City In Flux
By Luke Pearson
Development
1
Buildings of Leeds
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Signs of Leeds
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5
Signs of Leeds
Graffiti of Leeds
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Trade of Leeds
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Trade of Leeds
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Found Items of Leeds
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Litter of Leeds
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Concept One: Trade of the City
The first concept I have to explore is the trade market. This subject has a majority of branches that lead off it. This is because there is so many different aspects that make up the concept, and with these I am able to collect a vast range of ideas for my experiments, which will then help me develop a final idea. A big change in cities over the years is how traders work. For example markets are still around today but in the past all over the world markets would be filled of people selling their goods off to make money so they could live. However, Retail in modern times
has
developed
into
where
store
outlets have a number of stores in a city and all over the country. This is helped by the way people pay for goods too with credit cards, cash or even gift vouchers. Trade is well known for retail and shopping, but people forget about tourism, where airline and rail companies offer their service of travel to us and the public pay for a ticket to be allowed on board a plane or train.
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After
researching
immediately
the
thought
of
Trade the
market,
I
exchanging
of good for money and heading straight towards retail. On the other hand, the research I found helped me broaden my knowledge of the subject, which opened my eyes to other ways of trade that I would have never come across. In the late 19th century and early 20th began the history of human trafficking or prostitution as it is more known now. This is an attempt to make money from selling your body for sex. The occupation is mainly made up of females and is often perceived as a woman’s profession even though it is open to males. This also reaches out to strip-clubs, where instead of selling their bodies for sex, women do other activities like pole and lap dancing. I want to communicate the sides of trade people see and believe but also contrast them with the deals of trade that are tried to be kept hidden. I will be using my own photography to capture this and also to use collage and printing techniques to show this form of difference between the two. 19
Concept Two: Social life of the City
In the city social life is big part of what makes
take it or they can’t remember where they
the night-life run, which is why I have chosen
are. This is what creates the night-life,
to focus on the social side of the city for.
alcohol, friends, clubs and of course those
During the day everyone moves from one
creepy strangers who you meet along the
place to another with the only conversation
way. This is the modern day though, what
they have is with a shop worker or the a
happened to those sensible social nights
person on the other side of their phone. This
out, the ballroom dancing? The opera?. They
changes during the night. The clubs open
are still around but the shine that it used
and everyone is there to have a good time
to get is washed away and only associated
drinking alcohol until their stomachs can’t
with the wealthy or an older generation.
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When the term social life is used in a city
to meet new friends, its to enjoy the company
it is associated with nights out around the
of the ones that are already there. It is with
town moving from club to club. Meanwhile,
this observation I want to create something
the social interactions of the daytime are
that with make this noticeable to everyone.
far more different
to the night. Priorities
I want approach this by using photography
change, the people change because their
as a starting point but also mixing this with
intentions are to meet up with their friends
printing and digital experimentation. I want
and go shopping, go to college, eat out or
to be able to express the difference between
play sports. During the night people see other
day and night between people’s thought
people, but in the daytime when social groups
process depending on the time of day and
are together everyone else is out of focus,
people they’re with. This is because social
they’re not important at the time, he aim isn’t
life changes from night to day.
Concept Three: Hidden side of the City
For my final idea I have chosen to investigate the hidden side of a city. With this in mind I will be looking at the areas within a city that people forget about like; the homeless, litter problems and the run down areas. These areas are forgotten about because when the city is advertised to grab tourism, these problem areas are not shown because they won’t attract tourists. This affectively makes these areas disappear until they are visited, which is almost like they are being covered up and hopefully it will be cleaned up by someone else. The homeless are a big problem in cities, because they have a high population rate so more people are around to potentially give money to help feed them or get shelter. These people are almost like a sign of negativity in the city, as no-matter how nice something is there is always something wrong with it which is what is being said here.
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Litter is a problem everywhere in cities and
no longer needed as the location they are in
with the modern society, where everyone
isn’t in the centre and people would prefer
seems to be in a hurry, nobody has time to
their service to be all in the same place
walk to a bin. In today’s generation litter is
which is why some areas are very outdated.
a part of it, nobody kicks up a fuss unless it
With this concept, I would like to use all
really is bad, but that mentality is different
of these factors if it is possible through
for other places. Take Montreal in Canada,
experimentation
known to be the cleanest city in the world.
a visual that opens people’s eyes to the
This is because it made to be the cleanest
neglect that is being put on their city and the
and the people who live there want to live in
bad experience tourists have when visiting
a clean environment. Whereas, the public in
the area. I am going to experiment with
other places don’t have the same mindset.
actual litter I find on the ground
This is the same thought process with
so I can incorporate the materials from the
derelict buildings and areas. These areas
neglected areas to give a negative view on
are forgotten about because their usage is
a beautiful scape.
so
I
can
communicate
in a city
Digital Experimentation
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Digital Experimentation - Image Crops
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Digital Experimentation
For my first experiment I looked at my artist research at some of the techniques they used. I came across Mary Clanahan’s work of overlaying images and changing colours and contrasts around to make some images stand out more in the overlay. I decided to play around with it firstly and use my own images of broken and signage that had been torn vwith an item I found in the city where these signs are from. I categorically put them all together a mixture of different colours and shapes but with each image adding something different, by leading onto another part of the image. After my first experiment there was a lot of green in the image that I wanted to change.
This was because there wasn’t anything in the image the colour could relate to so after playing with the hue I got a more yellow feel which related to the parking ticket and began to look more relevant, and related to not just the parking ticket but to the banner image because of the usage of yellow. In the image I had the typography “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted” really stood out because of the use of red. From this I decided to add more red but keep some yellow to the image just to boost the contrast with the typography. I used the eyedropper tool to get the exact colour levels of the red and then added the multiply effect. The result was good but the
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parking ticket got lost with all of the red so the effect didn’t work as I had planned it would. So fix this dilemma, I played around with the effects in Photoshop and overlay worked best because, more detail was brought out and the essence of the yellow was still involved with the image but as an equal balance. The next step I wanted to take was the text. The way it was written in red and a bold font really stood out, and I wanted it to stand out in the image. To do this I changed the image to black and white apart from the red text which gave the image some atmosphere and emotion. This was down to the gloomy style of the black and white imagery in contrast to the red. After that I wanted to incorporate more black in the image to add more of a creepy feel and sort of a horror moving style appeal with the black and the red lettering.
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Digital Experimentation - Image Crops
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Collage Experimentation
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Collages
Moving away from my digital experiments, I wanted to create some handmade stuff like collage. I started off with some random bits and bobs I had around, like cardboard and bits of paper with a carrier bag. I then developed that in to using some of the found items I found on the street of Leeds when I visited. I collated a number of delivery menus that I got passed on and a parking ticket wrapper that had been torn open and has small bit or dirt on it. Once I had looked back at my digital stuff I wondered if there was a way for me to use some of my digital outcomes in my collages. I wanted to make this collage city based so everything I used
was related to the same city. I began using the Yorkshire Post newspaper as it was famous for being produced in Leeds, and I then added some edited signage I used for my digital experiments. I also wanted to mix media so instead of just making a collage, I made a stencil for text which read the name of the city and dabbed a sponge in an ink pad and then over the top of the stencil. This worked well because the text was all broken up and faded which gave the typography another dimension. Another technique I found out worked well with the newspaper, was when I put Sellotape on the paper then tore it off quickly, the top layer of the
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newspaper came off and made the opposite side come through. I decided that I enjoyed making a simplistic collage, and I liked the idea of using signage to convey a message across to people. I choose to use the “Trespassers will be prosecuted� text again as I thought it would work with an image of a homeless person. I thought this because the homeless who are on streets begging for change from the public, do get asked to move away and stop begging as they could get arrested for it. This in a way almost says that the homeless are trespassing in the city. Just like trespassers can get arrested
so can the homeless. I also like this idea of the homeless as it is a good advert for a campaign to show people that they have no home and they can be prosecuted for that. To link the two together I chose brown paper, just because the colour seemed to be right. However, I think I could develop this with some sort of litter like a paper cup, a fast food restaurant bag or a packet of crisps. This would link in with the litter side to my concept of the hidden part of the city and using the homeless and litter, as well as the paper cups relating to the homeless begging for change.
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Typography Experimentation
After consulting with my tutor, I began looking for cleaner design ideas as well as typographical pieces that I could take inspiration from. After having some trouble I came across the Dandelion logo made by LogoMix. I really liked how simple and clean it was, but it also combined type with imagery. After finding this image I began brainstorming ideas for words I could use. I was thinking of things that people would relate with hidden parts of a city. My first four ideas were Homelessness, Littering, Urban Decay and Corruption. When I though of one of these words, I began to think of images that could symbolise the word. The word
would be the main focus and to add a strong image, it would make the piece stand out more to the audience. The audience I chose to aim for was late teenagers to late twenties. This is because I want the images to make people change the way they live their lives and the younger generations have a bigger impact to make change because there is more younger people out there in today’s world. Another factor I have to consider is the background colour. For the first drafts I have chosen colours associated with the word, for example; I have used green for littering as the colour for recycling is green, I also used green for corruption because it relates to money.
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Poster Development
For the majority of my poster ideas, not a lot of them needed to be developed. However, I had the most trouble with Pollution. The first issue I had was the colour for the background. I went with green as a symbol for “Being Green” and for environment. The colour didn’t work with the black text and the grey of the smoke. I then changed the background to black because pollution is a bad thing and then the text was changed to white. I liked this poster and felt that I had the colours right. Meanwhile, after receiving some feedback from other students, the smoke didn’t look natural to some of my
piers. It was here where I experimented with the smoke making it sideways, but again the feedback wasn’t received well with shape of the smoke not looking natural. From here I began to look at smoke on the internet and after finding simple cartoon like smoke, I began to draw in Illustrator. I did two updated versions where the smoke was a cloud to the right and another where it merged together to create a grey cloud above the word. After positive feedback for the design on the far right, all I had to do was to make the text the same point size and have the same amount of tracking as the rest of my poster designs.
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Disease
P E N Y
N E
N
W
1 P E N Y
N E
N
W
1 P E N Y
N E
N
W
1 P E N Y
N E
N
W
1 P E N Y
N E
N
W
1 P E N Y
N E
N
W
1 P E N Y
N E
N
W
1 P E N
image didn’t say that, there was no powerful message involved. The next move I made was to scrap the image and bring back the “L” but to make the work more meaningful, I expanded the space between the first part of the word and the second part. This left the middle “L” alone in the middle of the word, showing the letter as a lonely letter. I really wanted to include Poverty in my series because it is a serious problem that is on the rise. However, I could only think of having a torn background. This changed after I got feedback from a friend suggesting I use pennies and that would create the “O”. in the word. I then changed the background to a murky brown colour so it relates back to the rest of the series of posters.
Y
N E
N
W
I had created a number of designs that had images as an extra to the typography. What I mean by this is that for my disease design, I have added a face mask that looks like the word is wearing a ask to prevent disease. This worked well but compared to other designs where I have used imaged to replace letters. I spoke to one of my tutors and I began looking into words as images and it was there I discovered Ji Lee and his word “Word As Image”. After looking at his work I chose to look at the work I had and change them anyway I could, so I had a running theme across the series of posters. Another Issue I had was for loneliness I had a figure of a person to replace the “L”. The problem with this was the word was loneliness and the
1 P E N Y
N E
N
W
1
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Mock Ups
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Final Outcome
For my final pieces I chose to put all of my final poster designs into an A6 book. This worked as a book filled with single pages that were my designs. The design I created on the front and back covers was a simplistic version of a city at night. I chose to do this because it went with my clean and simple poster designs and set the theme of the book out nicely. With the tittle I decided to make the word “Hidden� smaller to emphasise the meaning of the word .
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I also printed out three final posters I had made. I was making a series of posters so I decided on three I wanted to print out. I chose the prostitution poster because it was my favourite and I was really pleased how it turned out. As for the Traffic Congestion image, I asked for some feedback to find a way which other poster I should get printed, which led to traffic Congestion being picked. I then chose to print out Littering because it was one of the first ideas I had for the project and the only adjusting I did with the design was change the tracking between the letters.
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