Searching for an agent..........

One of the points of this project is to find someone you want to impress and make a piece of packaging that will impress them. I’ve been cooped up in the art world for too long and am not really aware of any agencies out there, so I’m off to google to see what I can do.

Workshop 002 – Logos

Still in the topic of branding ourselves, the focus of this workshop was to create a logo using our initials.

Had a go at drawing a few ideas out first but I always find I get further by actually playing with the physical letters and moving the shapes around until I find something to work with.

At first I thought ‘G and M? What a rubbish set of initials’ until I discovered circles. I really fell for the idea of simplifying the letter shapes, turning them both into circles with a stick to differentiate between the G and the M. Circles have connotations wholeness, protectiveness and honesty, which I think is perfect for representing this company and everything that they stand for.

Playing about with so many different ways of linking the G and the M, I decided I wanted the G to be thicker than the M, and for them to be the same size.

Inspiration #2

Hannah Höch

Dada-Ernst, Vera and Arturo Schwarz Collection, Milan

Untitled, Morton G. Family Collection

Hannah was one of a group of pioneers of Photomontage during the rise of the Dada movement (favourite movement alert, it encourages mess and embraces and nonsense). A lot of her work has the subject of beauty and materialism, but every piece is intricately put together to create an interesting piece that lets you see something new every time you look at it.

We touched upon the Dada movement last semester in a couple of our modules and shame on me for not researching it properly, but it seemed like the perfect design movement; cutting and sticking! My understanding of the movement, (or at least the bit where designers used collage as a medium) was using raw material, papers, photographs, anything on a particular subject (usually political) and would cut them up, mix them up any which way and would turn them into a piece that reflects their thoughts on that subject. To you and me it's a collage, but a clever one.

Linking to my previous Inspiration post, it's interesting to see where the work that Martin O'Neill does was born.

(It's a lot of fun)

Curated...by Narratives conference

I spent my Saturday this week at uni watching four very interesting people from the big wide world of design.
I always enjoy going to these sorts of events because there is just something about a person stood before you giving you a guided tour along their personal path, and through the turns they made before they became who they are today.

Morag Mysercough was first to take to the stage and opened with the words: "I'm going to spend the next hour telling you stories about my life" and I was captivated already. From a young age she was always exposed to a creative world and pooled every aspect of it together into her own work. Started off with Graphic Design but found it too 'limiting', Morag went onto to find her niche in using Graphic Design in the architectural sense. This began when she did some work purely for herself and displayed pieces in a makeshift exhibition called 'My House'. Since, she has formed 'Supergroup' based in London and has worked individually on projects varying from creating exhibitions at the Design Museum and more recently designing the interiors of schools and hospitals (slight touch of being star struck, she designed the new Kirk Balk, I know that school!) with a love of bright colours and flare for giving every piece a back story (note: getting children to create patterns to then merge them and use one super pattern).

Jack Schulze came up next with his entertaining presentation of his technical and electrical background. Him and his team 'Berg' have worked on so many ingenious projects, the world's favourite being 'Little Printer', and spoke honestly about the way him and his team would approach a project, learn about the subject by researching it as far as flying out to China to watch how it's made! I found his talk particularly reassuring because he spoke so honestly about long nights surviving only on Relentless (because it's cheaper than Red Bull) and made us all feel better about our future paths. Such a down to Earth designer in one of the fastest moving areas of 'production design' or, 'design for internet things', as he so quaintly put.

Jonny Kelly had the difficult job of keeping us entertained whilst we were digesting. He works for Nexus as a director of animations and has made some beautiful pieces for some really big name companies, (Adobe, Chipotle, Google/Youtube). He fed us with some videos that he himself found inspirational which was very interesting to see how his mind actually works, and picks up ideas. He mostly works with stop animation and the work within them varies across disciplines and creates a wonderfully handmade and unique feel to it.

After a long wait, Erik Kramer finally arrived (through our flash-blizzard) from Amsterdam to present to us his hilarious approach to producing quality Graphic Design. From the anti-advertising of possibly the worst hotel in Amsterdam to producing endless books of found photographs (of a woman through her life, a woman always in water and a  woman shooting her own photos) all telling an open story of their lives that leave so many possibilities that we become the storyteller. He left us all in a cheery mood after watching him flick through pictures of his bunny with objects on his head. A brilliant end to a fantastic day. Left feeling so inspired and dreaming of a day when I might be able to present to fresh-faced designers my story!

Inspiration #1

Martin O'Neill 

This man presented the first Curated...by lecture that I'd ever seen, and since that day, his work and style of working has stuck firmly in my mind. I found his collages really interesting, especially the nature of collecting the raw materials from various places: a dump, charity shops, flea markets, the closet... 

  

The Guardian - How to Write Poetry 

The Folio Society

Since seeing his work and hearing him speak so passionately about something as mundane as finding papers I have been transfixed with the idea of illustrating this way. I find there is so much energy and personality bursting out of every piece. I found him so inspiring, with so many stories tell and adventures to document, and this is what I like about a piece of illustration, if it can tell a good story. I'm gonna coin the term 'sentimental design'. 

Osum Oil - Taxi - Canada

The Folio Society

I noticed that a few of his commissioned pieces involved a character with collage bursting out, as if their mind had exploded right onto the page in front of him. 

My favourite thing about this man was his method of working. Obviously, to create such beautifully detailed collages you need a lot of raw materials. Lots of books, magazines, oodles and oodles of found papers and things. To accommodate this, he has a set of drawers which are just as detailed and intricately placed as his work. I love the idea of cutting up every interesting (or not!) image and tidying it away for a later date when it will be perfectly placed in another one of his masterpieces. 

Martin's desk tidy

It's amazing what you can do with a piece of paper (or several!)

Guided by Invoices

Workshop 001

Paper folding. 

I love workshops like this. Doing something completely new and unexpected, enjoying it and learning. Do you ever just look around and think you're just so glad to be somewhere?

Yeah, anyway, we were getting acquainted with the idea of gently folding paper to create some beautiful creases and shapes (see number 1, aka my favourite). Started off with some simple squiggly lines and circles (1-5, 4 is missing) and progressed onto a snail shape with a ridge in the middle, an unexplained shape (7) that for the purposes of this I will call a dolphin and my personal favourite, the snake (9).

It's an interesting new way to look at folding. That it isn't just a straight forward horizontal crease. You can carefully plan (or blindly cut and fold until you get it right - the more interesting option!) an interesting and beautiful shape. You could actually say something with the form of your paper. Origami a.k.a. magic?

That brings me onto the next task, everyone was given a different net and we had to use what we had learnt to make that piece of packaging reflect a word. I had a simple tuck-close box, and I chose to make it look 'heavy'. I severely underestimated the creases I was making and just ended up giving it this rather nice edge, which I suppose actually made the corners look sharp (which was another word). It didn't go how I wanted it to, I then realised: how could I ever think it was?

and I also learnt that this particular kind of crease makes a box super strong, couldn't crush it! (a last resort to make the box look heavy......)

And to finish off, (playing was encouraged,) as well as turning famous logos into something interesting. First idea was to combine the curved score down the centre with an arrow that stands up. I probably could have designed this better, but getting it right first time is B-O-R-I-N-G.

Next one was a bit more complicated. Tried and tried to make it work but couldn't figure out how. I over heard Glyn suggesting someone else work backward, so I did. The idea was for the M to be raised higher than the child in the middle, to signify parents looking over children. Sticky tape was my saviour, I might try this one again someday. 

In this workshop, Jen showed us a book she had, I forget the name, with examples of some actual art made this way. Fascinated by it, I took to google to find out more! ( later...)

Another wise way to tackle this project would be to have a look at existing packaging that I particularly enjoy and find out exactly what it is that makes it so appealing. I have a thing for packaging you see, I distinctly remember being really excited when Tesco ditched their god awful barcode style ‘value’ range and picked up a lovely new user friendly style using symbols to represent each product. (couldn't resist a photo!)

(http://www.packagingnews.co.uk/news/tesco-to-drop-stripes/)

I find that I’m particularly attracted to what I’d call ‘friendly’ packaging, if it’s playful, has a happy tone of colours, has a handmade feel to it, or engages the consumer (especially in a humorous way). Searching for the perfect packaging on the internet proved harder than I expected. I found that I can appreciate a piece for being attractive or informative, or just nice, but I feel that for something to be extra special it has to demonstrate another level of creativity in its design. 

One of my other favourite ranges is the Innocent one. Their packaging is very playful and very friendly. With little facts and figures displayed beautifully for children and parents alike to understand and enjoy. A characteristic I particularly like is personifying the product and the ingredients, giving the fruit faces and a back story. There are the obvious aesthetics, the packaging is sympathetic to the brand with clean designs, zero use of capital letters and the sheer amount of facts and information available on each carton. Just all round lovely. 

Next I hit up the 'packaging' tag on tumblr. It's where I usually find hidden gems of inspiration, so don't fail me now. I realise the images I find may not be cited properly or they might be fellow students' work, so I'm sorry internet if I'm doing it wrong, but I'll hook you up to the owner if and when I can. 

(Tumblr suggested the 'branding' tag instead so I had a peep and found disturbing pictures of people actually branding themselves, you know, carving shapes into themselves. I've had it internet, I'm going to sleep.)

Little Fury

Michal Marko

Vibeke Illevold

Not going to analyse these out loud, it's late, but just something to think about. 

Who am I? (Side B)

What better way to throw yourself into a project than to make a spider diagram and doodle? One evening I sat with my flatmate and her boyfriend and asked out loud "what am I good at?" their answers were a little helpful, one being 'organised' which could be something to consider when I brand myself! 

I bit the bullet and wrote about what I think I am, and what I like. In an ideal world I would spend all day making memories on paper. I love nothing more than to scrapbook, make albums, follow Keri Smith's rules in How to be an Explorer of the World. I'm very sentimental and I like it when things can tell a story.

An interesting thing to look at (I thought) was to think about art projects I did at school that involved myself and my life and who I am.

The last project I did was focussing on Kate Nash's 'My Best Friend is You' album cover. I photographed myself with my favourite things, and then edited them with a high contrast and with a colour filter on top. From here I created several collages of these images alongside images of other objects that I love and ended up with some playfully sentimental pieces.

They don't really show me as a designer, but it's a start...

Who Am I? (Side A)

Nobody likes writing about themselves in a 'self - promoting' way. It's easier to say "I'm so bad at ...." than "well I'm actually really good at ...... and this is what I'm known for" because there is that shadow of a doubt in your mind that although you think you're good at something, everyone else might think you're so much better at something else. Perhaps something you don't like doing as much. It seems we all know ourselves far too well, in too much excruciating detail to be able to step back and see what we're really like as individuals. Just like we all spend all of our time in a cloud of our own 'house smell' and can never understand when someone else recognises it as you.

As budding graphic designers, myself and everyone else alike need to conquer that exact fear of stepping back, and looking at the bigger pictgure and seeing who we are. Otherwise, where will we end up, eh. I'm glad we're doing a module like this, I hope in three weeks time I'm a little less bad at saying what I can do well, rather than giving you a list as long as my arm of things that I can't.

Anyway, I had images and ideas when Lee was talking about this module and the nature of task one, but it seems they missed the paper in front of me when they fell out of my head. I've done some thinking into who I am, what I do, what I like, and then my wall turned into collaging with colours and patterns from the latest Lush Times (my favourite paper to destroy).

Perhaps I should ask somebody else what they'd pin on me and have done with it.

Testing

I have work to publish, promise
(excuses excuses)