James Henderson - Unit X Sketchbook

James Henderson Unit X Sketchbook.

See what I did here with the layout looking like the final piece? Graphics.

J Henzo Unit X. Ban all Group Work.

Hort

4

Lord Whitney

6

Dave Haslam

8

Son of an Architect! Eike Koenig talks the talk.

3D illustration, bright colours and lots of gaffer tape

Mancunion Music Man.

So what is ‘Unit X’?

10

Choosing Our Object

12

Making the Connections

14

The formation of our idea

16

Building the brand

18

My work for the end piece

20

Exhibition Shenanigans

28

Unit X begins, starting off with a series of lectures from a plethora of arty type people.

Sacking off the galleries.

Point A to Point B and everything in between.

A plan is formed... sort of.

A plan is really formed.

Postcards and papers, yo.

It all went quite well.

We had a lecture from Eike Konig of Hort. Eike spoke at a fairly great length about his career in graphic design which was born from the back of being a creative director for a record label, and his background in creativity owing to his father being an architect.

Hort is pigeon-holed as a graphic design agency, but they describe themselves as a ‘multidisciplinary creative hub’, working for clients ranging from Nike to Universal Music.

I’ve shown some of the notes that I took down during the lecture that stood out to me. Most of

them are things that I felt gave me and the rest of the students in the room a bit more hope about going into an already heavily saturated industry and really helped to demonstrate the importance of doing what you like and not just what the client thinks they want.

Hort by Eike Koenig German raver-turned-designer.

Lord Whitney.

3D illustration and bright colours.

Lord Whitney was established by Amy Lord and Rebekah Whitney in March of 2009 officially, although they have been working together since university over half a decade before that.

Lord Whitney market themselves as a ‘Leeds based creative duo, specialising in photography, illustration, set design, and art direction.’

Our workshop took place over the course of the day within our Unit X groups. The task was fairly simple but quite creative and novel. Each group were given an object and three words, of which should inspire us to create something that is a response to all three things. We were given a wooden ruler and the words

‘time’ and ‘quest’. Initially, we struggled to think of a way to put them together into a unifying object, mostly because we were thinking quite laterally and we hadn’t worked together as a group before this point, so the dynamic was understandably a little slower than a more well-acquainted group.

Eventually, with a little encouragement, we made a ‘time machine’. This was constructed, mostly, from the remains of a sofa box, tin foil and some brightly coloured gaffer tape. We also had a lecture from Lord Whitney about how they began and how they persevered through jobs that they didn’t enjoy because it meant that they could make nice things in their free time, occasionally making money from

them which would bring them closer to doing what they do now.

Personally, I didn’t enjoy the day as it felt like the task was trivial and generally aimless. Although, the fact that the group were forced to interact and work together was something that I found really helpful and I feel like it will help the group when it comes to responding to the full brief. I also found their lecture quite inspiring for the same reasons that I found the Hort lecture inspiring; struggling through difficult times and persevering with people not fully understanding your work until they are forced to accept it.

Dave Haslam.

DJ Extraordinire and Zine connoisseur.

Dave Haslam is a renowned DJ and orator of the Madchester music scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He talks prolifically about the state of the music industry and the scenes in which he operates, as well as his lesser-known interests in things such as fan-zines, growing up around the work of people such as Linder Sterling and the City Fun zine.

This was one of my favourite of the guest lectures because it appealed to me on levels outside of design, having vaguely studied Haslam’s work before university. There were a lot of things that Haslam spoke about that really stood out to me, but the main one that spoke to me was the phrase, ‘Culture starts on the margins of society.’ I felt this resonate with me because it is something that I had thought of before the lecture but was never able to fully articulate. Again, with similar reasons as the Hort lecture, it was just inspiring to hear someone giving commendation to the people that aren’t doing things that are necessarily popular now, and the people that are doing it because they’re being true to themselves and just doing it for the love of whatever it is, and not looking for any sort of major recognition. I’ve also shown some of my notes from the lecture so you can see what else stood out to me.

Unit X Kicks Off. The Whitworth Gallery & Cottonopolis.

We began our research by visiting the Whitworth gallery as a whole class. The artist in residence at the moment is Cornelia Parker, and a lot of her work was really interesting, I particularly enjoyed her self-portrait series; ‘Self Portrait as a Square’, ‘Self Portrait as a Line’, ‘Self Portrait as a Circle’ & ‘Self Portrait as a Triangle’, as well as ‘Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View’. Some of the other pieces of work that I found interesting were ‘Smokeless Coalfire’ by Patrick Caulfield and ‘Paul’ & ‘Paul Courage’ by Paul Maloney.

In all honesty, none of the items in the Whitworth really appealed to us, particularly as there was a fairly high chance that we would inevitably pick the same object as somebody else which would force us to pick something else completely, ultimately defeating the point of the exercise (in my opinion). We also felt that some of the pieces, such as ‘Cold Dark Matter’, were more entrenched with London and other areas. We began to look into Manchester’s history, using the industrial revolution as a starting point. Manchester, as well as a large chunk of the North West UK, played a huge part in the cotton industry, so much so that what is now known as the Ancoats was nicknamed ‘Cottonopolis’, and is widely accepted as the first industrial suburb in the country.

The Rich history of the Ancoats and Northern Quarter area led us to research the architecture and infrastructure through the ages to see how things had developed. We discovered that a music venue now known as ‘1 Primrose Street’ used to be an abattoir and meat distribution centre when it first opened in 1950.

Instead we began to research things that were intrinsic to Manchester without being in a gallery to begin with. We looked through books on local history in the library and found an article about the Ancoats Kitchen for the Sick, formerly part of the Ancoats Hospital in the times of the industrial revolution. It transpired that the building has now become Soup Kitchen, a popular music venue and eatery on Spear Street in the Northern Quarter. This was looking like the most promising object that we had found so far, as the brief had not dictated that buildings or larger objects weren’t permitted.

Choosing Our Object.

Sacking off the galleries.

After due consideration and time spent reviewing the pieces we had already seen, we looked into the brief from a different perspective and considered the art and structures that were in Manchester outside of the galleries.

We looked into the history of Cottonopolis, Manchester’s formerly-industrial, now-suburban Ancoats area, which has undergone a huge overhaul from vacant mills into desirable homes for young professionals over the last 20 years. This inspired us to look further back at the history of the area and how it coincided with the map of Manchester’s world-renowned culture across the 20th and 21st century.

impressed with the depth of knowledge that we presented and we were given the go ahead to continue using that as our first object.

We were told that in the afternoon we would be given a second object, with which we were to make a chart exploring as many degrees of separation that we can find.

The collapse of the cotton industry in the UK created a wealth of spaces for artists and musicians to accommodate, transforming buildings into nightclubs and studios across a large section of the city.

One space that we discovered almost accidentally was The Ancoats kitchen for the Sick. Formerly part of the Great Ancoats Hospital, The Ancoats Kitchen for the Sick served to help the workers of the industrial suburb when the mills were still active but became abandoned once the slums were cleaned out. Since then, the building has become ‘Soup Kitchen’, an eatery and nightclub mostly putting on niche club nights and bands, sometimes both in the same night.

We liked that the building had become derelict and repurposed instead of just being left vacant, particularly in an area that was largely cleared out because of the poor living conditions, and now to thrive as one of the most popular night clubs in Manchester in a time of economic hardship.

After deciding that our object would be Soup Kitchen, we were asked to do a presentation to half of the year group to demonstrate why we chose that object over all the other objects.

I mainly led the presentation but didn’t have a problem with that. All the tutors seemed to be

Chatting breeze since ‘93

The object that we were given was ‘Roy’s Rolls’, the fictional café from the classic British television series ‘Coronation Street’. Roy has been the operator in the café since 1998. As this was shortly before Easter, we were told to look at those connections over the three-week break.

Mapping out The Connections.

Straight outta Cropper.

After the half term and being given the green light to work with Soup Kitchen and Roy’s Rolls, we were asked to produce an infographic that would serve almost as a map to demonstrate those connections, and to see where some of those connections ‘crossover’ as well, forming new connections.

We made the first picture using illustrator and a simple colour-coding system to demonstrate our research.The 3 main points are Soup Kitchen, Soup and Roy’s Rolls. The 4 corner points on the infographic are Community, The Northern Quarter, Coronation Street and History.

The rest of the points are all the other things that we found in the middle of those other points, and they are clustered the closest to their most relevant ‘parent-point.’ We felt like it would be a good way of mapping what we had discovered in a way that interacts with all the points without drawing a lot of lines and generally making something that looks a little untidy. One thing about our group that was quickly established was an overarching strive for minimalism in all areas of design. This did make it difficult to identify which point was which, although given that we had all studied the points, we knew where they would go so we could work it out if we needed to, which was something that we also quite enjoyed; being able to produce something that we understood but others might not grasp at first.

After initially choosing Soup Kitchen for our first object and then given Roy’s Rolls, we were very apprehensive, given that none of us had any active interest in Coronation Street and we weren’t thrilled about trying to draw the connections of real life (Soup Kitchen) and fiction (Roy’s Rolls). Nevertheless we persevered and found a wealth of connections through various bars in the Northern Quarter and around Manchester generally, as well as learning that Roy’s Rolls had also been used as a soup kitchen in Coronation Street. At first we thought we might have to work with a piece that was loosely centred around the fact that both of these places are social gathering points. We considered the idea of doing an instillation piece that would force some sort of social interaction that might be otherwise frowned upon in a cafe or night club.

Then we were told that the exhibition would only be displaying a postcard for each member of the

group that would reflect the actual final piece that we would make. Obviously, trying to show the full extent of an interactive piece looses a lot of it’s oomph when all you can see of it are seven post cards. So we went back to the drawing board and spoke to John Walsh and Adam Griffiths about what our objects were and where they felt we could take them. They pointed out what we had missed when we were trying to look at the similarities of the two objects. The fact that both of them weren’t what they said they were. Soup Kitchen is no longer a real soup kitchen and Roy’s Rolls isn’t a cafe, it’s a set from a fictional neighbourhood that doesn’t act as a social gathering point for real people.

So we thought some more about what we could do and eventually came up with the idea to write a newspaper style magazine, similar to Vice, Crack or Skinny that would look the part on the surface but when delved into would be written with pseudo-intellectual pieces about fashion, art, music and all the usual criteria of those sorts of publications. The piece would serve as a comment on the content of the publications that it is parodying, as well as the environment that they

are typically found in (the ‘trendy’ areas that used to be places of affordable retail spaces that have become gentrified and taken over by big business disguised as independent retailers).

We decided to use the name ‘The Scoop Kitchen’ as a working title but it stuck very quickly, so we decided to press on with it.

The Formation of Our Idea.

Can you smell what the Rock is cooking?

After deciding that we would create a newspaper, we set about creating the brand guidelines using the conventions that we had found in the publications that we were trying to parody. One of the the first things that we observed was the use of a strict colour pallet. As well as adding to the aesthetic appeal and the formation of a ‘brand’, this would hypothetically reduce costs if we were going to be printing the newspaper with spot colours.

We also decided on what typefaces we would use for the different areas of speech. We elected ‘Grouch’ for the main header typeface, as well as our typographic logo. We chose Grouch because of it’s surface visual appeal, but also as a functional design choice, we felt that it would make our newspaper look more plausible as a real newspaper. We also deiced to use Futura Medium as our secondary font and Adobe Calson Pro in Semibold and Semibold Italic as the body copy font.

Molly also designed the logo for The Scoop Kitchen which we were all really impressed with. It makes effect use of single colour when we did need to use it and just generally looked really nice and suited the rest of the branding really well.

After that, we had to work out a grid system that would work well with those fonts and that everyone understood so that we could each work independently without big changed being needed when it came to compiling all of the features into the master InDesign file. I mainly designed this because I’d had the most experience with InDesign, although the whole branding process was a very democratic process.

Once we had finished that, we then decided on some features in the magazine that we would create, including travel, sport, comics, advertising and personal ads. This also meant that people could work independently on their spreads and develop them without the need to be together, which was proving to be one of the sticking points with group work.

Building The Brand.

Rules and regulations.

After deciding that we would create a newspaper, we set about creating the brand guidelines using the conventions that we had found in the publications that we were trying to parody. One of the the first things that we observed was the use of a strict colour pallet. As well as adding to the aesthetic appeal and the formation of a ‘brand’, this would hypothetically reduce costs if we were going to be printing the newspaper with spot colours.

We also decided on what typefaces we would use for the different areas of speech. We elected ‘Grouch’ for the main header typeface, as well as our typographic logo. We chose Grouch because of it’s surface visual appeal, but also as a functional design choice, we felt that it would make our newspaper look more plausible as a real newspaper. We also deiced to use Futura Medium as our secondary font and Adobe Calson Pro in Semibold and Semibold Italic as the body copy font.

Some of the preliminary type logos can be seen to the right. I really liked the stacked variation of the logo because the letters all fit together really nicely and I liked the stable pyramid shape that they created when stacked this way. Alas, I was outvoted in the democratic system so we went with the simple variation in the end.

The illustrated logo was something that we wanted to use sparingly but to great effect, so we developed the logos on the opposite page. We wanted to make a clear reference to Soup Kitchen as our object so a soup tin was the obvious way we could do this, also working as a subtle reference to Andy Warhol, particularly with the final logo which uses heavy repetition. I’m really happy with the logo, it works in single colours but also when used with a broader pallet.

After that, we had to work out a grid system that would work well with those fonts and that everyone understood so that we could each work independently without big changed being needed when it came to compiling all of the features into the master InDesign file. I mainly designed this because I’d had the most experience with InDesign, although the whole branding process was a very democratic process.

The Scoop Kitchen.

Once we had finished that, we then decided on some features in the magazine that we would create, including travel, sport, comics, advertising and personal ads. This also meant that people could work independently on their spreads and develop them without the need to be together.

Not a fan of the spoon shape, feels too obvious.

Prefer the bowl but the shape feels too vague.

The forcefield feels sturdier but not fully sold.

Soup tins work perfectly and the repetition is really nice.

My Work for the End Piece.

Writing a lot of words. A lot.

I chose to do spreads that would have larger amounts of body copy as I quite like creative writing and it meant having free reign over whatever I wanted to do to a degree. The first image shows a fictional piece that I wrote about Roy Cropper hospitalising 7 people with a bad batch of Coronation Chicken, which was traced back to a poultry distribution centre in West Yorkshire. I also illustrated the chicken and the speech bubble, in which is written “Fuck off, Roy”.

The second images are from a spread about fashion predictions for men this summer. I used this as an opportunity to make fun of my friends and the way we dress, as well as addressing the predictability of fashion commentary. The piece is written by the fictitious ‘Johnny Thompson’, which is another in-joke between my friends and me. The illustrations were also done by me.

I decided to do them in the same style as the chicken so there would be a sort of coherence throughout the publication that would also add to the believability when we came to get it printed.

The third spread was part of a two-spread feature that I worked on with Luke about a dream that he had about Hawaii. We wanted to write a travel piece but couldn’t afford the time or actual money to go somewhere, but we felt that Luke’s dream of Hawaii would be a funny thing to write a travel piece on just as another comment on publications of this nature and a lot of them being recycled opinion projected as original thought and genuine journalism. in a newspaper full of the shitty doodles of art students.

More Things I Gone and Done.

More spreads to fill your heads.

This image is the contents page that I put together and re-designed more times than I care to remember with the overall content changing from day-to-day and the pages being re-ordered twice as often. The photograph is one from my personal archives, taken at a rave in an abandoned brewery which will remain anonymous. In the middle of the spread there is a man wearing a mask, which I thought would be a funny thing to put in as that is how Adam Griffiths described Soup Kitchen and Roy’s Rolls when we first discussed them not being what they say they were. Similarly to our infographic

only being fully understood by us, this was just another way for us to reference our message without people immediately realising what the purpose of the newspaper was.

I’m really happy with all of the spreads that I worked on, in particular the illustration pieces.

The process that I used was really low-fidelity (biro on to scrap paper, through the low quality e-mail scanners and then crudely made into greyscale images with boosted contrast in photoshop). I tried to bare in mind some of the work of Le Gun for this process, as well as their

ethos in just doing what felt right and seeing how it goes instead of what is technically correct.

This was also another underhand comment on the quality of the newspapers that we were parodying. Not that their production processes are necessarily poor, but more that there is an element of predictable safety with these newspapers, most likely because they rely on paid advertisement to continue publishing and a lot of bigger companies won’t want to advertise in a newspaper full of the shitty doodles of art students.

This image is from my fictional agony aunt page entitled ‘Auntie Sheila; Feeling Feeler’. The content of the page is a comment on the sorts of problems that people who occupy places like Soup Kitchen might have, particularly young professionals or students. I had a lot of fun writing this article because it meant that I could poke fun at my friends and myself. I also used it as a platform for some mild political commentary, and also made reference to some films that I enjoy (Gran Torino). My favourite part of the

article was the part about the messy hosuemate, something that I relate to on a daily basis.

‘Alex, the way I see it you can go about this in a rational, by-the-book route, which is kind of like a breakup conversation with one’s significant other. Or you can get more creative, which comes with a greater risk, but could prove to be a much less painful process for you. If you choose to go with the first option, you should tell him how it is and let him know that his mere presence

is causing you severe discomfort in your own home in the hope that this might kickstart his turnaround towards being a productive member of society. The second option is to find and employ a hitman to take care of the issue for you, I’m sure you can figure out their means of doing that. Be prepared to move out of your now clean house and into a new country, which doesn’t extradite, to start a life as the solemn anti-hero grumpy guy of your newly occupied neighbourhood.’

Yet More Things I Gone and Done.

There’s no more, I swear.

The last spread that I did was a piece about Leonardo Da Vinci inventing Emojis whilst on a comedown.

In all honesty, this was just a means of me writing something completely unrealistic and seeing how far I could actually blag it before people would realise that the piece was satirical. I really liked the colours that I was able to use for this, the marbling effect I think made for a really interesting background for something that might otherwise be a pretty boring spread. I think this might be one of my favourite pieces from the whole unit just because of how silly it is.

Postcards & Paper-rounds.

Let’s get physical.

So we eventually got the newspapers finished and sent off to The Newspaper Club who did a really great job with them! They arrived on the morning of the exhibition so I brought them to Federation House on the night and we found a spot for them next to some of the other featured work. Lauren had also brought a ‘pay what you want’ jar so that

we could try to make back some of the money that we’d spent on getting The Scoop Kitchen printed.

Most of the copies were taken and we made a dent on what we had spent, but mostly it was just nice to see people reading the Newspaper and

enjoying it. We hand stamped the ‘_/20’ sign so people would know that they were limited, but we didn’t want to tell people exactly how much we had spent on the newspapers, we wanted people to pay what they thought was right for it.

For the Unit X exhibition we were asked to produce a postcard each which would be displayed in the graphics area, where free prints of each postcard would be available. I decided that I wanted to use this as my postcard. I liked the idea of taking this image out of the context of the article and the newspaper so that it was just this illustration. In a way, it was a way for

me to see how people would react to something like this, especially as the postcards of most other people seemed fairly safe and easy to understand when taken out of the context their broader body of work. I’ve never really displayed any of my illustration work anywhere before, I suppose because it isn’t technically good. I’ve never been formally taught how to draw and I like to use

whatever media comes to hand first, which is usually scrap paper and a biro. This is obviously not the way to try and sell art. Regardless, I’m going to risk taking 50 postcards home to my Mother’s house this summer and see who picks up my swearing chicken.

Exhibition Shenanigans.

It’ll be alright on the night.

So we eventually got the newspapers finished and sent off to The Newspaper Club who did a really great job with them! They arrived on the morning of the exhibition so I brought them to Federation House on the night and we found a spot for them next to some of the other featured work. Lauren had also brought a ‘pay what you want’ jar so that we could try to make back some of the money that we’d spent on getting The Scoop Kitchen printed.

Most of the copies were taken and we made a dent on what we had spent, but mostly it was just nice to see people reading the Newspaper and enjoying it.

We hand stamped the ‘_/20’ sign so people would know that they were limited, but we didn’t want to tell people exactly how much we had spent on the newspapers, we wanted people to pay what they thought was right for it.

Self-Evaluation pro-forma

Name

Programme

James Henderson

Graphic Design

Feedback session date/time (if known)

ID Number

Link to Digital submission

Contact number

14050146

http://www.lilhenzo.tumblr.com

07812360250

www.issuu.com/narmuk

This pro-forma is for you to consider your own performance in relation to the learning outcomes. It should help you to reflect on your achievements and identify future directions. The format is the same as the staff assessment and is intended to help you understand where your expectations match or differ from that of the assessor, and as such should inform discussion of your achievements.

Self Evaluation – circle the text that describes your assessment of your achievement for each learning outcome.

Learning outcome

F

40+

50+

60+

70+

Minimal engagement with group sessions and little meaningful contribution to group research

Some engagement, tending to following others lead. Contributing some critique and/ or content to group research.

Responded to set programme of events.

Contributed to shared experience of the group and evidenced this.

Took an active role in the shared experiences both with own group and across programmes where possible.

Demonstrated clear engagement and willingness to develop opportunities to feed into the group. Evidence of active contribution to critical and supportive dialogue, and embraced potential for shared experience.

Little evidence of awareness of external context for practice.

Evidence of some awareness of a context beyond their chosen area of study.

Is able to articulate an awareness of a range of practices beyond own programme of study.

Demonstrates an engagement with and reflection on practices that are beyond own experience and chosen area of study

Discusses with confidence and reflects with insight a range of practices in context and identifies the potential influence on their own methodologies.

Little evidence of personal involvement in the generated of work either independently or as part of a group output.

Demonstration of production of work in response to project but with little engagement with creative generation or resolution.

Produced a body of work in relation to the given brief that reflects creative collaborative and communicates through outcomes that are either individual or as part of a group.

Demonstrates the application of creative approaches that embrace collaboration and articulate this through the development of individual or group work responding to the given theme.

Clearly demonstrate the impact and potential afforded by creative collaboration in the achievement of either individual or group work in response to the given theme.

Poor engagement with feedback and presentation opportunities both physical and virtual.

Engaged with set group activities but did not extend beyond minimum requirement.

Took an active part in the presentation of individual and/or group outcomes to others.

Actively articulated individual and /or group outcomes to audiences with clarity and in considered form.

Demonstrated the ability to articulate complex processes and practices to a range of audiences with confidence clarity.

(what it means) Apply and reflect on teamwork and leadership skills Did you work effectively with your team?

Recognise the broad context of art and design practice What did you find out/learn?

Generate creative artwork in response to a collaborative, interdisciplinary brief.

Did you do something?

Present solutions and articulate ideas to a peer audience How did you explain it all?

Unit X Level 4 – Student self-evaluation pro-forma

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The Best Bit Which part of this unit have you engaged with the most, and why?

My favourite part of the unit were the guest lectures at the beginning. After the lectures that I attended I felt more confident in my own work and how I could get it to the level that I wanted it to be at. I think I enjoyed them because they were mostly from disciplines of design or culture that I wouldn’t normally elect to pay attention to. For example, I didn’t think I would enjoy Le Gun’s lecture anywhere near as much as I did do. I enjoyed listening to them talk about their ethos and their aesthetic and how they aren’t mutually exclusive and very much inform each other.

•

Things that worked What are the most successful aspects of your work for this unit and why?

Successfulness is something that I struggle to define, but I would say that my postcards might be my most successful piece from the unit purely because they seemed to be enjoyed by the most people. I think they were as popular as they were because they were quite different to most of the work that a lot of the other people on graphics and illustration had produced. I tried to be quite playful and not as serious as I had been in the previous units with this work and I think it worked out for the best. All of my postcards had been taken by the time I had arrived at the exhibition, which was a really satisfying feeling if not a little frustrating because I wanted a copy for myself!

•

Things to work on Which aspects of your work will require more attention in the future and why?

I think I’d like to do more work on my blog next time it is required. I neglected the blog for weeks and made it more difficult for myself by not posting regularly and instead just saving notes on my computer and not posting them straight to the blog. I felt too swamped under the weight of the rest of Unit X to bring myself to completely stay on top of my blog, so I think what I really need to improve on is the delegation of time and the making sure that the group dynamic is more self-sufficient instead of needing to be pushed to do work.