City in Flux - The Research (Unfinished)

City In Flux

By Luke Pearson

Research

City in Flux

Cities all over the world are in a constant state of flux, with everyday life changing because of new technology, trends, and ways of life. Cities began with populations in the hundreds, whereas now in the modern era most cities are in the high hundreds of thousands with some in the millions. They are many aspects in the modern city that have changed dramatically over the years to make peoples lives easier. However, those aspects have now also cause the city to change once more but help become more greener because of the influence global warming has on the earth. The way people work has moved on from the days of pen and paper to computers, then to even more advanced

computers and technology. With new ways of transportation with cars being more available to people this has effected the way trade is delivered and sold, with more supermarket chains opening and markets becoming more out of date. The culture of a city has changed through time, with different music, fashion, and the influential people in the public eye.

It’s not just the city itself that’s changed but the people who inhabit them have changed too which has influenced the city’s change.

This means there are more shops for fashion, technology and fast food chains, while the markets are constantly being forgotten about, just like the other forgotten areas of what was once a booming area of business.

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Inspired City

For the City in Flux brief I am going to base my work around the city of Leeds. My final outcomes will be produced using Leeds or influenced by Leeds. The main reason behind my decision was because I know Leeds.

I have been in and around the city for two years when I went to college and it holds a big part of my life. However, the project is about the City in Flux, changing, moving; and Leeds is a perfect city for this description.

The history is still involved in the buildings and areas. The indoor market, everyday trade has been there since 1857, and is still one of the largest indoor markets in Europe.

Better yet the original building that was built still hosts the market in the modern times of

today. Briggate, the shopping high street of the city holds today’s everyday must haves.

The designer jeans that all your friends have, the new smart phone that makes yours so out date; but with the ancient building work on the top as if it was still in the good old days of yesterday, are still a reminder t the people of where the city has come from to the fresh look of today. Leeds is the birthplace of Tetley’s, Yorkshire’s own beer, now the brewery has been turned to an Art centre, but the building that represents it’s history is still used. What I like about Leeds is the urban areas. Everyone has their own interpretation of Leeds, and the majority of that will say what they have seen on TV or in photographs

that only show the areas people want you to see. It’s only when you go to Leeds you see a big contrast between what is shown. The towering Town Hall and the brand new Trinity centre are impressive, but they are shown as a big difference compared with the people sat on the ground with their cardboard blanket and cup pleading for any spare change.

However, the urban areas of a city show the real interpretations are hidden beneath the city’s skin where graffiti and old disused materials are left to rot into the cities surface to feel part of it again. I aim to capture this and experiment with the imagery to create visual language that influences the city of Leeds’ image from the past to the present.

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City History

From the early days of cities, trade has been a big part of any location, without trade a city wouldn’t function. In the turn of the century trade in cities was mainly done by markets, where there was single stalls that would sell on goods with one department, like a butcher for meat or a greengrocer for fruit and vegetables. These would also be from British farms mainly local products from the local area, which is known to be good for people as its organic. In modern day products from all over the world get delivered to supermarkets and stores across the country where in comparison to the early 20th century where everything was organic and locally product.

The first instance of international trade was during the great depression. This was down to countries wanting to help post war victims and delivering good just like what happens today with charities for poor nations and after major disasters like earthquakes. This then influenced small corner shops to expand into bigger shops so they could sell more different goods and bring more different types of goods from overseas. Cities are now made up of major company outlets with more than one branch in a town or city. The indoor and outdoor markets still create trade for themselves but now big supermarket chains like Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s have taken over

because of convenience, with everything in one place. These supermarkets are also expanding more with additional products like electrical and clothing goods which is now troubling the clothing retail sector as well as the clothing market sector. This is also now changing with discount stores like Aldi and Lidl by selling items that are the same as the branded items but are cheaper. Theses stores and others like pound shops and Home Bargains thrive on making low profit instead of big profit, which appeals more to people because of the low prices on offer.

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Music is a big influence of people everywhere and this also changes someone’s personality and looks. In the early decades of the 1900s, music was classical and clean, and most people who listened to this music wore classical clothing like suits and dresses. This was because the night-life would include to most citizens attending the opera or going ballroom dancing in a way to socialise. As time moved on the 60s began a year where rock and roll started breaking through with The Beatles and Elvis Presley began influencing the world. People dressed like them and styled their hair like Elvis’ famous quiff and members of The Beatles’ bob cut.

These artists have also inspired the modern era where all over the world there is Elvis impersonators who get paid for different events and jobs, one that has been created is them marrying people in Las Vegas.

Whenever the music changed the fashion changed with the style of genre. Music has now changed to a point where there is now more genres in the industry than ever before.

Cities now have bars which is created by indie rock, clubs made from house and electronica and other venues like Rock City in Nottingham specificity for rock and metal genres. Music that is mostly known for city life is rap and grime, which is created on the

street in the back alleys and areas that have been forgotten about. Major locations now have either stadiums or arenas, as big venues for music artists, comedians, sporting events and reality TV shows to come and showcase their talents on a big stage. The oldest music venue in the country is the Royal Albert Hall in London but since then the boom of arena venues was mainly around the late 1980s and early 90s up to the present day.

All major venues like Wembley, O2 Arena, NEC etc. are located in big cities because the population is high More of these are being built or improved to make them have larger capacities because of high demand.

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Cities of Yorkshire

York

In Yorkshire there is a total of four cities.

York, Leeds, Bradford and Sheffield, these are with the North, East, West and South sub-counties that create Yorkshire. York is the oldest city in the Northern county after it was founded by the Romans in the early AD period, and was made capital of the British Roman province. Just the look and feel of York shows that it is an historic city, with its cobbled roads, old style housing in particular standing out along The Shambles.

York’s rich heritage comes from it’s historic

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age and being the Church of England’s capital in the North of the country. Compared to the 20th century, York’s trade evolved from wool into becoming a hub of railway activity, and the manufacturing of confectionery. This has once again changed in the modern time, during the economical change of York now becoming more involved in providing services.

This is influenced by the rise in the Yorkshire Museum and the National Railway Museum, which has helped the tourism in York grow.

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In the South of Yorkshire, Sheffield was known as the biggest steel producing city in Britain during the industrial times, with everything that was steel in Britain at the time came from Sheffield. Meanwhile, during the 1970s and 1980s the international competition from iron and steel grew, which meant that Sheffield’s industry started to decline along with the collapse of local coal mining. The history of the city’s manufacturing sector is now pride of place in the Kelham Island Museum, with references to the history around the city. Sheffield is now the greenest city in Europe, and this is celebrated in Greenspace that is located in the centre. With other modern developments, the Meadowhall shopping centre on the outskirts, is one of the biggest in the continent along with Manchester’s Trafford Centre.

Sheffield

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Cities of Yorkshire

Bradford

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Richard Knaggs

Just like many other cities in Yorkshire like Leeds and Bradford, York’s main trade item was wool during the industrial revolution.

However Bradford was known for being the wool capital of the world. After having access to such raw materials as coal and iron ore, Bradford soon became one of the richest cities in Britain during the industrial revolution.

However, after the decline of the textile industry, the city of Bradford fell victim to this and soon became known as a tourist place with being the host to the National Media Museum.

In the modern era just like many of other cities, Bradford had a rise of population during it’s rich history, but because of the decline it has now become a cheap place to live.

This has influence a big number of the population to have immigrated from other countries from the middle east and India, which has been a big help in the city being announced as the Curry Capital of Britain.

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In the 17th and 18th century Leeds was also known for producing wool, but during the industrial revolution the city became a mill town, like the neighbouring town of Huddersfield, this was mainly down to Bradford being the wool capital. One of the mills from this time is still around today in one of Leeds’ suburb town of Armley. This has now been turned into, Armley Mill Industrial Museum, where the cities history of the industrial sector is now held and showcased to tourists and members of the public.

Leeds also had two breweries with the Tetley Brewery located just outside the centre of the city and Kirkstall brewery positioned around five miles out of the city. The Tetley brewery still going strong with the production beer but also holds exhibitions and art fairs. Whereas, the Kirkstall brewery has now been closed and turned into student accommodation for one of the three universities in Leeds.

Some would say is a perfect replacement for the landmark. The city has the largest student population in the country with around a quarter of a million students.

Leeds

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Andy Warhol In the late 1960s Pop Art, began to catch the eye of the public, with the style of strong colours expressing their vibrancy into an image. Andy Warhol one of the most famous artists to have lived, spent the majority of his career working with pop art. He likes to use the same image multiple times but with a change, where he used multiple colour swatches to make a single piece. It is like looking at work that is showing the process of change and different ideas Warhol used. The prime example for this would be his works of Marylin Monroe.

The Marylin pieces vary with one image being shown then another piece with the image shown four times but with different colours.

Warhol’s work incorporates capitalism and with his work with Marilyn this shows that as a famous actress she is seen as an image, a flattened out image to make a profit from a film or in Warhol’s case to sell a piece of art.

“In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”

- Andy Warhol

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“I’m afraid if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of it’s meaning”

- Andy Warhol

Another famous piece of work by him was the Campbell’s Soup tin. He took inspiration from a Roy Lichenstein comic strip painting where he asked a friend for suggestions of what he could paint. The outcome of this was Campbell’s soup for the reason that it was a recognizable product. Warhol did the same as he did for his work on Marilyn Monroe, and began changing the colours of the image but keeping the design work the same throughout the thirty two versions he ended up producing, after buying multiple tins of the soup. In his earlier work he had a similar perception of what his art eventually turned into with similar aspects of the work being a strong influence through his more well-known pieces.

Lips, was a piece that stands out, with his used of the same image multiple times but the colour being changed to different shades of red and pink. This is just like his other work but with the images shown as all one piece instead of being single images.

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Kurt Schwitters

Kurt Schwitters’ old technique of collage is different to any other collage that has been created. His style consists of using old objects, pieces of old paper and card. This is unique because although his creations don’t make sense to the majority, all of the pieces he makes show the evolution of time.

He matches these bits together under the type of time period and similarities that they have. Schwitters expressed himself this way as he thought that these old materials of bits and bobs were “suited to the purpose just as well as factory made paints”. In his work that fragments of packaging, newspapers and train tickets were included, these images reflected the British life that he was surrounded by after living in London before relocating to Cumbria.

“It is possible to cry out using bits of old rubbish” - Kurt Schwitters

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“Everything had broken down and new things had to be made from the fragments”

- Kurt Schwitters Collage is seen as a way of useless pieces of paper stuck down together by glue, but Schwitters evolved from that by using actual objects like wood and other organic materials create assemblages. He used this technique to replace mass produced ephemera of previous years, which is where his inspiration came from. Schwitters chose to call his post war style as “Mertz” after his post war experience in his native Germany, where the destruction of buildings were being rebuild out of the rubble that was left. “Everything had broken down and new things had to be made out of the fragments, and this is mertz”.

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Martin Roemers Metropolis is a series of photographic images created by the Dutch photographer, Martin Roemers. The series of images span across the world with locations that include, India, United States and Indonesia.

The images that are produce show the movement in a still image which works with the location of places like India, where it is known to be an over populated place.

The images that are moving in the image, like the traffic feel like are moving with the effect of the blurred image. This image is created by a slow shutter speed camera, which shoots the movement of anything in shot. Roemers would have used a tripod to make sure that the parts of the image he wanted to be still would stay as still images.

Roemers likes to create these images because he looks for the smaller stories in the images. These include a passerby, a vendor or general commuters who populate the street or are part of the traffic.

“I’m looking at the small stories of the street vendor, the commuter�

- Martin Roemers

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Armin Hofmann

As a Graphic Designer being able to communicate to an audience through visual language to emphasis a message. Armin Hofmann has become a major influence on the graphic designers of today, with his form of working and through his teachings later on in his career. He worked by the influence that the most efficient form of communication was through a poster. Hofmann used this and showed off his thoughts through a number of designs he created for the Basel Stadt Theatre in Switzerland It was his work for the company where his most famous piece of work, Giselle, emerged. The poster shows a photographic image of a ballet dancer who is shot in a pose that emphasises a state

of dynamic balance and grace. This image works well as it is but with the addition of the towering text makes the poster really grab the audience in, especially with the intermediary dot of the “I”. Throughout Hofmann’s work he uses the purity of form in typography and photography, which helps him interpret the dramatic experience of watching and listening. Before Hofmann produced his famous work, he began his career as an experienced apprentice in lithography.

This has helped him throughout his work, because he produced his work using this technique and this then gave him a better knowledge of knowing what colour structure he was going to incorporate in his designs.

“I tried to create a kind of counter picture” - Armin Hoffmann 16

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Jean Dubuffet

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“For me insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.”

- Jean Dubuffet

Dubuffet was famous for his grotesque style akin to naive graffiti. A number of his later pieces look like random scribbles and graffiti that covered a sculpture of different shapes and sizes. However, he started off painting the Parisian cityscape and using a variety of colours to show off the city in a different and unusual light. After a number of years in the field he took a hiatus from painting before he came back to the profession after being inspired by Jean Fautiers art work that Dubuffet recognised as meaningful art that expressed directly and purely the depth of a person. It was after being inspired , he adopted the same technique Fautier used by mixing oil paint with sand and gravel to give his work more detail and dimensions. Dubuffet worked with French music artists Jasun Martz to create his album cover for his record, The Pillory.

The record has centralised image created in the style of Dubuffet’s late paint work, which is an abstract version of a human being.

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Mary Clanahan

In a modern world where computers and digital media are a big part of our everyday lives, the modern technology has also taken off in art and design. Digital Art is a growing discipline in the art field and for artist Mary Clanahan, this practice is where she find most pleasure creating her work. For Clanahan in particular she uses several types of digital software, with her main usages being on Adobe, Corel and PicMonkey. Her artwork consists of a lot of abstract and surrealist work, where her most recent work that

includes a number of photographic images that overlay each other with multiple effects on the images once edited. The majority of her digital overlay work, these shots are mostly of cityscapes and buildings, where the landscapes are full of colour, light and movement. As well as creating these overlay images, Clanahan creates a various amount of surrealism pieces that focus on the study of human condition that have hidden details with the depth of the work.

“If I can truly brighten one’s day or give hope to one who is lost, I will have succeeded.�

- Mary Clanahan 20

“Digital art is limitless and no matter what you do, the colour mauve will only enter the scenario when chosen.�

- Mary Clanahan

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Steven Candler

Stephen Candler is a HDR Photographer who takes inspiration from landscapes in Britain but also Spain. His photography captures major parts of cities and towns. These images show the quite and stillness in cities and towns. In the majority of his work he uses a high contrast on the sky which really determinates the atmosphere of the image. A good example of this technique is the image of the civic hall in Leeds; where the image is making the audience look upwards towards the focus of the image and the sky in adding to that with the directions of the clouds. The added contrast is the dark grey which gives the piece a dramatic emotion because of the association viewers have with dark clouds and the colour grey. Candler likes his work to be in colour but he does have a tendency to use black and white with one colour that makes an object or part of the image stand out. This gives the image a focal point for the audience to be directed to instantly and the colour used works with this as a symbol of wealth.

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“If I can truly brighten one’s day or give hope to one who is lost, I will have succeeded.”

- Mary Clanahan

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Enzed Enzed is Graphic Design company that was founded by Nicolas Zentner and his wife MÊlanie. The company is based in the Zentner’s home nation of Switzerland.

Enzed have worked with DADI, Bilian and LA magazine, as well as smaller businesses such as Vintage wine bar. They specialize in a number of areas of Graphic Design that include; print, corporate, cultural and editorial design. Throughout the Enzed portfolio, the majority of work is magazine and book layout. Looking at some of the work by the consultancy, the layouts that are used are experimenting with typography is a running theme, With the Zoo image the designer

has made the text the most important thing on the page so to make it stand out, it has been placed above the image. The end of the word has also been cut off. Another example of experimentation using text is with work created for LA in the image below. Instead of using software to make the text broken up, the designer has used a die cutter, which makes the book more handmade and unique.

This makes the text look like its broken and made up of a pattern, when the pattern is a full page that is the next page over. This technique has saved the designer time doing it this way rather than using computer software, like Photoshop or Illustrator.

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“Big type used to maximize impact. Big DJ names = big type size” - Nicolas Zentner

As well as producing booklets, Enzed have created posters for Clubs, Exhibitions and festivals. The Clubbing posters have a running theme throughout. This can be seen with the red background and the style of the text, where the black is indicating a shadow that makes the text look three dimensional. These posters have the same layout throughout.

This is with the main title which is the music artist, the in bold white there is the time, date and where they will be playing; and finally more information in regular font. The three posters are advertising the artists playing which links with the main event poster that is laid out in the same style.

Enzed also produce a number of posters that promote art exhibitions. What I like mostly about their style with these posters is that they have used artwork as the main background but the used modern text and graphics to almost bring the artwork up to date . The style that they have used is a similar one to work they have done in magazine layout by cutting off text. However because text has been cut off the word “Musée” is clearly readable, but to make the text run with the rest of the typography, the “e” at the end is cut in half.

This may relate to the rest of the text but also the “e” cut in half creates a capital “e” so the word is still readable.

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Sawdust

Sawdust is a London based Graphic Design creative partnership between Rob Gonzalez and Jonathan Quainton. The pair focuses on typography, image-making and visual identity. The partnership is gaining success year by year with their recognition from D&AD, Creative Review, It;s Nice That and many other creative organisations.

The work created by Sawdust is not just used in book and posters etc. but is also professionally printed on materials for bags and other finished outcomes. The pair don’t just create work for clients but they create t-shirts and prints that are up for sale on their website for members of the public to buy.

Sawdust don’t have a style that is linked to them, this is because everything they do is different and their focus is to create something that communicates the right message to their client and that will be different every time.

With their “Foxy” work the designers have made text into image by creating the word but then taken bits out so the type is made from shapes instead of a font. This also has taken parts of the word out but the audience can still read what is supposed to be written.

This is a similar feel to their “we all live underground” poster. However Sawdust have created their own type face by using the London underground’s logo to create text.

This is a similar attempt to their work for Mens Health. The word “Pain” is written by using bones as seen during an X-ray to spell out the word. This is another example of Sawdust taking an image as part of their clients and creating a type face with it to communicate a message. Each letter is different and is constructed not only by bones, but with screws and natural joints, along with broken bones. Its not just about the text here because without the realisation of the glowing blue and white the image wouldn’t relate as well to real life experiences. However with the use of the colours and glowing effect the piece looks just like the word has been X-rayed.

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“Creating work with intelligence, visual ingenuity and meticulous craft is what drives us forward..�

- Sawdust

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Ji Lee

Ji Lee is a communication designer that is originally from South Korea but has lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil and he now lives in New York. Throughout his career he has worked for big companies like Saatchi & Saatchi, Google and now his present role is at Facebook. Lee’s work is surreal because he takes something that is existing but adds a twist by replacing something that is normal with something totally different. For example His work for GQ magazine created the “Xbox Man”. This was a response to Xbox releasing the Kinect to their gaming system. The slogan for this was you are the controller. Lee created the image of a human but with their head and hands

changed to Xbox 360 controllers and the skin colour changed to indicate that “You are the controller”. This style of his work continued with his work for the New York Times on advertising branding. The article was about consumers being impervious to advertising.

Lee took an image of a family and replaced their faces with logos of brands that would appeal to the members of the family like a car manufacturer with the father for example.

Lee has also recreated logos like the apple logo. This image was made for the New York Times again to fit with an article about Steve Jobs, the creator of apple and how he is a genius to create a company like apple.

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“I believe ideas are nothing, doing is everything..�

- Ji Lee

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Ji Lee - Word as Image

Ji Lee also creates work that is personal and regularly set himself these projects for himself. The most famous of these is Word As Image. This is where lee has taken a word and then changed letters and created images and given them word a new look to create an image. A good example of this description is the condom piece. A condom is used as contraception so Lee has used the “C” and extended the letter to protect the rest of the word. The rest of the word now turns into a euphemism for penis as the “C” is shown as a condom. Its not only words Lee has used, as Dali and Van Gough make an appearance because of their famous facts of having a moustache and a cut off ear.

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“The challenge was very hard, but the reward of “cracking” a word felt great. So this became a lifelong project for me.”

- Ji Lee

Lee decided to use his Word As Image project to describe the FIFA Football World Cup in 2014. Tim Howard the USA goalkeeper had a good tournament by almost being unbeatable and this is shown as the “H” of Howard is representing a goalkeeper saving a ball which in the is case is the “O”. This also links with the USA Almost image that is written like USA is being chanted but the Almost is representing how the Americans were within a second of beating Portugal but conceded a last second goal for a draw. Every big moment was captured by Lee and non other big than Germany’s 7-1 victory over Brazil. To show this the last for letters of Germany is “Many”

which is stood out in bold black and because Brazil scored only once a “Ch” is added at the end of Brazil to make the word “zilch” which is also shown in bold. Another big story of the tournament was Uruguay’s Luis Suarez biting Italian Giorgio Chiellini. To show this action blood is made to be dripping from the “A” in Suarez to recreate the biting attack, and a separate image for Italy has the added letter of B at the start so the word “Bitaly” initiates the attack on the Italian player but also reads like it is a plan for someone to go and Bite Italy. What Lee has done well to do is represent each image with the colours of the countries involved as the background colours.

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Arial Regular

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For my final pieces I wanted a simple modern font that I could easily play around with to create new images to link with the theme I had in place. I didn’t like the fonts that were at my disposal because I wanted something simple with a thin look to it. I decided to browse dafont.com as I have used it in the past and I came across Geo Sans Light which was created by Manfred Klein. I liked the simplicity of it and the ability to distort the lettering to what I wanted in my visual imagery. The typeface only has one version which I was a little disappointed about because for one or two of my ideas I wanted a bold part of the font but that was unavailable.

However, I overcame this by adding a stroke to the text which made the lettering stand out much more.

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