Bond & Coyne Associates

On the 10th December Martin from the graphic design company Bond & Coyne gave a talk on their work with War on Want and briefly about other work they do with other clients. Martin showed us a variety of their printed work. I particularly liked the packaging work they did for one of their clients: Sesame. Most of their packaging consisted of embossed material.

After Martin gave us a talk about his work he gave us an individual tutorial about our own ideas for the War on Want adshell poster and 2nd dimension. He gave me several ideas on how to improve my 2nd dimension.

Democracy

This was a one day project to work as a team to design a poster that interprets Democracy.

We started the brief off by brainstorming the meaning and ideas on Democracy. This lead us to several ideas for our poster. I found that working as a team produced a wider variety of ideas and therefore gave us many different routes to go down for the final outcome. We all had our individual say towards the design of the poster and explored each others ideas. We researched into the lifestyle of ants, as they are known to have their own democracy rules within their organized colonies. We thought this would be a fun and original approach to the thought of democracy!

Our poster showed the map of the world as a puzzle - with missing pieces. The missing pieces were the countries without democracy for example, China, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Cuba. The ants are carrying these missing puzzle pieces towards the world. The meaning of our poster was to show that 'Many hands make light work.' In other words, if we all work together we can create a fair democracy. This poster is targeted towards countries neglected from democracy; to encourage them to fight for their rights.

Visual Thinking

On Tuesday 1st December we were introduced to the new unit: Visual Thinking. The first assignment for this unit is the War on Want brief.

War on Want want us to create a transport campaign encouraging people to make a financial donation to and/or become an active supporter of War on Want.

To begin this project i am going to carry out a variety of primary and secondary research. Such as, researching into the background of War on Want, analysis of the target audience and research into contemporary advertising towards a younger generation.

Visual Equations

My primary idea for this project was to look at the use of formal language and change/alter/add to the wording/phrase with the use of informal language. I came up with several ideas such as:

I found that this one worked the best! This is because I have added informal wording to a very formal title; instead of actually changing the title/phrase.

Therefore, I'm going to progress from this idea and start a theme of formal logos with an informal twist.

Study Skills

On Wednesday 11/11/09 I attended an extra study skills session. The session consisted of exercises and discussions about how to write a formal essay. I found it useful as it exercised my academic knowledge.

London!

On Thursday 12/11/09 the whole of Visual Communication 1st years travelled up to London to hear the amazing Paula Scher talk. We arrived in London at 12:30 and the talk didn't start until 7pm. So we had all day to travel around London to visit several exhibitions.

We took the tube to Algate East; where we visited the Whitechapel Gallery. We then went on to Shoreditch to visit The Old Truman Gallery. These Galleries had some inspirational work. Such as, 'Phone Booth' by Paul Auster. I enjoyed viewing his work as it related to my Visual Equation project.

During this outing in London we also had a browse in several shops in Covent Garden, such as Muji, Magma Books and London Graphic Centre. These shops had amazing art and craft goodies...at an extremely costly price!!

After a long day of traveling around London it finally came to Paula Scher's talk, situated in Logan Hall, Institute of Education, Bedford Way. Funnily enough, before the talk started a bumped into Paula Scher in the ladies! We had a very interesting conversation about how sh*t the hand-dryers are!

Her talk was very inspirational; she spoke about her childhood and what it was like growing up; where she has worked during her design career; what she has worked on etc. She clearly wanted to get the message across that: you can achieve whatever you put your heart to! She spoke in depth about how she was seen as an Illustrator, so therefore she wanted to do work in graphic design to broaden her skills. And how people have told her she is a fine artist and could only work in that area, therefore she wanted to prove them wrong and work on briefs to create logos and album covers.

She took a great interest in typography and illustrated mapping.

War on Want

On Tuesday 10/11/09 we had a talk from the charity War On Want. They came to the University and presented their campaign they want us to work on for our next brief. (This being our first live brief! Very exciting!) The explanation of the aim of their campaign was very touching and inspirational. They told us, in detail, how the workers struggle to survive on extremely low pay in poor working conditions.

Visual Equations

After research on several artists and designers i took a liking to Katy Dawkins work. She uses informal languages in places you would expect to see the use of very formal language. Clearly without authority she creates plaques in public places. The offensive message makes the piece visually exciting.

Interference Plaque - Katy Dawkins

D'etournement

For the Seminar Task 3B we had to take the idea of D'etournement to create a visual responce.

D'etournement is the re-use of present and past cultural creation - Comics/movies are manipulated and placed in new contexts.

Paris. May, 1968: the Situationalist International successfully fed the revolutionary spirit by subverting popular comics in posters and flyers.

Dada Poem

To make a Dadaist poem :

Take a newspaper.
Take a pair of scissors.
Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.Cut out the article.
Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.
Shake it gently.
Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.
Copy conscientiously.
The poem will be like you.

And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar.
– Tristan Tzara, 1920

This is my Dada Poem and Visual Responce:

Visual Equations

For this project we are expected to produce a series of 6 collarged images that each explore the theme of opposites.
So...where to start?
...Images/photographs that don't usually go together; coloured typography that has an opposite meaning to the word/phrase; or a mixture of imagry and typography. By doing this it will control the viewers reading of the image.

Promo Print

During the last session of Promo Print we learnt how to use Quark Xpress and sketched up an accurate measured grid in preparation for the booklet. We used Quark Xpress to create our grid on the computer; this software will enable us to design our booklet for print. We learnt how to draw up grids; experiment with the layout of text; and how to add pages to the layout palette.

This is one of my illustrations im going to include in my booklet.

Glyph's

For this project we had to create an icon from the drawings and photographs of Poole, and create a typographic glyph.
I created an icon of a coffee cup, which would represent a cafe. I choose to use this icon because it is a simple image that is well familiarized. Therefore, this icon would be an obvious suggestion to the location of a cafe.

I re-drew the typographic structure of 'Morton's' jewellery shop to create my typographic glyph. During this project i enjoyed learning how to use Illustrator and by creating icons and glyph's it gave me a lot of practise with the software.
For this project i researchd other artist work, such as:

Bopano - the work of artists form around the world to create fake roadsigns

An example of easy to read signs

Oded Ezer has created some facinating glyph's:

Interesting Illustrations!

Looking for an image/illustration to analysis for my visual culture essay...

Brand Nu - The Coolhunter Treelife

Eva Tatcheva - Illustration for the announcement of the top 15 Clean Tech Companies competition in Canada, Canadian Business Magazine

Phil Weeler - 'I Love New York' campaign for the New York state tourist board

Promo Print Work: Profile of Yourself as a Visual Communicator

My name is Mary-Anne Trant and I am currently in the first year studying Visual Communication at The Arts College at Bournemouth University. By being a visual communicator my primary aim is to convey messages graphically or visually. This can be achieved by having a variety of skilled techniques, as well as a visual sence for creativity. I enjoy being able to solve problems by creating a visual response.

Letter Press

On the 21st of October i learnt a new typography technique - Letter Press.

We could choose from a variety of wooden letter blocks - capital; lower case; condensed; expanded and several ligature's. We had an assortment of colored oil inks to roll onto our wooden blocks and then compress them on the letterpress machine, so that the ink printed onto paper. The paper was slightly damp, which gave the text an embossed effect. Some of the wooden letters had slightly chipped rough surfaces, which gave a really appealing sketchy feel.

I then explored my new learnt technique by using a variety of different colored papers; applying the text to fabric textured backgrounds; using tracing paper to overlay onto more text etc.

This is some of the work by the letter press designer Alan Kitching

Here is one of my outcomes of Letterpress - Exloring the idea of Expand. The words expanding around the centre.

Intro to Grids and Layouts

We had to work as past of a team to compose the layout for a 6 page magazine. I enjoyed working in a group as we got to share and explore each others ideas. We all individually did our own layouts and then merged them together to create a 6 page layout; which had a constant flow and variety of image/text shape. This exercise also gave us a taste of a real life timescale as we had to race against the clock!

Editorial Illustration

These are some newspaper illustrations i came across during my research for this project.

Type and Tape Task

Devise and design a typeface using tape. Create a name and characteristics of the typeface.

Our typeface, which we named 'Diversion', was built up from lengths of tape crossing through a hallway, with the text in the centre of the cross. This literally caused a diversion to get through!

However, we did not get to finish our creation as we got told of for blocking the fire exit! Therefore, we finished our typeface with the name 'Dive'. This also worked well with the position of the type; as you had to physically dive under to get past!