/ Year two / Project: Sound and Vision [Part 2]

My original idea for mapping out the song “Born slippy” was to use something that captured my interpretation of the song in a simple way, looking back at my original thoughts on the song in my sketchbook I thought the words that captured my interpretations best were “dance” and “glow stick”. Using these words I came up with the idea of mapping out myself dancing to the song using light. I achieved this effect by using an LED torch and the long exposure setting on my camera. I displayed the images as a sequence and I also added the word “Boy” written in light because it is a word repeated constantly throughout the song.

 

 

Whilst I was working on my response for “Born slippy” I also experimented with an idea I had for “Punk Rock” by Mogwai. The concept behind this idea was fairly simple, I wanted to experiment with typography so I used the lyrics from the song and created an animation in which the type appears in sync with the lyrics. I enjoyed creating this animation and working to get the timing right. I think if I had spent more time developing the animation and adding some interesting effects such as camera movements, this would have been a more interesting response to the brief.
Punk Rock from SapB on Vimeo.

Having been ill for the majority of this project I am not surprised by the low mark I received. A lot more research and development are required to create an informed response. I still enjoyed the project and gained experience from it, I learned that with my style of working it is defiantly more effective to write my notes on the computer. I learned that sometimes it is necessary to abandon an idea, even after working on it for sometime to allow me to pursue more interesting concepts. I improved my skills of interpretation and learned that even the simplest ideas can be interpreted in many different ways.

/ Year two / Project: Sound and Vision [Part 1]

My second project was split into two parts, for part one I was asked to choose one piece of music from a list and make a visual response to it. The format for this response was left open for me to decide. For part two the brief was to make a map of the piece of music I had chosen for part one. Again there was no specific format. The aim of this project was to question my perceptions about music graphics.

For this part of the brief I chose the song Born slippy by underworld. To illustrate the song I chose to create a short animation loop in flash using type. I chose to create the type myself using simple squares with a three dimensional effect. I then animated the squares appearing and disappearing from the frame. The Idea of this animation was to make the type have a “fluid” style, even though it was built up of geometric shapes, I hoped the type would have a “Slippy” feel to it. I am quite happy with the effect, but I think that overall my response needed more depth; on reflection I would experiment more with colour and making the squares appear from multiple directions. I think that the background is something I overlooked. I originally thought that it having any detail would detract from the type, now its clear that I could have made it more interesting with my choice of background. Mixing video footage and the animation could have been a nice effect.

/ Year two / Portfolio

For the portfolio brief I was asked to put all of the work I had produced in the first year into presentable A3 spreads to create a professional    looking portfolio.

This project’s main purpose was to show the new course tutors what kind of work I had previously created. It also gave me the opportunity to get back into swing of things.

I enjoyed laying out my earlier work as it gave me a chance to review some of my old ideas, although coming up with a simple layout style that would display my work effectively was not as easy as I originally thought. After experimenting with many layout ideas I decided to go with the simple gray typography because I felt it let the designs speak for themselves.

The main learning outcome I gained from this exercise was how important it is to display portfolio work in a way that is clear. It should allow the viewer to quickly grasp what my aims and creative choices were during the project.

/ Year one / Project: Layout

Having used InDesign of a previous course I found that I already knew a lot of what we were taught in the first few sessions. I was able to ask Graham questions about things I was looking to learn or was unsure about which helped.

After we completed the sessions to introduce everyone to InDesign we moved on to the project. First of all we were asked to choose a graphic design company that we liked, then we were to find some copy about them and create an a3 Portrait magazine layout using that copy.

To Begin with the designs that I was creating looked more like a newspaper than a magazine and were not very interesting. After I reduced amount copy I was using I was able to have more freedom with my designs and make them a lot nicer to look at. This was probably my favourite project that I have done this year and I am very happy with my final layout.

Final Layout

/ Year one / Project: Competition

For the competition project we were given a choice of three different briefs, One from YCN for a Sainsbury’s bag design, one for D&AD for a Water Advert and one for a Youth magazine. The one I chose was the Sainsbury’s bag design brief.

To start with in this project I did a lot of research into Sainsbury’s and other Bags for life that are currently on the market. I struggled with this project to begin with because it is an area that I am unfamiliar with and it is not something I would usually have much interest in. After Doing all my research in to environmental issues and looking at endless amounts of reusable bags, I started to come up with designs.  My designs to begin with were all quite cliche because I thought that if I got all the cliche ideas out of my head I would be able to move on to more interesting designs. Even after doing this I still struggled to avoid cliche and have an interesting design.
This was when I decided to focus on a design that uses Typography rather than images  and I decided that I would like to make a bag that I would be happy to use on a regular basis. I came up with  a play on words using “refuse” and its two different meanings.

Final Board

Although at times in this project I struggled to get motivation and come up with designs that I was confident in, I am very pleased that I managed to overcome these problems.

/ Year one / Project: Narrative Sequence Design

To begin this project we did a short  week-long project to give us a feel for title sequence design. The week-long project was titled “A day in the life of an hour”. We were asked to go out and take around 20 photographs over an hour to show a typical event in our day. We were then shown how to make this sequence of images into a cute little book.

The first thing I was asked to do for the main project was to find a photograph that we could use to write a short story. I wrote my short story about a young boy lost on his own in a war zone. Looking back I wish I had written it about something more light hearted because I could have had more fun designing my title sequence.

As well as the 20 frame board we were asked to put together for this project, I decided to have a go at making a moving image version using skills I have learned from previous courses. I am fairly pleased with the final piece and enjoyed this project.

Some Sketchbook stuff.

/ Year one / Project: T-Shirt Design

For this project we were asked to  create a T-shirt design for Self promotion. The idea was to have a design that would let people know something about my personality.

To begin with the sessions focused on typography and how to use type. I enjoyed these sessions because I have studied typography before but I was able  to learn about it in more depth. I bought the suggested book “stop stealing sheep - Erik Spiekermann” which was an interesting read and showed me what kind of feelings different typefaces can evoke.

After asking my family to write down some words that they think best describe me I went on to create many designs that I thought showed an aspect of my personality or lifestyle.


The design I finally decided on was one of myself in a Lego style.

/ Year one / Project: Advertising

Our first task in this project was to collect an advert we thought was good, and advert we thought was bad and one that worked on us.

After we had some sessions looking at these adverts and why they were good/bad ect, we moved on to our brief. Our task was to take one of the ads that we thought was bad and redesign it to make it better.

This was a group project, I was in a group with Adam Brandon and Jack Boutlon. The advert we chose was one for Coca-cola trying to advertise their new bottle size. After trying many designs we decided to go for an advert that relies mainly on copy rather than imagery. Using innuendos but trying not to be too offensive we came up with the tag line “Size Matters.” I am not able to show the final concept for this project because it was stolen.

I enjoyed this project and was very pleased with how it went. Working in a group was a fairly new experience for me so I think the main thing I got out of it is improving my team work skills.

/ Year one / Intoduction exercise

In the first week of the course we were asked to partake in an exercise to break the ice and to help us get to know some of the other course members.

For this exercise we were given a partner and asked to create a piece of design that shows that persons characteristics.

My Partner was Nia Banwell. The first thing that we did was sit down and “interview” each other asking questions about their life to find out their interests, likes and dislikes. After doing this we decided that rather than creating individual pieces about each other that we would collaborate to make one piece that shows both our characteristics together.

The idea we came up with was to make a creative record for each of us playing on the idea of making them look like criminal records.

 I enjoyed this exercise although we didn’t end up quite finishing the piece. The exercise helped me to get to know more people on the course and I feel the atmosphere was more relaxed afterwards making it easier to get stuck in with the projects.

All my work so far

Ok,

I have totally neglected to use this blog over the first two years of my course. I feel quite disappointed in myself for not using it how i had intended. i am now going to post all of my work so far.