DESIGN&MEDIA

J A C K W A L D E N

BRIEF- 1

01To gather inspiration I went on a trip to London during the London design festival. In particular I went to Brick lane - I took a few photos of street art I came across along the way which i found particualarly interesting and eye catching.

I came across this small piece which was situated besides a tree that had grown up out of the concrete. With obvious link between trees and squirelsl, I found this really interesting as it gives a sense of purpose to the work and also shows that the artist has thought about the placement and location of his work.

01I was required to collate images of the alphabet that occured in everyday objects, scenery and coincidense. Here is an example of the letter A which I found in a windowsil while walking along Brick Lane. I really like how there are stickers and graffiti plastered all over the window - I feel that it gives the image a sense of a community expressing itself through design.

I found this image of the letter O alongside the floor while walking through london - I dont have any idea what the ogirinal use for this object is, although I think it could be used for locking a bike up or something of that nature.

01I was then tasked of creating paths around the letter forms we had found using Illustrator to then create a typeface which would be unique - I also had to find examples of vernacular type - Vernacular type is essentially a font which has not been mass produced i.e. handwriting.Here are a few examples of my experiments when using Illustrator to create a path over a Serif font

Here is an example of a sign that I found and created a path over it - I really like that not all the text is uniform and alligned. I feel that it gives it a hand-made feel to it which I think fits in perfectly with the idea of vernacular type.

01Using the paths that I had created - I had to create a word which summed up the feelings of an image and design 3 a5 pieces of work using seperate colour palets and using the rudiments of design such as the rule of thirds. The word I chose for this image was purged as the image seems purged of life.

In my first image I used a complimentary colour pallet. I made each section of the word a progressive colour, ranging from a light blue to dark and a light brown to dark. I feel that this gives the image flow and drags the eye across the word. Although - I feel that this perhaps does not best reprisent the word and its meaning. If I were to go back and change it I not use blue as the colour is too closely related to water which doesn’t fit in with my chosen word.

01In my second image I used a splitcomplimentary colour pallet - I also used a progressive colour arrangement to give the image a sense of depth. I think this can be best reprisented by certain words have quite a weak colour to them thus drawing your eye to the one with the most vibrent colour.I also used symetry in this image to give it a uniform feel to it. I feel that this piece best represents my chosen word as the colours i’ve used are quite dry which fits in with the image.

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In my final image I used a monocromatic colour scheme. I mirrored the word to show symetry and reversed the colours on each word. I feel that this is my weakest piece for this brief and I feel that i could have done a lot more with the placement and colour scheme to make this more effective.

BRIEF-2

For this second brief I was assigned to use our vernacular that I had collected for the first brief and create a 3D typeface to place into a 2D environment. The word that I was needed to create had to give suspense and tell a story to transport the viewer. I used 3DS Max for this brief.

For my first piece I chose the word oppressed and picked a picture of a street. I chose the word oppressed because I got a the feeling that this photo could’ve been taken from someones perspective who’s living on the street and feels oppressed.

For the lighting of text i used a skylight- this gives the text a realistic look to it. I chose to texture the word to emulate concrete as it was similar to its surroundings.

02

I used a similar process when creating this piece. I decided to use this image and word combination to highlight the impact that art has had on a once bland, industrial envrionment.

Juxtaposed to its environment, the word purged means cleansed. I feel that this works because the graffiti is giving the surroundings a purpose and cleansing it, giving it life.

I kept the image and the text black and white because after testing a few colours with the background, I felt that it didn’t work.

BRIEF-3

03For this brief I was asked to create a 60 second knetic type video. The words had to sync in time with my chosen song. The typeface also has to compliment the song.

My chosen song was Borgore - Nympho. The reason I chose this song was because I enjoy it and thought it would be appropriate for this brief.

I chose a bold style font to match the brash and loud nature of the lyrics. This also inspired my colour choice because white on purple is bold and in your face, similar to the track.

I created this in After Effects. With my prior knowledge of the program, I gave the text a motion blur to give it fluidity.

I had a lot of trouble with this brief as the nature of the program is quite detrimental. As this was the first time I used a camera and 3D space together, it took me a while to get to grips with the progam.

I found issues when syncing up the sound to the visuals. Other than this, I felt the outcome worked well considering it was my first attempt at constructing a knetic type video.

BRIEF-4

04For this brief I was required to create a 30 second stop animation at 12FPS. After doing some research on the internet with regards to stop animation, I decided that using text might be an interesting method producing an effective outcome. Whilst constructing research, I found that commonly used materials include paper and plasticine. I decided to use paper as I witnessed the effects that it could give, and thought it would work well with my concept. My concept was to take descriptive words and use them to act out their meanings. The two words I chose were destroy and rebuild. I explored the concept that something which can be destroyed may also be rebuilt.

I worked with a Serif font as its simplicity worked well with my chosen black and white colour-scale. Using a stanley knife, I cut out each printed individual letter and arranged them in such a way that they would be central for the viewer.

Taking the description of the word destroy, I used ripping and tearing methods to create a decaying effect.

Once the debris hit the edge of the scene the letters collapse back into place and the word rebuild becomes visible.

On reflection, I am quite pleased with this work. Although I feel if I had taken more photos I think that stop animation would be smoother.

BRIEF-6

06For brief 6 I was told to animate a painting to tell a story.

After having a look at a load of paintings, I came across a Dutch artist called Félicien Rops. And in particular a painting that he created which follows the story of ‘The temptation of St. Anthony.’The story follows St. Anthony during his pilgrimage to the desert when he is approached by several demons which were the embodiment of temptation and sin who try to a lure him away from his pilgrimage.Many artists have taken inspiration from this story to create pieces of work and interpreted it in their own way, such artists include Salvador Dali and Hieronymus Bosch.

For the animation, I tried to show the struggle of Jesus in this painting as he’s being pushed off of a crucifix by making him reach for the cherubs and for them to then disappear to show desperation.

I also used to camera to focus in on certain areas of the painting to give a sense of suspense and to lead the viewer around the painting taking them to areas that I felt were more important which meant I could make my own narrative from this painting.

If I were to change this piece, I would perhaps change the painting as it was quite difficult to clone the subjects out and animate them properly.

BRIEF-7

07For this brief we were assigned to create three background for various devices using patterns - I experimented with making tiny 10 pixel x 10 pixel documents in photoshop. Using a 1 px square brush ive made some really simple but i feel effective patterns which in a larger scale really mess with your head (and hurt my eyes)

Using these small patterns, I filled objects and areas with the patterns to see what effect it would give me. Once I filled the areas, I could see different shapes within the patterns - which made me think of how this brief could relate to optical illusions and and tricking the eye to see shapes in patterns.

07I found this image while searching for inspiration with optical illusions - this image uses conflicting patterns to give the illusion that there is writing on the image.Not only does this mess with the viewers head - I feel that it forces the viewer to look at the image for a longer period of time to absorb what is being shown.

Taking inspiration from my research, I used photoshop to make a small 10 pixel by 10 pixel document with black diaganol lines which I would go on to use as my background. Next, I made a document of the same scale with the opposite pattern to my background image. To create the image of the skull, I made it a brush and then applied the conflicting pattern to it via the stamp tool. This gave a really nice effect and something that I initially was hoping for.

The only thing i’m not really happy about with this piece is that I am unsure if the effect will carry out if it were to be printed.

For my second background, i decided to explore image glitching - the process of corrupting digital code to produce an unexpected outcome.

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This is the background i created using image glitching, I did this by importing the image code into a common program called word pad and simply chopped pieces out of the original code. I then placed the image into photoshop and layered the image over itself a few times and added some layer styles to give it a vibrent feel.

07For my thrid and final background I decided to continue with exploring image glitching. But this time I chose to use it with photos that I had taken as I thought it would be interesting to use different subjects.

For this piece of work I gitched two of images of I took. One was a piece from brief 4 and the other was from a picture of some street art I look while in London.

I used largely the same method to a degree as my second background as I felt it was an effective one.

I think this background is quite nice, although i think that it lacks a coherent pattern and could be concieved as straying away from the brief, although on the flip side such is the nature of glitching images.

BRIEF-8

For brief 8 I was asked to create a protest poster using stencils. I had to choose a subject to make this poster about and I ended up choosing the occupy movement.

“The Occupy movement is an international protest movement which is primarily directed against economic and social inequality. The movement started in Kuala Lumpur on July 30, 2011, with Occupy Dataran, followed by New York City and San Francisco on September 17, 2011, with Occupy Wall Street and Occupy San Francisco. By October 9 Occupy protests had taken place or were ongoing in over 95 cities across 82 countries.”

08

Here is my digital mock up of the protest poster.

The image I am trying to portray with my sign is that the figure which is not filled in black represents the 1% and that the other figures represent the 99%. Showing that the 99% far out number the 1%, I also chose to make the figure in the middle larger than the rest to represent that the 99% are financial underdogs. I’ll be using black as my colour of choice for my sign,

I chose this colour as the figures which I will use for my sign are taken from w/c signs which are coloured in black. I really like my idea for this sign, however I feel like I need to simplify my graphic for my design as it is hard to view from a distance.

After I cut out my stencil I used spray paint to put it on my plackard. This was my first time using spray paint so I wasn’t too sure what the outcome would be.

08

This is my final outcome for my protests poster. Looking at how the stencil came out, it looks pretty poor. The spray paint seaped undernearth the stencil and didnt really give it a clean edge. I think this is down to me using newspaper paper as a stencil.If i were to redo this I would change the paper to use as a stencil.

BRIEF- 10

10For this brief I was assigned to culture glitch a 60 second long advert.Culture glitching is when the message of a piece of media changes externally.The advert I chose was John Lewis christmas advert which depicted people sitting behind a table, then an object that would be an ‘ideal’ present for them would appear.

To glitch this brief - I changed the ‘ideal’ objects to stereotypical objects.Im quite pleased with this work I think it answered the brief pretty well. Although I feel I could have made the whole advert look sleeker and more proffessional.

BRIEF- 11

For brief 11 I was asked to make a 30 second animation aligning to sound that I had created. It was specified for myself to use abstract shapes. I decided to use 3ds max to create my shapes,

I used these harsh lines and angluar shapes to coinside with nature of the electronic track that I had created. Electronic music doesn’t flow softly like a piece of classical music whereby i would have used curved shapes or a pastel pallet.The shapes and colours i have used demonstrate the lack of emotion in electronic music which can also be seen during the futurist movement.

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The colours I used are reflective of the genre of music. Electronic music often uses old samples of beats or synths and encorporates them into the track, bring them into the new age. I tried echo this in my work by using the colours found on a 1980s computer which are black and green.

I chose to make shapes move similarly to their abstract design and not have set out path. I did this by using displacement on 3ds max, this turned the geometric shapes in wild, glitchy and uncontrolable objects.

11In conculsion I think the imagery of this breif is really strong and I really enjoyed creating it. Although the weakest element for me was marrying up the sounds and the visuals together.

When rendering out the video, the sound did not sync up the imagery. I honestly have no idea how this happened as while I was pulling all the visual and sound elements in After Effects.