Cars

During the Adobe Illustrator workshops, we learned how to use the pentool, and we were practicing on a picture of a car. I don't remember the make, but it doesn't really matter. I wanted to hone my linearting skill, and wanted cars to use as part of a traffic jam in my final resolution for the book of 100. These are some of the vehicles.

VW Beetle


Smart Car


Mini


Nissan Micra


A Land Rover


Ford Ka


An Estate car

I'm pleased with how they turned out, and feel like my pen tool skills are improving.

-HJ x

Book of 100

This is the final resolution that was made for the book of 100 brief. I wanted a box that looked like a book, as you can see. I bound it like a book, and to be honest, I'm really pleased with how the box turned out. My first attempt at making a box didn't work at all, and I managed to superglue my work to the table, but it was soon rectified. My flatmate told me that I should just make these boxes and sell them. I think she wants one.


The wooden wheels on the side, which are actually wagon wheels for doll house vehicles or whatever, are the turning mechanism for the 'scroll' type book inside. I had to make the holes of the wheels a little wider by scraping the inside of a pair of scissors. Easier than I imagined it would be.

Anyway, I thought that the wood looked good against the green and cream coloured box, and seemed to fit in with the whole feel of 'green'. Green as in eco-friendly. Despite using wood not really being the most eco friendly thing to use. Aesthetically it works, however.


This is the inside of the box, and as you can see, this is the first version of the 'scroll' book I made. It was very long, my illustration took up about..25 A4 pages altogether, I believe. During a crit, the one on the day before the deadline in fact, A lot of people felt that it was far too long, and they didn't get what the cars had anything to do with anything. They got bored with turning it about halfway though, so I bought some Pro Plus and got cracking as soon as I got home. It was a long night.


And this is the second attempt at the scroll mechanism within the box. I changed it quite a lot, and made it much shorter. I didn't take anything out, I just shrank everything down so it covered about eight pages instead. Another thing I did, was I removed the car illustrations and put them in a seperate line, which I coloured red, which indicates several things. First, it imitates the red light which is keeping all the cars stationary and stuck in a traffic jam, and second, red is a colour that connotes the bad things in life.

Which is why the figure dancing around is coloured green, because the green is good and better for the environment, as well as the signal for go. This time, only the figures are on scrolls, because while they move from side to side, the car illustration can't physically move anymore, meaning it's stuck while the person has the freedom of movement. That was what I intended, at least.


This is the cover of the book. My original intention was to have the 'Green Person' aka, the walk signal, sprayed onto the front cover, but I chose against it. I used this question instead, because posing a question to the viewer automatically asks their opinion and makes them curious as to how to answer it. That is my way of getting people to look at this book. I was going to spray paint this onto the front cover, but I ran out of time and had to stick a piece of acetate on instead.


This is my workstation on the day of the deadline, hah. Caffeine, Sausage roll...what a way to start the day.


The turning mechanism was not as smooth as I would have hoped for, but I feel that it was the best that I could managed with my limited tools and limited experience with making such things. That, and actually spray painting the cover of the book, are the main things that I would change about this design had I had a little more time, but overall, I'm pleased with the result.

-HJ x

Photoshop Book

Just like before, with the Illustrator brief, we had several sessions on Photoshop and InDesign with one of the computer technicians, called James. Going along with the book theme for this module, we had to create a 16 page booklet on what we have learned so far on this course.

This is the front and back cover of the book.
Images from the Mono Print workshop.

And from the Screen Print workshop.

Things I have learned to do in Adobe Illustrator.

Bookbinding.

A little more on bookbinding and some examples of the different techniques.

Examples from Visual Language sessions with Amber.

And a page on Time Management that we have been covering with Jo.
It was very simple, altogether, but I think that's fine because there was no need to over complicate things. I like the way the book turned out, althought I didn't read the brief properly apparently, and made the book A5, when it had to be A6. So there was a mad dash to the Mac Suite on the day of the deadline. I managed.

-HJ x

Module 102 Evaluation

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN LEVEL 01
Module Code OUGD102
Module Title DESIGN PROCESS


END OF MODULE SELF-EVALUATION

NAME HANNAH JACKSON BLOG. ADDRESS HANNAHJACKSONBAGD.BLOGSPOT.COM

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

During this module I have learnt a lot about book binding and I feel that I have applied this newfound skill quite well throughout this module.


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

I have begun to let my research and development guide my work rather than having an idea to start with, though I do need to get my mind off the final resolution.


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

Illustration seems o be one of my stronger points within this particular module, this is something I would like to experiment further with.


4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?
Doing things in the right order is one of my weaknesses, I can’t seem to break my habit of working towards a final resolution rather than experimenting more in my development work and letting that lead me.
I also need to do more thorough research.


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

1. More thorough research.
2. More development before I choose an idea.
3. Manage time better.
4. More mock ups.
5. Not take on too much.


6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas:
(please indicate using an ‘x’)

5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
1 2 3 4 5
Attendance 5
Punctuality 5
Motivation 3
Commitment 4
Quantity of work produced 3
Quality of work produced 4
Contribution to the group 4

The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self-evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

32 Page Book of 100.

After collecting all of our research on the subject of choice, which for me was movement. In hindsight I wish I'd done something different, it took me a while to come up with this idea. We had to somehow put our 100 things into a book of 32 pages. Granted, I didn't have quite 100, but I still like how the book turned out.

This first picture is from the early pages of the book, and to demonstrate a form of movement, I wrote the words in the dark using a torch. It took a while to get right. Each word is actually a different picture that I meshed together to make the sentence. I blacked out my window and set my camera on the tripod and went mad really.

This is another example of light moving, that I created with my camera on the tripod with a 30 second shutter speed. The lights and light trails were caused by me throwing glowsticks at the wall from behind the camera. I really like how the image turned out, and got some really interesting shots.
Such as these:
The idea of my book was to document movement as a 'how to draw' guide. So I took pictures of the stages of movements with my flatmates, who were very helpful, and then put them on the lightbox and created simple line sketches. I would have lined them properly in Illustrator, but time management was a bit of an issue at the time, so I didn't. I think they still look okay though.This is a collection of the images of the finished book, showing each double page spread. The print quality wasn't amazing, because I just printed it out on the printer in my room. It's good, but it's not that good. Anyway, it seemed to get a good response. People liked it.
I'd like to re-do it with illustrator smooth images and decent prints, but that's a task for another day.

-HJ x

Concertina Exercise.

Okay, so this was an exercise that we did with Jo on Monday afternoon, it was interesting for sure. We folded up strips of paper into Concertina style books, and had to put the title of the books we had made over the week in the first box in some visually exciting way using type. Then we would pass it along to the person on our left and they would fill in the next box, and so it would go around the table until it was full. I think Martin was doing very well considoring his right arm is in plaster and he's right handed.


The ones below were another strip of paper, though this time we had to use images, we spent like, two minutes on each frame. Once they'd all gone around, they went around again, and we had a minute to work on top of someone else's drawing and add to it. That was pretty interesting.


I don't know how Disco Stu ended up on mine.

-HJ x

I HAS BOOK

Look at that, I made that all by myself today in the Book Binding workshop with Printroom Roger. It took most of the day, I never really realised how much went into making a book, it's a lot more complex than you'd think!

Anyhow, I really enjoyed the workshop today and I'm well proud of the book I managed to make, I mean, seriously, not bad for a first attempt. I've always wanted to know how to do this, so it's a skill I definately wanna work on. I want to try all different kinds of binding methods and see what I can do.

I'd quite like to try making a book without a hard spine like that, where you can see the stitching and the cover is just sewn right onto it, but it looks like that'll be a project for another day, because I have to have a 32 page book ready for Monday. I should be able to manage that, I hope, and thankfully it doesn't have to be bound like this.
By the way, this is referred to as 'Perfect Binding'. Mine's not perfect but with practice, I could get this down just right.

-HJ x

MORE WHAT IS A BOOK

Tortie Rye is responsible for the creation of the below books, except, some of them I'm fairly sure she just modified existing books, I could be wrong. The little round things in the picture below are described as 'Cactus Books', and unfold into, obviously, a cactus like structure. Aren't they cute?These are bauble decorations, but are still classed as books and are aptly names 'Bauble Books' again by Tortie Rye. They're very nice to look at, though from the picture I can guess that there is no text in these 'books'? Meaning that they are purely for aesthetic value.

Still lovely though.


Literal Book Bags

I remember seeing a tutorial on some forum or another on how to turn a book into a handbag, so I went looking for them and found this example on a website called 'The Bag Lady'. I assume she sells bags. Anyway, it's a good way of creating an interesting looking bag, and recycling a hard back book. If only I was a handbag carrying person, I would go and raid the nearest charity shop of their interesting covers and go completely nuts.



The following images are the work of Brian Dettmer, and they are referred to as 'Book Autopsies'. Sounds pretty morbid, but they look completely fascinating. I'm not even sure how he does some of them, but the end result is pretty interesting.






I'm not too clear on their 'readability', but they are still definately books.

-HJ x

WHAT IS A BOOK?

Emily An.

Yes, these are books, despite what they seem. They are constructed from Newspaper or magazine pages, and represent just how much of a tree it takes to make just one newspaper or magazine.

Although there is an obvious centre, and in some images a spine is clearly seen, I'm not sure that these 'books' were meant for reading. I don't know about anyone else, but I for one would probably not be able to get the thing back into the bark exterior.

In the image below, the middle 'book' is to represent The Yellow Pages. Look at how much paper that is!


As well as being interesting, and one of the most unique forms of books that I've ever seen, I think that they are very clever. It really hammers it home, to me at least, just how much paper is used to create one publication, that we later throw out.

I've become a bit of a recycling fiend lately anyway.



Su Blackwell.

Blackwell creates scenes from books, by cutting them out and creating 3D models from the pages. It's sort of like a wierd form of pop-up, except I don't think that you can close the books. It's an interesting way of altering a book, however. As we can see in the image below, a scene from Alice Through The Looking Glass has been created, using cut outs from pictures as well as models fashioned from other pages in the books.
And the image below depicts a forest, though this one looks a little flatter than the ATTLG one, for instance there is not chair made from a solid block of paper. These seem to be flat trees pushed up from the pages. No less interesting, however.

It kind of reminds me of that one scene from The Three Musketeers? When Aramis flipped open his bible to reveal a gun hidden in there from the pages being carved out around it? Nifty hiding place.

-HJ x