Monday, 13 September 2010

SUMMER (project)

I'll start by saying that a brief being called summer project is very misleading, and pretty much depressing. Summer is meant to mean no work, parks, BBQ's, holidays, sunbathing, reading, time wasting, seeing friends, sleeping and generally not doing much. But no! With a summer project this all goes out of the window, well maybe for only the last few weeks when you feel the terror of a deadline a' looming.

Anyway I have been chugging along with my project for about the last four weeks, doing tiny bit everyday and not really getting anywhere fast. The brief is to create an alphabet which shows a response to one or many of our summer experiences. It's pretty open ended, we can create a new typeface or use an unusual method of displaying the alphabet etc. for our final outcome. I decided to base my project on Playmobil, after spending the best part of a week sorting a mountain of it out. After much faffing, I decided to make an interactive alphabet where using a few things you can make many, such as with Playmobil. I decided to make a set of 14 blocks out of wood that could be put together to form the 26 letters of the alphabet, below are the photos;


To make them I used balsa wood which is a very light, easy to cut wood. ( I am yet to drill holes which will allow them to attach together) In addition to this I am also trying to come up with a digital version of this new typeface which can be used as a more practical readable version of the wooden 3D typeface. I am currently really struggling with this aspect of my project. I have tried many different ways of displaying the typeface but none seem to be quite right, well to me anyway. I am tempted to leave my project at just the wooden type but I think it needs something else, something to make the process of arranging the wooden blocks relevant. Below are some sample of the digital typeface;
Hopefully more photos to follow of the final thing! x

Tuesday, 17 August 2010

Fiona Banner




Stumbled across the artist Fiona Banner through It's Nice That blog, whilst doing some research for my alphabet summer project. Even though she's at artist she does some interesting things with type. She seems to turn the conventions of type on it's head, making you question why you had never thought about it that way. She also seems to focus a lot on war imagery and machinery; using drawings of various planes, tanks etc. to create her 'The Bastard Word' alphabet.

Some of my favourites are 'Black Alphabet', 'Portrait of an Alphabet' and 'Full Stops'. (All shown above) Hopefully her work will prove as some useful inspiration! x

http://www.fionabanner.com/index.htm

www.itsnicethat.com

*loser alert* MT masking tape


Japanese masking tape, sad I know, but how can it bad sad when it looks so good? Lot's of lovely colours and patterns which can be used for a variety of different things. I'm planning on using mine for sticking up pictures in my new house at uni! I'm lusting after the tartan and black and white sets (not shown) x

http://www.masking-tape.jp/

Wednesday, 11 August 2010

Cote D'Azur France


















Just some pictures I took on holiday on some of the more interesting and less touristy aspects of where we visited! However, I sadly completely forgot to take any on my Diana Mini which was ready and loaded up with a black and white film, gutted. Hope you enjoy! x

Apostrophe design



In my last blog I posted info about the Apostrophe design competition for a winter themed cup. my idea was to do a detailed illustration of a scarf or other piece of winter clothing that would wrap around the cup and look as it the scarf was keeping the hot drink within the cup warm. I drew the outline my hand; first in pencil then in fineliner. I wanted the illustration to be as detailed as possible with each individual thread shown. I did not colour the illustration by hand as I thought this would be easier to do later on in photoshop. Below is the original drawing which i scanned in...


I then coloured in the scarf using the Apostrophe pink colour. Below is how far I got. After the long long process of individually filling in each 'stitch' I decided to print and make a cup mock up to see how it was working. But from doing this I found that it really wasn't an effective design. I like the illustration as a 2-D image, but when applied to the cup format it no longer really ends up looking like scarf. So I have decided not to enter the competition. Im going to put this down as a colossal waste of time, but a lesson none the less!!! x

Tuesday, 20 July 2010

Apostrophe

The small coffee shop chain Apostrophe (mainly based in London) are holding a design competition. The brief is to design a take away coffee cup to be used in the winter season. The winners designs will be used on cups between November until January 10/11, they also get £500 to spend on art supplies and a years free coffee! I think I'll give it a go! x

http://www.apostropheuk.com/

Tuesday, 6 July 2010

Diana Mini

I gave into temptation and bought a diana mini from lomography. I decided it was time i learnt how to take photographs and with the diana being a VERY simple camera, I couldn't go wrong! But I was mistaken. Its not that it's hard, more that i'm very unpracticed when it come to film photography. Ah well, at least most of the shots ca me out in one way or another. Here are some of my favourites x