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Showing posts from 2015

After Effects Week 2

The second video made in Process and Production After Effects workshops. Working with the keyframing tools to animate and move assets. This project I took on with a slightly humourous approach, I knew the assets I was using were poor and simple, so I decided to use the skills from this workshop to make the video funny.

Illusions, crazy right?

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Deceptions of the eyes, great design or just weird coincidences? We had a lecture on perceptions and Illusions, focusing on the science behind how our brains interpret design, I found it very interesting and learned a lot about how our eyes see things. Here are some fantastic examples of illusions within design;  

Indesign Week 3

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Indesign Week 2 We looked at creating interactive PDF's, embedding video and buttons/bookmarks to allow readers the freedom move around easier and also not have to follow links to web browsers.

Genealogy

This is a combination of two seminars we have had on Genealogy. These seminars focused on utilizing knowledge of genealogy and using abstracts within our writing. A genealogist looks at pre-concieved notions and studies the phenomenom that   what  "we tend to feel is without history". Which is a summation of the seminar. To Summarise some of the keywords used; Root= eternal truth Dissipation= scattering and disregarding Identity= Foucault's subject. Method= the way of doing something Methodology= the knowledge behind the way of doing something When writing an essay, don't look for the root, only for the relevant history of your subject. And when you find it, write an abstract about it. 

Data Recording Styles

In this seminar, we looked at how data is presented and where you can make it more informative easier to decode as someone viewing it. For instance, using colours to define ranges.  Unfortunately it was raining heavily on my walk back home after this seminar, which soaked my rucksack through and ruined the work I had done.  I focused however, on using circles to define how impactful people/things were on my life as I grew up. I would fill the circle to a certain level with entirely full meaning it was very impactful and not very full meaning not very impactful.  I coloured the circles differently depending on what emotions the impact had, whether it was joy (Green) Anger/Challenge (red) or Sadness (Blue).

Physical Studio Week 2

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In our second week of Physical studio we stayed indoors and drew from perspectives around the studio and building, my first drawing highlighted my struggles with perspective drawing freehand so for my second two images I measured out the shapes and drew far more structured which I felt looked much better.

Type Seminar

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Monday Seminar was on Typography, creating new type and how it looks when lots of people all create the same letters to be compared. We each were given 3 post it notes and 3 letters to design, and then all the letters were put on the table for everyone to examine and take pictures of. I enjoyed the project and was happy with the final product everyone made. 

Histories of Animation and Graphic Design

This lecture covered briefly covered the timeline of Graphic Design from the late 1800's through to modern day. From William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement right through to futurism and things such as Dada, the differences (and similarities) were stark. It's interesting to see design both follow and lead different pop culture times, with design following suit in the early 1900's to crazy and wacky design movements taking the lead and changing pop cultures themselves in the later 1900's right through to the 2000's. One particular similarity that I found interesting when studying was Dada and the punk movement, alot of the punk design styles seemed to take alot of inspiration from Dada, presumably due to both being centred on anarchy and the law of entropy.

Indesign week 2

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For our second week of Indesign we looked into laying out advertisements and magazines, above is my attempt at the task to lay out an advertisement similar to the reference material. We then moved onto magazine layouts, getting text to follow a pen tool line and placing text within other text areas and getting everything to look clean and sharp.

Design Republic

Our Guest lecture today was Ian Anderson from Designers Republic, an incredibly large business in the UK.  He started out creating album covers for bands when he was at university and posters for gigs he did as a DJ. People started to love his work and came to him about making their band covers and he ended up creating Designers Republic. They have done some large jobs, working with The People Bureau, Coca Cola, Flesh Pure Holy Cow, Swatch Watch, and the Wipeout game for Playstation. http://www.madenorth.co.uk/ian-anderson-the-designers-republic/  < Here is some of their work.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

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We travelled to Yorkshire Sculpture Park as part of our research for Sense of Place, It was a fantastic trip where we got alot inspiration and a broader understanding of alot of art. I took alot of photos, but they were phone quality and bad (oops) and so I've with permission used another students photos as they were similar to the ones I took. Following this trip I had lots of ideas to work on for my sense of place project, and really enjoyed the flow of slightly less generic ideas I had.

Reflectivity

What is Reflection? -an ongoing process -a record -a way of gaining new perspectives  Reflecting on your work, at all times, before, during, after, is imperative. It helps to realise your ideas and how they can change/improve in the time ahead.  This blog is here for me to be reflective after the fact, It's a way for me to look back on my work while documenting it and be able to focus on what I could have changed. Following this I am going to endevour to keep my blog up to date regularly and really try to reflect on my work through this.

Artist Research : Guillermo Bolin

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Guillermo Bolin was a spanish illustrator who was picked up by vogue early on in his career, he specialized in art deco posters. One of his most recognisable and most loved pieces is of course, the great gatsby poster, which wasn't changed with exception for the lower wording when it was remade and released recently.

Artist Research : A.M. Cassandre

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A.M. Cassandre was a graphic designer made famous by his work in the Art Deco movement, he was a ukrainian-french migrant to america, where he was discovered for his talents with bold and stark colours and with typeface design.

Typography

In todays lecture we studied typography, it's history, it's uses and it's problems. To begin, lets define some keywords. Font - What you use Typeface - What you see Typography - The act of designing Type. Ascender height - The max height of an ascender ( h b d etc) Cap height - The height of Capital letters Median - The middle of the type  Baseline - The bottom of main body letters Descender height - the max depth of a descender (p q j y etc) Tracking - The gap between each letter Leading - The gap between each line Serifs - The flourishes on the ends and corners of letters. Type is viewed by many people differently, I think type can control an image, make the viewer feel things without even looking at the art but just the words, however the famous designer of Helvetica said; "I don’t think that type should be expressive at all. I can write the word ‘dog’ with any typeface and it doesn’t have to look like a dog. But there are people that [th...

Process and Production Workshop - After Effects - First Video

10 second Advert for Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman Made for Process and Production After Effects workshop. This workshop helped us work with attuning audio to keyframes, using audio to create more impact in animation (Try watching the video with and without sound to see the massive difference) and using solid frames and transitioning.

Convergence

Multidiscipline Interdiscipline Crossdiscipline Synergy Integrated Hybrid Convergence Convergence is a term of ambiguity used to describe the process of change toward uniformity. Specifically in the graphics industry it emcompasses the concept that designers can't get away with being one trick ponies anymore.  The digital creative economy is becoming a crowded place, with more and more people joining every day, a single skillset isn't going to get you anywhere when you're in competition with somebody with multidisciplinary skillsets. It's not a call for designers to become jack of all trades master of none type people, but it is calling for people to be able to do much wider jobs, for instance a graphic designer that can also do motion graphics and web design is of much greater worth to a company than a designer that can only do print.

American Modernism, The timeline of Modernism in America. Monday Seminar 3.

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American Modernism R. Roger Remington Graphic Design 1920 - 1960 Roger Remington provides an overview and time-line of modernism in America. As a brief overview: the first third of the book contains a run up to modernism, the greatest world influences from the British Arts and Crafts movement, German Bauhaus and Futurism. The majority of the book covers the big designers and formative occasions of modernism in America. Finally the book concludes by examining the transition of modernism to post-modernism, including those designers who didn't let go of modernism, even in the era of post-modernism. The foundations of Modernism, especially in America, were established as a reaction against the aesthetic of the Victorian culture: the Arts and Crafts movement. "Modernism was more than just the name of a style. It was a philosophy, a view of life, a state of mind." Frank Lloyd Wright said, "What was most necessary in architecture was a philosophy, not an ae...

Artist Research : Bot and Dolly

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Bot and Dolly showing off the technicalities and mathematical work that goes into projection mapping. This research is for my Sense of Place project as I'm looking into creating a possible projection mapping final product.

Process and Production - Physical studio week 1

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In this workshop we went out into Huddersfield town to draw using certain techniques, my ability to draw by hand is still limited, but I found the workshop useful in honing these techniques. Perspective drawing of tunnel in Huddersfield using fineliner & promarkers.   Marker colouring piece of terrace-face in Huddersfield using pencil, fineliner & promarkers. Type in context image of Crawshaws butchers in Huddersfield using fineliner and promarkers.

Reproduction of Posters from Print - Process and Production Workshop

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Swiss style grid concert poster. Techniques used - Ruler guides, rectangle tool, text frames, CMYK Color codes. In this workshop, we had to recreate posters from the modernist era using illustrator, focusing on grids and new tools to make them look as close to the original as possible.   More advanced Swiss style concert poster.  Techniques used - Ruler guides, rectangle tool, text frames, CMYK, Rotate tool, pen tool, ellipsis tool, gradient swatches.

Wednesday morning lecture, 20 questions.

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The futility of planning too far... Playing 20 questions where you have to write out all 20 questions before you ask the person displays the futility of a lack of flexibility in your research and plans, if you can't bend and change to the results of your endeavours you're going to find yourself wandering in circles and never getting anywhere. 

How to have an Idea

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In this lecture we looked into what makes people have good ideas, and how we ourselves can keep our ideas new, original and interesting.  As someone who can often get very stuck as they often rush into a project with an idea and are broken if it doesn't work out, this part really struck me. Having a methodology, a series of approaches, techniques and strategies to indentifying and solving visual problems is a critical part of what I need to do in future with my projects to really develop great projects without having to return right to the beginning if something doesn't work out.

Monday Seminar 1, Creative Process.

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A pictoral sketch of my creative process.

Sense of Place - Exploring Grids

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In the first studio session we were tasked with exploring grids, I chose to explore grids in print, following examples from swiss modernist designers like josef muller-brockmann and massimo vignelli, i put together two basic posters using a grid as structure  

A few stills from my Forever Peace advert, process and production workshop on After Effects

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  Forever Peace, written in 1990's as a sequel to Forever War, written by Joe Haldeman. While Forever Peace is a sequel to Forever War, it contains none of the same characters or even storyline assets as Forever War, it takes place during a period of time completely skipped over by Forever War.   These stills provide a small insight into the design ideas of Gateway Publishing, who use a very impactful vivid set of colours and images to create a specific mood.

Theory As Practice Seminar 1

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What if hyperfertility/over-population was a thing? Introducing SkyLife, Spacious comfortable living in the sky. In our first Seminar with James, we had to design something that fixed a weird or outlandish problem that has occured on earth. Skylife was my groups solution to Hyperfertility.