New home

I've given in!..

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Tipografia de la Majorca (I think).

Here are some finds from my trip away- type and signage mainly but some beautiful architectural details too. The contrast between the tourist resort and a 'real' spanish town were massive- and funny. I wonder how it came around that tourist destinations were turned from authentic representations of the culture and place, into hotspots for cheese and tack.. luckily we made a trip into a town called Felantix which was much more rustic and pretty. Nice steps.

I really loved the street signs- the handcrafted look of placing individual tiles to make up one sign leads me to envisage a little spanish man, sporting a grey dusty mustache, going around with a map, a ladder and a big box of tiles- maybe a terracotta pot of cement? (my imagination hasn't quite got round the adhesive technicalities yet)- he arranges them carefully on the floor, stands back, takes a look whilst stroking his mustache, then takes them one by one up the ladder to stick on the wall. That's why some are a bit wonky because all he needs to position them is his finely tuned, laid back, spanish judgement. And he probably needs a siesta. Anyway.. I think they're a spot on representation of the typical architecture of the area.

And on the flip side I have some less then cultural examples of spanish signage. It tickles me that the owners of one particular bar have used those words as their

selling points.

Drawing practice

I've been experimenting with the drawing technique where the rules are- no looking at the paper and don't lift your pen until finished. This method, I'm advised, helps improve your drawing skills in general because you become much more aware of proportions and you're spending 100% of the time looking, so you really see what shapes/curves/angles/ are making up that object. I enjoy doing it because it's a challenge to yourself and I think the skewed finished results give the objects personality.. you can (almost) always tell exactly what they are too, despite the distorted broken lines. Kind of raises questions over how I perceive a 'good' drawer.

Late summer evening

Post bbq & beers, you can stare at a fire for a long time on a lazy summer evening. These pictures capture so much that's going on in there and yet the glow is calming. I love the consuming, passionate mood coming off the strong contrasting colours. I think they're beautifully aggressive... I'd like to find a reason to do something extra with them.

Nice

I don't often bother noting specific illustrators because I feel it's a field that, although I'm always impressed by, and envious of, the skill involved, I haven't got a huge amount of focus on it. However! I was looking through this guy's portfolio and found this great combination of crazy illustration and really clever placement of type. I like the variation in weights and strokes and I also think it's nice that the text elements are placed cleanly but don't look at all boring or uncreative.

www.timenthoven.nl

Like these layouts

This work is from People Collective. I like their website and I like all of the work that fills it. They make publication artwork interesting in subtle ways. I like their consistent use of decorative typefaces.. they make the most of a project combining simplistic, classic layouts with gorgeous hints of colour and detail.

An invitation

I've taken the summer vibe from this cover design to help me out with an invitation I'm doing for a friend. I love the warm tone the gradient creates and the subtlety of the title. Because the design isn't screaming the company name at you to sell itself, it's more effortless and cool.

I think the remaining cover lines contrast somewhat with the feel of the rest of the cover. The type is playful and quite gimmicky, and seems too big within the layout. Although I think white works well with the light, summery look. The typeface is used again inside in an entirely text based dps- which I like. I feel it works way better here. A lot of that is to do with the impeccable neatness and alignment of each segment but also the condensed, long style of the type compliments the subject of the writing where they're talking about cramming in all these events.

Good words from Sagmeister

15, 16 & 17 are relevant to me at the moment. I worry I'm being lazy and losing grip on the whole design career aspiration with all this summer time off! But I've been thinking about things and I actually have done stuff- but because it isn't related to uni I kind of disregarded it's importance. Whatever I create is going to aid my knowledge and experience in one way or another though, so it's all good.

End of year Exhibition

Another exciting element of this exhibition at LCC was having the chance to see my own work displayed. It's the first time the FdA course has shown first year stuff and I think our wall of London books deserved to be there!

Mine is the blue covered one.. It had already started to look a bit tatty at the corners so that will be something I consider further in future projects; materials that can stand a bit of wear and tear need to be tested! But I was proud to see it there. I'll be posting some pictures of the final spreads soon.

End of year Exhibition

I went to check out LCC's Power of Ten exhibition this week. Work is displayed throughout the whole college, showing a huge range of different aspects of design. I saw lots of great, thought-provoking stuff- it's good to have a look at work outside of my own subject. I'm always in ore of illustration work, it's not my strength, so it all looks amazing to me- so many different styles. Here's some bits and pieces that caught my eye in particular.

This collection of stamps I thought was beautifully delicate and twee. The colours that travel across the spectrum compliment the idea of something changing over time and the simple, uncluttered layout allows you to take a look at each individual frame easily.

There were a couple of 3D based projects around but I found this to be nice to look out in the 2D world too. I'm a big fan of most things screen printed, I think that's because it's not something I've dipped into properly yet, so I'm always impressed with the great colours and textures of the results. I will definitely be getting more involved when I return to college in September.

I thought this piece was gorgeous. You can see real skill in the laying down of colour in the 'Piano' 'Printer' artworks and the idea as a whole is brilliant. The thing I like is that the concept, although simple, is demonstrated in a clean, well presented way and needs no further explanation.

Sun plus Work

It's blummin lovely not working on the laptop and being able to get out in this glorious weather whilst being productive.. obviously I'm back in now posting this, I'm a bit pink.

On that note..

Some more bits I've been working on for the London Book project.

Here is the collection of line drawings traced from photographs of commuters on the train I get to and from London. I think all together they look strong, the colours give them a fresh look and with each person having one line and one colour, it demonstrates the single minded world these people are in, they never look around to observe what other commuters are up to. They don't notice the person taking a photo of them 2 feet away!

'Caution Commuters ahead'

A play on the way the 'suits' in the station, who do the journey so offen they know what platform at what time they're going to without thinking. So if you don't know your platform, you're kind of wandering around, there's a possibility of being marched over.

I found this immense 'London Encyclopaedia' in the library. It's huge.. and contains history of thousands of London Streets, why they're there and where the names come from. So I'm using it to create a historical street map of the bus route I take from Liverpool Street to Elephant. This is definitely a practise because the spacing is tricky to plan when you are handwriting. It would be much easier, and faster, to do using computer. But I like the whole idea of it looking kind of basic to tie in with old history element. Afterall, Robert Mylne didn't have a Macbook to visualise how Blackfriars Bridge (originally named William Pitt Bridge) would look made from semi-elliptical Portland stone arches in 1709 did he!

Reflection on my first year so far

I've been studying at LCC for nearly 10 months now and this blog has been a great way for me to remind myself of the things I've experienced from week to week- because time always goes too quickly so it's nice to be able to read about what you were thinking on a Tuesday 6 weeks ago. I feel with every project, or talk, I've learnt new things: how I learn best, what appeals to me as a designer, my strengths and weaknesses and most of all how I can improve as a designer.

The first project taught me literal new ways of starting and developing ideas - we were given specific workshops about good techniques to do this, to prepare us for future briefs. For example the 4 Step thought process, where you challenge concepts that first come to mind and take an idea and push it to an outrageous extreme, it all really helps to push your ideas. In the second project, mine being a brochure for an adult college, I learnt a load of technical skills within type and using InDesign for more than just page layout.

The third project, a children's illustration brief, was my toughest. I chose this project to try and develop my illustration skills, however, we were working with industry partners who don't 'teach' as such, they kind of let you get on with it. So I let my lack of confidence get in the way of focusing on the brief and lost sight of how playful designing for kids could be! I had some cute illustrations in the end, but didn't quite translate them well enough in the final outcome- it's okay though, I can always recycle them at another time- which is something Rachel Ortas, the leader of the project said.

Next year I know I want to visit more exhibitions and galleries on a weekly basis and I want to make sure I manage my time better in a project to allow me to get down to the letterpress and printing area. I'm going to keep this blog up for sure, it's not only kind of therapeutic by making you think and say what you've learnt or made, it's a great space for advertising yourself, so I’ll probably try and keep a lot of my own work on here and up to date- you never know who might be looking!

Grafik smells so good

My new copy of Grafik magazine came through the letter box yesterday giving off a delicious inky smell. It was the design awards edition so the cover felt more special than usual. It came in good time as it's got loads of varied, great quality, award winning designs shown from cover to cover, lots of lovely books to gain inspiration from for my own book project. There's also a free world cup calender in there which exudes style with its minimal design approach as appose to the usual gimmicky, loud, cramped full of images of footballs and England flags calenders you get in various newspapers builders like to read. Not that I'm being judgmental- every publication has a different audience. I think there'd be a lot of 'blokes' who would have a few things to say about Grafik's interpretation. However, it's in a design magazine so it's all okay! I may be tempted to fill in the blanks on this one..