VISUAL THINKING
Maya Forcione
Task One
R LE T ETS
N A T L H U I S N I V I G K
300 mm high
MTRPEASRAEIOICTE S O U C E Y S
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150mm high
Working in groups of two choose an initial letter from the following set and based on the terminologies and glossaries contained within the brief develop a word that is related to the unit - you can produce it in Caps or lowercase. After careful planning design and make a three dimensional initial character that communicates its meaning. The model can be made of found objects but must finally be wall-mounted.
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S PARTNER: Harriet Salmon
Snake Sparkle Sleek Sink Slip Sound Secret Scrunch Speed Shape Shiver Space Smoke Scratch Shadow Stab Smoulder Splatter Shave Shake Shroud Snot Shrine Sinuous Soap Soup Steam Singe Shatter Shredding
PRIMARY IDEAS SINK: ‘S’ sinking in the ground (in sequential images?) SCRUNCH: Scrunch some scrunchies into 3D ‘S’ SLEEK: Oil paint... SHAVE: Shave someone’s beard/hair (kiwi if not poss) SOUP: Birds-eye view of soup with ‘S’ in cream or cheese SOAP: Carve an ‘S’ into a bar of soap SHATTER: Smash a load of glass and form an ‘S’
IMAGE
RESEARCH
Photography Experimentation
SHATTER
After creating a long list of different potential words beginning with 'S', we shortlisted the ones we thought would work the best and started experimenting with lighting and photography to create the best visual results we could. 'Shatter' was our first word to experiment with and we created these upper and lower-case 'S' letters using one big glass. After smashing it on the ground outdoors we carefully divided the big and small pieces and created these two shattered-looking S letters. At first we thought it didn't look as powerful as we imagined it to even though after using a strong light and a good camera we managed to make it look slightly more impressive. On the other hand, we knew we could do better and wanted to try our next word which is soap!
Carving Experimentation
For our next word ‘Soap’, we got a smooth new bar of soap and spent a couple of hours carving the letter ‘S’ into it. It turned out not to be as hard as we thought - using a scalpel we first carefully created the outline of the ‘S’ and slowly started carving it out until it was a good 4mm deep in the soap then evened it all out. We were very happy with this outcome however our only problem was how small the bar of soap was in contrary to the brief. Also if you look closely, the top of the ‘S’ is slightly bigger than the bottom. Because of this, we decided to also take images of the soap in case we can make something even bigger and better out of it.
Light and Photogra
We chose to take our first batch of pictures on top of a sweet pink pattern of paper as it contrasts well with the white soap colour and relates to the lovely packaging soap and cleansing products usually come in. As the soap is also quite plain pattern-wise we thought it would be good to colour it up with this suttle yet noticeable pink pattern. The main benefits we achieved in taking these photos was how much the contrast in light shows off the carving of the ‘S’ so clearly. We were also able to make it look a lot bigger and more impressive through photography. I wanted the background to be even more exciting and less flat so I decided to place it in the smallest box I could find and scrunch it up for a more dynamic effect. This worked well for the look of the image yet it made the soap bar look as small as it is again.
aphy Development
After taking creative colourful pictures with the pink paper we decided to try some pictures in the bathroom where soap originally belongs. We avoided taking these at first as we thought it would look too bland and obvious however as we went along, the ideas got better and better. We focussed more on the hands that heald the soap rather than the soap’s surrounding.
I believe the hands give it a real touch in colour contrast and in what we are so used to seeing. Using just my one hand didn’t look good enough for us, we wanted it to be more symmetrical so I borrowed a friends pair of hands and the outcome (to the right) is by far my favourite now.
Using Lightroom, I edited the colours and contrast on this image. I changed the colour tones to blue instead of orange which gives it more of a crisp and professional look. I took quite a few shots of these hands until they were perfectly symmetrical.
I love how the soap stands out the most not only because it’s central but because of its light colour in contrast to everything behind. The only thing I would change about this image is the bracelet bands around his wrist. They are quite distracting and make the image less symmetrical.
Trying Alternative Ideas Finally, we had the urge to try the word ‘Soup’ using cream or parmesan; taking a neat and professional final image of it. Here are our first images:
We tried out different kinds of place settings and images to make it look pleasing to the eye as well as still keeping it in the centre of the image so it is the main focus. I was happy with the outcome of these photos yet I feel like we were restricted with making the ‘S’ look perfect and precise or match a specific font. I also felt like the background was a bit much; taking away the focus from the soup. So next we tried grated parmesan...
We used Lightroom to edit the saturation and contrast on this image. We also used it to crop and angle the image perfectly so the ‘S’ is central. For the final touches I used Photoshop to take out the bits of parmesan and wooden spots on the table to make the whole image a lot neater and focus the ‘S’ even more.
Below is our final image for our letter ‘S’. The typeface we used is called Plantagenet Cherokee. We chose this type because it looked neat and classy. We also wanted the challenge of using serifs. The parmesan worked a lot better than the cream in terms of precision and the overall picture looks a lot neater too.
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Our brief was to produce an A6 postcard with the image on one side and a brief description of word on the other. Resources: InDesign, Photoshop, Layout and pre-print specification.
Research
We found it quite difficult researching phrases or quotes that link our word and typography. There were a few poems we found about Soup but none of them were serious enough or linked well enough to use! After an unsuccessful try at finding something to write, we decided to go ahead and make one ourselves...
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Soup is a concoction of ingredients and so is typography. Soup can be composed of vegetables, meat, fish and herbs. The word ‘soup’ is made using stems, counters, brackets, a bowl, lobe and a descender. Alone the ingredients are nothing but together they can create something beautiful.
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SOUP IS A CONCOCTION OF INGREDIENTS AND SO IS T Y P O G R A PH Y. S O U P CAN BE COMPOSED OF VEGETABLES, M E AT, F I S H AND HERBS. THE WORD ‘SOUP’ IS MADE
USING STEMS, COUNTERS, BRACKETS, A BOWL, LOBE AND A DESCENDER. ALONE THE INGREDIENTS ARE NOTHING BUT TOGETHER THEY CAN C R E AT E S O M E T H I N G B E AU T I F U L .
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This initial brief begins with a visit to Poole where you will identify, collect and photograph, examples of vernacular letterforms in the town. Your images could be literal interpretations of details of road signs, gravestones or shopfront signs, etc or slightly more challenging abstract collections of 'hidden signs' drawn from architectural forms, found objects and unintentional typographic structures.
Shortlist Contact Sheet
My partners: Christiana Wilson, Georgia Shorey, Ayesha Ford-Hayles.
THOUGHTS I found this project incredibly inspiring and fun. I enjoy photography a lot and to be able to use it as my main medium for the project was greatly motivational for me. As the dayin Poole went on, I noticed my type images getting a lot more experimental and creative. Instead of taking images of the obvious already existing type, I started making letters out of shapes and shadows I saw. It was really fun working on the project in a group as not only did I get to know everyone better but we all managed to have different skills in different parts of the brief and photography We all had different opinions and ideas yet this worked perfectly when merging everyone's thoughts into one project to make it the best it can be. Time management was never a problem for us as we were all dedicated to spending individual or group time together whether at uni or home. We used Dropbox and Facebook to share our work and gather further feedback and opinions from eachother.
Edited Favourites
Book Planning
It took quite a long day to gather a total of over 400 photos between us, shortlist and edit them - yet after organising our favourites into a folder we went through and named each file by its letter. Things got a lot easier and faster after this. I edited almost all of the images on Photoshop; putting them straight onto InDesign to crop and place nicely. We spent a lot of time on InDesign creating our final book; cropping, cutting, rotating and changing layouts which definitely helped me personally to become a lot quicker in skill and understanding of the program.
PROBLEMS The only problems we were faced with were time-consuming problems such as my example in the picture above. As most of our images were high-quality, when placing them onto our book layout on InDesign, they would appear enormous and we’d have to manually scale it down to fit the
pages every time. The next and final problem we faced was having to relink some images we’d move after placing onto InDesign as it would then recognise it as an ‘error’ we needed to fix. All in all these were the only problems we were faced with so thumbs up!
PERFECT
BINDING
The Binding Process To create our final french bold book, we binded our pages using a technique called "perfect binding". We used a Lumbuck Press to do this (as shown below). Firstly after printing our final pages, we used a boning tool to fold them perfectly outward from the centre so that the crop marks aligned well for an accurate fold. With all our pages folded inside the lumbuck press, we placed spare pieces of paper on either side of our book to ensure it wouldn't get stuck or ruined in the next steps.
With the book and Lumbuck Press in place, we then neeeded to glue these pages together. Before doing this we needed to loosen up one side of the press using the rectangular blocks. This then allowed our pages to bend well together in order for us to apply glue to them equally. We placed paper on the outside gaps to ensure the glue didn't get on the wrong part of our book. We then locked the swivel rectangular blocks back into place and got glueing!
The Finished Book
We were all incredibly happy with the outcome of our book. We had no issues with the gluing or folding during the binding process and all the pages were perfectly aligned. It was so nice to have a final piece we could physically hold and look through. My group all worked equal amounts for this book and were all incredibly satisfied with the results.
If there was anything I would change about the project or how we managed it, I would have dedicated more time at the beginning to research professional layout designs without excitedly jumping straight into it and doing what we all instinctively liked. However, I still think by using our own imagination we learnt a lot with practise.
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As well as set tasks, you will be expected to sign up to at least three workshops of your choice. Organised by Graphic Design, Fine Art, Illustration and Visual Communication.
SCREENPRINTING
I was very excited for this workshop because not only was it my first time trying this new skill yet I have always really admired a lot of work that had been screenprinted before. At first I didn’t quite understand how the whole process worked; yet after asking a few questions I finally understood that the screen is made from a fine mesh material which is how it allows the ink to pass through. On our first try at screenprinting, we made simple triangular shapes just to get the gist of it. A week later I went back to practise screenprinting with my own images. I brought several photographs, tweeked the contrast and photocopied them for better results. Screenprinting was a really inspiring workshop for me; I can definitely see myself using it in future for all kinds of design projects and experiments. I would like to try screenprinting my own designs or images onto material that isn’t paper such as a bag or a t-shirt.
Outcome and
On the right is an image that was taken in Berlin of the Jewish Memorial. I chose this image to use because I was curious about how the tone/different blacks would come out when I screenprinted it. As these two images were on the same screen, the same mistakes happened on both of them. This was pretty disappointing yet by this point it was nearly the end of the day so I had no time to re-do it. On the other hand, I know now for next time to be a lot more careful when flooding my screen, I have to make sure the ink is spread nice and evenly, and not to try and print over the same image twice! Great workshop however, very inspiring.
d Evaluation To the left is my final screenprint of an image I took in a museum. I chose this metallic dark green colour because it’s not too dark or light and I wanted to see how the metallic look would look on the card I chose to print onto. Unfortunately, the print has come out quite fuzzy with not much accuracy or detail to it. This is because I did not flood the mesh equally enough. It was quite thick in some areas then there would be none in other areas. I went ahead and printed it with the squeegee and it came out incredibly faint. When this happened I tried printing over it again so it would be darker yet the paper had moved; hence why I have this outcome which looks like it has a double exposure.
CHROMOPHILIA (Fine Art) NOTES: - Matisse - Very involved in the character of colour (He once told Picasso he’d paint his girlfriend lemon yellow and Picasso painted that idea straight after ha!) - Chris Ofili interested in music + sampling which is expressed through his art. - Joseph Albers - BAUHAUS - teacher - Don’t think of a colour on its own - think of it in its context! - Complimentary Colours: When the eye is exposed to a colour it wants to see its opposite in the colour spectrum - MAXIM called simultaneous contrast (e.g. walk in a room all magenta... walk outside and you’ll see everything green!) - Colour is only a texture spread across a platform which changes the way light absorbs the wavelengths - absorbs all except red. - VALUE - HIGH value is a light colour. LOW value is a dark colour. - TINT = Colour mixed with white, SHADE = mixed with black. THOUGHTS: This workshop was another very inspiring workshop for me. The teacher had lots of amazing facts and images to show us about colour. We had a task to paint a typographic, geometric type of image. At first I wasn’t keen to paint however I got so into it that I stayed behind to finish! My aim was to produce colours that are ‘shaded’ (mix all my colours with black). I like my outcome quite a lot; the colours all blend nicely together and I am definitely more inclined to paint in the future!
LetterMpress (Graphics)
In all honesty, before attending my first letterMpress workshop, I thought the idea of a digital letterpress was quite tacky and would defeat the purpose of the old-fashioned lovely look... I was proved wrong! The program was great - lots of choices in fonts styles, ink colours, clip art etc. I thought it was very realistic and I enjoyed playing around with the different letter types it provided. As you can see, at first I was quite minimal with my knowledge in how many different colours or fonts the program provided. When going on to try another design, I changed my paper type, fonts and used clip art stars.
The only problem I came across when creating my LetterMpress designs was the paper size. I chose to work with A4, however the page they provide for me to place my type on was not A4, it was a lot larger and I had to guess exactly where the letterpress would print on my page. This made everything a little longer and more of a hassle. The only other problem was also the limit to how small you can scale the type down to. As I chose to work on A4, I needed to squash quite a few letters onto my page for the quote (on the second and third images) yet it wouldn’t allow me to make them any smaller then they are on my final images. I still got the program for my laptop as it could definitely come in handy when creating quick title pages for projects etc.
STU D Y TR BER IP LIN
H O LO C MEMO
C AUST ORIAL
The Holocaust Memorial was one of the first places we visited in Berlin. It was an incredibly powerful atmosphere to be in and I took away a lot from it. We went downstairs to the displays which explained in depth with imagery and writing all about the holocaust. Not only did I learn a lot about all the historical events and findings, yet I also took away with me the effort and layout that they had put into this small underground museum. It was so clear and creatively laid out. After first approaching the memorial I saw the whole thing in a very aesthetic manner; not thinking much about the background of what it all means. I’m so glad I went down adn read about it because it’s not only incredibly interesting but so powerful and really did touch me! I will undoubtedly never forget it!
S TA AT GALL
LICHE LERY
H O LO C MEMO
This gallery was by far my favourite of the trip. We spent about 4 hours in there as there was just so much to see and read and I simply loved how varied the types of art were! There was a small room where a film was being played upside down the whole way through. Funnily enough I found this inspiring as it started making me think about all the obvious yet effective methods of art and design possible.
C A U SAnother T piece of art I really was one plain wall O R I Aadmired L
which had been sprayed red with loads of cans. These cans had been left exactly the way they were thrown on the ground by the artist. He recorded a video of him spraying this wall and this was playing on repeat in the same room. The simple way he wanted to portray the process isntead of the end result as a piece of Theart Holocaust Memorial really opened my eye to the was one of the first places we amount of styles and concepts visited in Berlin. It was an incredibly people have powerful in art. atmosphere to be in and I took away a lot from it. We went downstairs to the I also found it interesting how displays which explained in depth with imagery and writing about the holocaust. Not only did I different mine andall some other learn a lot about all the historical events and findings, people’syet opinions were on I also took away with methese the effort and layout that had put differentthey forms ofinto art.this small underground museum. It was so clear and creatively laid out. After first approaching the memorial I saw the whole thing in a very aesthetic manner; not thinking much about the background of what it all means. I’m so glad I went down adn read about it because it’s not only incredibly interesting but so powerful and really did touch me! I will undoubtedly never forget it!
BAUH ARC
The Bauhaus Archiv was truely fascinating; starting with the architect of the building to the history of the movement - I was really thrown back by it all. The amount of incredible designs to basic household items was so intriguing and I wish my group had come a little earlier so we could have all had more time to really read into the individual designs and their meanings. I expected the Bauhaus Archiv to be quite a lot bigger if I’m honest however this didn’t effect my positive opinions on it what so ever. It was a shame I wasn’t allowed to document pictures from it yet I noted down specific names to remember.
HAUS CHIV
STR AR
EET RT
F i r s t Ye a r S t u d e n t Arts University Bournemouth
M a y a F o r c i o n e