Democracy - group Poster 08/12/09

Put in groups we were given the chance to produce an A3 poster visually representing democracy. My group and I were stuck for an idea to begin with but discussing our recent approaches with information on War on want we decided to investigate in the issues and problems with young sweatshop workers in Honduras. We split in groups of two, Emma and I were on a mission to come up with a tag line and a possible layout whilst the others looked up upon facts and vital content for our poster. We all agreed to take the simple route by keeping the poster visually easy to understand. Working in the groups I found that as a team all our input was creating more developed outcomes. After we had split we all met up again to discuss what we had found, Emma and I had decided to look at quotations from people about democracy, in this case a quotation by John Adams "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide"

So who is John adams? John Adams was a politician and the second president of the united states, he played a leading role in persuading congress to adopt the united states declaration of independence. Although the quote was from an american vice president, I thought the words were still very meaningful and relevant to democracy in general.

The other members of the group found images, one in particular of a young sweatshop worker lying on the floor, again as a group decision we traced the outline of the image and based our text round the outline of the body, using cut up letters from newspapers. I then set of and created a version in illustrator. From todays experience from working in groups and having to come up with a poster in a day as been very enjoyable yet challenging and has given me a great insight to producing our 'adshel' bus shelter poster for war on want.

Tutorial 02/12/09

Although we have only just been given the brief, we had small group tutorials to discuss the target audience and research to give us a starting point.

WAR ON WANT! new brief, Visual thinking 01/12/09

So... text and image is over, from what I've learnt I'm now going to put my skills into our new project War on want! War on want is a organisation that fights poverty in developing countries in partnership with people affected by globalisation. We campaign for human rights and against the root causes of global poverty, inequality and injustice.

Given our new brief were to produce an A3 poster for a 'Adshel' bus stop site. Also designing a second dimension to the campaign which communicates to a younger target audience, wakening awareness of human rights and social issues. Researching primarily and secondary I'm going to start by looking at the younger target audience and what appeals to them now days, which then I could find out how to produce an ad which would move the audience emotionally and more active into takings issues further themselves.

A couple of images for visual equations

Completing the six images for the last brief was such a relief! Below are just a couple of my favourite images. I took McDonalds as an example, I basically wanted to get the message across as, its all well and good seeing Mcdonalds from a good perspective, but in reality it has its consequences aka the opposite effect, I placed an image of a overweight man in hospital to represent the opposite.

I used the saying throughout all six images 'Living life through rose

tinted glasses' although I did explore ' square peg in a round hole' which I developed in my sketchbook, the idea actually linked onto our next project War on want, due to start tomorrow Tues 01/12/09.

My Booklet

This is my final outcome for my 8 paged booklet promoting myself as a visual communicator. The final outcome was o.k. After the crit I didn't really receive much feed back to change or add anything to my layout, type or composition of my work. But I think all went well.

Promo Print 27.10.09 - 25.11.09

Project 5

given our next project brief 'Promo Print' we were all set the task to produce an eight paged booklet promoting ourself's as visual communicators, using a specification and content guide we had to have certain measurements and content in a particular order.

To produce the booklet we had to learn the basics of Quark express, how to set up a booklet with a 120mm width and a 119mm height, making sure that image across pages and of the edges had a 3mm bleed. I found that Quark was very easy to use and with the knowledge of using the mac's shortcut buttons e.g apple,shift and A etc I was able to work

much faster and consistent. The only disadvantage of this project was the broadness, I kept chopping and changing my final layout and how I wanted to convey myself to the employer or reader as a visual designer. Eventually having an idea I got to work by simply setting up my picture and text boxes on Quark, once decided I imported my im

ages that I thought were my strongest images produced through the project text and image. I placed an image by a different illustrator on the back of my booklet, Matthew Hollings, an illustrator who attempts to bridge the divide between traditional

draftsmanship and contemporary digital mark making.

Visual Equations & Recent inspiration 13/11/09

I was looking through a book called 'playful type' and came across a technique that I thought may come into use for my visual equation project. Using text to fit inside the subject, which was also shown to us by Neil in a illustrator session not long a go..

Our last project 'Visual Equations' personally it really got me stuck for a final outcome. I started to look at old fashioned sayings and quotes and came across a few which were opposites e.g. ' Square peg in a round hole' and 'Life through rose tinted glasses' which had the meaning of two opposites, prosperity and poverty, I sketched one design, but after the crit on visual equations I was given more of a path to follow on how to develop my ideas.

Here i simply added a rose colour to the glasses with prosperity and poverty in each of the lenses, keeping the image simply and minimalistic so the audience concentrate on the message.

Pictograms and glyphs 21/10/09

Looking at different images we were to re-draw typographic glyphs found through our recording of Poole. Doing so I chose 3 images and created 3 glyphs which we had to present on the 04/11/09 on a scale of 100 by 100 pt in Illustrator.

I personally thought my glyphs went according to plan, although drawing some parts I found difficult, but I persevered and continued to take out the task. The three images I chose were a ship, an old couple and an ice cream, from our critique I was recommended to create a background or a border for each icon, doing so this seems to make the image more effective and gives each of them a balance and Similarity. I enjoyed this short project and its made me more confident with illustrator. I kept on editing and changing my icons till I thought they looked good enough to present as a final or even to a client, the only difficulty I had was keeping the ship as simple as possible, personally I think I achieved doing so.

Looking at other designers work such as Oded Ezer and Jonathan Barnbrook which I have referred to in my sketch book, but generally looking at magazines it has shown how creative you can be with Glyphs, taking a piece of text to create a complete abstract piece of imagery. I purchased Grafik magazine and given free was a book completed with different letter form.

Book Binding 28/10.09

we all looked at different techniques to binding books in this session, doing so we were given the opportunity to produce two different types of book, Circle Accordian and a Japanese variation. I enjoyed this session although trying to get the exact measurement and precise cut was quite painful. The more I concentrated to harder it became, especially following the measurements given... I decided to change the scale and produce a smaller version of the circle accordian as it was much easier to fold into place.

The second book was easier and seemed more appealing to actually use if I was to display some work of my own, the simplicity of sandwiching hard board and creating pages and stitching the whole thing together, most definitely worked for me!

I shall definitely try out other ways to create books and Brochures etc in my spare time.

Grids and Layouts 27/10/09

From this session, my complete understanding about grids and layouts.

Grid- An invisible structure once the work has been completed by the designer

Layout - The postion of the text and image on the page as the viewer sees it.

Grid = consistant Layout= Varied.

Learning the basics of grids and layouts is something I didn't think

would be that helpful but has been proven wrong. I have taking a more interest in the technical side of design, rather then just assuming the layout of a page in a book was just placed without thought. I drew some ruff sketches of different layouts and then created a layout with some of my items to simply show what I had learnt.

As a team we were also set a task to individually created a layout page working of a grid for a book, where all of our layouts would be placed, this was very interesting as it showed all of our different personalities in how we would arrange images and text in an empty space.

Type and Tape 20/10/09

Asgroups we were set the task to create a new type with ordinary tape and coloured tape somewhere around the university grounds. As a group decision we produced a large scale font in a corridor in the photography block, doing so we decided that each character of our font would have an cross through it. Where we were blocking the corridor(as shown above) with tape, we all came to the decision to call the type 'Diversion'

Thinking creatively we used yellow and black tape as used to warn people from danger creating a no entry zone. We had a few difficulties as people had to pass through the corridor, so we simply asked if they would duck and dive through the tape. The images shown are just an example of our concept and progress...

I had never thought of physically creating typography in such a large scale, definitely a technique to think about.

Illustrator session 21/10/09

Some illustrator tasks that we were given

by Neil, practising different methods to

create different type, symbols and pictograms.

I personally didn't find myself confident enough

with Illustrator, but Im sure with practice and

time i will become more knowledgeable. Also in

this session we looked at how to create icons from

drawings and photographs of Poole this was a brief

given on the 14.10.09.

Alan Kitching - Letter Press

Simple yet effective, gave me some great ideas for my next print session.

Printmaking - letterpress 14/10/09

Using block printing we were given a range of words Sequence, Freedom, Extend, Outside, Boundary and Extensive. I chose Freedom to start of with and then moved on with the word Outside, gradually my ideas and how I expressed the word on paper became more interesting and enjoyable. I thoroughly enjoyed this and shall most definitely be using this technique throughout other possible projects. The only down side was the time we had. I chose the word Freedom to start of with to simply get use to the process.

After realising how easy letter press can be I decided to play around with the letters more to try and express them on paper, I chose the word boundary, where I literally created a boundary out of the letters them selfs.

Project one - A Visual insight to Poole town

Our first project of our first Unit Text and Image.

As a group we visited Poole Quay for the day to explore the towns old and new characteristics visually Collecting sketches and photos, also studying the environment and the mood changes throughout the town.

From our visit I personally didn't like Poole until you reach the Quay itself. We were given out first project brief, to produce an Editorial illustration giving a visual insight the the regeneration of Poole for a international newspaper. I went back to Poole a few days later to specify in what my illustration was going to consist of and what effect it would have on the reader. I decided to look at the architecture of Poole and how it has changed over the years, collecting images of buildings I simply edited them into a graph showing the height and the age of the buildings, gradually getting larger up the scale. I found myself struggling to be creative enough, I tried to express an image without making it to obvious for the reader.

Previous to this brief we explored colour and a drawing with paper technique using our photos and sketches from Poole, looking at an artist called Rob Ryan, the neat, accuracy of his work amazed me when I was told the image was drawn into paper.