Collecting Library Inspiration

Given time to collect our own research, really helped me to produce a range of ideas as a starting point to the industry brief. We were in the library today, during our seminar time, and books were a very helpful, inspiring way to piece a few ideas together. Looking into similar books to the three covers we were given, I understood that thinking outside the box rather than looking for obvious illustrations or cover designs, worked better to produce a unique piece of work. The brief is asking for something completely different to the design that have already been used. 

Industry Brief: Transformation as a Design Process

Sketching, and producing a range of ideas was today's target for my Foundation Studio project. At this point, I hadn't really looked into any of the books that were listed for the brief. The adult fiction cover award, To Kill a Mockingbird, I was familiar with; I read the book as part of my English GCSE's. Therefore in this session, I focused on using a central idea relating to the book, creating an initial description/state and drawing a main idea down on paper. I used thumbnails and sketches, but also included key words, and unique points that I thought would help with my research.

Transformations: Explore the unexpected

• 'Invert' one element {design, movement, theme, stance, audience, etc} and explore the new potential outcome
• Go back to original idea and do this again
• Transform the new outcome, moves you a long way from the original

Introducing the Second Brief

My first Foundation Studio Practice is now complete, and today, our second brief of the first year was introduced to us by Rob. A selection of three competition briefs are available to us, they invite us to work with a clear industry focus upon graphic design or animation in a professional context. This project will enable my practice to become outward facing and contextualised in relation to one of the industry briefs that have been made available.

Over a period of 6 weeks, I will research, evaluate and define a range of issues, and discuss these in relation to the production of a body of visual work. I will produce work that communicates my ideas and applies appropriate aesthetic and technical awareness. I will produce background material in the form of research and concept development, to clearly support my final outcome. The briefs are listed below, the penguin student design award being the chosen brief I am taking part in.

Penguin Student Design Award 2017

This brief is our suggestion for Graphic Design students.

RSA Student Design Awards 2017


Brief #12 Moving Pictures

This brief is our suggestion for Animation students.

ISTD Student Assessment 2017

Project 1 - Banned Books

This brief is our suggestion for Graphic Design & Animation students.

The Penguin Random House Student Design Award is an opportunity for students interested in pursuing a career in design to experience real cover design briefs first hand. Below is a screenshot I took from the Design Award website, showing three different books that I can design, including an adult fiction, an adult non-fiction and a children's cover. I will start my research by looking into all three books, comparing and explaining why my chosen cover would be the best suited for my foundation studio project.

Concept development and Studio Module Criteria

The message of today's session with Rob was evolved around concept development. An image was placed on the board, a red syringe. When you first look, it is a red syringe, however there are other meanings behind the image, and this is what we were working with today. We all gave our personal ideas out, relating to the image on the board. Below are a few connotations for the red syringe:

• drugs
• pain
• medicate
• illegal
• addiction
• fear
• illness
• health
• horror
• danger
• infection

We then looked at the same red syringe, but this time 'lifesaver' was printed on the front.

We gave our connotation suggestions again, these were more positive rather than negative like the last few I gathered.

• help
• save
• future
• health
• signifier
• illusion
• giving
• change in perception
• hope 

The idea behind this exercise was to generate a number of ideas that delved deeper into a simple object, we can use this technique in practical work as well as written and theory modules. Thinking outside the box about what something shows helps you to create ideas and leads me to new paths that I can explore and explain. 

The next part of the session including looking into the studio module criteria, below are a few notes I gathered from the slides.

Concept development:

Successful exploration of a problem or theme is demonstrated through the development and documentation of appropriate create concepts and alternatives. 

Looking as multiple concepts - alternatives still need to be appropriate.

Sketchbook - pushing with different themes to look into new places and ideas.

Aesthetics and language:

Creative decisions are made in response to thematic projects and are based on appropriate aesthetic criteria. The ability to discuss these in relation to the work produced and other diverse sources is demonstrated. 

Technical responce:

Appropriate technologies are selected in response to thematic projects. The ability to discuss these in relation to the production of the work is demonstrated. 

Integration and Synthesis:

Awareness of the needs to reconcile conceptual/critical issues with the contexts of genre and audience (graphic design, animation) is demonstrated. 

Introducing Phase Two

Phase one of the Foundation Studio Practice module including creating my sketchbook full of primary and secondary research. It needed drawings, text, images, artist, examples, inspiration. This was formatively assessed on the fourth of October, so we are now moving forward with phase two - Place making. Using my research from my sketchbook I need to begin to think about writing a proposal that includes ideas from my gathered information. This lecture was to give us a guide as to what will be coming next, as we got given a brief hand out to read through and note ideas down. I Started establishing a rationale, describing project ideas and concepts, and the reasons for wanting to do them. I looked into themes, intentions, audiences etc. 

Workshop: Species of Space

Today's workshop followed on from the seminar on mapping and perspectives, I had yesterday. I worked individually through the morning, creating mini sketchbooks, each containing four aerial views of the same image (a memory; for example a holiday, trip, family).  The views progressively zoomed out, relating to the video shown in yesterday's seminar. It was a challenging activity judging the distance between you and the object you were drawing, but looking at objects differently from different view points will really help towards my assessed concertina. I can create thumbnails from sections of objects/views whether it be zoomed into the texture, or zoomed out for a larger scaled image. 

After my mini sketches were completed, I worked with a group of other students, using our ideas together to create one large map of one another's memories. The long piece of paper shown below includes key places from the individuals in my group, however we did not use an aerial view for each drawing. I created the New York skyline, also drawing a yellow taxi that drives forward onto the next destination, Paris. As you can see, the large swirl that covered the entire length of our sketches, is part of a rollercoaster. The rollercoaster idea originally came from my mini sketchbook, representing my day trip to Alton Towers. 

The end result shows a mini fictional world containing sections of everyones memories. This piece of work is exactly what I need to produce for when I start my assessed sketchbook. Different areas, with links between every sketch. 

Seminar: Species of Space

Today’s Lecture with Rob focused on the development of maps. We looked into how several artists represented places differently, and had their own take on an area. Maps have been designed in a range of ways, from full illustrations in a panoramic view, to symbols and lines that have become more of a modern day use. There were maps such as road sign maps, trees (plotted on a map, suggesting where streets are), seasonal specific maps where language replaces the icon (looking at the colours of leaves for example), light maps, sound walk; which maps the invisible, also a timeline which looks like sound waves. 

Before aerial views were available, maps were designed as a landscape, some in immense detail such as the piece below. Designed by Jan Visscher, this panorama of London consists of everyday life, boats, birds, trees. It also includes a banner at the top to show the audience where the map has been captured. To me, this does not display the body that I would look for on a map, however we as a group carried on looking into maps that became more recent.

http://www.thelondonmagazine.org/article/to-be-a-pilgrim-2/

The simplicity of maps did increase with time, using lines, symbols and colours to help guide the audience correctly and easily, such as the London map of today. Maps can also just include key information, such as the route someone is travelling, or landmarks with historical interests. We were shown a map created by Laura Klein which she had made with text/written language. Lines of paper became the paths. The visual language associated with street maps, however, was still maintained. This style is known as the ‘cut off’ method.

‘The Power of Ten’ was a video we were shown in the seminar, focusing on an object that had a starting point of viewing a 10cm box. This gradually became larger as the viewing range added a 0 onto the size of the viewing box, for example, 10cm, 1m, 10m, 100m. This was really effective I thought, because it was showing different perspectives and something quite large to use, was only really tiny once we zoomed out millions of metres away. This video was useful because I now see that different formats allow people to explore an area or object differently. This technique can be used in my assessed sketchbook for the module, A sense of place.

Sense of Place

This afternoon I was handed the brief for A Sense of Place, the workshop included group discussions, getting to know one another and informing others on ways the brief could be carried out. Within the brief are five different themes that us as students could use in our project assignment. Exploring the city, species of space, system of subjects, image and language. 

The post it notes were given to us to jot down words that felt relevant to the brief, on a personal level. There are so many paths that I could take, therefore writing down a number of words, such as, culture, urban/rural, history, weather will all mind map out towards bigger ideas that will help me understand what I will want to include in my sketch book. I was extremely confused at how many possible ways I could take my project, and sharing ideas with others in my group expanded my own mind map to an extent of not knowing where to start. 

We discussed ideas between us, and my tutor expanded on words that we wrote to help us gain confidence and a clear pathway as to why we thought the words were important for the project. 

The Book of Lies

'The Book of Lies' was my first Foundation Studio workshop, with Rob. As a class, we created a slideshow that gradually changed from one photograph to another, placing statements in front. The photographs were of each student, including myself, in front of a green screen. Helping each other with the reflection materials, we made sure lighting and shadows were perfectly addressed, for Rob to take photographs and place them all into a slideshow that merged and overlapped student during the change over. 

The second part to the slideshow once the photographs were took, was too fill out a form that asked for lies, facts and phrases that involved yourself, friends and family. I found it quite difficult to think of short sentences that would be appropriate, but in the end the form was filled and every students statements were anonymously posted along side the changing portraits on screen. It was an effective slideshow, humorous at times, but would also fall deep depending on the sentence placed in front of a face. 

"I robbed a bank and got away with it"

"She loves him unconditionally"

"I hate him"

"Pandas are her favourite animal"