I See What You Mean

using the poem that we had to learn of by heart in the project of 30 things the brief was set of creating 50 typographical experimentations using only scale, type face and arrangement.  above it selection of these.  i really enjoyed this project, i think this was my perfectionistic ways coming through.  the overall effect of many black texts placed together on a white background was very visually appealing. 

Next we chose two of our favourites and added the element of colour and tone to the mix.   For the 'What You Have Is A Blundering Mind' extract i chose a fairly simplistic type face which i restricted mainly on the word mind to represent the confusion in that mind.  by adding the text behind i found that i achieved my ideal outcome, making the composition confusing as how you would imagine a blundering mind to appear.

The Mona Lisa Curse

Robert Hughes documentary really made me think about art today,  in my life time it has always been this way, a commodity, but after watching his take on the art world and his strong opinions of the business of art really made me question what i knew or thought i knew.  one of the quotes from his documentary that was memorable was that art is the biggest unregulated market in the world apart from drugs!  As i had questioned in my previous post, who decides what is art, Hughes postulates that auction houses are the new arbiters of taste,  if this is true then i find this disappointing for use of a better word.  i know there was always a lot of controversy about Andy Warhol's work, in the same way as Damien Hirst's work today i suppose, should it be worth so much, is it art, personally i would say yes but does that put me in the same category as people who visit the mona lisa only to say they saw it or the dealers who only see pieces of art as a commodity to sell and buy for a profit.  has by giving work this enormous price tag devalued it?

A friend of mine once said to me that Art is not a career but a calling, but by giving it this title of a calling does it not make art appear discriminative, i mean who are these called upon people and who decides what is art.  It just makes me wonder, as i suppose i consider myself an artist, i mean i love the subject and i'm studying it, but is that enough.  As a see art as or in my future, when can i truly consider myself an artist.  Everyones interpretation of art is different, we see this all the time, 'artists' are always being slandered, personally i don't think i could handle that, yet i do it myself; if i go to an exhibition i pick out my favourites and almost instantly know which piece i don't like, i mean everyone has their own opinions but who has the right to judge someone els's work.  personally i always seek approval from my tutors, some could call it a form of self flagellation, but i still do it, i guess its just the way i have always been (something i'm trying to work on!!) otherwise when it comes to real life and outside of the 'class room' how could i possible handle it.  Therefore i use artist as a fairly loose term, i mean anyone could be, i guess what i'm trying to say is its not up to me to decide.
- a random contradicting internal rant i was having, having never converted one to paper before i thought it would be interesting to see if it was possible.  still not entirely sure as it makes sense, it does to me but probably no one else (a common theme with me), especially with the total lack of punctuation.

Typography

This is an article i found, it features some inspiring examples of typography in album covers from 1960's until today:

50 years of typography in album covers

Lists Lists Lists

For all 17 lists i used simple illustrations to represent my ideas, for example the image on the left.  i found it helped to have these visual interpretations especially in the development process.  after the initial diagrams i experimented with different medias, for example in the pictures bellow i used a mixture of inks and pen.

i liked the element of abstractness in both of these drawings especially the idea of a swarm of flies.

continuing with this idea i experimented on photo shop with found images and adding flies to them.  i really like the way they look realistic and sort of creepy at the same time.

when it came to the lists, i found coming up with '10 places to hide' was the most enjoyable and i also felt it was the easiest one of all my lists to develop and represent.  from here i combined my previous idea of flies with '10 places to hide' by using a fly to represent the person and a type of food as the place to hide, i did this for each place on the list,  for example with the 'abroad' idea i had a fly with a foreign food.  instead of sticking to just illustration i decided to create model flies using wire form, clay, wire, and acrylic.  

below is a few of these models; 

• the top left is to represent jail, i used caramelised sugar to create a caged effect.
• top right is to represent a hat/hoodie which people use to hide their faces.  
• bottom left is to represent an invisibility cloak,  this one was hard to represent so i used the lemon to give an impression of only a head on show and the rest of the fly concealed.
• bottom left is to represent halloween costumes, i used a pomegranate in the place of a pumpkin. 

large scale fly

30 Things To Do II : Develop a Piece with Potential

Out of the '30 things project' the two i considered having the most potential were, as shown in my previous post, 'do a drawing for a matchbox' and 'write your name in water'.  after a lot of brain storming i decided that the water piece had the most room for development and the project i could have the most fun with.

                                                                   I decided to focus on the typographical aspect of my piece and the use of a liquid based substance as a medium.  in my first piece the text was displayed on a window with the view showing through a little. i liked this idea of displaying the text on everyday object, where this running effect might occur naturally.  the next challenge was deciding what the text would say, i wanted it to relate to the place its displayed but also link into the original brief: my name.   

What i finally chose to do was think of names which people can be called or words that can be used to describe a person,  then place them in a natural environment that somehow relates to that word.  for example in the photo above i used a glue acrylic blend to create the illusion of pancake batter saying the word 'wanting' because obviously everyone 'wants' pancakes!! but it also implies greed, temptations and many other connotations. the one thing i would change would be the letter W although i read it as wanting because i now what its meant to say, to someone else i think its not very clear.

for the word 'disposable' i used the same glue acrylic blend but in blue to represent toilet bleach, i could of used a bin for the word 'disposable' but i thought that was too literal and kind of left no room for a viewers interpretation.  so i chose a toilet as it is another way of disposing of something and also i liked the symmetry in the photo it would create.

30 Things To Do

This brief was rather ominous, at least thats how i felt when i was first given it.  i don't think it was the actual tasks but the sheer quantity of it, i mean 30!!

the first on the list, 'do a drawing for a matchbox' i had the most fun with,  as in the rich inspiration i could draw from, for example the image to the left of a soviet matchbox cover is in my opinion beautiful. especially considering it is for a disposable everyday object.  its also always fun to downsize and work on a very small scale. 

i tried to draw inspiration from vintage matchbox covers because they always were a lot more interesting.

another one of my mini projects i liked, and not only because i got to eat it afterwards, was 'before and after' :

i thing that i like about this piece is the very basic interpretation, and how fairly simple it was to make but in the end was very visually pleasing.  i think this is mainly down to the type face i chose to use and the arrangement.   i found it hard trying to get a very similar photo of the 'After', after i had moved it around, as the 'before' photo. also getting similar lighting and positioning was hard.  in the end however i think the slight difference doesn't damage the overall effect too much.

but my favourite one has to be 'write your name in water', i did a lot of experimentation with this title;  one of the things i tried was using actual water and an acrylic spray paint, but either they didn't work or i didn't like how it looked.  so finally i tried using a very liquid glue to write with:

coming in after reading week on crit day was really interesting, seeing everyones interpretations without any help or advise from tutors.   

Chosen Speciality

VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS

I chose vis com as my chosen area after meeting with Wendy and looking at the suggested research list, in particular http://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time_off.html, it made me think of my gap year and how much more productive i could of been while travelling, and that by studying vis com for foundation i would be more able to see the possibilities of experimentation and possible projects in my surroundings.

Im exited to try new things in this area and basically experiment and push myself as you never know if an idea is going to work, even turn out ok, until you try it, which i always find scary, and something i want to overcome.