Mapping Workshop

The story of the DIY music video.

Whist beavering away last week trying to finish my last project I was listening to some late night radio on on Radio 1. It was one of the 'stories' features and this week they were looking at the phenomenon of music videos, as well as videos created by fans. They had many interviews with creators or directors of some of the videos featured. I think it offered a great insight into the world of music videos as it is something that I don't really know anything about. It also may proove usefull for the new my brief which is based on mapping music. I found this broadcast really inspiring as it made me really want to make my own fan video for some of my favorite artists/bands! Below are some of my favorite videos that were featured. I think you can still catch the 'story' on www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/stories. Enjoy!!! x

Daft Hands- Austin Hall

Oxford Comma- Vampire Weekend

Gabe Askew fan video for Grizzly Bear- Two Weeks

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

Radiohead- Jigsaw Falling Into Place

Project 2.1- RESTRCTIONS

First project back was a hard one. The project was called restrictions so, we had many placed on us. We only had a limited selection of words to choose from, we were only allowed to create four double page spreads or an animation and we could only used helvetica and two colours. From the list of words I chose 'belly flop' as mine. The brief asked us to 'explore the word in a new and interesting way.' With belly flop I decided focus on how the word is said with the mouth and how 'flop' is a very onomatopoeic word. The four spreads below show my final outcomes, the text on them all relate to onomatopoeia and the large amount of text is the lyrics to the 'Trolley song' by Judy Garland.

Lovely Animation

Haven't posted in ages, had way too much work with my first second year project. I'll fill you in on it later this week when I have time to stop and think!

In the meantime, thought I would just post this up this great animation by Ed Barratt called Man Up. I think I like it so much because of it's effortless simplicity- an aesthetic I'm beginning to realize I strive for in my own work. x

www.itsnicethat.co.uk

Ed Barratt

Man Up from Ed Barrett on Vimeo.

Invite

For my housemate's 21st birthday we had a house party at our new uni home. I, as the graphic design student of the house was roped into making a flyer/invite to post round to the neighbors on our road. I went for something simple, eye catching and only black and white to save on ink-we are poor, poor students! I thought I would try using just helvetica as that is one of the restrictions we have been set in our new uni project (more of that to follow). I think it turned out well, lots of people came and the birthday girl was happy! x

Final: summer project

Final outcome for my summer project brief A is not for apple and z is not for zebra. I decided to go with the 2d design with different coloured blocks in the the end as, after much deliberation it thought it worked best. Photographing the block letters turned out to be a complete pain in the arse; messing around with different background colours and angles of shot, but eventually I decided to have them on a plain white background, but the photography still isn't great.

Crit turned out to be pretty disappointing, it ended up taking a long time to get around everyone and when it was my turn I don't think I got that much feed back. I know I want to add to my project and present it in a different way for final hand in, as the way I initially presented it I don't think did it justice. x

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