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.