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Stopped by the studio of local illustrator Martin O’Neill today...

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:25:00 +0000

Stopped by the studio of local illustrator Martin O’Neill today as a friend was buying one of his prints. As well as being a thoroughly nice guy, he’s got a great style. Around this time last year I went to a small exhibition he held in his studio; very festive with mulled wine and some great local art. His studio is a really interesting environment, lots of small draws with odd labels on and piles and piles of cut outs and paper, a reflection of the very hands on approach he takes to his work. In true festive spirit he kindly gave me large sheet featuring one of his works, it also features as the dust jacket for his book. Martin suggested it could be used as wrapping paper, but it’s going straight on my wall to be honest. Excellent.

At the weekend I headed along the coast to visit Eastbournes’...

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:54:00 +0000

At the weekend I headed along the coast to visit Eastbournes’ Towner Gallery. The impressive white building is the work of Rick Mather, who’s done a brilliant job of crafting a successful modern structure amongst the genteel streets of the seaside town.

The gallery plays host to an interesting mix of exhibitions, the contrast was quite exciting and inspiring to see. Although to be honest what constantly held my attention was the amazing lines of the building and how they expertly framed the views that are not only aesthetically brilliant, but serve to keep the whole building very well lit and maintain a sense of space and airiness. The curvaceous exterior of the building certainly holds a certain seaside-eque feel to it, which is not too dissimilar to that of the De La Warr Pavillion down the road from it in Bexhill-on-sea. Both serve their respective seaside towns very well with their astounding architecture and high quality of the exhibits.

The other day I caught the award-winning documentary by art...

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:41:00 +0000

The other day I caught the award-winning documentary by art critic Robert Hughes; ”The Mona Lisa Curse’. In his own unique style Hughes’ explores the art worlds journey from the pre Mona Lisa world tour days through to the rise of contemporary art and how we view it all today. It was a really thought provoking look at the art world.

As a 25 year old, I struggle to remember a time when art was mentioned in the media without a price tag being quoted alongside it. That’s something we’ve almost been conditioned to expect. The art, and its monetary value being perceived as going hand in hand. Probably one of the most influential events, that literally changed the art world over night was Robert Sculls’ auction in 73. After marrying into a taxi firm, Scull displayed an entrepreneurial knack, expanding the firm quickly. He transfered his shrewd business skills over to the art world as he started a large art collection, bargaining artists down to a fraction of their normal sale price. Scull went on to make a significant profit following his controversial high profile art auction.

Artist Robert Rauschenberg was particularly outraged and gate crashed the auction to take a swing at Scull after the painting he sol for $2500, reached $90,000 in the auction. I dug out an article written at the time in New York Magazine by critic Barbara Rose which sets the scene of the auction nicely.

Certainly an interesting watch, and a real eye opener for the generations of us that don’t remember art without a price tag.

Last week we had a day in college with photographer John...

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:51:00 +0000

Last week we had a day in college with photographer John Reynolds. We carried out various tasks with the aim of providing us with an insight into commissioning a photographer. Really useful experience. John also kindly spent the afternoon with us fielding our question, the body of which were addressing the basics of photography and what to pay attention to when photographing our own work. He actually wen into an amazing amount of detail with us and after scratching our heads over inverse square law for a while, we all came out with a much better grasp of photography. All in all a really amazing day.

Last week we had our group critique for a print design brief...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:18:00 +0000

Last week we had our group critique for a print design brief with Karen Wilks. The brief was to create a promotional booklet for our home town with an emphasis on its format and print techniques.

St. Leonards is a small coastal town (now merged with Hastings) that was originally a high class seaside resort in victorian times. Nowadays the area is an interesting mix of strange finds, talented artists and one of a kind shops. With this in mind, I wanted to create something that would envoke a feeling of intrigue and almost slight oddity that mirrors the spirit of the area and its residents.

I decided I would focus on two main areas of the booklet to create the desired effect; the imagery and printing technique. For the images, I took to the streets with a lomography camera (Diana F+), as they produce unusual, almost dreamy images that have a charm of their own and the final result is perfect to represent the details of St. Leonards. With the printing I knew I wanted the paper to be very thin, but also very smooth and of high quality. I decided upon using a traditional french fold for the pages as I loved the idea of printing on the inside of the folds to create anther dimension to the design. I found that 60 gsm bible paper was the perfect stock for this idea. After a lot of experimenting I found that printing reversed text on the inside of the french folds would allow the text to interact with images on the surface of the pages in a really unique fashion.

To add to the visual intrigue of the pages I also added typical tourist information, but in an almost technical manner. Each page has two statistics; the distance of location of the photo to the sea and the train station, with the length of the line representing the distance.

You an see the final images of the booklet here.

I was toying with capturing television images the other day....

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:05:00 +0000

I was toying with capturing television images the other day. It’s a highly addictive little hobby actually, just because you never quite know exactly which frame will be captured. I also think the images posess a unique sense of drama to them which I find fasinating.

Whilst watching a news report on the rising murder rates in Mexico, I was amazed by the footage that was being shown, and was instantly inspired to start capturing the scenes.

The image to the left is my favourate if the lot. It almost looks like a double exposure done on a traditional 120 film, but it was actually just a digital snap that caught that millisecond window between images changing. The result is something quite special I think.

The result and approach of these kind of photos interestingly mirrors lomography. Seems strange that the combination of a modern LCD television with a digital camera would draw any comparisons with that of decades old toy plastic cameras. With both techniques you roughly know what you’re going to get a picture of, and I do mean roughly. Because until that digital image has fully formed itself on that screen, and until you walk out of that photographic shop and flick through your prints, you really don’t have a clue what you have really captured. Light leaks from every angle, double exposures, odd marks, uncontrollable blurring and a distorted version of how you originally composed the shot. It’s these qualities that reinforces my enthusiasm for these shots, each one is unique, each one has its own character that could never be re produced.

I’ve been continuing my exploration with printing on light...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:36:00 +0000

I’ve been continuing my exploration with printing on light weight bible paper and using the image created on the reverse. I went out around the area with my Diana +, a reproduction of a classic lomography camera. I wanted to use something that would produce photographs with some real character and interesting lighting effects.

The image to the left is the first prints of some of my photos on bible paper. I really love the intriguing qualities when viewing the reverse of the prints. I’ll continue to experiment and work the interesting qualities of the prints into my final design.

I’ve been experimenting with some new paper stock I...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:33:00 +0000

I’ve been experimenting with some new paper stock I purchased recently for a college brief. Essentially, the brief was to create a ‘visual feast’ in the form of a printed promotional booklet for our home town. One of the areas our tutors wanted us to focus on was printing techniques and finishes, and using them to maximum effect. So, I decided I wanted to create something which was a bit more intriguing to the viewer.

After researching the many different book binding techniques, and various effects achieved with paper, I decided I wanted to play with the properties of paper opacity/weight in the design process, and really make it a key feature of the booklet design.

Two key areas I recognised that needed further research were; - Paper folding techniques - Quality light weight paper.

I discover that a traditional french fold would be suitable for the book contents and allow me enough flexibility to create something interesting with images and type. Also I found 60gsm bible paper would was high quality but thin enough for the ideas I wanted to apply to it, so seemed the perfect choice for the contents of the book.

The image to the left shows my experimentation with the bible paper, where I’ve printed a large amount of type onto its reverse, and used a mask to increase the percentage of black on certain areas in order to create further large type within it. I’m planning on using this technique to create a dust jacket that unfolds out to give a history of the town. I’m really pleased with my initial results, it seems to have created the unusual effect I was hoping for.

I’m just about to start on a couple of interesting books,...

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:32:00 +0000

I’m just about to start on a couple of interesting books, one an old classic and the other just intrigued me.

Grid Systems In Graphic Design [Josef Muller-Brockmann]

This is a book I’ve had for a while, and picked bits and pieces from, but never given it a thorough read. There’s a particular section I’m interested in which looks at using grid systems for environmental design, which is an area I’m becoming increasingly interested in. Aside form that it certainly won’t hurt to add to my grid system knowledge/understanding.

The Language Of Things [Deyan Sudjic]

Written by the Director of the Design Museum (London), Sudjic looks at how we are manipulated and seduced by our possessions. The book covers five broad areas; Language, Design & its Archetypes, Luxury, Fashion & art. I was really drawn to this book, not only because of its content, but partly because of it’s beautiful screen printed cover, which is ironic given the subject. There’s something about the title of the books introduction which I love as well; ‘A world drowning in Objects’, very appropriate.