explore definitions and characteristics
street graphics Promoting research, creative thinking, experimentation, semiotics and visual narrative
11-14
cabinet of curiosity provoking a sense of curiosity and wonder in the viewer
ollows funct f io rm n o f
of
mo
m
modernism and postmodernism
5-8
is
3-4
r de an e n o rn explorati mod ism and post
n
17-20
earth artefact Promoting research, creative thinking, experimentation, semiotics and visual narrative
A modern quality of expression or function. A philosophical movement that along with cultural trends and changes, arose during great depression and war. Based on modern industrial, rapid growth of cities and world war I, Modernism rejected the certainties of enlightenment, religious belief and cultural development. Artists experimented with form and the new to break from tradition and propel the arts into the industrialised world. This break from tradition formed many different styles and techniques whilst always rejecting the idea of realism, modernists also reformed ideas from the past which were rewritten and revised and also parodied.
The 20th century style and concept representing a departure from Modernism in the arts. It’s characterised by the use of earlier styles and techniques whilst maintaining a distrust of modern theories and cultures. Postmodernism rejects the modernist’s need for the new and creates form for no other purpose than novelty and expression. The ism wanted to maintain elements of Modernism whilst incorporating classical forms of the past which resulted in an iconic, ironic collective approach to art. Postmodernism is a rejection of the autonomous sovereign individual with an emphasis upon anarchic diversity.
I see postmodernism as a complete reversal of modernism whilst keeping the same values of rejecting the ideas founded through modern day thinking. Whilst Modernism craved the new to incorporate surreal tendencies and to mock the changes in modern world. Postmodernism however relives the classical world whilst also representing irony and parody.
My street graphics project started with me looking into urbanisation and in particular, how the landscape has changed over the years. I wanted to create an infographic showing the amount of urban areas in the united kingdom today and another to contrast with the amount 50 or 100years ago, the style would’ve been illustrative with minimal detail but a wide palette of shades, building up layers to the bigger cities centres. Whilst researching artists i proceeded to develop a new idea of renovation, taking a run-down building and making it vibrant and come back to life by use of colour. I focused on the spanish collective, Mariscal, they are known for their use of colour especially in their typography, and i went on to apply this to illustrated building fronts. I then explored this idea and looked at de-collaging and street art to help support the theme of renovation. After a talk about a BBC radio article, i looked into the idea of utopias and dystopias. I made the connection to 1950s and 60s advertising through the over-excessive use of the term when talking about future plans, and how every little detail seems to be the biggest technological advance, when really it’s a simple idea finally implemented, much like older advertisements did when showing products like fridges and washing machines. I chose to create a poster and postcard depicting Huddersfield as a culturally and technologically advanced utopia, in the style of 1950s/60s advertisement, with off bright colours and bold claims. Both were produced on photoshop whilst some components were created on illustrator. I think i’ve captured the style well and if you have anything to do with Huddersfield, such as hearing about the town or living it, you’d know find the hilarity behind the piece.
‘welcome to huddersfield’ postcard /street graphics
inital type designs
type inspired by el lissitzky
type inspired by brockmann
alphabet inspired by brockmann
My cabinet of curiosity project started off with me mind mapping my initial ideas and researching into several artists to find inspiration. From my initial ideas i started developing work around my parent’s and families experiences within the uniformed services. My father has served 23 years in the royal navy, he has been awarded 3 different medals and gained esteemed recognition for his service to the country; My grandfather served in the Army for 33 years and was appointed the highest decoration for long service and efficiency among many other accolades. My mother and uncle have also served in the Army before leaving to pursue their favourable careers. Over this time my relations have collected more than enough memorabilia, letters, photos and artefacts from their travels and experiences, from these momentous is where i base my project. Me not going into the services is always on my mind, my family and past generations were all esteemed servicemen or women, it was pretty much either going into the pits to work, or going into either the navy or army. My father and mother both accept my interests and are interested in my work as much as i am in theirs, we share this respect for each other however i’m always pushing my self in self guilt that i’m not living the military legacy my family have left. To this day, i still worry that i’m not making my father or grandfather proud by not keeping the almost tradition going, but in many ways i also feel that me proving myself, what i’m good at and what i enjoy, and that i’m incredibly proud of what my family have achieved and showing this in a
way which is personal to me; through creative representation, will make my family proud of me also. I’m very proud of my family and I wanted their accomplishments to be shared creatively and documented more permanently. I wanted to compare old and new, show how my father documented his life; with all his memorabilia in a suitcase, carried with him around the world, and how this relates to me carrying my life around on my laptop and phone, shown through my creative ways and work. finally, i wanted to look at the relationship between me and my father specifically, it’ll be hard to document that visually as with him being gone most of my childhood i have no photographs or memories to expand on, but i’m hoping that most can be explained and symbolised through description. I was never close to father growing up, not untill he came out of the Navy when i started secondary school, by that time i had a close friend group and was under my mother’s wing, i had no time for him and we found it hard to bond and get along. Through secondary and college our relationship grew stronger and me growing up, i matured and all the rest, i started appreciating my father more and there’s not much else to it. It may seem like a simple sob story of a son not seeing and hating on his father when he’s finally back, but him not being there and me fending for myself more or less when it came to growing up to become the man of the family i grew indepence and knowledge. Thats what everyone does though right? Yeah, but relating back on choosing my own direction in life and not being filtered into the military, mine and my father’s younger years are pretty much similiar. We both didn’t get on well with our fathers, we both chose at a very early age what we wanted to do, and through the experiences we had along the way we both taught ourselves; with a little help around us to become who we are. And after all that i’m proud of my father and he’s proud of me.
Summarising, i wanted to be highlighting and blatantly comparing the two ways of documenting life in my website design, using old photographs and organising techniques on a modern, simplistic layout. I want to include more of myself, show my talent too and also include my family’s opinions; especially high lighting mine and my father’s relationship. I started looking into website design and thought this would be the perfect way to archive and present my message to the viewer, an interactive immersive experience of my families stories and life. However i’m no good at coding or anything of the sort, so the best i could achieve was designed visuals of the finished thing.I took my father’s and grandfather’s stuff and documented them and put them onto blogs as tests for my finished website, i believed this to be too generic and wanted a more fun, aesthetically pleasing final piece. After researching into website designs and possibilities, i attempted designing my final website and i’m more than happy with what i produced.
this is my final website design, it consists of a front page which acts like a hub, containing all the links to the other pages.
another popup appears when a group of items is selected, this includes parcels and envelopes, also books of documents, but not photographs.
The user will use the mouse to browse over and select which part of the suitcase they want to explore, making the experience truly interactive.
A video starts playing showing hands opening the envelope /parcel and holding each item inside up to the lens, rotating them and generally showcasing it in a 3d view.
When they highlight an item of interest, a small glow will appear and that will indicate it is selected, upon clicking a box will popup.
To get information on these items the visitor would click on the photos beneath the video player of the items which are displayed in cronological order, having them like this makes it easy to find what item you’re looking for.
The home page also consists of formal links to information about the website, links to references and my other blogs and also credit to my family and helpers. I believe this type of format makes what is a pretty dull learning experience to something more fun and memorable, it’s also very easy to navigate and very aesthetically pleasing and up to date. when a singular item is clicked, such as an object of clothing or loose items scattered ontop of above, a popup opens. On the left it displays the item in various photos showcasing noteable features. On the right a large text box contains the item’s name and a short descriptive and informative post. This post contains the usual why, what, where, when style of presenting. Although this layout and way of writing is very simplistic and minimal, it’s an advantage rather than a dis-advantage. Nobody wants to sift through pages of useless information and clicking link after link to find different pictures. This simple design contains all of the above in a easily navigated, professional looking popup.
To browse the photos at the bottom, you’d hold your cursor over the right hand side of the row and it would scroll automatically, you’d then move your cursor to stop this motion. Once an image is selected, the previous ‘single item window’ would popup..
a final page appears when a pack of photographs is selected. along with the place of where they were taken, a 3 by 3 grid of them come up, you can see more by hovering your cursor to the right or left like before, and if you were to click on one it would come forward and become bigger, and also more details about it would appear. Again i feel this is a little more interactive and interesting than just a slideshow, and shows more of my way own style and thinking. Finally, for the items underneath which are out of view, a similiar popup opens up but instead of photographs , it’s the colection of items in the pile. From there one would simply click which they want to view and the relevent popup would open.
Cubism is an early-20th century movement in art, especially in painting, pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, Cubism revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubism, perspective with a single viewpoint is disregarded and structueres or forms were made of simple geometric shapes, interlocking planes, and collages.
I started off the Earth Artefact brief with 3 main ideas, showing the diversity of life through film, capturing the culture of the world by illustration and depicting the evolution of the world through stop animation. I developed 2 of these ideas and came out with very different solutions. The animation i had created was short, showing the creation of the earth and how the land morphed; it showed the dinosaurs and also their extinction. I did this all on Adobe Flash; i liked the sketchiness of the final thing and i think it added a quality of personal documentation, like it was pulled out of a diary or quickly noted from someone’s memories. My illustrations were produced on illustrator and was a collage of a countries culture in particular, food, people, religion and landscape. I started off with Papa New Guinea as it’s listed the most culturally diverse country on the planet. I enjoyed creating the illustrations as i enjoy using illustrator in general, but i didn’t believe the idea was powerful enough to portray the brief’s intentions. Looking at both of my developments i wasn’t pleased with the outcomes i had and the reasoning behind each of them. I started looking into Infographics and in particular cards. Playing cards have been around for centuries and each country has their own set and story behind the images, colours and numbers. They originally were made to depict stories and currency, they were traded between people to grow communities and knowledge. From this perspective, i built my idea of a deck of cards. The court cards would be historical figures of Earth and have a small illustration of their profile and symbols matching their lives. The number cards will be facts containing snippets of information and a smaller illustration matching each of the sets. Diamonds being money, Spades being landscape, Hearts being people and Clubs being war.
3
A
The
400billion trees on
earth give out enough oxygen each year to
support
800billion
people.
A
J
J
3 Q
Q
K
K At the time i thought i had a pretty good outcome but i feel it was to be more contextual rather than just a deck of cards. I wanted to make the cards more immersive and functional so i altered my playing cards so they could also be used as trading cards. I added QR barcodes onto the back of all cards, when if scanned by a smartphone or smart device a wiki page of information related will popup and, if it was a court card which was scanned, an animation documenting their achievements/life while they were alive. Adding the barcodes gives access to the internet allowing much more information to be shown and also gives possibilities of computer generated arts, in this case animation, to help depict earth’s diversity. I wanted my cards to build relationships between communities, in particular humans and extra-terrestrial beings whilst also depicting earth’s diverse population.
upon scanning the qr barcodes situtated on the back of the cards, a wiki page followed by an animation related to that figure will pop-up on your smartphone or device.
don’t overwork yourself
have a break, make some tea, take your
cat for a walk.
jump in and get your feet wet,
soon have waves.
start splashing and you’ll
if it feels wrong, it’ll turn out alright
right then, that’s alright too.
and if it feels
be human. don’t chain yourself to your desk, yourself when it comes to brainstorming.
as roger alan wade said,
tough.
beauty comes naturally,
inspire
if you’re gonna be dumb you gotta’ be
you can’t force it
ask for help,
other’s imaginations can be much more inspiring than your own. there’s no shame in asking for help, collaboration is wonderful.
criticism isn’t an insult,
consideration is.
but taking your work back without
the littlest things inspire the biggest ideas believe in yourself,
for in confidence.
what you lack in experience you can make up
don’t be afraid to try something new,
something old and make it nouveau.
design is a visual representation
or bringing back
of an inidividual’s imagination solving a mundane problem for yours or someone’s benefit. don’t tell me we just make posters... because we make leaflets aswell.