ITAP - Week nine

This weeks lecture was about how an image can be changed by factors such as typography, history, place and positioning of the frame. The factor that really interested me was typography and how the use of it can completely change how we look at an image. To start I am going to look at the work of Gillian Wearing.

Gillian Wearing - Photographer

Below are a couple of examples of Gillian's work. Gillian is known for using typography in her work to give it an interesting edge. She gets the people she wants to photograph to hold up a sheet of paper with hand written typography on it. As you can see from the images below, the text she puts on the paper contradicts the look of the person in the photo. In the first example, the man looks well dressed and has a smug look on his face implying that he is well off and happy with his life. On the paper, it says 'I'm desperate' which is the last thing you would be expecting to come out of his mouth. This makes us think deeper about the meaning of the photograph.

In the second example, there is a police officer holding up the word 'HELP'. This is a sight you would never see in real life as police are meant to help the public, not the other way round. This makes you ask questions such as whether he is happy with his job or if he is scared of what people can be capable of. Gillian uses typography to get you thinking deeper about what would otherwise be a plain, boring image. 

Keith Arnatt - Photographer

This is one of Keith's most famous pieces. He has used a similar style to Gillian in the fact that the words contradict the image again. This is an image of Keith himself who is a photographer, holding up a sign saying 'i'm a real artist'.

Here I have chosen a couple of photographs I took as part of my L4 visual Communication work and have added typography to them to try and demonstrate how it changes the feel.

This is a photo of some graffiti I took in Digbeth. In the first image I have written the word 'Art' in a white simple font. When we see this we instantly know that this image is trying to portray that graffiti should be classed as a form of art. Using text that is lighter than the image helps give it a fresh look and feel. 

In the second version I have written the word 'CRIME' all in caps lock and in black. This gives the image an edgy feel and makes us think about the law and how graffiti is vandalism and is illegal. I have deliberately used the same font in both images to show how simple changes can have large effects. 

This is a photo of the plant on my windowsill. In the fist image i have written the words 'Raindrops on roses...' in a pink, curly font. This gives the image a girly look and feel. It looks like the sort of image you would see on the front of a poetry book. 

In the second version I have written the words 'Cold Light..'. This gives the image a dark, eerie feel and brings out the bright light and dark shadows in the image. It now looks like the sort of image that you would see on the cover of a murder novel.

ITAP - Week eight

This weeks lecture was about production in visual communication. There are 5 main aspects of the design process. These are the problem, the ideas, the visualisation, the layouts and the production. Production is the final section of the design process and consists of the part where an image, film or whatever is being designed is finalised and produced at a professional or commercial standard.
There are 5 main principles we can look at in the production of design. These are:

1) The history of production

2) Essential milestones

3) The design workflow

4) From novice to expert

5) The experts

The two that I have chosen to look at are essential milestones and the design workflow.


Below is a Design Workflow Diagram that I have drawn showing the production of my L4 visual communication work that I am producing at the moment. We are in the production stage of the project now so I can easily look back at my work and analyse what I have done to produce content for the magazine that we are designing. 

Essential milestones are occurances and inventions that have happened in history that  have influenced the way we design today. I am going to chose ten of these milestones and explain why I think they are most important.


•3500BC - Sumerians use cuneform alphabet on clay tablets
This is the earliest evidence of production in the world. I think is is important because it may well have been the start of the series of events that is production. Other people probably found these later on in history and were inspired to try something similar themselves. 


•AD105 -paper invented in china by Ts'ai Lun
•1798 paper making machine invented by Nicolas-Louis Robert
Paper is obviously a very important in production, billions of pages are printed everyday worldwide. Without it we would have to print on alternative, expensive materials making it difficult. The first paper making machine links to this as it meant paper could then be printed in bulk.

•868 Diamond Sutra - First ever printed book
The first ever printed book marks the beginning of marketing in production, meaning that people from this date started considering paying for printed copies. Also, as the Diamond Sutra is a religious book, it would have been heard of and admired by a wide range of people. 


•1839 - negative/positive photograph invented by Fox Talbot
•1861 - first colour photograph produced by Clerk Maxwell
Photography is widely used in production today, before photography everything had to be drawn which took a lot of time and skill. A photograph could be taken in under a second and somehow produce a beautiful, detailed, realistic image that was way beyond the quality a human could produce.  


•1860 - Principle of color separation by filters demonstrated by Clerk Maxwell
•1890 - Four colour separation process invented
Colour separation is the reason why we are able to produce thousands of colours on a computer screen and in printing today. Before thing there was no such thing as RGB and CYMK


•1971 - Email invented by Ray Tomlinson
Email meant that designers could share their creative design ideas over the globe in just a click and that designs could be created in one country and sent to another to be produced. 

•1971 - Project gutenberg began aimed at collecting as many texts as possible in electronic format. 
This meant that different forms of typography could be used in design and publishing and could be printed and shared worldwide.

•1976 - Inkjet printing announced by IBM
Inkjet printing is a simple, easy way of printing. Many people could afford and own an inkjet printer meaning you could print at home. This put printing on an enormous scale.

•1982 - Adobe Systems founded
Adobe is one of the main inventers of computor design software. The software is used globally covering many areas of production, publishing and design. 

•1984 - CD-ROM & flash memory invented 
This meant that people could transport computer information easily from one place to another, making you able to work on a computer design in more than one place easily and be able to share work with others. 

ITAP - Week seven

This weeks lecture was based on film and moving image.  
The five principles were:

1) Story development - Three act structure.

2) Story development - The hero's journey

3) Pre-production Character Design

4) Visual Development -  Visualising information

5) Future Film - Digital storytelling 

The two principles I have decided to look at are the Three act structure and Character Design.

So what is the three act structure?
Basically, the three act structure is the under laying foundations that plots of films or books can be based on. It consists of three parts; an establishment, a crisis and a resolution. There is usually a 30:60:30 time frame, meaning that the establishment would last about 30 minutes, the crisis would last about 60 minutes long and then the resolution would last about 30 minutes. Evidence of this can be seen in many films today, though not necessarily in that order. Below is a diagram I have drawn to demonstrate how the structure works. I have backed it up with evidence of films that use the structure, one being Walt Disney's 'The Lion King' for an older example and the other being 'The Hangover' for a  recent example. 

You can see from the events I have written in the boxes that both these films follow the structure. Films with this structure tend to have a somewhat happy ending, although a character may have died earlier earlier in the film such as in the lion king, the resolution usually turns out happier than the crisis area, just maybe not as happy as the establishment. This structure is widely used because it is so versatile. It can be used for films with many different audiences, purposes, age ranges and genres. It is a strong foundation in film making. 


Secondly, I am going to look at pre-production character design. There are four main aspects of character design to think about when it comes to film production. They are as follows:

The protagonist: The main character

The antagonist: The cause of conflict

The Dialogue: The speech 

The Stereotype: Anything oversimplified

Within these aspects, there are 3 main areas you need to look at. 
They are APPEARANCE, ACTION and INTERACTION. 
To explain this I am going to use the example of mean girls. 
Mean Girls is a chick flick set in an american high school. The main character is just an ordinary girl who moves to the high school. She is the protagonist. She then gets dragged into and becomes part of the stereotype. The stereotype in this film is the mean girls themselves who are the girly, slutty, popular clique of the high school. The antagonist in this film is one of the popular girls ex boyfriends of whom the main character ends up falling for. This then causes a conflict between the protagonist and the stereotype.


Thinking about the design one of the stereotypical female characters you would have to cover the three areas mentioned above. For example:

Appearance: Fake, pretty, girly, skinny, lots of make-up

  Action: Bitchy, Selfish, Rude, Think they're better than everyone else

Interaction: Sweet, Secretive, overly friendly

This is a simple and easy way of knowing what you want from a character before you start to design them, therefore this is frequently used in film production. 

Mean Girls (2004)
Lindsay Lohan, 3rd one across is the Protagonist.
The other three girls are the Stereotype.

ITAP - Week six

This weeks lecture was about 'Production and Outcomes' in Visual Communication. The five principles were Interpretation, Delivery, Medium, Testing and Methodology. The two principles I have decided to look at are Interpretation and Methodology. 

Interpretation - An explanation of the meaning of another's artistic work .

Methodology - A study into the way in which we solve a problem .

To begin I am going to look at the use of 'zeitgeist' to interpret an image. Zeitgeist is the ideas and spirit of time; how time is expressed in creative matter. In the lecture we were shown many examples of different artists takes on Alice in Wonderland, ranging from 1865 through to present day. Being inspired by the idea of looking at children's books, i decided to look at the famous Aesop's fables to see how these have been illustrated differently over time. The one particular fable i looked at was 'The lion and the mouse'. Shown below are 3 illustrations created by different illustrators in 3 time periods. 

Lion and the Mouse
Milo Winter - 1919

Lion and the Mouse
David Wenzel - 1990's

Lion and the Mouse
Jerry Pinkney - 2009

The first image is the earliest of the examples. You can tell this without looking at the date from the tone of voice of the image. The colours are dull and faded and the image looks slightly dated. As you scroll down through the 3 images you can see them getting stronger, more colourful and more detailed. Also, the lion itself appears to get more lifelike, as if to say the two later illustrators knew more about what lions looked like than Milo winter back in 1919. 
What's interesting is how all 3 illustrators have taken a different approach to this design problem. Milo winter has used a simple, traditional approach by drawing the whole image. David Wenzel has gone for a slightly more abstract approach, drawing as if he was on floor level looking up at the lion and using the final image as a long rectangle shape. Jerry Pinkney has gone for a front on, close up effect which makes us see more what the lion is thinking, rather than whats actually happening. This shows how different people's creative brains work in different ways providing evidence of Methodology.


So what's the importance of methodology?
Methodology enables an illustrator, designer or photographer to be able to follow a thorough and versatile design process, which then enables them to be able to work independently and professionally. The designers with a strong sense of methodology shown in their work are likely to do much better than those who have no structure or system to help them along. Employers are also more likely to employ someone who can show evidence of a design process in their work, than those who just have one idea and one final outcome because it shows they're able to constructively critisize they're own work in order to produce a better final income and are therefore hitting high and professional standards. 

ITAP - Week five

This weeks lecture was basically all about the sense behind design, i.e the reasons why designers make images them look the way that they do. The two principles I have decided to look at are Legibility and Visual Hierarchy. I'm going to start with some definitions.
Visual Hierarchy is the order in which you see certain aspects of a design. This isn't just for editorial design, it is the same principle with any type of design, whether it be 3D or photography. For example, a magazine page with a large, brightly coloured title, you're eyes would be drawn towards the title and you would see this first. 
Legibility describes how well you can read the text. This can depend on many aspects such as the colour, font, size and alignment. There are many rules you have to stick to to maintain maximum legibility. One is that you should never put more then 10-15 words on a line, unless you choose to do this deliberately for design purposes. Another is that you should never put words over an image if you want them to be read carefully and actually taken in. With that, I'm going to look the David Carson. 

David Carson is a famous typographer who seems to break all the rules of structured graphic design. His work is known and recognized for its irregular, maybe described as chaotic form. Carson  keeps symmetry in his work by twisting the rules of graphics and putting his own twist on legibility. He does this in many ways, playing around with many different aspects of the type such as size, direction and font. He takes words apart and moves them around making it hard for the human eye to register what is going on and be able to read sense from his work. Some of his pieces are more legible than others depending on the audience and purpose. His works of art tend to be less legible than work that is to be published for a purpose as they are designed to be seen as an image rather than text. Another twist Carson puts in his work is making imagery from text, making the text used to construct the image completely illegible but it is an interesting design feature and can make an image much more interesting on the eye.
Here is an example of Carson's work that really inspires me. 

This is a magazine spread he has designed for what looks like some sort of art's magazine. As you can see a lot of the text is illegible and the readability is very poor. You can see on the right hand page where here was a 3 column grid structure to begin with but Carson has broken the grid and put his own twist on this. There is text overlapping both text and image. This work would be very difficult to gain information from and therefore would be no good for an informative purpose. As a work of art/design on the other hand, this piece is very interesting to look at. There is so much going on your eyes can't settle on anything in particular. There isn't really much of a hierarchy going on as everything is overlapping and making the piece very confusing. It's the little traits like that that people recognize Carson's work. 

Visual Hierarchy is very important in all types of design. When people think of Hierarchy they think of the history of royalty and how there is a hierarchy of class, starting with peasants and working up to the king. This is the same principle in design, the king would be the first thing you're eyes see, and the peasants would be the last. Here is a CD cover design from an event that I like. I have been influenced by designs for this event in my work in the past. The first thing I see when you look at this is the image in the middle with the large 'W'. My eyes are then drawn straight to the the word 'Warning' and then they follow down through the text as is shrinks in size. This shows the designer has used Visual Hierarchy in order to get me to see the important parts of the design first. Informative flyers and magazines are strong evidence of the importance of Visual Hierarchy in the publishing world today. 

ITAP - Week four

This weeks lecture was about research and being inspired and it's importance is Visual Communication. Before I look at the principles, I am going to look at some definitions.

Research (noun): An inquiry or investigation into a subject in order to discover or revise facts, theories and applications.

Inspire (verb): To affect, guide or motivate by divine influence.

Now i'm going to put the word visual in front of the word to see how it changes the definition. 

Visual Research: The practice of creating pictures, impressions, appearances, rendering, projections, illustrations, diagrams, images, etc... 
Visually Inspire: To affect, guide or motivate through some form of imagery, photograph or vision. 

The first principle I have decided to look at this week is how the notion of ‘inspiration’ derives from constant inquiry, based on research, observation, recording and experimentation. The second principle I have chosen is how by understanding the various ‘practices & processes’ of illustrators, designers and photographers one is able to progress and advance one’s own practice. To begin I am going to look at Graphic Designer Nerina Fernandez, studying what has inspired her and how she has produced reflective visual journals from this inspiration. I have chosen to look at her as I am greatly inspired by her work, it is the sort of thing i'd like to produce in the future. 

Here is a youtube video of one of her sketch books. I have watched a few from various designers and illustrators but this one particularly caught my eye. 

Moleskine Nerina Fernandez notebook @ Detour exhibition

Snippet from Nerina Fernandez moleskine
From looking at Nerina's moleskine you can tell she has been inspired from many things. The good thing about a moleskine is that its small and you can take it anywhere, that's why many designers have them. Hers consists of everyday things such as maps, buses, policemen on the streets and theatres. I love how she uses a little bit of drawing or typography with everyday things she has photographed or picked up and creates miniature pieces of art. This has inspired me to get a moleskin and begin one myself. 

Here are some images I have drawn that are the sort of thing I would put in a moleskine notebook. From looking at these I can see that music is a big influence on my work and I am heavily inspired by it. Also, fond memories inspire me. The black and white sketch is drawn from a memory contain two people I care about. When I found myself thinking about them, I decided to draw the sketch and now keep it on my wall as an inspiration. I intend to do this with more memories over time. 

Sketch from a free party 

Logo designed for a soundsystem

To conclude I am going to leave you with a quote..

 "If you start with nothing, you have to invent everything from scratch''

This quote has touched me because it is impossible. If you tried to invent an idea from scratch you wouldn't be able to, you would have subconsciously already been influenced from past experiences and therefore you're work would contain similarities to someone else's somewhere in the world who is influence by the same things as you. I believe you can work as hard as you want on an idea, but if it hasn't been research or influenced it will never be anywhere near as good. 

ITAP - Week three

This weeks lecture was about connectivity in visual communication.  The two principles I have decided to look at are notions of originality and the relationships developed from existing forms of historical culture. Basically, I will be looking at the connections that can be made between artwork that has been produced in different time periods and the reconceptualised ideas and concepts shown in contemporary culture. To begin I have chosen to explore these two pieces of artwork.

Elsie Wright - Cottingley Fairies (1917)

Matt Collishaw - Catching Fairies (1996)

As you can see there is 73 year gap between the production of these two images but they look reasonably similar. This is because relationships have developed through historical culture. Cottingley Fairies is a well known piece that many people have been inspired by, Matt Collishaw being one of them. You can tell this from the notions of originality shown in his piece. The obvious similarity between the images is the fairies. Fairies are fictional characters and do not exist in the real world, but the way Matt has drawn them is very similar to Elsie. As they are unreal, you could portray them in any way you like but Matt has decided to keep the historical relationship and allow people to relate his work back to Elsie's. Another similarity is the lack of colour. Matt has chosen to only colour the fairies and the human. By doing this he may be trying to portray that fairies are real, like humans. Elsie was also trying to portray this by using a child in her work. It is thought by many that children never lie and therefore by using this child in the image it portrays that if the child thinks they're real and can see them, they must be real. The child looks very innocent which makes you believe it even more. To conclude, there is a strong historical and cultural link between these two images.

Hokusai - The great wave of kanagawa (1830)

Asahi Beer Advert 

Secondly, I have chosen to look at advertising and how historical culture has been used within it. Below and above are a couple of examples of where famous artwork has been reproduced in the form of an advertisement. Wanting to go into advertising myself, this has really inspired me to research further into classic paintings and think about how I could use them in my work. In the Hokusai example, I think it is really clever how the wave has been made out of bottle openers. When you first look at the advert you see the wave and think they are trying to say that it's first quenching, but then if you look again you see the hidden bottle openers and also realize that it is similar to the Hokusai painting. This works well as an advertisement as they are likely to be shown on a billboard or somewhere in public. This would mean that when you first walk past the advert you might only notice the wave, but when you walk back past it again you begin to notice the other subtle hints within it. Its the sort of advert that makes you think 'oh that's clever' and therefore you're impressed and more likely to buy the product. The Dior advert also has this effect. When you look at it you either see the skull or the woman first, and then you see both. To conclude, it can be said that advertising companies are using the clever ideas that are hidden in historical culture to successfully market products today. 

Charles Allan Gilbert - All is vanity (1892)

Vincent Peters - Dior (2002)

ITAP - Week two

The two principles I have chosen to look at this week are developing ideational fluency and managing a creative environment. These two principles stood out to me because again I found them easy to relate to. As I am writing this blog, I am sitting in my own creative environment that I have set up, which I will write more about later. Firstly I am going to look at the work of Saul bass.

As you may or may not know Saul Bass is a famous graphic designer. His work is recognized all over the world. This is because of the ideational fluency portrayed in his work. The two images I have shown here both contain similar characteristics. Bass often uses the idea of a silhouette in his work, not necessarily in black like shown in the images here, but just some form of silhouette style drawing. His drawings are always very basic shapes with blunt, sharp edges and hardly any use of curved lines. The typography is usually very basic, as if it was drawn by hand, almost childlike. Same with his use of colour; Bass very rarely uses a lot of different colours in his work. He usually sticks to one or two and plays with the gradient instead. All these assets he portrays in his work are from where he has developed ideational fluency over his years of being a designer. Developing this fluency can have many benefits for the designer, the main one being that your work is easily recognized. Another would be that the designer can easily tackle any design problem put in front of them as there brain is trained is to tackle anything from there own personal angle.  To conclude on that principle, ideational fluency is very important in visual communication.

To write about the second principle, I have taken a photograph of my wall, which is my personal creative environment. This consists of a collection of tickets, flyers and drawings I have collected over the past year or so. As you can see I have created a collage of them on my wall. I often add to this with new objects that I collect that mean something to me, influence me or make me feel happy. That is how I manage my creative environment. Your creative environment says a lot about the sort of person you are. From looking at an area an artist and designer works in you can learn so much about them without having seen there work before. Obvious things such as the colours and layout can tell you about how the person acts and behaves. Looking at my creative environment you can pick out lots of bright colours and large amounts of collage. You can also see how the board is more cluttered on one side than the other. This shows that there are two sides to my personality, the wild, arty side and the more serious, organised side. As this is my creative environment I know that for a fact is true but if I was to enter another person's environment I would be able to assess it in the same way to pick out similar qualities to those I just listed about myself. To conclude managing your creative environment says a lot about you as a person and therefore has a large influence on your work. 

ITAP - Week one

The two principles of visual communication I have chosen to look at from this week's lecture are Draw and Utilising the creative brain. These two principles stood out to to me because I could easily relate to having used them in my work.

This is a collection of images I drew based on the city of Norwich. Together as one image, it has a wide target audience, with ages ranging from 20's up to 60's. The intention was for it to be used in a tourist information leaflet or website to attract tourists to Norwich. It is an obvious example of the visual communication principle that is Draw. The original pencil lines are still visible in the images with just a slight use of colour here and there. This shows there hasn't been much of a design process used to create the images; they are still mainly in the form of the original thoughts that I sketched out onto paper. This shows poor use of the design cycle. To create these images I used the link between hand, brain and paper which has allowed my hand to sketch my design ideas and thoughts straight from the creative side of my brain. The creative brain is described as being like a child at play. The bold block colours shown here prove that the creative brain was working in a childish manner whilst producing these images. The images are also very simple and rough, like an inexperienced person such as a child has drawn them. I have deliberately left them looking slightly unfinished to make them more interesting and therefore more eye-catching but I think I may have left them too unfinished as they have turned out too plain and therefore a bit boring on the eye.

This is a well-known piece of artwork by famous pop-art artist Andy Warhol. From the colour scheme used in the piece you can tell that it is trying to attract a younger, more vibrant audience. The contrast between the bright colour and the black bottle make the piece extremely eye-catching but also a little bit sinister, as if there is a hidden message in the image. That makes us question meaning of the piece. Its gets you thinking why has Warhol chosen to use that colour and what might have happened in his life to make him want to portray vodka in that manner. There could be more then one purpose for this piece. It has a strong advertising value due to its design and would serve well in making the target audience want to purchase the vodka shown in the image rather than other brands. On the other hand, the image has a dark, eerie side that could put the target audience off wanting to buy the product, therefore turning the image into a work of art rather than a commercial advertisement. Besides the hidden dark side to this image, there don't appear to be any other messages or signs being portrayed. The media used to produce the image looks to be very basic. The techniques used are traditional; you can still see where the artist has put pencil or paintbrush to the paper to get his ideas down. It is as if the image is a rendered and manipulated version of his first design ideas.