New Visual Language Final Magazine

11th May 2015 Issue 1

Form Follows Function

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An exploration of Modernism and Post Modernism

01 02 City In Flux ........ 01 Title page Introduction Hand drawn map of Leeds

City In Flux ....... 03 Photographs of Leeds gig venues

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City In Flux ....... 05 Photographs of my final piece My evaluation

Earth Artifact ........ 01 Title page Introdution Photograph of one of my ideas

Earth Artifact ........ 03 Photographs of my experiments Earth Artifact ........ 05 Videos of my final piece My evaluation

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03 04 Type Transription ........ 01 Title page Introduction Screenshot of my typeface Type Transription ........ 03 Two of my final pieces My evaluation

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Type Transription ........ 05 Third final piece

New Visual Language ........ 01 Title page Introduction Picture of Modern art movements New Visual Language ........ 03 Modernism definition Postmodernism definition

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City In Flux Project For my first brief, named ‘City In Flux’, i created a guide book to the alternative music scene in Leeds. This included everything you should need to know such as maps to the venues, gig reviews, venue reviews, yearly events, photographers and the best places to eat and sleep.

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This is the cover of the booklet that i have drawn, it is a map of Leeds with some extra bits to fill out the blank spaces. I got the roughly hand drawn felt pen idea from another guide book cover and thought it would stand out from the other plain covered books.

I took a trip to Leeds on the train to v write about later on. I took my came graphs to use in my guide b

visit some of the venues that i would era to take some of my own photobook on the pin point map.

This is my final piece, printed out and made into a booklet. I decided to keep it clean and plain and straight to the point.

I made a choice when creating the cover to not put any writing onto it and just keep the image on its own; the image wraps around from the back to the front and i think that is enough. If i had put writing onto it, you wouldnt be able to see some of the map and the pin points.

Inside i have included reviews on a few of the most popular venues in the centre of Leeds.

I thought it would be better if i kept the images smaller to make more room for the reviews and venue information. The reviews are off of Yelp.com and TripAdviser.com and are completely genuine reviews written by members of the public that have visited the venues.

The most important part of the booklet is the map at the back. I created it myself on Illustrator using Google maps to trace over. Once adding the map to the booklet, i selected the best photographs that i had taken on my trip to Leeds and placed them around the map, i then pin pointed the venues and linked them with the photographs.

Overall, i really threw myself into this project and created something that i would like to use and would find very helpful.

I definitely enjoyed going on a trip to Leeds with my camera and finding all of these music venues, going inside and exploring and experiencing. It was a win win situation as i needed the photographs for my project but also got to know where all of these venues are in case i ever want to visit them for an event.

If i could improve it, i would definitely change the layout of some of the pages and the font but more importantly, i would extend the booklet to more of a southerners view and call it ’A Southerners Guide to the Northern Alternative Music Scene’. Being a southerner coming to live up north for the first time ever, not really knowing where i was or who anyone was, i could have really done with something like this. Music is a huge part of my life and i think it is a really great way to meet new people who share the same things in common so this could have been my icebreaker to my new northern life.

Earth Artifa Project For my second brief, named ‘Earth Artifact’, i created a video about the human face and how different faces can be yet still have the same features to send into space on a new Golden Record.

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This is a photograph of one of my experiments, it is a jar full of lots of little things about me such as rings, lipstick, keys, candles and money.

For my final piece i decided to use what i had learnt in Sara’s Adobe After Effects lessons and create an animation. As the films are aimed at alien life that may not understand very much about us, i kept the outcome simple and obvious, i only included the most relevant bits.

I started off by asking a few coursemates and flatmates if i could take a photograph of their face, they knew it was part of my project but i kept my intentions a secret right up entitle very end. The photographs were head shots that were later scaled to the same size and straightened, this meant that when i layered them up over each other, all of the features would line up on each face.

I began by playing about on photoshop, cutting bits of one persons face and placing it on another persons face, i was happily surprised with the outcome as they made some brilliant images. I didn’t feel that these images would get the message i was trying to portray across so i moved on to creating animations with the images.

I realised after layering up the images on Photoshop earlier on that it actually looked quite effective and i could make an animation of that too as well as my final piece. The animation would progress through the images, layering them one on top of the other with the opacity down so you can see the faces layered up at the end. This was getting loser to the kind of thing i wanted to create but i knew i wasn’t quite there yet.

After finishing the first animation, i moved onto making my final animation. This consisted of taking the photos of each person face and slicing them up in photoshop so i was left with peoples eyes, noses and mouths. I then continued to link up all of the eyes, noses and mouths on their own sort of reel. I placed each picture of the eyes next to each other creating a long line of different peoples eyes and then did the same with the noses and mouths. I then put these long

images into Adobe After Effects and animated them so they moved across the screen in different directions; in the end it looked something like a slot machine. After this i felt that it needed a little bit more relevance so i added in some of the phases from the original Golden Record which also moved across the screen.

Overall, I am most impressed with this outcome over all of the others i have created this year; partly because i had learnt how to use a brand new program and created something fairly intricate.

I really enjoyed going away on my own and remembering (without my notes) how to create a whole animation, start to finish. It was by far the most satisfying thing i have done in my projects and i am very proud. I actually think it came out better than i had expected and this is probably because i got really into the making process and made sure that everything was as i intended it to be.

If i could improve it, the first thing i would do is take the phrases out of the animation. I can understand why i thought the animation was lacking something but then again, in context, it makes a lot of sense on its own. I may also slow down the animation a bit as your brain can’t register the whole thing the first time, you have to look at it multiple times to see everything that i have done.

Type Transc Project For my third brief, named ‘Type Transcription’, i created a selection of 3 typefaces based on a modern minimalist style. The style is more specifically using geometric shapes and aztec patterns with bold black lines.

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This is a screenshot of one of my typefaces that has been scanned into Adobe Illustrator so i could edit it and make it bolder. This is the first typeface that i ever created on Illustrator and i am quite impressed with how it came out.

These three typefaces are my final pieces to the project called ’Type Transcription’. All three were hand drawn and transferred onto Adobe Illustrator where i boldly outlined them to five them a nice smart finish.

I began by looking at other typographers and what inspired them to create their typefaces. Some of them were inspired by patterns and some by nature; a favoured the patterns as they were more simple and bold.

I took lots of the typefaces that i had looked at and picked out my favourite bits from some of them and used that to inspire my own typefaces. I drew out lots of grids and created a few different designs for each letter before finalising them which helped me find out what worked together and what didn’t, what was too much and what wasn’t enough. This consisted of lots of geometric and aztec shapes and lines which i put together in Adobe Illustrator.

Overall, i really enjoyed this project and would love to do more of them. I am very fond of typography but ave never created my own like i have in this project. I have learnt a lot about what it takes to create a completely new type-

face and all the processes you need to go through to get a good outcome.

The best bit about this project was the research as it made me realise just what you can do. Creating a typeface has such a broad and endless amount of possibilities, you can use anything from flowers and bricks to star constellations and patterns on the face of planets. It is very satisfying creating something completely new.

If i could go back to the start of the project again, i wouldn’t necessarily change anything but i would use a completely different idea to inspire my work. I would look more at the nature side and what i could do with something like climbing Ivy or grass as they create their own patterns naturally.

New Visual Project For my fourth brief, named ’New Visual Language’, i created a Postmodern Minimalist magazine. Seems as i like straight edge and clean, i felt that it would be best if i went for the Minimalist style, it also looks very professional.

Language

This is a photograph of one part of my art movements timeline taken from the ‘Modernism’ section.

Modernism

Modernism refers to the broad movement in Western art, architecture and design which self-consciously rejected the past as a model for the art of the present, and placed an emphasis on formal qualities within artworks and processes and materials. It is a movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in the years following World War I. Modernism refers to this period’s interest in new types of paints and other materials, in expressing feelings and ideas, in creating abstractions and fantasies, rather than representing what is real. This kind of art requires its audience to observe carefully in order to get some facts about the artist, his intentions, and his environment, before forming judgments about the work.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/1280px-Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a term used from about 1970 to describe changes seen to take place in Western society and culture from the 1960s onwards. The name given to a wide range of cultural phenomena, to characterize a move away from the ‘highbrow’ seriousness of modernism, preferring a more eclectic and populist approach to creativity.

The term is used both as a ‘stylistic’ term and also as a period designation.

Paintings that have been described as Postmodernist include the work of Stephen McKenna and Carlo Maria Mariani, also selected works by Peter Blake and David Hockney. http://www.museothyssen.org//img/obras_grande/1978.92.jpg

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