Workshop: Screen – Stencil – Squeegee.
Posted: October 30, 2014 Filed under: Subject | Tags: halloween, illustration, pumpkin, screenprint Leave a commentThis week’s workshop was screen-printing. I was looking forward to it as I’ve done it previously in my Foundation Diploma course in college last year and found it to be a lot of fun so I was excited to revisit it again in uni.
We were asked to create a two colour/tone screen print. Being the big kid that I am and with Halloween fast approaching, I obviously had to choose a pumpkin for my design! 😉 haha.
Expressive personality.
Posted: October 30, 2014 Filed under: Subject | Tags: graphicdesign, typography Leave a commentFor this exercise we had to pair up with someone in the class that we ‘don’t know that well’. I paired up with Zarna, who I have spoken to briefly on a few separate occasions, which was nice because it wasn’t too awkward.. plus, Zarna is a really friendly, laid back and easy to talk kind of gal anyway so I was glad. 🙂
We basically had to ask questions, make conversation to find out more about the other person. What they like, what they dislike, what interests they have.. in general what kind of person they are and what their personality is like.
Once we thought we gathered enough information we had to create fonts of their full name to match their personality.
In the amount of time we had, I could only come up with three designs. I actually found this to be quite difficult. Mainly because initially I misinterpreted what was said. I kept thinking that we had to design a font to represent them, for example if they are a happy person I would’ve thought that I needed to use things like yellow smiley faces in the font, whereas they wanted us to create a more vibrant, brightly coloured, bouncy, curvy, rounded font to represent happy instead. Reading by how it’s written rather than what it contains.
I thought I’d post my attempts anyway.
- My first attempt I used a classic, times new roman-esque font in a semi circle shape to represent her ambitious personality. I used a bold, classic font in capitals to show a sense of importance and strength. I drew it in a rainbow semi-circle shape to make it look as though we’re looking up at it like a skyscraper effect to represent always aiming high. Additionally, because Zarna is one of two student reps. of our class she could be seen as someone to look up to and someone to aspire to.
- My second attempt I used a dotted lettering effect with black pen first and then blues, greens and a hint of purple in a flowing, whimsical motion in a dream like effect as she mentioned she is a bit of a ‘dreamer’. I think this was my best out of the three that matched the criteria. I really liked the way it has turned out.
- My third and final attempt the word I wanted to symbolise was ‘relatable’. I tried making all the letters of Zarna’s name all relate in some way. For example, you can see I tried to incorporate the ‘Z’ into the ‘A’ and also a sidewards ‘n’ and ‘A’ combined to create the letter R. I mixed and matched various letters together to create new letters. I really like the outcome and idea behind it, although I don’t think it’s as visually appealing as the other two.
We then had a review of everyone’s work and discussed what we liked, what made them work/not work. There were a few pieces that I really liked and caught my attention. I liked their use of colour and how only parts of the letters are revealed.
#CardiffTypeHunt #RevealConceal
Posted: October 27, 2014 Filed under: Subject | Tags: graphicdesign, typography Leave a commentWe got involved in Cardiff’s Type Hunt today. We were asked to go around Cardiff, in either pairs or groups of three, to take photographs of various types that we found interesting then to upload them onto Instagram with the hashtags #CardiffTypeHunt and #RevealConceal.
These were some of my favourites that I captured.
Typography Introduction.
Posted: October 23, 2014 Filed under: Subject | Tags: graphicdesign, sketches, typography 1 Comment
So during this lecture Olwen talked about Typography. She went through different typefaces and various typographic terminology.
She then continued onto the different movements of typography, how it progressed and changed throughout the years.
- Art Nouveau.
- Arts and Crafts
- Futurist
- Dadaism
- De Stijl
We were then set an exercise. We had to choose four letters of our choice:
- one uppercase serif
- one lowercase serif
- one uppercase sans serif
- one lowercase sans serif
Then we divided A3 sheets of paper into six equal squares. Within each square we had to create patterns, shapes, interesting compositions with the letters of our choice. 
Strengths & Weaknesses.
Posted: October 23, 2014 Filed under: Constellation | Tags: essay, illustration, strengths and weaknesses, writing Leave a commentDuring our first study skills group we were asked to write what we think our academic strengths and weaknesses are. Simple question. But I honestly struggled to answer it at the top of my head.
I can easily think of my strengths and weaknesses personality-wise. I’m a Cancer, which means I’m extremely caring. I love to nurture and look after things (even though my parents only allow me to have goldfish as a pet as apposed to a most wished for pomsky puppy 😦 with that being said, my goldfish are undoubtedly the most spoilt fish in Merthyr Tydfil). Cancers’ are known to be shrewd business people who are very good with money. I put on a tough exterior, like my zodiac sign the Crab, I hide behind a hard outer shell but in reality I am a complete softy and hopeless romantic. However on a bad day, I can be moody, stubborn, I can take criticisms to heart, plus I have a fear of rejection or failing and I don’t react well when either one occurs.
In academic terms, my strength is having a creative flair that is dynamic and fearless. I am thoroughly enjoying my time at Cardiff Metropolitan studying Graphic Communication. I feel my skills are really being put to the test, continuously evolving throughout each activity and project. I’ve had fun experimenting and really pushing myself to develop as an artist/designer. I’ve learnt so much in a short space of time and I feel I’m headed in the right direction.
Another strength is my determination to excel and to keep on top of things. This strength I developed recently. I have definitely tried much harder at university in comparison to college. I think it’s partly due to the fact that I know there’s no one here to nag me, make me turn up to lectures, make me complete my work on time etc., other than myself. In college, they were like nagging parents and ‘spoon fed’ us a lot to be honest. I’ve always been pretty organised but since starting this course I’ve had to really up my game attempting to juggle both my part time jobs, university work and social time, making sure I know how to prioritise them as well as putting in a 100%. Hopefully this strength will continue for this year and beyond.
Onto my weaknesses, this one was just a no brainer for me, I do not cope well with public speaking. It is definitely something I’ve always loathed in school. I am naturally quite a shy and introverted person. I do agree with Ashley when she stated “do you think it is a weakness or just a fear?”. I know I can physically speak in public. It’s just the utter fear building up towards it that is most terrifying for me. It’s probably the only time I will show self doubt and have pessimistic thoughts about ‘messing up’. It is definitely something I hope to practice and improve upon. At first, my stomach was turning looking at my timetable as my course requires us to take part in group reviews and critiques quite regularly each term, but now, as I’ve grown more comfortable with my class I’m not as anxious about it. We’ve had a few already and I do feel like my confidence has grown. My aim is to take part in them more and to practice, practice, practice.
Another weakness is my essay writing skills. As an art student I’ve always been more of a visual person. Plus it’s something I’ve never really enjoyed doing. I feel that whenever I write, my vocabulary is quite basic and not as strong compared to everyone else’s. I enjoy reading light-hearted novels now and again but I want to focus on reading more literature to enhance my vocabulary. I also aim access the library website to look into various ways to improve my critical reading, it promises to help break down text into manageable chunks as well as various other techniques and useful tips. I think those are my main strengths and weaknesses. I found this lecture quite useful as it makes you realise where you’re going right and where you’re going wrong, but most importantly, how you’re going to correct or improve upon whatever is going wrong.
What is Type.
Posted: October 20, 2014 Filed under: Subject | Tags: graphicdesign, illustration, sketches, typography Leave a commentToday we were given the task of researching typographic terms. We had to find examples of them and document them.
Image Project: Creating. (3/3)
Posted: October 15, 2014 Filed under: Subject | Tags: art, collage, graphicdesign, illustration, poster, sketches Leave a commentFor my poster design I have decided to use three main scenes: the famous scene from the movie Titanic (to represent wealth in love and relationships), the opening shot from TV show Friends (to represent wealth in friendship) and lastly a screenshot of Carol Vorderman on gameshow Countdown (to represent wealth in knowledge). I’m so excited to try this out. I’m actually giggling to myself thinking about the final outcome.
Firstly I sketched rough drawings of the scenes on A4 sketchpad using photos I found on google from my laptop.
I left out the heads as I will be collaging over them later on.
I wanted my drawings to have tone so that there would be more depth to the poster rather than just a flat, simple, outline drawing. If you look closely at the notes you can see the images are different shades of light and dark tones by shading effects such as dotting, lines and cross hatching so I decided to incorporate this into my drawings.
I’m pleased with how my drawings look. At a glance, even without the heads, you know exactly what the image scenario is meant to represent.
Next I used PhotoShop to cut out images of the Queen’s head, as well as other various faces from pound notes, and pasted them on top of my drawings.
I was actually crying laughing while doing this. I absolutely love the way they have all turned out. I highly debated whether to put colour into my illustrations to match the faces but I think leaving them black and white creates a nice contrast between the two.
Finally, after playing around with the various different compositions, when I was happy with how they were placed; I merged my three images together onto A3 to finish off my final design.
The main message I wanted to convey with my poster is that money is primarily the focus initially when you think of the word ‘wealth’, which is why I chose to have the faces in bright vibrant colours to capture the viewers’ attention first. They will automatically think “oh, it’s something to do with money” but as you look deeper.. there’s a different meaning to it.
Like I said previously, there’s all different types and variations of what wealth means to different people. I’ve just chosen love, friendship and knowledge as examples for my poster. I want my poster to trigger thoughts so that wealth doesn’t have to be viewed as materialistic possessions and money.
Workshop: Photography.
Posted: October 15, 2014 Filed under: Subject Leave a comment
For this week’s workshop we had Mal to talk to us about Photography. Similar to last week we got to play around with cameras. Difference is it was more in depth and taught us about colour correcting with the different functions such as ISO, aperture and shutter settings. We learnt how to cancel out shadows in the studio when taking photographs. We learnt how to use many of the equipment and lighting in various rooms. He also showed us how to scan, edit and colour correct images on PhotoShop and LightRoom.
Image Project: Brainstorming. (2/3)
Posted: October 15, 2014 Filed under: Subject | Tags: brainstorm, graphicdesign, illustration, sketches Leave a comment
I struggled extremely hard to come up with an idea for my poster. Like ridiculously. I came up with so many different words to do with wealth but couldn’t pin-point anything in particular that I wanted to use within my poster.
I liked the idea of ‘growth’. The fact that wealth is something you grow. Whether it be in money, happiness, knowledge, power etc.
I started sketching a few more poster ideas. I used images of plants, growth rings in trees, ladders, magnifying glasses.. objects that makes things ‘grow’.
But I honestly still wasn’t convinced they were good designs. They still seemed boring!
I then looked into the idea of origami – possibly folding a 20 pound note into shapes.
Again, I wasn’t happy. It didn’t blow me away and it wasn’t something that people would look at and remember.
After staring at my 20 pound note for minutes and the Queen’s face staring straight back at me.. a idea finally popped into my head.
I want to use the faces on the notes as part of a story/scenario I’ll create. I want to use well known scenes/scenarios from movies, tv shows etc to convey a meaning of what wealth is. Eventhough collaging faces onto someone else’s body has been done countless number of times throughout the years.. it’s still, in my opinion, a humorous and effective way of making people laugh as well as helping images stick in their minds. Therefore, although I originally wanted to steer clear of the obvious, I’m attempting to use it to my advantage and create a poster that represents wealth in a predictable – but not really kind of way. 😉
Post-Perspective.
Posted: October 9, 2014 Filed under: Constellation | Tags: perspective Leave a commentThe First Keynote lecture was from Dr. Jon Clarkson. He talked to us about post-perspective. The first example he used was a birds-eye view of New York City from google maps from 2008.
From this image he could explain how we instantly know what this image is and how to read it. However if this was shown to people centuries before they may not have seen it in the same way. We are able to differentiate the icons on google maps for example as being signs as apposed to it being actual giant knives and forks in the middle of New York. It’s as if our brains have been trained to think this way now through the ‘notion of perspective’.
We then moved onto the history of perspective. It all started in the 15th century with work from Albrecht Dürer.
In this image we see that the male and female are separated by a gridded window. In my opinion the gridded window is used to represent perspective. The male is looking through a device while the female lays in a seductive pose. We can perceive this in different ways. We could say the male has more power in the image the way he is in control and objectify the female. But we could also argue that possibly the female has the power here, judging by her more laid-back, free body language, whereas the male seems trapped.
Dr. John Clarkson continued to talk about:
- the multiplication of views and viewpoints
- adopting a non-human viewpoint.
- doubling and repetition.
- and lastly historical perspective.
All of which were very interesting in their own way. The one that interested me most was the anamorphosis side of perspective. It is basically a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or to occupy a specific vantage point in order to reconstitute the image.
(Felice Varini)
I like how clever and well calculated it can be when executed in the correct way. I’ve always been into ‘illusions’ and things that ‘trick the eye’. I just find it to be a fun way of engaging people and triggering them to think. It makes them feel like they’ve achieved something when they figure out how to reconstruct the image.
I feel perception plays a massive part in the world of art. A lot of the time, paintings, photographs, artwork etc. don’t really have a specific meaning. Even if it did to the artist, the viewers may perceive it in a totally different way. They may have their own interpretation to what it means to them personally. I think it depends on their own inner feelings, emotions, experiences and many other different factors. The fact that we see things in different ways with different perspectives is great. It creates opinions, theories and concepts.
Rebecca Jim 