New Visual Language

1 MAY 2014

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION

ISSUE

New Visual Language

CONTENTS

STREET GRAPHICS CABINET OF CURIOSITIES EARTH ARTIFACT TYPOGRAPHY

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STREET GRAPHICS Our brief was to research into the graphic langugage of the street and develop a personal response. I started by creating a mind map and exploring the different meanings of the street and potential starting points. I looked at architecture, reflections, road signs, high street,

towns and cities, and the history and culture of some cities. I began by researching architecture and discovered that Huddersfield and Wigan are very similar when it comes to architecture.

This led me to thinking about the other similarities.

SARAH HANSON

Sarah Hanson is a graphic designer and illustrator who creates high quality collage illustrations. She was worked for a wide range of clients in advertising, editorial, publishing and design sectors. Her work is a combinations of traditional handmade and digital collage

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techniques. Sarah Hanson is inspired by travel and she collects a range of materials and objects, which have all become a strong element in her work.

Her images are often related to the places she visits. She often combines mixed media with digital photography and print

methods to create images which re layered.

My initial idea was to combine images of Huddersfield with my home town to represent my journey in a similar way to how Sarah Hanson shows her travels through combining image

and materials. I then decided to do a photo shoot of al my favourite places in town that reminded me of my home town, Wigan. I then took these into Adobe Photoshop and edited them to black and white. This was influenced by Miles Donovan and Nicolas Zwarg.

MILES DONOVAN Miles Donovan is and illustrator and art director living in London.

He takes photographs of buildings and places then uses Adobe Illustrator to create vectors of the images. Next he starts to overlay the vectors to create a composition that reflects the place.

Another technique he uses is

to cut out the images and start to put them together to create a very abstract and complex composition.

When I began to experiment with my images I used these techniques to put some composition ideas together. Similar illustrators I looked at were Jason Hardy and Alex Williamson.

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DAVID HOCKNEY David Hockney is a pater, set designer, print maker and photographer. He creates photomontages and composite polaroids. I am going to try this technique with some of my images and combine them together to give the idea of merging two different places as one.

Next, I printed some of my images from the photoshoot and started to cuts them into strips.

I then glued the strips onto another images before cutting them into strips again and arranging them into compositions.

These images worked reallly well so I developed them.

FINAL PIECE My idea for my final piece was to merge the two places together into one image. I wanted to create something abstract and in the style of Miles Donovan but using the photomontage technique from David Hockney.

My final piece is shown on the right. I wanted to merge the

images as representation of my home town, Wigan, and my second home, Huddersfield, as they are similar towns. I created some photomontages digitally and thought they worked really well so I then tried to add colour and other materials over the top in layers.

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CABINET OF CURIOSITIES This project was called “Cabinet of Curiosites” and we were told to find a subject in society that is close to you. I first looked into global warming and recycling but I didn’t feel that I had a personal connection with it. So then I chose to base my project on cancer because a member

of my family passed away a few years ago after suffering from lung cancer for several years.

I eventually chose to create a lung shape out of paper mache then cut it in half so that it opens up and can be decorated on the outside and inside.

RAYMOND HAINS I began by looking at Raymond Hains. He was a french artist and photographer who uses collage and is associated with the Dada movement. He uses torn posters from street advertisements and combines them to create an original collage.

I took this into consideration when I started to decorate the outside of the lung I created using paper mache. I took images and clippings from different newspapers and began to cover the outside with these in a similar way to how Raymond Hains works and his techniques.

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JOSEPH CORNELL Joseph Cornell was an American artist and sculptor. He was also and avant-garde experimental filmmaker. He was one of the most celebrated exponents of boxed assemblage which was greatly influenced by surrealits. At first I was going to create a box assemblage in the style of Joseph Cornell but then I looked into paper mache and decided to create a more original shape. This led me to looking at atists such as John Hancock, Mark Patraw and Dan Reeder.

FINAL PIECE This is the outside of my final piece.

I created it using multiple layers of paper mache. To make the correct shape, I had to look into a variety of paper mache techniques. I was going to use chicken wire to get the shape but I thought that this would be quite awkward and that it would be hard to get the lung shape that I wanted. However, this led me to finding a technique where you use a plastic bag and stuff the inside with scrunched up pieces of paper and newspaper. I then tied the bag and put duct tape around it to secure it before molding the shape and adding more duct tape. Now that I had the correct shape for my lung, I created the mixture for the paper mache, this was one part flour for two parts water. I went over the shape several times to try and smooth it out. When it was all finished and dry, I painted the outside with white emulsion paint that was mixed with a bit of water, this was just to add a thin layer of white paint to make the newspaper from the paper mache a little faded. Next I cut the lung in half and took the paper clippings I had found about cancer and using my paper mache mixture, I added them to the outside.

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EARTH ARTIFACT For our “Earth Artifact” brief, we were reuired to submit visual proposals for a new verion of the “Golden Record” that was sent into space via the voyager in 1977. The original contained sounds and images which were selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. It

VIKTOR HERTZEN I began by looking at Viktor Hertzen.He is a Swedish graphic designer and artist who creates funny pictogram movie posters/minimal move posters.

He mostly uses stick-men from road signals and signs and simple shapes and objects to communicate the names of the famous movies. I took this into consideration when I thought about creating some infographics and pictograms. I decided I wanted to create a poster as it would not be complex and wouldn’t require any other object to be able to see it.

was intended for intelligent extraterrestrial lfe or future humans. I already knew that I wanted to use infographics and pictograms for this brief. I didn’t want to include any text because on earth we have many different languages and we often communicate with signs.

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JACK HAGLEY Jack Hagley is a London based graphic designer specialising in Infographics. He has created “The World as 100 People,� which is an infographic that illustrates global breakdowns of language, religion, poverty, age and more. This image can be seen above. He has also created an infographic for Lexmark which is about productivity and agilty in a work enveiroment and how Lexmark can improve the efficiency of a company. I think that his images work really well in comunicating his idea.

14 ICON RESEARCH I found it quite hard to find artists for icons and infographics so I decided to just look at a range of different icons. I created my own icons to use for my poster which were based on jobs, education and lessons, then hobbies. I used inspiration for the images below as well as

other icons I had found while researching this topic. I decided to use the colours blue and green for the poster because it would represent the sky and ground and the colours of earth.

I then used grey as a neutral and third colour.

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FINAL PIECE This is my final piece for the “Earth Artifact” project. I decided to not include and words and only use signs and symbols because we have many languages and signs and symbols are globally known. Above you can see some of the icons I created.

These were heavily influenced by my icon reasearch and Viktor Hertzen’s work with signs and symbols. At the top of the poster I used blue to represent the sky and the bottom is green to represent the ground. At the top I have placed our solar system with the sizes of each planet so that any intellent life would be able to locate our solar system. I have also included a road map idea which was influenced by Jack Hagley. The road map includes famous landmarks for each country. I then included the evolution of our species using the famous illustration “March of Progress”. Finally, I added some of our basic knowledge to the bottom of the poster to show what we know and what we would be able to teach.

The theme for my poster was to showcase our achievements on earth and what we know about ourselves and space.

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TYPOGRAPHY Our brief was to create an original font based on a piece of work. My font was based on the piece “Utopia” by Oskar Schlemmer. He was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer who was associated with the Bauhaus school in 1923. His piece “Utopia” can be

seen below. My font was based on the “U” but was changed slighly when I created the font as I wanted it to be all capitals.

We began by creating three font designs. My other designs were based on Milton Glaser and El Lissitzky but I felt they were too random and wouldn’t be

18 consistent enough. I kept the font consistent by using the same shapes for multiple letters. I also created grids and guides so that every letter would be the correct size. I am very happy with the outcome as I have never done anything like this before.