feature, – basing it around the Yorkshire dialect, would be a much more effective approach and more visible. I quite like this idea and i’m unsure whether to keep the type in sync with each other or vary the font to suit the context of the quote. I think they would be more appealing to match as a set, however I will play around first with different styles to see which has a stronger outcome.
I have decided that typography would be more effective for my format and would have a nice crisp look against the glass jars. It will also make more efficient use of the space I have available. Looking at my sketches, I have come to the decision that a landscape design would be more effective that portrait as I will be able to make the type larger, rather than squashed up on a small square of the canvas. A landscape layout would allow me to spread my design across the jar and cover more of an area, while also been more ledgible. Bold fonts and larger fonts would also work best, and I like the idea of keeping things interesting by mixing up fonts, styles and colours to portray the tone of the saying.
YORKSHIRE DIALECT ZINE
Moving forward with my typography and illustration, I decided to develop my zine from my initial ideas. One idea for this was to show the sound waves in the tone of voice when speaking the Yorkshire Slang. My other idea was to use animal puns or illustration to support the slang text. A quick digital sketch of ‘bee reyt’ helped my to decided which idea to take forward, - a short zine based on the Yorkshire slang supported by light hearted animal puns, inspired by Nick Deakin from my artist research.
ILLUSTRATION DEVELOPMENT
Here I have sketched out various animals which I may develop for my zine. I have tried to relate each illustration to a quote such as farm animals for ‘was tha’ born in a barn?’ or use puns such as using a bee for ‘be(e) reyt’. Some other sayings weren’t as obvious to design for such as ‘eyup’ (hello) and ‘tarra’ (bye), so for these I may use friendly looking animals instead. Once chosen the characters, I will develop them in illustrator either by live trace or using the pen tool to create paths.
ILLUSTRATION DEVELOPMENT (DIGITAL) ‘appy as a pig in muck
flippin’ eck!
eee-baa-gum
These are the characters I have chosen to go along with for my zine. I feel the friendliness of the characters give them viewer a taste of a light hearted and slightly comedic quick read. As you can see, I started with a rough version quickly drawn out using the pen and shape tool in Illustrator which I then developed further so ensure the style, quality and measurements run smoothly between them all.
bee reyt
The Yorkshire Rose from my earlier sketches may also come in handy for this idea as it is still based on Yorkshire slang and a little icon may help the target market to recognise this.
ILLUSTRATION DEVELOPMENT (DIGITAL)
I really liked the idea of a hand drawn style zine after sketching out the character and felt the digitalised versions lacked character and depth. I decided to add brush styles to the outlines to give them more of a personlised appearance. I think this has really helped bring the designs to life.
ILLUSTRATION DEVELOPMENT
Before jumping to any quick decisions, I decided to play around with colour and textures to see which may be the most effective. I really do like the majority of them to be honest as they all have their balance of pros and cons. The last bird was based on the theme of popular textures related to Yorkshire. However, I do feel a black based zine would stand out more than a white canvas and help contrast the designs to make them pop. For this reason I will either go with the second or third style as they will work the best duotone or monotone.
ILLUSTRATION DEVELOPMENT
This is the colour scheme and texture I have decided to go with. I have chosen to stick to the original palette of black and yellow because it makes my designs appear bold and positive. On the reverse of the pages will be the definition of each quote with the colours opposite. This not only is aesthetic strong and works well with the overall design, but helps readers to quickly navigate through the zine. The fonts I have used for the small text is Future (medium). It is simple but effective in it’s purpose without been a distraction to the illustrations.
TYPOGRAPHY DEVELOPMENT
Futura Medium
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My cover is the last part of my zine to complete before adding the finishing touches. Futura seemed too bland to use for the title. I was looking for something more scripted or handwritten to get the same effect as my illustrations. At first I felt a brushed font would be well suited, however after looking at other styles I decided to go with Olivier. While looking crisp and neat, it still has that bold and hand written look to it that is reflected in the characters. I have added the same texture to help the zine run fluently.
From Where You Are
a quick guide to
Yorkshire Slang by katie kershaw
One Direction
Olivier
PaintyPaint
Edo SZ
PROTOTYPE
To create my prototype I had to measure out the net to ensure it will match up when I glue it together. In the studio the maximum size to print on is A3 and so I have to half my zine and rescale it to fit the paper. I left a tab on the ends when both sides will meet so I could glue both sections together. Using the guillotine and glue, I folded and assembled my net to create my prototype.
PROTOTYPE FINALISED
I am pretty happy with how my prototype has turned out although it was a little tricky to fold exactly and neaten up. Because I used regular paper, the ink was worn away on the folds and so I filled them in with a black marker. Hopefully this won’t be an issue when it comes to printing them professionally and all will run smoothly. I have enquired with the printing rooms to see whether it would be best to design the net with the pages facing opposite ready to fold back-to-back, or whether we have equipment that is accurate enough to print doubled sided without having to manually glue the pages together.
FINAL ANALYSIS
From the start, I found this brief quite difficult. Partly because I had just returned to uni after 3 months of summer, but also because it was so open. I really struggled to decide what approach to take with this project incase I did it ‘wrong’. My first idea (using the jars) was quite unrelative to what the breif was asking. I came back to this a couple month before deadline and totally changed my idea. Now I feel my outcome is suitable to the brief and has helped me progress in terms of thinking of solutions and developing my technical skills.
Indesign, just the basic tools. However after developing my idea into a small zine / book, along with the branding project, I feel I have definately took my knowledge of the program to the next level. I can now make publications comfortabilty and have a better idea of what makes a good layout. I also feel I have developed my skills in Illustrator as usually I take on a hand drawn approach, this time I chose to mimc the hand-drawn look through the pen tool in Adobe. I have learnt how to add styles to these strokes, as well as experiment with adding textures.
I have always been interested in illustration and editorial design and so this project has allowed me to put my skills to the test. At the start, I didn’t know much about
I did encounter a few problems while printing my final piece. At The University of Huddersfield, we don’t have the equiptment to print accurately back to back
to make the zine layout I hoped for. Instead, I had to print it off with the back-toback pages facing opposite each other and glue them together by hand. Due to the length, the paces had to be printed on an A1 poster sheet, which also make it difficult to fold neatly and put together. At it’s original size, it also came out slightly pixelated for some reason which I can’t understand. The black ink wouldn’t dry either so it was difficult to not smudge it everywhere. My prototype actually came out better than my final one due to the technical issues with the printer. I also managed to make a book version which you can find on my Issuu. This is probably my best outcome of the project and there are no issues with the imagery or technical problems involved. It also allows the book to be easily accessable.