Graphic Design week 2 - Illustration

Week two of grappling with stationary, I came in on Monday with my first idea and pretty much jumped the gun by starting to build my "stationary" doberman pincer. The idea came from the fact that stay  is one of the basic commands used to train a dog. Then I had to pick a dog synonymous with staying, a guard dog, and the first breed I always think of is a doberman. Not only do guard dogs have to stay in place, they can also freeze people with fear. Another interesting thing about Dobermans is that to increase the rigidity of their posture, puppies under-go a binding of their ears to make them prick up permanently. And so, to clarify the message that this is a stationary dog I made him out of my stationary..all of my stationary.. I haven't had a pen, pencil or marker in 3 days!!!

Also, another problem was the fact that the cardboard frame that gives the dog its structure was creased from the beginning, and following a dive from the table courtesy of the cleaners (I know it was an accident...) he began to develop narcolepsy and would slump down on the table from time to time. He managed to behave and STAY for the vast majority of the assessment until 10 minutes before then end, when he fainted. All snags aside the piece got a great reaction, even a few photos, so I'm satisfied it had impact at least!




The prototype




Finished piece


The second idea came from the amber light on traffic lights. I used photoshop to create an unholy 11 x 11 lane gridlock populated by monochrome cars. Then I created the amber light from a formation of 23 central cars. Now the first image is clear enough but to highlight the fact these cars are not just a randomly orange I decided to include the unlighted red and green light, particularly to underline the fact that the cars are not red- stopped.

Before I reached my two solutions Mary Nagel asked us to prototype as many of our ideas as possible, so I had a sticky tape spiderweb, which came from the idea of both the stationary spider waiting in its web for its prey and also being stuck and immobilised in a spiders web. If I had continued with this idea I would have liked to have made a floor to ceiling sized web in our studio. The second idea was using stationary to make a person -stay-. So I drew two little characters and had one paperclip themselves to the other, I would have made this into an animation. The third is a variation on the above idea of using stationery to make someone stay, a ball and chain, with the chain and manacle made of a roll of tape and paperclips and the ball made to look like note paper.

NEXT WEEK - SCULPTURE!

(How am I going to cope with a fine arts subject??? I NEED BOUNDARIES!!)

Graphic Design week 1. Typography

Stationary - a state of motionlessness and in the States, writing materials. Our brief for graphics week one was to communicate the meaning of our given word using typography. Great, good, yes this seems clear enough. OH what a fool I was. First of all I misunderstood the brief and thought we were supposed to design a font, then I had to grapple with the actual state of being "stationary" as in possibly have been moving, but currently still, and also still capable of moving again. Its easy enough to show something is stopped dead or something about to move but neither of those two states are completely right.

We started off brainstorming and mind mapping, Patricia gave us an exercise using the S.C.A.M.P.E.R method to help us start thinking laterally. We drew up thumbnails to tease out our ideas. We were also asked to try and make a 3d piece to communicate our word.

To me, the idea of pens and pencils seemed like a much easier definition to convey so my two 2d pieces dealt with writing material:

Both of these pieces have problems in their communication, the first piece I feel, if it was saying a different word, I'm not sure if a viewer would read stationary, as opposed to paper clip, or metal or red! The second pieces problem is that it relies too heavily on the actual pieces of stationary stuck to it to communicate. It took me a while to understand this clearly and I think my results suffered!

 Ironically, as things often are, it was the more difficult definition that gave me the strongest piece. My 3d piece was the word stationary written in glitter and clear nail varnish on acetate. I then put the word inside a glass jar full of water and loose glitter, making a snow globe. When you shook it, the glitter swirled around the word, Stationary stayed stationary in the swirling environment! This piece got the best reaction and its the one I'm personally  most pleased with.

I really enjoyed the contextual study part of this project, Graphics is what I want for next year and I'm glad I'm getting to know famous designers to help build up my repertoire, Herb Lubalin and Bob Gill are two who I think I'll be coming back to.

So I'm a little disappointed with my mark for this week but I'll up my game for next week, the same thing happened with my first semester project, I got a bad review and it lit a fuse under me for the assessment! Fingers crossed I'll get it right next time!

FAAAASSSSHHOOON.

Front cover - apparently I suck everthing in upsidedown... good for me...

Two months later and I'm back! I have just completed my first two week elective, the formidable fashion! We were given a brief based on silhouette and shape - choose either an industrial or a natural source and distill two distinct shapes, then work with the shapes on different scales and in different materials (first paper then heavy, medium and lightweight fabric) on the mannequins. Finally based on photos taken of the mannequin work, start pushing the designs (and this became the buzzword of the week, push the designs, push them, just keep pushing them till.. till,,, till you can't even find them anymore!!) By the end we had each designed a collection of six looks based on our original shapes, with colour stories derived from our source

material.

Shape 2.



Shape 1.



 


Analytical drawing.

  

Pulling shapes

For my project I picked exotic beetles (as opposed to those fat little raisin sized ones that lurk under flowerpots over here). This was somewhat an act of god because our trusty printers fritzed out on day one and the only pictures that would print for me were my beetles, which I found in an article on the new york times website. Anyhow this worked out well for me in the end because they proved to be such a rich source, their bodies are naturally segmented and each one had a really distinct and unique shell (or carapace, as I learned!). Also, their shells come in a vivid range of jewel colours, they could easily belong on a pendant or a ring in place of a stone!



Light weight



So after drawing them I chose two shapes, as different from each other as possible  to get a good contrast, one was from the body of a Odontolabis cuvera (what I would have called a stag beetle), the other was the antlers of  an Onthophagus (Proagoderus) rangifer. After working with both shapes I found I was getting for more from my stag shape, the antlers were so limp in all weights of fabric that they seemed to be more suited to being used as a pattern. My favourite part of this project was working on the stands, I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly you can invent a garment by draping and folding your shape, and then you can turn that into something else entirely different with a few pins.

My final line up

My favourite!

Second!

  

Another important part of the project (or any project I suppose) is contextual research. My exposure to high fashion has so far probably been limited to the Sunday times style magazine (which is a quality production I'll just say, incase anyone thinks I'm disrespecting it!). So Pamela gave us a list of relevant designers to investigate. Hussein Chalayans Speed collection actually looked exactly like my beetle shells before I had even played with the shape. Both of Viktor and Rolfs 2010 collections featured huge triangular folds, massive shapes, which I seen myself in some of my work in paper on the stands. McQueens 2010 a/w collection used a contrast of rich reds and golds against neutrals and white, which I think I referenced in my final colour story - Blush, Crimson and gold. Those are just a few anyway!

Husein chalayan

McQueen

Viktor and Rolf

I'm surprised at how much I liked Fashion, but at the same time I did feel quite overwhelmed at times by the sheer broadness of it all, ever contemporary designer, every designer in history, every possible colour story, every type of fabric, every type of stitching, your target market, your season, all this needs to be taken into account with every piece you design! I know we are here to learn how to do this but it can be intimidating starting on a blank canvas! .. or a blank stand!

*More pictures to come, my camera is fritzing as per usual!*