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.