year 2 portfolio semester 1 methods and madness / independant practice

BA GD| L2 | SEMESTER 1 20011-12 STUDIO PRACTICE 2A: METHODS & MADNESS | UNIT EGRD 2009 BA GD| L2 | SEMESTER 1 20011-12 INDEPENDENT PRACTICE 2A: INTERROGATION | UNIT EGRD 2010

METHODS AND MADNESS

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SHOOTING STARS

SHOOTING STARS BRIEF For this brief we were given the task of taking a current news story and analysing how it is represented by the media, how it was constructed and how essentially it would be percieved. The challenge being how to turn the result of this investigation on its head, and create a video a minute long that communicates and alternative to the one the media portrays.

THE RESEARCH I chose Amy Winehouse as my subject, She was a great example due to her high profile in the media and her treatment leading up to her death and I felt that she embodied the glamorised miss-communication that the media favour in order to capitalise. In my research I found out the 1800’s is the earliest recording of the public fascination with celebrity culture. the first celebrities were those elements of high society who were eligible to get a mention in the obituaries when they passed. As in those days it wasn’t just anyone who got a mention. Strangley Ironic given these days the media won’t leave celebrities alone until they pass away.

APPROACH I had not used any editing software prior to this excercise so veiwed this as a daunting yet welcome challenge. I decided to make a visual collage that repressented Amy’s birth in the media to her televised demise, using a visual and auditory crescendo to create a metaphor for the lead up to her death.

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SHOOTING STARS

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SHOOTING STARS

Early footage in Black and White to

footage where you see her start to spiral

The static in between represents the

represent to give the feeling of times gone by

into a life she no longer has control over

changing of channels which is meant to

I made the footage blue and green with a

show the scope of which the media were

washed out feel to mimic the coldness of her

involved in her life and how that translated

ongoing torment.

to our TV screens.

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SHOOTING STARS

As her life spirals in the video the footage speeds up in time with the layered dialog getting increasingly hectic to give a crescendo meant to echo the way her own life built up to it’s sad conclusion.

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SHOOTING STARS

SHOOTING STARS

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CONCLUSION This was a great task to start the semester on, instantly challenging as I had not worked with editing before. It was a huge yet rewarding challenge to have to work out how to use Final Cut in such a short space of time, but gave me the push I needed to move forward in other areas.

The task itself was interesting, it helped me understand the value of understanding the way the media operates and how that is relevant in design, previously it had not occurred to me the social impact design can have and vice versa.

Since this task I have found myself questioning the meanings behind what I see not just in the media but in literally everything.

As regards the actual piece looking back at it now it seems somewhat remedial as I have developed further techniques over the semester which would have been benificial at the time of making this short. But I do feel it has impact and fullfils the criteria.

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VIRGIN BRIEF

VIRGIN BRIEF BRIEF Create a corporate communications piece for the Virgin brand showing sector and worldwide spread of the business in a fun and engaging way.

We were restricted by the stipulations of virgins existing branding and by the target audience which was predominantly existing Virgin employees as well as prospective business associates. They wanted to create a clearer way to show how they are structured.

THE RESEARCH For this brief I looked carefully at Virgin as a company, the ethics they stand for and how they convey their business. My partner and I looked at the Virgin facebook page and studied the existing available material. The one thing that seemed prominent in the brief was the fun aspect that was being pushed and this seemed to reflect Sir Richards character, so we felt that this would be a good place to start.

THE APPROACH My partner and I initially kicked around a few ideas but the first idea stood out by far as being the best. The brouchure’s kept refering to ‘the Virgin Motherbrand’ this immediately made me think of motherships i.e spaceships. this was a fun concept and also worked perfectly as a metaphor for the structure of Virgin as a brand.

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VIRGIN BRIEF

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VIRGIN BRIEF Some early workings of how to structure the booklet, it had to be easy to mail and inexpensive to make, yet look high end, also it needed to be environmentally sound, we realised that we could make an A1 in length poster that would fold down quite small in it wasn’t A1 in width, also we could make it double sided, and have the poster fold up into the cover which could then double as the actual envelope. This was great as it solved almost all of the issues, we just had to make it look high end.

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VIRGIN BRIEF

Initial concepts for the structure and pallet of the design. After discussions we decided that we should keep as much red as possible to keep in with the original branding, the rest of the pallet was inspired by 50’s B-movies, which we felt was appropriate considering the style of the design.

Still from the movie Forbidden Planet 1956

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VIRGIN BRIEF

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VIRGIN BRIEF

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VIRGIN BRIEF

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VIRGIN BRIEF

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VIRGIN BRIEF

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VIRGIN BRIEF

CONCLUSION I found this brief a great brief for stretching the aesthetic creative muscles, I enjoyed the challenge of trying to come up with the ideal product to meet the varied requirements. The Crit we had with The young man from virgin was positive and constructive and my partner and I made the neccessary changes in order to meet his needs and found that the end product was a success. The most challenging part of this brief was to cater the design so that it would appeal to a wide demographic, in the end our approach communicated the hierarchy of the Virgin Brand and on the other end of the spectrum could also appeal to small children with the fun science fiction edge.

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BIOGRAPHY

BIOGRAPHY BRIEF For this brief I was given the name Jeremy Bentham and had to find out who he was and as much information as I could without using my usual research methods. Then finally to represent my findings in some way.

THE RESEARCH The research for this task it seemed was the point in the task, having to find new ways of thinking and getting around the obstacle of google denial. At first I found it hard to stop thinking about going to search engine’s, I found my mind kept going in circles from “how do I find out about this man?” to I’ll could use. . . . .” and then I would just think of search engine’s.

This was surprisingly difficult to get out of, which in itself has taught me that I rely far too much on the same few avenue’s of research, which I realised makes the results of my line of investigation limited.

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THE QUESTION

BIOGRAPHY

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‘Who, or what, is a Jeremy Bentham ?’

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BIOGRAPHY

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BIOGRAPHY

The techniques that I ended up going with in order to gain as much info as I could about Mr Bentham all relied in one way or another on other people telling me.

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BIOGRAPHY

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THE ANSWER

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BIOGRAPHY

Thread from Drowned in sound music forum

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BIOGRAPHY

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CONCLUSION I was surprised to find that out of my four methods...

1. Place an add on Gum Tree 2. Post a status update on facebook 3.Put posters around the uni 4.Post the question on a music forum 5. send an e-mail to as many variations of Jeremy Bentham in an e-mail address I could think of. that method four was by far the best, it seems music enthusiasts that post regularly on forums know more about Jeremy Bentham than I first would have thought, and oddly enough the methods that I thought would work best, methods two and three turned out to have little to no results, proving once again that I should veer off my standard paths of investigation in future. Putting an add on Gumtree gave to most accurate results, I am assuming because of the format, i.e nobody would bother to read the post as it was irrelevant to the use of the website unless of course they already knew or had an interest in Jeremy Bentham. Another interesting result was that after posting a link to the finished poster, I had a reply from a teacher saying they were going to use it in their class.

This shows to me that although some of the facts are false the end result is a good example of the publics perception.

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INDEPENDANT PRACTICE

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THE LAST EMBRACE THE BRIEF For my Independant practice I wanted to cover the subject of Love, in this brief I was given the task of creating a large poster for a friends band called ‘Love among the mannequins’ they wanted a poster that conveyed a general romantic theme but retain a punk rock vibe and without using any text.

THE RESEARCH I started by asking people what was the first thing that came into their heads when I said Love to them, the answers were far more varied than I anticipated and also far more negative.

People tended to either come up with cliche’d imagery like ‘hearts’ etc or they would refer to break ups or feeling bad. It seems obvious that the question would beg these two outcomes however it was the conveyance of this that was interesting. one of the things that interested me the most was marriage and the vows we take and how although they are meant to be romantic they also refer to death ‘death do us part’. I found this acknowledgement of our mortality within a romantic vow a juxtoposition that reflected my general findings. And so decided to make the poster a deathly image with a romantic heart.

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THE LAST EMBRACE

I wrote the word romance on a piece of paper and gave people 1 minute to write down as many things they could think of connected with it.

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THE LAST EMBRACE

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THE LAST EMBRACE

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THE LAST EMBRACE

CONCLUSION This design was incredibly labor intensive, with all the line work hand drawn and the dot work for the texturing of the sky hand drawn as well, a technique that when I look back now only really benifits when the illustration is viewed close up, something I will avoid in future for larger pieces of work. The feedback I have recieved has been positive with people making reference to the color pallet and neon border. These are both things that I have added after researching artists like Kevin Tong and El Boca, so it has been a great experience being able to look at their work and apply certain visual styles to my own work. I also had to look at a lot of images of fire in order to attain the liquid effect of the atmosphere being penetrated this was a good learning curve also as it gave me a better understanding of shapes and how they can convey texture on a large scale.

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FALLING IN LOVE

FALLING IN LOVE THE BRIEF This was a self set brief. I had been relying too much on illustration and felt I wasn’t getting enough diversity in my design so I wanted to try doing an animation as it was something I hadn’t done before and due to some workshops this semester understood how to do on a very basic level. So the brief was to create an animation that could potentially be used for an advert or a short to promote valentines day cards. I had in mind when doing it clinton cards or a similar company.

THE RESEARCH Whilst researching the theme of love in general I looked at terms that are used commonly in reference to love, one of the most obvious and probably universal terms is ‘falling in love’ which when you dissect it literally is interesting as love is an emotion and falling is a physical action so it does not seem obvious to pair the two, however in a literal sense it made for an interesting idea.

THE APPROACH I wanted to give the animation a colorful and fun aesthetic to fit in with the kind of marketing normally used to advertise seasonal based media. I also wanted the animation to be some kind of play on words so I married a literal concept of falling in love and colorful basic illustration.

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FALLING IN LOVE

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FALLING IN LOVE

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FALLING IN LOVE

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FALLING IN LOVE

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FALLING IN LOVE

CONCLUSION It was an extremely painstaking process to make the animation, the first thing I have learnt from this experience is patience, I found that because I had become so close to the project once it was finished I could not tell if the message was effective or not, I showed it to some peers that reassured my it conveyed in a clear way. I was pleased with the final outcome on the whole, although in future I would spend more time getting the aspect ratio a bit better as I ended up with a letter box effect on the sides which was not intended. I think I was successful in creating something that could be used as a sassy advert as I think the level of humor is at a good place within the confines of terrestrial television.

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LOVE IS A DOING WORD

THE BRIEF Create a piece of photography based design that could be used again as an advert or billboard campaign for a product, any kind of product with romantic connotations, from condoms to perfume, or potentially even a bed. I wanted to try my hand at something simple that invovled photography as I have not really done any so far but I do enjoy it. I also wanted to create something that was really simple conceptually but at the same time effective.

THE RESEARCH To research this I trawled the internet for famous advertisments like the ‘lemon’ ad for volkswagon and various examples of found typography for inspiration. I came across an uncredited image of typography made up of bed clothes which gave me the idea to make a heart shape out of my own to see what it looked like. The text is one of the things that was said to me when I did my survey of Love association.

CONCLUSION I always tend to feel that something isn’t good if it comes too easy, and although I took a lot of photo’s trying to get the right one and played about with the typography for a long time, it still felt too easy. However the response to this piece has been great and I do feel that it connects very well between the aesthetics and the concept. In future I think I need to be more confident when it comes to simplicity

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DEATH DO US PART

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DEATH DO US PART THE BRIEF I wanted to create another avenue more consistant with some of the work I have done previously so I tried designing a logo for a potential clothing range in the vein of clothing ranges like drop dead and atticus but still give the range the theme of Love.

THE RESEARCH I turned to marriage vows again as this subject still interested me, and I also looked at seal’s on products i.e quality stamps etc I decided to apply this to the design to make it look more uniform and mounted, you see a seal and you automatically know there is going to be a message behind it and thats what I wanted for this design.

THE APPROACH In my previous design I found that metaphors are great vehicles for carrying messages in a subtle way, so I tried to couple the literal side of death do us part, i.e death and the romantic side to give the message an ultimately darker image even though it is a romantic sentiment.

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DEATH DO US PART

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DEATH DO US PART

I tried experimenting with making the skulls look like they were kissing, in doing so I realised that the shape they made when together was a heart which was a a perfect ‘happy accident’ .

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DEATH DO US PART

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DEATH DO US PART

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DEATH DO US PART

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DEATH DO US PART

CONCLUSION I added colour to emphasise the heart and the message. I’m drawn more to the grey only design as I think it looks better as a design in just one colour, however the coloured version does stand out more as having a message and the text is more obvious. I still struggle to when there are small boundaries between what looks good and what conveys the meaning the best. This project has proven to be one where I cannot tell and would have to get a lot of feedback in order to make and informed choice, something that is becoming more and more valuable I have noticed.

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LOVE SHACK

LOVE SHACK THE BRIEF This semester we hadn’t really done much in the way of corporate logo design, and this is something that I want to get better at. Making smooth logo’s using illustrator in the standard mode to create really clean lines and curve’s etc. So I decided to design a poster for the remainder of the associated Love words.

And after seeing La Boca’s work I felt compelled to experiment with gradients and patterning.

THE APPROACH I didn’t really research this project as more experiment with various objects to see how well I could represent them in illustrator. I did however refer back to la Boca’s website for inspiration in texture.

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LOVE SHACK

The results of what people think when they hear the word ‘LOVE’. lots of juxtoposition going on between positive and negative and emotions and objects. Lots to work with!

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CONCLUSION This task was more for fun really, I wanted to see what I could do with the icons, in that respect I feel I could have done better, they suffer from a lack of uniform and they look to me to be too literal. I found that when looking at other icon design, icons tended to be very simple where as my icons seem a little clumsy.

That being said I felt the poster itself came out quite well and I found a way to integrate photo imagery (the moon) without it looking cut and paste which will be useful in the future as I am hoping to be able to combine illustration and other types of media, something which has eluded me so far.

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LOVE SHACK

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LOVE SHACK

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BURNING LOVE

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BURNING LOVE THE BRIEF For this brief I origianaly wanted to make a short video made up of close up shots of burning photo’s of couples that had broken up, I felt I had covered the romance side of love, the fun side of love so I now wanted to deal with the product of love, a broken heart.

THE APPROACH Again this was meant as more of an experiment to apart from looking at short films on youtube like ‘the gift’ by Carl E. Rinsch to get the pace right. Apart from that it was pure experimentation.

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BURNING LOVE

I put out a plea for people to send me photo’s of them with ex-partners for me to burn, the response was enthusiastic to say the least.

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BURNING LOVE

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BURNING LOVE

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BURNING LOVE

BURNING LOVE

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CONCLUSION After I filmed the footage I realised that I couldnt’ achieve the look I was hoping for due to various technical hitches so I was about to abandon the project and move on. However I started to reflect over my original independant practice statement and realised that I could manipulate the footage like I did with the shooting stars brief. I heard a song round a friends house acouple of days later called burning love and realised I could use the footage I da to make a music video for the band, so I got in touch with them and they approved the idea. I am really pleased with how well the imagery was adaptable to the meaning of the song and style of the band. With more time I would like to add more Typography and shoot more varied footage.

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INDEPENDANT PRACTICE I am really happy with my Independant Practice this semester, I have experimented in areas that I previously have avoided or been a intimidated by, this ongoing experimentation has done wonders for my confidence and has made me excited about future possibilities. I have also found that the two units have crossed over much more with this semester with some of the illustration skills I have learnt helped inform and produce the Virgin brief and with the shooting stars brief informing my animation and music video.

I feel the quality of my work is growing as I learn new techniques and that my skills in research are growing. My first port of call when taking on a brief is research where previously I would have dove straight into making work. To me this is a huge leap as in the past this has always felt like an alien process.

I also feel that with every passing brief my concept of how my work relates to the audience is more and more defined. This can only be a good thing.

METHODS & MADNESS At the start of this semester I was instantly thrown with the first brief being a moving image based brief, but this turned out to be a blessing as I would go on to use the skills I learnt in that first brief for much of my independant practice. The following briefs I have to admit I found frustrating, the ambiguity of some of the tasks put me in an uncomfortable mind set.

However when I look back at the unit I can see it from a more positive perspective and now find myself a bit more able to tolerate ambiguity and treat it as a license to be more creative.

As always the initial frustration turns into a skill. This can be said for the pace of this semester as well. As at the begining it was a slow start and toward the end time management became an issue. Unfortunately I did miss certain workshops and the LAB due to my lack of awareness of what was to come. But this can have it’s positive merits as from now on I shall work to predeadline deadlines.

I look forward to next semester and the challenges that may come but will definitely work harder to pre-empt unexpected time constraints.

BIBLIOGRAPHY http://www.behance.net/walterhansen Walter Hansen http://www.veritykeniger.co.uk/

Verity Keniger

http://www.tragicsunshine.com/

Kevin Tong

http://www.laboca.co.uk/

La Boca

http://www.johnalvin.com/

John Alvin

http://www.rhyswootton.co.uk/

Rhys Wooton

http://chloeearly.com

Chloe Early

http://artisproof.bigcartel.com/

Art is Proof Press

http://www.juxtapoz.com

Juxtopoz

The Designer as Producer by Ellen Lupton PDF. The designer as author by Michael Rock

PDF.

http://designnomad.blogspot.com/

Design Nomad Blog

http://thedudedesigns.blogspot.com/

The Dude Designs Blog

Facebook Youtube ISSUU Vimeo ( http://vimeo.com/33025640 )

Directed by Carl E. Rinsch, ‘The Gift’

http://drownedinsound.com/

Drowned in Sound