Time

Feeling that my latest works are all too self absorbed, and more importantly they were annoying me and I fancied doing something else for a bit I spent last night making the poster below. Due to a combination of  stupidity and a lack of effort the photo is on its side. Oh well

The poster was made for the Don't Panic competition and revolves around the idea of Albert Einsteins quote 'Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it feels like a minute, sit on a hot stove for a minute and it feels like a minute'. The word Don't Panic want us to work with is time, and I think it fits nicely. 

In other news my 'Why I Hate Trains...' second draft isn't going to plan and neither is much of anything else. Thursday (the day before hand in) will be fun. For now though I'm off for a few chilled beers in my friends garden whilst I write learning agreements and catch up with some chat. Life is far too short to be worrying about such trivial things as sketchbooks when the sun is shining.

A Serious Man

I recently managed to get myself a copy of the latest Coen brothers film A Serious Man and after a few weeks of finding the time I finally got down to watching it today.

As a fan of slow, quirky comedy I was hoping a lot from the film, as all reviews stated that A Serious Man is full of the awkward, almost cruel humour I love. Plus for the most part the characters are all Jewish, being of Jewish roots myself it's nice to brush up on the cultural and religious differences you'll find between a film like this and a film set in the more traditionally based view of Christianity or Atheism. 


Carrying on from that last point viewers who aren't up to scratch with their Jewish terminology may be ever so slightly lost but not enough to dampen their enjoyment of the film. Only the opening scenes (spoken in Yiddish, with subtitles) would really confuse I think. Even then you can guess what's going on.


The black humour starts from the very beginning, and I don't really want to ruin the story by giving away the various happenings but in a brief summary the story revolves around Larry Gopnik, quietly spoken and seemingly happy physics professor at an undisclosed University seeking tenure and trying to understand the sudden and unexpected revelations in his life, a disobedient son, surly daughter, genius but socially inept brother and the seperation from his wife, who is leaving him for their pompous friend Sy. Add issues with Neighbours, lawyers, 3 seperate rabbi's, the police and an anecdote about a dentist and you have the synopsis to the film.


Ultimately upsetting, genuinely funny and heart warming at the same time I can see why the film reaped such accolades as it did upon it's original release. Pretty much all my film reviews seem to end with 'not a film for everyone' and the same applies here but people who enjoy well made and well shot stories about life and it's intricacies mixed in with a large dose of black humour will love it.

Review

I had my review last week and managed to get my feedback today. As per usual I seem to have missed the mark but am sure I can do better when it comes around to the actual grading. 

I have a C at the moment and am confident in my abilities (especially since my magazine work is being marked when still only half finished) that I can achieve a higher mark. How the C translates into 1st, 2:1, 2:2 etc grading is a grey area and I'm still unsure as to why our tutors insist on marking us like this, but I'm reasonably happy with the mark.

Would like to go better than the 62% I achieved at the end of last term, definitely think this is achievable as I have already gone back and improved upon work done last term, just need to make sure I keep working and improving with what is left of this term and it'll be golden.

You can have a gander at what I presented (minus the TQ magazine work which is still in development stages) here

Since Tuesday...

I normally try to get stuff uploaded as and when it happens so that each post is for a specific thing and not a random amalgamation of my recent history. Unfortunately that has gone out of the window and what your are about to read/skim over/ look at pictures of is a mish mash of the past weeks happenings, film reviews, work, new briefs, tutorials, websites, a night out and maybe even a few other bits and bobs that spring to mind during the writing process.


For a large part of the week I have been trying to redesign a cover for The Access Project. Taking design cues from the well known propaganda poster, 'Keep Calm And Carry On' I have tried to make something more professional looking and recognisable for the charity. Attempts at constructing a cover using elements from the classroom, i.e. whiteboards, greenboards and flipcharts haven't worked so well. The cover design is starting to get to me a bit. I really like the inside spreads layout and finding a cover design that is as simple yet effective, eye catching and readable isn't as easy. 

Other than toiling over Indesign and Illustrator shuffling pixels around in an effort to create a cover I have also been figuring out what to do with the rest of the year. We're mean to try and answer 3 briefs this term and so far I have made a reply to a Don't Panic brief, and am focussing on self promotion and magazine layout design for the other two. I think I'll add more and more short briefs throughout the term as well, so posters, book and album covers, that sort of thing. On the self promotional front i've bought some domain names, am investigating some servers and having a play with Indexhibit to build a website. Business cards, a better digital portfolio and some other items are also in the pipeline. For the magazine layouts I'll be looking at re-designing some existing magazines which have a staid, conventional layout solution and making them a bit more exciting whilst still keeping with the fundamentals of displaying information in a clear and legible fashion. So the next few weeks will be seeing a lot of teaching supplements and the like getting cut up and experimented with. 


My 1st term crit has been and gone, with some nice things being said. I just need to sort out my horrendous efforts at sticking my portfolio sheets to boards and get a bit more exciting with some of my work. I may even need to move from using Futura and Bell MT in all my work. Time to download some new fonts I think, FF Din being number one choice. The general consensus was that I had some good looking, well displayed work, it just needs a new angle to it.


What I have managed to do well over the last 5 days since I updated previously is watch a shed load of films, Up, The Gruffalo, Mary and Max, Planet 51, Old school and Star Trek. I loved Up and Mary and Max. Two of the finest animated films I've seen for a while.


Up is your classic Disney formula, fantastical story, lead characters that form a bond despite their early dislike for each other, plenty of tear jerking moments and plenty of jokes from the comedy sidekicks. As with all animated films it is allowed to be completely surreal in it's story line and makes good use of this fact. I whole heartedly recommend it to everyone. 


I hadn't heard of Mary and Max until it was put on and it was the best of the bunch of the films I just listed. Once again, surreal, yet a much more adult film than Up. The muted palette and odd topics of alcoholism, mental disabilities, bullying, self discovery make it quite a serious film to watch, but some wonderfully dark humour is present throughout the film and it ends up being quite uplifting in its own weird little way. Different to UP but brilliant in its own right, watch Mary and Max if you think Up might be a bit to make believe for you.

Statement of intent...

Get past the dubious sounding title to this post and you will find a few words speaking about what I want to do for the rest of the academic year, here they are

Evaluation of Learning/ Statement of Intent

I would say that my year so far has been a mixture of successes and failures, with the successes outweighing the failures.

My work done early in the year lacked any real punch or point and has been discarded, and happily the work that has arisen from it though is some of the best I’ve done so far.

Obviously I want to continue to produce more of the latter and less of the earlier style of work so I am trying to create briefs that will suit my style and objectives as well as resulting in an interesting and varied Portfolio at the end of the year.

I hope to have my answer to the Fedrigoni Paper competition completed early in January and I can use the rest of my time to iron out any problems with Silence, and also finish my personal project.

For the personal project I will be producing a logo and sponsorship proposal booklet/pamphlet for The Access Project, a charity set up to give students from low income families the chance to go to university. I chose to accept the offer of the project as it would be nice to have work I’m producing actually help someone, and also the pamphlet side to the project allows me to continue with my book binding and paper folding fixation, yet use it in a more business orientated style and less crafty/arty than my current work.  I hope to have the research and rough works finished by the time I’m back at uni and can finish it off with some help and direction from tutors/peers.

Where I would like to go next semester is a difficult question to answer, so far rattling around in my head I have ideas for projects based in t-shirt design and print, look book/catalogue design and smaller book design projects. Having spoken to Sue for my PDP I am confident that I could get a good title for a brief, perhaps picking from the current crop of competition briefs available and reworking them to be suitable. I would quite like to continue with small book binding projects over the year, regardless of whether they contribute to my final mark or not.

Really what I want to achieve in the next semester is a good looking, well balanced portfolio that shows I am skilled in many different areas of design, yet still has a character and individuality to it. To make this happen I think that I need to push myself harder and get more involved with out of University projects. Also I need to make sure that I make the most of the tutors and really start thinking about where I want to see myself in the future. At the moment I think that I lack a bit of direction and that until I can find out what it is that I want to do exactly I will struggle.

Overall I think that if I can finish with a 2:1 and a better understanding of my own style and abilities I will be happy. Of course I would love to do better and want to be able to finish Uni saying that I did the best I could do. The next semester will be spent trying to make that happen.

__________________________________________

There you go, how I feel about the last few months output, and how I hope to spend the next few words. Enjoy

PDP meeting

I had my PDP (personal development plan) review today with my tutor Sue Platt. The aim for the PDP review is to help us as students see how we are doing in respect to workload, quality of work and also a look at what our aims for the rest of the year are.

I took my Silence book with me, some print outs from my/this blog and a board with concepts for the Fedrigoni paper brief. I also filled out my learning agreements and evaluative pieces, describing how I feel the course has been run, and how I feel Im doing.

So how am i doing? To start with Sue was really happy with the improvements I had made since my early experimentations and agrees that I'm pretty much finished, just need to iron out some of the little issues I have before the Christmas break and it'll be done. Can't wait to get it done, photographed and put into my portfolio. Have really enjoyed working on it, but need to pt my effort elsewhere.

The Fedrigoni paper brief was met with mixed reviews from Sue, she enjoyed the idea of the paper planes and really liked the 'doing something with paper?' logo, but wasn't sure if there was enough to make a full campaign from. There needs to be more 'done with paper' to make it work. Sue also suggested bringing in some of the techniques I had learned and enjoyed from my book binding and silence book work into the Fedrigoni brief. 

On the subject of what to do with the rest of the year we discussed several options and I think we both agree that selecting another competition brief might be best. In the next few days I will reprint and finish my silence brief, then re-read the briefs and see which ones I can make work with my current fixation with making books and manipulating paper.

Work so far

Other than being late to write up my lecture notes what have I been up to so far this year? A question I have asked myself on more than one occasion I assure you.


So far this term we have had two briefs set for us, the first was split into two parts and asked us to investigate and create a body of experiments in answer to the question, What is silence? The second part to the Silence brief was to reevaluate these experiments and create a folding document that relates to the original idea of silence or could be used in an Amnesty International campaign for free speech. 


Our other brief has been to answer one of the many competition briefs made available to young designers through D&AD, YCN, ISTD and so on. I chose to answer  a brief set through Fedrigoni paper company asking to raise awareness of their London exhibition/showroom space. 


I have also been writing my 3rd year essay, it still doesn't have a title, but when it does it will be a shortened version of this sentence A look at how popular culture and the media have affected T-shirt design, and how T-shirt design has affected popular culture and the media as you can see, its not really a snappy title yet. The bulk is done though and its just a matter of adding some images, rephrasing some things and then it should be done. Ill make a copy to put on Issuu so that anyone and everyone can read it if they should chose to do so. 


Other than the set briefs and essays I have been attending workshops like Lucy's bookbinding, Ian Anderson's presentation workshop and I shall be creating an answer to Johnny Hardstaff's brief soon. Johnny has asked us to invent and document a narrative for an object, I'm thinking of ways to tie this in with my personal project and essay before I start going at it and end up having to restart or submit something I'm not happy with.


My personal project is also approaching, I have a few ideas but ill disclose those at a later date.


Work that I have done so far can be seen on Issuu, (thats the link from the brown shelf at the top of this blog) so far it's just a look at the book I created for the Silence brief and some work from over summer but I'll add some more work soon.