Sheet- Final Design

Here is my final design for UO Sheet, I will submit this entry via Instagram and e-mail. I have used many different pieces of paper and materials within this  collage for the collage to feel less flat. Overall I am happy with it, I think its Christmasy yet decorative and could work well as a wrapping paper or a poster for the wall. Creating something by hand and stepping away from he computer has been refreshing, the scanned in design was added into Photoshop to alter the contrast slightly to complete the piece. 

Sheet Evalution

This was a competition brief for a chance to get your work into Urban Outfitters Sheet newspaper. The newspaper is distributed all over Europe in every Urban Outfitters stores so it is a great chance for exposure. The design needed to be Christmas related for the Christmas edition.

To begin this brief I started to research into Sheet and the designs that had gotten into the newspaper previously. I realized there was a wide range of work displayed within the publication from photography, illustration and graphics. This brief is very open and there are no rules other than Christmas.

I started to think of ideas relating around Christmas and was unsure whether I wanted to have a traditional Christmas theme or something more modern. My initial ideas were a Christmas tree geometric pattern, some Christmas related type and stockings with collaged textured. I didn’t want to take this brief seriously I just wanted to have some fun with collage, make something textured and see what happened. Also there aren’t a lot of collages in Sheet so I thought this would be a different approach. I collected paper and various materials and decided to work on the donkey design.

I am happy with the overall collage and I entered it into the Sheet competition. I really enjoyed getting away from the computer and creating something physically, scanning it in and digitally manipulating it. If I had more time on this brief I would of liked to have made a donkey repeating pattern and extending the brief and created a Christmas gift-wrap and greetings cards.

Cheese Society- Eat and Greet Poster

We have managed to get Friends of Ham as a location for the first event of the year, they are kindly allowing people to bring there own cheese into the restaurant. 

To create this poster there was a collage technique used, starting with a piece of blue paper, printing off the cow, mouse and cheese pattern, cutting them out and re-arranging them on the page. The collage was then scanned back in, hand drawn type was designed separately and placed in the speech bubble. 

To complete the poster a party hat was added to the cow, bringing the yellow out of the clouds and logo together. 

Sheet- Development

I made the decision to collage for Sheet, above is a collage that has got into Sheet issue 4. I really like how busy the collage is and how it almost looks like a mirrored kaleidoscope, with elements of fashion, cartoon, and fun. I also really like how the background of the collage is on grid paper, a simple yet effective decision. 

As this collage is Christmas related I wanted to include a reindeer however I didn’t have any primary images of reindeer so I decided to turn my donkey patch into a reindeer using sparkly pipe cleaners. I scanned in some holographic paper in and I was surprised by the pattern and colours it gave off when scanned in, I decided to use this somewhere with the collage as it looks quite Christmasy. I needed to add more colour into the collage so I decided to use carrots as the background as they are associated with reindeer. Once I layered up the carrots, donkey and holographic paper it didn’t feel Christmasy enough, so I cut out some holly and trees for that added Christmas. 

Made you Look

http://www.madeyoulookdoc.co.uk/

I went to see the Made you look film at Hype Park picture house and it was very relevant to my dissertation and my practice. 

The film was filled with interviews from creatives about creativity in the digital age, a very relevant subject. 

Made You Look is a documentary about the UK DIY graphic arts scene of the 21st century. Via candid interviews with top British creative, publishers and agency owners we explore the fact that more people than ever seem to be turning to analogue means of creating things, even though we are living at the height of the digital era.

I really enjoyed the film here are some notes I took from it that may be useful for my dissertation on publication in the digital era.

• how the media and twitter has made it easier for people to share their work

• the internet can be quite comforting 

• without the internet you wouldn't be able to engage with that many people

• liking and sharing is a good way of communication

• the internet can be pure procrastination

• through seeing many other peoples work the internet can be a source of self doubt

• can be a relief not to have the internet at times

• creatives would struggle to get their work seen without the internet

• creatives would work differently without the internet

• ideas are shared so quickly

• copy write

• how do we tell stories/ voice our opinions without the internet?

• the world would be in chaos without the internet

• would love to see the world without the internet

• the internet is open floodgates for creativity 

• now the younger generation is constantly on the internet so our new media is screen printing

• the internet is infinite with a 'look at this, look at this!' attitude 

• get away from the computer for your own health and mental health 

These are just notes I took from what the creatives say, the film took two and a half years to produce. I will defiantly be watching it again and be referencing it in my dissertation. 

Visiting professional- Dr. Me

Normal Mailer

We all know the expression "you've got to speculate to accumulate"

Regardless of whether you intend on stating your own creative studio, joining a small studio or working for one of the design behemoths we want you to understand the importance of sending out mailers to people that you want to work for, work with or just be friends with. 

By the end of today we want to see a pice of work that you feel sums up your creative practice, this could be a beautiful bit of hand drawn typography, a collage that makes us question your sanity, a psychedelic drawing, a mind bending painting or something indescribable. 

After today we want you to take your creation one step further and turn it into a mailer, make something that you'll want us to keep, make it unusual, make it brilliant, maybe the peice you'll make will end up being a screen printed cassette tape cover that you'll make a bit of music for us to listen to? Who knows? 

We want you to post us the mailers to our studio by Monday 26th October so that'll mean you should have it in the post by the Friday before. Send it to the studio address"

DR. ME
Studio 104 
Islington Mill 
James Street 
Salford 
M3 7HB 


Some of DR.ME's work: 

I really liked their use of collage within Dr.Me's work, I like how random it is yet it is done well and precisely. When Dr.Me first started out they started to send mailers out to studios they like in the hope of getting some work and the studio to take a look at their work. They created random mailers to grab studios attention, something they would want to keep. What they did worked and managed to get them some work. 

Eugenia Loli

Dr.Me reminded me of some of Eugenia Loli's work because of her use of random collage, I really like her collages because they are all done so well and look like they tell a story. 

Tyler Spragler

Tyler Spragler is also one of my other favourite collagers, I really admire his use of colour and how well they all work together in each piece. 

Todays work:

This is the collage I created in today's Dr. Me's session, to create this I used an old Vice magazine and cut out images I found interesting. The background is made up of old pieces of wrapping paper, coloured paper and squared paper. The collage doesn't say much about me other than showing my fear of getting old. I really enjoyed this brief it was so nice to get away from the computer for a session and create something hands on with scissors and a pritt stick. Overall I am really happy with the outcome, I think it would catch peoples attention if I sent it as a mailer, I think it would be something that people would question. I would like to experiment further and create more like this to send out to design studios and hopefully get a reaction. 

Creative Networks- Evaluation

I have really enjoyed working on this collaborative brief and happy with the way the final posters have turned out. To start the brief we all took it upon us to research into Daft Punk and Andrew Graham Dixon, to find out some interesting facts about them both and look at imagery that represents them. We found that Andrew Graham Dixon was into a lot of art history and decided to push that as a theme/concept in his poster using various patterns of art history to portray Dixon. With Daft Punks research we found a lot of bright imagery, stage lighting and their famous helmet logo.

Developing the posters is where we came across a few problems. To overcome these problems we decided to ask peers for feedback on the designs. The problem we had with the Andrew Graham Dixon poster was the shapes and getting the different patterns to clash and complement each other through shape. With the Daft Punk poster the problem was that the poster had such a busy loud background that deciding where to put the important information proved slightly difficult. We did experiment with non digital techniques of using foil within the design, however this didn’t work out as well planned. 

Throughout all of the posters as a series they would use the ‘Karla’ font to keep it consistent. Each poster would be different to represent each guest well. We have worked well as a collaborative team throughout this project, managing our time well to get the posters in on the deadline. 

Cheese Society- Screen printing Tote bags

This year as part of the membership for the cheese society we are going to ask people for £5 for a membership, included in the membership will be a screen printed tote bag. The reason we have put the price up from £2-£5 this year is so we can buy more cheese and cover more cheese costs. 

The pun for the bag will be 'cheese on tote', the initial thought from me and Hollie is to have the cheese melting on the toast, however when I actually drew out the type to make it look like it was melted it began to look quite spooky! We both didn't like the way it looked so decided against it not looking melted, I drew out the type again making it bubbly. 

The tote bags are going to be two colours, a yellow halftone dot in the background to represent the cheese and the type and outline will either be in black, blue or brown, we are both un decided. 

As we are screen printing tote bags I exposed an A1 fabric screen for the design to fit on comfortably. One problem we did have when screen printing is that we couldn't see where the bag was so when screen printing the yellow background onto the bag it was sometimes off centre. 

Once the yellow was screen printed onto the 50 bags, it was even more difficult trying to line up the the type onto the yellow, this was a problem that we could do nothing about, it took along time just to line each bag up separately. 

Overall I am happy with the way the tote bags have turned out, some are better than others and we accounted for ones that we messed up. We now have a good amount of bags to sell at our first event with the membership. The bags will also be good advertising for the cheese society in general. The remaining bags from the event will be kept in student union for people to purchase, and the bags will be taken to every event that we hold. 

Creative Networks

Brief

Creative Networks

Who they are: 

Five events per year

High profile speakers – discussing their creative journey or a discussion around a theme.

Mix of local / national creative industry, staff, student and alumni guests.

One hour of networking prior to the talk with drinks, Colours May Vary and DJ/food/other stalls.

What they need: 

Multiple posters to decorate the café/College during the event.

One main event poster.

Other ideas that you could consider: 

Floor stickers

Light boxes

Postcards

Beer labels

The competition: 

The competition is to win the chance to win the opportunity to design all of the creative networks for the rest of the year and to design all the artwork that goes with the events. 

Task: 

Daft Punk & Andrew Graham Dixon are the next two guests at Creative Networks

Research their profiles/practice online look for inspiration.

Please submit 1 x A3 poster design for each event to decorate the café.

Please include – Date, CN logo. (Brand guidelines & Powerpoint will be available on 

Estudio).

Work in groups of three. 

Please send your designs as PDF’S to tom.hammond@leeds-art.ac.uk by 5pm on 

Thursday 8 October.

I completed this brief with Katie Rothery and Molly Goggin

Research

Andrew Graham Dixon

• Andrew Michael Graham-Dixon is a British art historian and broadcaster.
• He’s one of the leading art critics and presenters of arts television in the English-speaking world
• For more than twenty years he has published a weekly column on art, first in the Independent and, more recently, in the Sunday Telegraph.
• He has written a number of acclaimed books, on subjects ranging from medieval painting and sculpture to the art of the present. 

Daft Punk

• Daft Punk is an electronic music duo consisting of French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter.
• French house
• From Paris, France 
• Started in 1993 




Design Development- Andrew Graham Dixon

The main thing we liked when researching into Andrew Graham Dixon is the use of pattern on the front of some of his book covers and looking at the History of British Art. We liked the idea of having some art history on the poster because thats what Dixon is about. We decided to create a pattern of British Art using kaleidoscope app on my phone. Above are the patterns that we created using the app, I really like the colours within some of the patterns and the use of shape. We will use some of these within our poster design to add pattern to the design, we could also pull out some of the colours in the patterns we have created. 

Here are some of our first experiments with the patterns we created. We quickly realised that the pattern looks too much as a background and released it needs to go inside a shape. We experimented with various shapes including pentagons and triangles inside the triangles. 

We took inspiration from the Leeds College of Art shape of the logo and created hexagons and 3D squares with muted colours and patterns to show Dixons love of art. We used
a white background to make the colours and the patterns stand out more.
The design further to the right we experimented with more shapes, this time a triangle and tried placing different patterns in each triangle. I think this works well, we added this name into the middle to make it stand out.
We asked people for feedback on which one we should go for. We had various pieces of feedback with mixed opinions for both posters.
Feedback received for left hexagon poster:
• good use of colour
• looks a bit too much like college
• patterns work well together
• clear to what it is
Feedback for poster on the left:
• looks a bit like a night out event poster
• your eye gets drawn straight to the name
• clear and crisp
After much debate and asking people off the course and outside the course we decided to go for the hexagon design as a group. We decided from the feedback that we needed to change the colour/shape of the light blue pentagon.

Daft Punk Design Development

The first thing we did when researching into daft punk was research into there stage art, and we found some really good images of the lights and shapes in the stage when they perform. From the images we thought that we would need to design a poster with some texture and movement in it. The first thing we thought of was to use materials within the poster. We scanned in some tin foil and experimented on photoshop with various patterns within the foil. We also took inspiration from the triangles on all of their stages and designed a simple pattern, we then experimented with the pattern and the foil and how they couple work together. After much experiment nothing was really working, so we decided to go for another approach and experiment with half tone dots as they look quite digital and remind us of their music. We also decided to use the daft punk helmet within the logo as it is very iconic for them. 

We looked into colour used within the stage designs to inspire us for the colours for the posters. We wanted to go for something bright, bold and eye catching. Everything else has been put in white over the top to make it stand out. 

For the date we went for the simple Karla font as it is clear and easy to read.
One issue we did have with this poster is deciding where things should go, the logo ect, so it is visible and clear to the audience. As we have such a crazy background getting some of the type in the right place was difficult. 

Final Designs

Here is our final design for Andrew Graham Dixon using a variety of patterns made with a kaleidoscope app on my phone. We got the idea for the kaleidoscope as many of his books have very loud patterns on them. The images were taken out of his books. We used muted colours to complement the patterns and the odd 3D shape to make the poster less flat. We used a simple font (Karla) a clean font that is easily readable from a distance. Overall I am really happy with the way this poster has turned out, we have worked well together to put all of our ideas together to create this. 

The final design for Daft Punk we were inspired by there stage designs at their festivals/concerts. We used the helmet as this is iconic to them, we all really liked their logo so we included that also. I really like how the half tone dots overlap on this poster and blend well. I think this poster sums up daft punk well and defines their music, I think it would stand out on all college notice board and students would be intrigued by the event.