Design Practice Evaluation

1. What practical skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

I believe that I have definitely improved my time management skills by making full use of the weekly planner timetables and by keeping a 'TO DO' list pinned to my bathroom door. It has definitely helped me keep on track of exactly what I needed to do within the module by the end of the deadline. By using timetables, I managed to allocate myself time for mock ups, and practice final pieces, trying and testing within my projects to ensure that I got the best outcome possible, in my opinion.

I definitely think that I have managed to develop my software skills further, particularly using Adobe Illustrator. The Type and Grid project that we have been doing with Lorenzo has finally allowed me to play around with Adobe InDesign and I believe that I am on the way to learning much more about this piece of software, though I do feel pretty pleased that I have finally started using it.

2. What approaches to/methods of problem solving have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

I feel that I have definitely embraced the idea of using mock ups within my work to properly test whether or not a design will work before going ahead with the final product. As I realised my mistake in the last module with the 'Book of 100' when the final outcome just did not work as I had expected it to, I have really realised the value of testing my ideas and mocking up the final product.
I have also really started to research thoroughly into the outcomes of my product, and research into any ideas that I have before working on the product, whereas before, in previous modules, I have gone with an idea before working backwards and adding the research as an afterthought.
. I really see the benefit of researching first and how that can influence and inspire my ideas.

During the collaborative brief, I worked with Carl and I chose to work with him after designing for him during the first module, that I could learn a lot from his style of working. He and I have worked together on several occasions now, and his and my styles(as much as I hate the word) mesh pretty well, and we learn a lot from each other.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

I feel that a strength of mine is the ability to seek inspiration from the work of those around me. For example, I have recently attempted collage work, especially within the collaborative brief, and also the hand illustrated style which has featured in both the collaborative brief as well as 'Speaking from Experience'.

Both my elective project and the 'Speaking from Experience' brief were based on paper toys, something that I have really gotten into lately and I feel that I have learned quite a bit on the subject already and it is something that I would like to look into in the future and develop further.

I think that a definite strength of mine is not being afraid to try new techniques and outcomes.



4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?
I feel that a weakness of mine is that I seem to lean more towards the digital side of things whereas I would like to try create more outcomes based on hand drawn and crafting. I really want to develop my illustration skills and this is something I want to work on over the summer as well as in the second year. It's all about stepping out of my comfort zone. Another point is that I come from a very hand crafted background and I really want to get back into it. Before I came to this course I was heavily into realism portraiture and this is something that I would really like to incorporate into my future work.
My annotation and evaluative skills definitely need to be worked upon over the length of this course as I feel that my analytical skills can be much improved. I have never been much of a writer but I still feel that I can become much better at the job at hand. I would really like to be better at analysing my own work and what went right or wrong. I also want to be able to provide better feedback for my classmates during crits.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
i) Explore a variety of outcomes before settling and moving forward with a particular idea. This also involves working quicker and developing my research skills.
ii) Learn more skills! I would definitely like to explore methods of printing more, including screen printing and mono printing. I plan to, if I can, take the print elective in the second year so I can learn much more about these methods.
iii) Improve my illustration skills and include these within my projects.
iv) Become much better at analysing my own work and being more critical. I would like to be able to provide better feedback within crits.
v) I have learned a lot from my Recycling and Sustainability elective and I would like to try and apply what I have learned to my work in the years to come, rather than ignoring where my materials have come from and the like.

Coinstar

Speaking of making things out of money, I recently re-stumbled across these Coinstar adverts by PES film on YouTube.They are really good, and I have tons of 5ps, 2ps and 1ps at home I intend to play around with when I get home...later. Long day today.

Await further updates.

-HJ x

Money Art 2

In the previous post I looked at images made out of money, in this post I am looking at physical objects made out of money.

So this isn't technically a physical object mad out of money, but I found it interesting either way. It's a bus sop advert to advertise security glass. There's quite a lot of money stowed inside it, real money too, just to show how strong the glass is. Really clever. Mean though in the face of those people desperate for money.

This is the first one I've actualy found that's made out of English money. A cute doggy, n'awh. I cannot find the name of who did this anywhere. What is it with people and not naming their sources?

A ovely gun, again I can't find the name of who did it, therefore making me just as bad as everyone else because I haven't put a name down. Damnit.

Money doesn't grow on trees eh? How very ironic.

Now this one I actually have a name for, the only one too. Ray Beldner. It was in response to another designer's work, and I can't remember his name. But yeah, a rug made from dollars.

-HJ x

Money Art

So, for my 'Speaking from Experience' brief, I hav been working on the problem that students do not know how to manage their money.

As a part of my research for this brief, I hae been looking into things made out of money, because it is an avenue that has opened up for this project.

This is what I have found so far.

C.K. Wilde




Mark Wagner. This is a portait of the fine artist Chuck Close made out of dollar bills.
These have really inspired me to ty to make things out of physial money, be in coins or notes. Obviously not real notes. I'm a student, come on.

-HJ x

My Manifesto

Who did I used to be?

I've always been very art orientated, so I was mainly in art classes all through school. I never got to experience any alternatives to fine art such as photography and graphic design until I hit A-level, so I ook all three. In retrospect, that was a bad idea because it was a lot of work, but it definately helped me decide that Graphic Design was the way forward for me. It took my Foundation year to solidify that fact. I didn't really have a 'style' of my own, I like pulling in all different kinds of techniques until I find something that suits the project that I'm working on the best. I don't want to rope myself into a particular catagory.

Who am I now?

I like to think that I am a much beter designer now, though I still have no defiitive 'style' and I don't particularly want one. I've learned so many new things so far this year and I hpe to continue my exploration of techniques on through the next two years. Since starting in September I have become very good at managing my time and realised just how easy Foundation and A-levels were in comparison to this. I would say that I have a far wider skills base now than when I started on the course.

Where to now?

1. I definately want to develop my illustration skills, I can get much better at it
   
2. I want to become the master of screen printing
   
3. Get more paid work!
   

Title

>Insert research about speaking from experience brief to do with money issues, budgeting and student loans<

If I hadn't been up all night cramming my elective project, this would definately be here by now.

But now I'm going to bed before I die on my keyboard.

Sorry.

Speaking from experience...

What is the problem?
Being able to budget your money

What are you going to do about it?
I intend to offer advice to next year's students about things they can do to ensure that they don't run out of money

How are you going to do it?
I am going to gather pieces of advice from around the class about the ways in which people budgeted themselves so that they did not overspend, and collect warnings from those who did overspend. I am toying with the idea of the format being something money related, such as a cheque book or bank notes, maybe a credit card or a wallet.

Commission

Over Easter I was commissioned by a radio station based in Swansea calld 'Xtreme Radio' to design them hoodie featuring pictures of boomboxes in one way or another. I chose to go for the hand drawn approach and drew out some boomboxes before applying them to the design.

I was only allowed to use one colour because tof keeping printing costs down, and because the hoodie fabric was going to be brigh red, black didn't really stand out all that well against the red so I chose to make the designed simply white instead.

They seemed pretty chuffed with the design.

I'll upload some photos of it once the hoodie arrives in the post.


-HJ x

Collaboration.

FOr the collaborative brief, the lovely Carl Holderness and I teamed up again. We work well, pretty much. Anyway, we chose the challenge of getting people to give more, and interpreted it as the sharing of information. So the book was born.

We discussed the idea of sending books around the world, and leaving them out in the public areas of Leeds, but the likelihood of them coming back covered in penises or at all was slim.

We swapped projects with Chloe and Vickie, we had to think of improvements to their music festival project and they came up with improvements for ours, which involved keeping it within the university.

We went with it, deciding to make a book from the old students for the new students, pieces of advice and such.

We made one book at first, but comepletely forgot about the whole...two colour plus stock thing, which sucked entirely, so we had to re-do it.

By the way, it looks like two shades of red, but it's not, the lighter shade is the same colour set to a 50% transparency. Ahah, sneaky way around it.

These are the pages from the book, full of questions and such that we gathered from around the uni using questionnaires. What did you want to know about Leeds when you first arrived for university?


Chloe and Vickie also came up with the idea of making posters to create a hype about the book, to make people aware of it's existance

And we put them up around the uni.

This is the book, as we left it, with a pen, in the cafeteria of the university. We wanted something on the cover to be instructional, and simple, and not make people think that it was just a notebook left lying around by somebody.


And this is Carl, hard at work on our presentation boards.

I checked on our book a shile after we'd put it out, and it was almost completely full! I went down at the end of the day and it was gone though. They'd cleared away all the tables for a meeting of some description and it was just gone, and no one had handed it in anywhere too. We found the poster that was near it in the recycling bin though.

We're gonna see if the student advice people will put out an email to see if someone has it in their bag or something.

We did ask for it not to be removed from the uni.

- HJ x

Old LPs

Again, raving through the loft, I came across several interesting album covers. My mum has good taste in music, I can say that much.

Meatloaf - Bat out of Hell. Illustration by Richard Corben.

My mum bought this album in 77.



Led Zepplin - Physical Graffiti. The designers of this include Peter Corriston, Elliot Erwitt and Dave Heffernan.
Clever design.
1975.





Hawkwind - Warrior on the Edge of Time. Artists - Pierre D'Auvergne and Eddie Brash.

The whole thing unfolds into a shield!

1975




The whole album was inspired by and based on the Elric novels by Michael Moorcock.


Another Hawkwind album, this time The Chronicle of the Black Sword, again inspired by and based on the Elric novels by Michael Moorcock. The artists for this record are John Coulthart and Bob Walker.
I can't find the date on this one, but I'm going to say mid 70s.



Lovely, right?

-HJ x

War of the Worlds

Let's talk War of the Worlds, the musical.

I was raving through my mother's vinyl collection in the loft, and came across this. Now we have this on CD, and it is awesome. If you've never listened to it, do it. Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. Do it.

Anyway, it's awesome, it's got some amazing artwork on the sleeve and in the book that came with it that I want to share.


This is the fold out of the sleeve itself and the scene is that of when the first martian crashed to earth, described as 'the cylinder'. The painting is by Peter Goodfellow.



The first page from the book. The painting is my Geoff Taylor and is called 'Panic in the streets.'
"...the beginning of the rout of civilization, the massacre of Mankind..."



'Thunder Child' by Michael Trim.
"...the Thunder Child vanished forever, taking with her Man's last hope of victory. The Earth belonged to the Martians..."



'The Red Weed' by Geoff Taylor.
"...the Red Weed began to creep like a slimy red animal across the land, it's living scarlet feelers crawling, crawling!"



'Parson Nathaniel' by Peter Goodfellow.
"...they must be cast out - and I have been chosen to do it!"



'Brave New World' by Geoff Taylor.
"We're gonna build a whole new world for ourselves. You know where? Underground!"



'The Birds' by Geoff Taylor.
"...out of the hood hung red shreds at which the hungry birds now pecked and tore."

Oooold stuff. Good stuff.

-HJ x

Visual Language Evaluation

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

I have definitely gone back to my fine art roots within this module when it comes to my What is Line project. It was the chance to go back and do something that I used to enjoy doing a lot.

As for the session work during visual language, I have gained skilled in perspective. I've touched on the subject before but not in great detail and we looked at it in a lot more depth with Lorenzo this time around. I have learnt about icons and schematics and how the simplest way is often the best way. It has taught me a lot about breaching the language barrier and making things universally understood.

2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

I definitely just started exploring lines as soon as I got the brief and then the research came afterwards when I had more of a definite direction that I was working in. When I had the right direction I researched into artists whose work applied to my own. Experimentation definitely came before in depth research.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalize on these?

Experimentation is definitely a strength of mine. I had fun with this project and it was the chance to go back to something I used to do a lot of and have no time for anymore.  Experimenting definitely helped me decide the direction in which my work was going.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?

Apparently I'm incapable of being able to lay down enough newspaper to not wreck the carpet in my room.

I spent a lot of time on the experimentation and the fact I did little to no research before I started is a weakness.

5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

1. Research first, it'll probably make life easier.

2. Spend less time mucking around.

3. Lay down more newspaper and not wreck my room.

4. Use all the time that was given to me and start right away.

5. set a specific amount of time aside per week to work on Visual Language.

6. How would you grade yourself on the following areas.

Attendance: 2

Punctuality: 2

Motivation: 3

Commitment: 3

Quantity of work produced: 5

Quality of work produced: 4

What is Line Statement

'A mark indicating position, connection or boundaries.'

What is line resolution

I decided to put my paintings and my what is line exploration into context by creating a HOW TO craft book for parents to do with their kids.

The audience of the book is the parents of the children, and not the children themselves because the majority of crafts within the book should be done under parental supervision.

I looked at lots of different stocks to print the pages out onto like tracing paper, sugar paper, brown paper...

But the book was really the clearest and the cleanest on white paper, so that's what I went with. I wanted the cover to be highly visible, so I used Magenta and Yellow to really make it stand out to attract attention of the people who pass it. 

The book is A5 and consists of eleven double page spreads with one craft idea on each. I am very pleased with the resolution. Wop wop!

 

I mentioned that I looked at the idea of printing this out onto brown paper, and I really liked the test piece that I printed out, so I decided to make a mini version of the book on brown paper, using both the stock and testing out another scale.

The book was very small, and pocket sized, but I think that it is too small and easily losable.

Paints

This is a contact sheet consisting of photographs of all the paintings I have made over the course of this project. The majority of them are A1, and then A2, with a few A3 and A4 sheets scattered amongst them. Whoah!

-HJ x

Oops...

Let's look at the state of my room for a moment.


Uh oh.

-HJ x

Armed with a straw...

I really really really wish I'd thought about doing this technique earlier in this project, rather than a week before because damn, I really love the results of these images. Essentially, it's just food dye on paper with me chasing it around with a straw. I got so light headed but it was completely worth it. I actually love these pictures a lot.




I was feeling a little creative here, clearly and decided to MIX COLOURS. This one with the red and blue is definately my favourite, because there are some gorgeous transitions of the colour in there. I know that's not what I'm supposed to be focusing one but still, I love it.

I love the mash up in this, and the green that's appearing when the two colours meet.





-HJ x