New Visual Language - Issue 1 Form Follows Function

NVL

NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE

ISSUE 1 Form Follows Function

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CONTENTS 4-9 Street Graphic 10-17 Cabinet of Curiosity 18-27 Earth Artefact 28-31 Typeface 32-33 Manifesto

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STREET GRAPHIC

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The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvellous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvellous; but we do not notice it.

- Charles Baudelaire

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The Brief: You are required to research into the graphic language of the street, how imagery, artifacts and ephemera of all kinds bombard the senses with visual messages and experiences. In the first instance you should demonstrate your ability to select suitable subject matter for translation into graphic experiments. You should be able to justify ideas and be able to discriminate between strong and weak ideas/concepts. Your experimental work will form the basis of an exhibition exploring the role of the influence of the street on graphic language.

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Street Graphic ‘Street Graphic’. The main thing you think about when hearing this term is street art. The graphic images that are physically painted onto the streets and buildings, and the artists that put them there. But what this term really means is in fact, the buildings and the streets themselves.

The visual messages they give out and the experiences that they create for each individual. When I first looked into this project I discovered that the main themes I wanted to concentrate on was architecture, development and regeneration. I wanted to explore the ideas of how a city is built up and torn down, rebuilt over and over, but not always making improvements. I wanted to look at the differences between past and present, how things had changed and how different types of structures change how people think about a city.

During my research I began to looks at artists and photographers that mainly specialised with architecture but then also ones that created artwork that followed the ‘street’ theme. After looking at artists such as Jonathon Barnbrook, Mimmo Rotella, Alex Williamson and Herbert Matter I discovered that my main inspiration was Mimmo Rotella. I found his style of artwork intriguing and that it worked particularly well with my theme of regeneration. The torn up, decollage images show both construction and deconstruction as one image is being taken apart but then a new one is being made. I liked how the layers helped to create depth and emotion as the images hiding underneath are being partially revealed bit by bit. I liked the grunge style that it created and the rough look about it as well as how the different images work together as one. This idea then inspired me to think about the development and regeneration of a particular city. I chose to look at Sheffield, as it is my hometown and I know the area quite well. I collected a selection of old photographs from the Sheffield archives and then revisited most of the locations or somewhere similar to re take the photographs to show how they had changed. I then used these images together to layer on top of one another to create a decollage of the old and new. As the layers of the new image on top were taken away it reveals the past of how the building or area used to look. The new image shows a mixture of past and present and highlights the main changes that have taken place. I also tried to make sure that the images were all taken from a similar angle so that the images would fit together better once layered.

I experimented with a collection of different images for this so that I could see which ones worked the best. I also explored a few other ways in which this idea could be carried out. One idea I had was to create a flipbook with the images printed on strips of acetate sheets so that the images could be recreated in any way you wanted. I found that this idea didn’t work as well as I’d hoped as the images didn’t stand out very well on the acetate and took away a lot of the depth and detail.

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FINAL OUTCOME

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After exploring these ideas, I decided to go back to the original idea of the physical layering and chose three final combinations so that I could create bigger A3 versions mounted on plywood. I decided to theme each piece to show 3 different sections of the city including buildings, transport and maps. I also added in some typography as the bottom layer of each image using words that reflect what I was trying to show (for example regeneration and development) to generate more depth and to also give the pieces a hidden message.

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CABINET OF CURIOSITY 10

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Derive ideas from the world around you, from your own background, from your childhood, from relationships with others, from the social and political environment. Don’t be confined to a pond... in which the water is always in danger of becoming stagnant.

- Ken Garland

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The Brief: In the same way that certain artists attempt to capture experiences, or ephemeral moments of time in their work, as in the boxes of Joseph Cornell and animations of the Brother Quay, you are required to use your personal experiences to build a cabinet of curiosity or shrine. This does not have to be a literal physical cabinet but can be virtual, physical or static. In the first instance you should collect written and visual information based around your personal experiences and interests.

Joseph Cornell did not merely collect elements of his experience and haphazardly make art out of anything he found. His work resulted from a compulsion to hold onto every experience.

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Cabinet of Curiosity ‘Cabinet of Curiosity’. Something that should be personal and mysterious. Something that only you should ever fully understand.

Creating emotion and being close to your heart, maybe even telling a story. This brief automatically made me think about my family and my childhood. Remembering the little details that sometimes you think you’ve forgotten. I started my research by looking at the likes of Joseph Cornell, Louise Nevelson, Robert Rauschenburg, Kurt Schwitters and Eduardo Paolozzi. They’re work all significant for different reasons.

Nevelson used simplicity and block colours while Paolozzi used bright colours and playful designs.

The one that influenced me the most though was Joseph Cornell. He created intricate designs and beautifully made structures paying close attention to every detail. Each one with a meaning or a theme. There was one piece that stood out to me the most though. A striking narrative he had once written about collectible items. Telling a story through words and images as he actually illustrated some of the objects he was talking about. This inspired me to look deeper into collectible items and specifically at things that I used to collect. I went through phases growing up of collecting different things. Whether it was TY toys, some kind of ornament, gemstones or gig tickets, there was always something. I then moved onto looking at things that members of my family used to collect, making me wonder what I could do with it all.

This is when I decided I wanted to recreate what Joseph Cornell did by writing a narrative, telling stories of my family and my childhood and using the physical objects that I collected to illustrate some of the words.

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FINAL OUTCOME With this idea I created a narrative for my mum, dad, brother, granddad and then two others about my family as a whole. Sharing a personal story about each one and then using objects and drawings that relate to that specific story. Typed in a typewriter font to symbolise the past and then stained, torn, burnt and wrapped up with string to represent an old letter style.

All enclosed in a simply designed wooden box that doesn’t give away any indication of what’s hiding on the inside and creating that element of curiosity. The scrabble pieces are a symbol of the games I used to play as a child while the others are materials I collected from my home.

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The aim of the narratives is to create emotion and a personal connection with stories that are being told and the objects that are shown. I wanted to make readers think about their own childhood and family, bringing back stories that they thought they had also forgotten.

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EARTH ARTEFACT

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For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals.

Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination.

We learned to talk, we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas enabling people to work together… to build the impossible.

Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking… and its greatest failures by not talking.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future with the technology at our disposal – the possibilities are unbounded.

All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

- Stephen Hawking

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The Brief: You are required to submit visual and written proposals for a new version of the ‘Golden Record’ entitled, ‘Earth Artefact’. This should not be a slavish reproduction of the original golden record, but should be a more contemporary version, which should be reflected in the content and the format/media channel of your choice. You should demonstrate a critical understanding of the design challenge as well as being inventive and demonstrating your ingenuity in solving this design challenge.

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Earth Artefact In 1977 ‘The Golden Record’ was sent up into space on The Voyager.

On a mission to explore the boundaries of the solar system NASA wanted to use this as an opportunity to send up a message in the event the spacecraft’s were ever found by intelligent life forms. A time capsule that tells the story of our world on a 12 inch gold plated copper phonograph record containing carefully selected sounds and images to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. With over one hundred images, a variety of natural sounds and musical compositions, letters and spoken greetings in over fifty different languages along with scientific information, the record was a form of communication to celebrate Earth.

With this in mind I focused my research on information graphics to generate ideas on how I could display specific information. With Harry Beck, Nigel Holmes and Peter Orntoft, I began to explore the different ways that information could be displayed creatively. My main idea was that I wanted to create some kind of physical book. Something that other life forms could easily figure out, hold on to and look through together. This made me research guidebooks and I then discovered that my main influence was the Wallpaper City Guides published by Phaidon. The simple, block colour covers were attractive and didn’t cause any fuss and then the insides were informative and told you everything you needed to know about a specific city.

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FINAL OUTCOME I explored the different ideas that I could create from this and eventually decided that I would like to go down a more contemporary route looking at topics such as human emotions, landscapes and religion and then instead of just writing pages of information I wanted to create a poetic narrative that engaged with the life forms. Make them think and visualise our world in all its man made and natural beauty, with images displayed throughout that related to the text to help it become more understandable to someone who is looking at the Earth and humans for the very first time.

The images I used are a collection of my own along with others that I have sourced from other photographers. I then decided to expand on this idea to make a full collection of ‘Earth Guides’ by including some facts and adding topics such as science and population. Altogether the guides work as a whole to show various different aspects of life on Earth, stirring up thoughts and feelings and representing everything that is good and magnificent about the Earth.

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MY TYPEFACE After looking at various artists and completing some research and development on other typefaces I decided to use this image by Miltion Glaser as my inspiration. I like how you can see certain letters in this image already like the ‘m’, ‘w’ and ‘e’. It made me wonder how all of the other letters would look following this particular shape. I wanted to created a bold, playful and creative font that was full of curves and limited straight edges.

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FINAL OUTCOME

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MY MANIFESTO DESIGN This is the manifesto that I have written and designed. I feel that it supports the way I feel about design and most importantly reflects the way that I want to be as a person and as a designer.

I’ve kept it simple and minimalistic and chose to design it so that only the words that I thought were the most important were highlighted. I made them stand out in different ways depending on what the word was.

I have presented my manifesto in this way so that it evoked emotion as it was read. The words would be read differently depending on how it looked. Bolder words would be said with certainty, confidence and power, whereas the words in the scripted font would be read with more care and a softer more relatable tone. I used some other style types as well like strike through on the word ‘fail’, underlining the word ‘design’ and stretching words such as ‘standing’ and ‘up’ in a vertical direction to reflect the actual physicality of the word. I made the whole last line bold to state the importance of my opinion and my beliefs.

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