year 2 portfolio semester 1 methods and madness / independant practice

METHODS AND MADNESS

SHOOTING STARS

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UNIT/METHODS AND MADNESS

For this brief we were given the task of taking a current news

story and analysing how it is represented by the media, how it

was constructed and how essentially it would be percieved. The

challenge being how to turn the result of this investigation on

its head, and create a video a minute long that communicates

and alternative to the one the media portrays.

BRIEF

THE RESEARCH

I chose Amy Winehouse as my subject, She was a great example

due to her high profile in the media and her treatment leading

up to her death and I felt that she embodied the glamorised

miss-communication that the media favour in order to

capitalise. In my research I found out the 1800’s is the earliest

recording of the public fascination with celebrity culture. the

first celebrities were those elements of high society who were

eligible to get a mention in the obituaries when they passed. As

in those days it wasn’t just anyone who got a mention. Strangley

Ironic given these days the media won’t leave celebrities alone

until they pass away.

APPROACH

I had not used any editing software prior to this excercise so

veiwed this as a daunting yet welcome challenge. I decided

to make a visual collage that repressented Amy’s birth in the

media to her televised demise, using a visual and auditory

crescendo to create a metaphor for the lead up to her death.

SHOOTING STARS

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UNIT/METHODS AND MADNESS SHOOTING STARS


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Early footage in Black and White to

represent to give the feeling of times gone by

footage where you see her start to spiral

into a life she no longer has control over

I made the footage blue and green with a

washed out feel to mimic the coldness of her

ongoing torment.

The static in between represents the

changing of channels which is meant to

show the scope of which the media were

involved in her life and how that translated

to our TV screens.

SHOOTING STARS


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As her life spirals in the video the footage

speeds up in time with the layered dialog

getting increasingly hectic to give a

crescendo meant to echo the way her own

life built up to it’s sad conclusion.

SHOOTING STARS


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CONCLUSIONThis was a great task to start the semester on, instantly

challenging as I had not worked with editing before. It was a

huge yet rewarding challenge to have to work out how to use

Final Cut in such a short space of time, but gave me the push

I needed to move forward in other areas.

The task itself was interesting, it helped me understand the

value of understanding the way the media operates and how

that is relevant in design, previously it had not occurred to

me the social impact design can have and vice versa.

Since this task I have found myself questioning the meanings

behind what I see not just in the media but in literally

everything.

As regards the actual piece looking back at it now it seems

somewhat remedial as I have developed further techniques

over the semester which would have been benificial at the

time of making this short. But I do feel it has impact and

fullfils the criteria.

VIRGIN BRIEF


BRIEF

Create a corporate communications piece for the Virgin brand

showing sector and worldwide spread of the business in a fun

and engaging way.

We were restricted by the stipulations of virgins existing

branding and by the target audience which was predominantly

existing Virgin employees as well as prospective business

associates. They wanted to create a clearer way to show how

they are structured.

THE RESEARCH

For this brief I looked carefully at Virgin as a company, the

ethics they stand for and how they convey their business. My

partner and I looked at the Virgin facebook page and studied

the existing available material. The one thing that seemed

prominent in the brief was the fun aspect that was being pushed

and this seemed to reflect Sir Richards character, so we felt that

this would be a good place to start.

THE APPROACH

My partner and I initially kicked around a few ideas but the first

idea stood out by far as being the best. The brouchure’s kept

refering to ‘the Virgin Motherbrand’ this immediately made me

think of motherships i.e spaceships. this was a fun concept and

also worked perfectly as a metaphor for the structure of Virgin

as a brand.

VIRGIN BRIEF

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UNIT/METHODS AND MADNESS VIRGIN BRIEF

VIRGIN BRIEF

VIRGIN BRIEF

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Some early workings of how to structure

the booklet, it had to be easy to mail and

inexpensive to make, yet look high end,

also it needed to be environmentally sound,

we realised that we could make an A1 in

length poster that would fold down quite

small in it wasn’t A1 in width, also we

could make it double sided, and have the

poster fold up into the cover which could

then double as the actual envelope. This

was great as it solved almost all of the

issues, we just had to make it look high

end.

VIRGIN BRIEFUNIT/METHODS AND MADNESS

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VIRGIN BRIEFUNIT/METHODS AND MADNESS

Initial concepts for the structure and pallet

of the design. After discussions we decided

that we should keep as much red as possible

to keep in with the original branding,

the rest of the pallet was inspired by 50’s

B-movies, which we felt was appropriate

considering the style of the design.

Still from the movie Forbidden Planet 1956

VIRGIN BRIEF

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UNIT/METHODS AND MADNESS VIRGIN BRIEFVIRGIN BRIEF


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UNIT/METHODS AND MADNESS VIRGIN BRIEFVIRGIN BRIEF

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CONCLUSION

I found this brief a great brief for stretching the aesthetic

creative muscles, I enjoyed the challenge of trying to come up

with the ideal product to meet the varied requirements. The

Crit we had with The young man from virgin was positive and

constructive and my partner and I made the neccessary changes

in order to meet his needs and found that the end product was a

success. The most challenging part of this brief was to cater the

design so that it would appeal to a wide demographic, in the end

our approach communicated the hierarchy of the Virgin Brand

and on the other end of the spectrum could also appeal to small

children with the fun science fiction edge.

VIRGIN BRIEF

BIOGRAPHY

UNIT/METHODS AND MADNESS BIOGRAPHY

BRIEF

For this brief I was given the name Jeremy Bentham and had to

find out who he was and as much information as I could without

using my usual research methods. Then finally to represent my

findings in some way.

THE RESEARCH

The research for this task it seemed was the point in the

task, having to find new ways of thinking and getting around

the obstacle of google denial. At first I found it hard to stop

thinking about going to search engine’s, I found my mind kept

going in circles from “how do I find out about this man?” to I’ll

could use. . . . .” and then I would just think of search engine’s.

This was surprisingly difficult to get out of, which in itself has

taught me that I rely far too much on the same few avenue’s

of research, which I realised makes the results of my line of

investigation limited.

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THE QUESTION


‘Who, or what, is a Jeremy Bentham ?’

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The techniques that I ended up going

with in order to gain as much info as I

could about Mr Bentham all relied in one

way or another on other people telling

me.

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THE ANSWER


Thread from Drowned in sound music forum

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CONCLUSION

I was surprised to find that out of my four methods...

1. Place an add on Gum Tree

2. Post a status update on facebook

3.Put posters around the uni

4.Post the question on a music forum

5. send an e-mail to as many variations of Jeremy Bentham in an

e-mail address I could think of.

that method four was by far the best, it seems music enthusiasts

that post regularly on forums know more about Jeremy Bentham

than I first would have thought, and oddly enough the methods

that I thought would work best, methods two and three turned

out to have little to no results, proving once again that I should

veer off my standard paths of investigation in future. Putting an

add on Gumtree gave to most accurate results, I am assuming

because of the format, i.e nobody would bother to read the post

as it was irrelevant to the use of the website unless of course they

already knew or had an interest in Jeremy Bentham. Another

interesting result was that after posting a link to the finished

poster, I had a reply from a teacher saying they were going to use

it in their class.

This shows to me that although some of the facts are false the

end result is a good example of the publics perception.


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INDEPENDANT PRACTICEINDEPENDANT PRACTICE

THE LAST EMBRACE

UNIT/ INDEPENDANT PRACTICE

THE BRIEFFor my Independant practice I wanted to cover the subject of

Love, in this brief I was given the task of creating a large poster

for a friends band called ‘Love among the mannequins’ they

wanted a poster that conveyed a general romantic theme but

retain a punk rock vibe and without using any text.

THE RESEARCH

I started by asking people what was the first thing that came

into their heads when I said Love to them, the answers were

far more varied than I anticipated and also far more negative.

People tended to either come up with cliche’d imagery like

‘hearts’ etc or they would refer to break ups or feeling bad. It

seems obvious that the question would beg these two outcomes

however it was the conveyance of this that was interesting.

one of the things that interested me the most was marriage

and the vows we take and how although they are meant to be

romantic they also refer to death ‘death do us part’. I found

this acknowledgement of our mortality within a romantic vow a

juxtoposition that reflected my general findings. And so decided

to make the poster a deathly image with a romantic heart.

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I wrote the word romance on a piece of paper and

gave people 1 minute to write down as many things

they could think of connected with it.

THE LAST EMBRACE

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UNIT/ INDEPENDANT PRACTICE THE LAST EMBRACE

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CONCLUSION


This design was incredibly labor intensive, with all the line

work hand drawn and the dot work for the texturing of the sky

hand drawn as well, a technique that when I look back now

only really benifits when the illustration is viewed close up,

something I will avoid in future for larger pieces of work. The

feedback I have recieved has been positive with people making

reference to the color pallet and neon border. These are both

things that I have added after researching artists like Kevin

Tong and El Boca, so it has been a great experience being

able to look at their work and apply certain visual styles to my

own work. I also had to look at a lot of images of fire in order

to attain the liquid effect of the atmosphere being penetrated

this was a good learning curve also as it gave me a better

understanding of shapes and how they can convey texture on a

large scale.

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FALLING IN LOVETHE BRIEF

This was a self set brief. I had been relying too much on

illustration and felt I wasn’t getting enough diversity in

my design so I wanted to try doing an animation as it was

something I hadn’t done before and due to some workshops

this semester understood how to do on a very basic level. So the

brief was to create an animation that could potentially be used

for an advert or a short to promote valentines day cards. I had in

mind when doing it clinton cards or a similar company.

THE RESEARCH

Whilst researching the theme of love in general I looked at

terms that are used commonly in reference to love, one of the

most obvious and probably universal terms is ‘falling in love’

which when you dissect it literally is interesting as love is an

emotion and falling is a physical action so it does not seem

obvious to pair the two, however in a literal sense it made for an

interesting idea.

THE APPROACH

I wanted to give the animation a colorful and fun aesthetic to

fit in with the kind of marketing normally used to advertise

seasonal based media. I also wanted the animation to be some

kind of play on words so I married a literal concept of falling in

love and colorful basic illustration.

UNIT/ INDEPENDANT PRACTICE FALLING IN LOVE

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FALLING IN LOVE

FALLING IN LOVE


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UNIT/ INDEPENDANT PRACTICE FALLING IN LOVEFALLING IN LOVE

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CONCLUSION


It was an extremely painstaking process to make the animation,

the first thing I have learnt from this experience is patience, I

found that because I had become so close to the project once

it was finished I could not tell if the message was effective or

not, I showed it to some peers that reassured my it conveyed

in a clear way. I was pleased with the final outcome on the

whole, although in future I would spend more time getting the

aspect ratio a bit better as I ended up with a letter box effect

on the sides which was not intended. I think I was successful

in creating something that could be used as a sassy advert as I

think the level of humor is at a good place within the confines

of terrestrial television.

FALLING IN LOVE

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THE BRIEF

Create a piece of photography based design that could be used

again as an advert or billboard campaign for a product, any

kind of product with romantic connotations, from condoms to

perfume, or potentially even a bed. I wanted to try my hand

at something simple that invovled photography as I have not

really done any so far but I do enjoy it. I also wanted to create

something that was really simple conceptually but at the same

time effective.

THE RESEARCH

To research this I trawled the internet for famous advertisments

like the ‘lemon’ ad for volkswagon and various examples of

found typography for inspiration. I came across an uncredited

image of typography made up of bed clothes which gave me the

idea to make a heart shape out of my own to see what it looked

like. The text is one of the things that was said to me when I did

my survey of Love association.

CONCLUSION

I always tend to feel that something isn’t good if it comes too

easy, and although I took a lot of photo’s trying to get the right

one and played about with the typography for a long time, it still

felt too easy. However the response to this piece has been great

and I do feel that it connects very well between the aesthetics

and the concept. In future I think I need to be more confident

when it comes to simplicity

UNIT/ INDEPENDANT PRACTICE LOVE IS A DOING WORD

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DEATH DO US PART

UNIT/ INDEPENDANT PRACTICE DEATH DO US PART

THE BRIEF

I wanted to create another avenue more consistant with some of

the work I have done previously so I tried designing a logo for a

potential clothing range in the vein of clothing ranges like drop

dead and atticus but still give the range the theme of Love.

THE RESEARCH

I turned to marriage vows again as this subject still interested

me, and I also looked at seal’s on products i.e quality stamps

etc I decided to apply this to the design to make it look more

uniform and mounted, you see a seal and you automatically

know there is going to be a message behind it and thats what I

wanted for this design.

THE APPROACH

In my previous design I found that metaphors are great vehicles

for carrying messages in a subtle way, so I tried to couple the

literal side of death do us part, i.e death and the romantic side

to give the message an ultimately darker image even though it is

a romantic sentiment.

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UNIT/ INDEPENDANT PRACTICE UNIT/ INDEPENDANT PRACTICEDEATH DO US PART

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I tried experimenting with making the skulls

look like they were kissing, in doing so I realised

that the shape they made when together was a

heart which was a a perfect ‘happy accident’ .

DEATH DO US PART

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UNIT/ INDEPENDANT PRACTICE DEATH DO US PARTDEATH DO US PART

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CONCLUSION

DEATH DO US PART

I added colour to emphasise the heart and the message. I’m

drawn more to the grey only design as I think it looks better

as a design in just one colour, however the coloured version

does stand out more as having a message and the text is more

obvious. I still struggle to when there are small boundaries

between what looks good and what conveys the meaning the

best. This project has proven to be one where I cannot tell

and would have to get a lot of feedback in order to make and

informed choice, something that is becoming more and more

valuable I have noticed.


LOVE SHACKTHE BRIEF

This semester we hadn’t really done much in the way of

corporate logo design, and this is something that I want to get

better at. Making smooth logo’s using illustrator in the standard

mode to create really clean lines and curve’s etc. So I decided to

design a poster for the remainder of the associated Love words.

And after seeing La Boca’s work I felt compelled to experiment

with gradients and patterning.

THE APPROACH

I didn’t really research this project as more experiment with

various objects to see how well I could represent them in

illustrator. I did however refer back to la Boca’s website for

inspiration in texture.

LOVE SHACK

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The results of what people think when they

hear the word ‘LOVE’.

lots of juxtoposition going on between

positive and negative and emotions and

objects. Lots to work with!

LOVE SHACK

LOVE SHACK

LOVE SHACK

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CONCLUSIONThis task was more for fun really, I wanted to see what I could

do with the icons, in that respect I feel I could have done better,

they suffer from a lack of uniform and they look to me to be too

literal. I found that when looking at other icon design, icons

tended to be very simple where as my icons seem a little clumsy.

That being said I felt the poster itself came out quite well and

I found a way to integrate photo imagery (the moon) without

it looking cut and paste which will be useful in the future as I

am hoping to be able to combine illustration and other types of

media, something which has eluded me so far.

UNIT/ INDEPENDANT PRACTICE LOVE SHACK

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UNIT/ INDEPENDANT PRACTICE LOVE SHACKLOVE SHACK

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BURNING LOVETHE BRIEF

For this brief I origianaly wanted to make a short video made up

of close up shots of burning photo’s of couples that had broken

up, I felt I had covered the romance side of love, the fun side of

love so I now wanted to deal with the product of love, a broken

heart.

THE APPROACH

Again this was meant as more of an experiment to apart

from looking at short films on youtube like ‘the gift’ by Carl

E. Rinsch to get the pace right. Apart from that it was pure

experimentation.

UNIT/ INDEPENDANT PRACTICE BURNING LOVE

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I put out a plea for people to send me photo’s

of them with ex-partners for me to burn, the

response was enthusiastic to say the least.

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CONCLUSION

After I filmed the footage I realised that I couldnt’ achieve the

look I was hoping for due to various technical hitches so I was

about to abandon the project and move on. However I started

to reflect over my original independant practice statement and

realised that I could manipulate the footage like I did with the

shooting stars brief. I heard a song round a friends house acouple

of days later called burning love and realised I could use the

footage I da to make a music video for the band, so I got in touch

with them and they approved the idea. I am really pleased with

how well the imagery was adaptable to the meaning of the song

and style of the band. With more time I would like to add more

Typography and shoot more varied footage.


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INDEPENDANT PRACTICEI am really happy with my Independant Practice this semester, I

have experimented in areas that I previously have avoided or been a

intimidated by, this ongoing experimentation has done wonders for

my confidence and has made me excited about future possibilities. I

have also found that the two units have crossed over much more with

this semester with some of the illustration skills I have learnt helped

inform and produce the Virgin brief and with the shooting stars brief

informing my animation and music video.

I feel the quality of my work is growing as I learn new techniques and

that my skills in research are growing. My first port of call when taking

on a brief is research where previously I would have dove straight into

making work. To me this is a huge leap as in the past this has always

felt like an alien process.

I also feel that with every passing brief my concept of how my work

relates to the audience is more and more defined. This can only be a

good thing.

METHODS & MADNESSAt the start of this semester I was instantly thrown with the first

brief being a moving image based brief, but this turned out to

be a blessing as I would go on to use the skills I learnt in that

first brief for much of my independant practice. The following

briefs I have to admit I found frustrating, the ambiguity of some

of the tasks put me in an uncomfortable mind set.

However when I look back at the unit I can see it from a more

positive perspective and now find myself a bit more able to

tolerate ambiguity and treat it as a license to be more creative.

As always the initial frustration turns into a skill. This can be

said for the pace of this semester as well. As at the begining it

was a slow start and toward the end time management became

an issue. Unfortunately I did miss certain workshops and the

LAB due to my lack of awareness of what was to come. But this

can have it’s positive merits as from now on I shall work to pre-

deadline deadlines.

I look forward to next semester and the challenges that may

come but will definitely work harder to pre-empt unexpected

time constraints.

BIBLIOGRAPHYhttp://www.behance.net/walterhansen Walter Hansen

http://www.veritykeniger.co.uk/ Verity Keniger

http://www.tragicsunshine.com/ Kevin Tong

http://www.laboca.co.uk/ La Boca

http://www.johnalvin.com/ John Alvin

http://www.rhyswootton.co.uk/ Rhys Wooton

http://chloeearly.com Chloe Early

http://artisproof.bigcartel.com/ Art is Proof Press

http://www.juxtapoz.com Juxtopoz

The Designer as Producer by Ellen Lupton PDF.

The designer as author by Michael Rock PDF.

http://designnomad.blogspot.com/ Design Nomad Blog

http://thedudedesigns.blogspot.com/ The Dude Designs Blog

Facebook

Youtube

ISSUU

Vimeo

( http://vimeo.com/33025640 ) Directed by Carl E. Rinsch, ‘The Gift’

http://drownedinsound.com/ Drowned in Sound

year 2 portfolio semester 1 methods and madness / independant practice

Documents

media favour

media wont

shooting stars634unitmethods

great task

methods madness unit

madness635early footage

footage speeds

footage blue