The design of dissent...

Taking Mac's advice from the lecture on Tuesday I ordered the book "The design of dissent" by Milton Glaser & Mirko Ilic. The book looks at the area of socially and politically driven graphics, "it thrives on shock, wit and instant recognition." Admittedly when I first opened the book I wasn't too sure but spending the time to look through it there are some really clever campaigns in there, some may push the limits of what may be considered acceptable visually but show how something very simple can make a very interesting, hard hitting campaign. 

Seen but not heard....

My continuing work on the 'silence' brief and my initial idea of looking at the silent thoughts in people's heads has led me to look at people's fears that are silent, fears that people have that we are not aware of...this can be linked to our subconscious; the part of our mind that we are not really aware of but can influence our 'silent fears.'  Some of my initial visualizations of silence were around the idea of shadows and how they can represent something about you that others are not aware of and in this context can represent our thoughts or fears. 

I took a trip home for the weekend and in my quest to be more experimental with my work and not just go straight to the computer I decided to experiment with taking my own photographs and incorporate text within them. Typography is an area of great interest to me and so is something I definitely want to incorporate into this project. Looking at how to represent our silent fears got me thinking about the context in which these fears could be represented, places that we think of as 'scary.' I live out in the country and close by is an old derelict farm that has been abandoned for years. I thought this would be a great place to photograph to help visualize the idea of fears....so my dad and I went to the house armed with torches, candles and my camera - like I expected in the pitch black it was a very scary place! 

Being in there and seeing how everything had been left got me thinking about how this had once been somebodies home and it would be full of old, silent memories personal to those who had once lived there.....there was an eery silence about it. Being such an old place the silence in there itself created a sense of fear for me as the rooms were dark and any slight noise sent your imagination into overdrive, being in an empty dark space did give me ideas of how to visualize fears and also realise what some of the fears could be. I did manage to capture some quite good shots with some great shadows that will work well to represent 'fear.'

Below are some of the photographs I took in there...

The next set of photographs show the contrast of the same place from night to day...

I was hoping by going in the day as well I would be able to capture some of the shadows projected into the empty space as I had been looking at similar images in my initial research....disappointingly the light cast into the rooms was not as good as I thought it would have been so the daytime photographs do not fully show what I wanted them to but I do think certain images when combined with type can be used to portray the idea of silent memories lost within the empty rooms. I still feel a little lost with where I am going with this project but I do feel I am being more experimental.... 

Special Collections Library...

At my tutorial on Friday Clinton mentioned the exhibition currently on at the special collections library, and also the resources that are available to us that we should take advantage of while we are still at university....so yesterday Kathryn and I took a trip to the special collections library to look at the original United Colors of Benetton posters as we are both looking at these for our dissertation. We found two of the original promotional magazines for the fall/winter collection 1992; these were not what we were looking for as they did not show the 'controversial' campaigns but they were still interesting to look at. After asking the librarian we found that there were some of the original posters that we could look at, however when she brought them out we discovered....they were billboard size!! this posed a problem as they were far too big to set out and photograph so we had to give it up as a bad job. There are some great resources available to us at our university and the special collections library is definitely somewhere I will visit again.

It wasn't a totally wasted trip as we did get chance to look at the 'Stilled Lives' exhibition featuring work from some of our tutors...Sue, Clinton and Hitch have all got work featured in the limited edition book.

"Stilled Lives is a new collaborative work bringing together artists, designers, poets and writers from across MMU. Edited by Carson & Miller this limited edition volume showcases a striking and thoughtful range of responses to the books held in MMU Special Collections, provoking further explorations of narrative, memory and collections."

Susan Platt 'Strange Library'

 

Clinton Cahill 'Across the Garden Wall (The Last Lads)

Jonathan Hitchen '709.05 KOM'

Johnny Hardstaff...."graphics is a sensation, a quality."

Johnny Hardstaff was our first visiting lecturer of the year...I was not aware of his work before hand but looking at work he has produced there are pieces I recognise such as the MTV 'Cherry Girl' and the Orange adverts.

Hardstaff is a director and designer. Represented by Ridley Scott Associates (London) and Little Minx (Los Angeles), he has directed and designed innovative moving image work across a broad spectrum of both commercial and non-commercial strands of the visual arts. Mass media clients include Sony, Radiohead, Orange, Toshiba, Sony PlayStation and the BBC amongst others.

"Amongst his most notable works to date remain 'History of Gaming' and 'Future of Gaming' (two politically provocative short films designed to first engender then test corporate patronage, now inducted into the National Film Archive), the Radiohead film 'Like Spinning Plates' (long format two track experimental music video), and increasingly a contemporary raft of innovative design based commercials (Sony / Toshiba / Asics / LG / MTV etc)."

The talk from Johnny was inspiring for us to generate our own work in any media that we are comfortable with; Johnny graduated with no software skills and made his first piece of motion graphics 'History of Gaming' using Photoshop....this just goes to show that you can produce any style of work using whatever skills you have, you just have to work hard at it! I really loved Johnny's sketchbooks, each page was crammed full with notes and sketches showing his thoughts and ideas....I like the fact that the pages were full which is something I always try to achieve but not as good as Johnny's! He talked to us about his experiences in industry working in the corporate sector and his battle between producing visually appealing work and the meaning of the work....there is a big responsibility when you put work out there, you have to think about what is does to the people who view it, what is it intended to do? what does it do? It was also refreshing to hear that some elements within his work were there purely because they "looked good!" 

Digital work is not something that usually appeals to me the fact that i recognized some of his work means it must be something that catches my eye, although I did not understand the meaning behind all the work Johnny produces he is a very talented designer and it is always great to hear from people within the industry.

MTV Cherry Girl

Orange

Sony Lens

Rollerball...

Monday was the first screening for Kino 4, showing 'Rollerball' a 1975 film, chosen and introduced by Mr Johnny Hardstaff. I have to admit I wasn't too keen on going to the film club as films aren't usually an area I take a great deal of interest in, but I did actually enjoy watching the film. It was quite a violent film at times,  but as Johnny explained it was a subversive film about manipulation in a corporate world, how the media can be used as a weapon and the elevation of sports stars to "gods."  The next film is being screened on Tuesday night...

ilikeblue.co.uk

This is a design website I have looked at a few times for inspiration, its a website for freelance graphic designer & art director Nic Shuttleworth. I recently found some great self promotional material on there that I really liked, take a look....

I will be looking at getting business cards printed soon and think these are quite simple but very clever and aesthetically great as ideas for self promotion.

First tutorial of the year...

I had my first tutorial/seminar on Friday with Clinton and we had to show our initial response to the new brief. There are 5 of us in the group and I always find it interesting to hear other people's interpretation of the briefs and it always amazes me how everyone has different ideas. I found the tutorial really helpful to discuss my ideas and get other people's views and opinions. I went to the seminar with quite a wide range of visuals that I felt depicted 'silence' and after discussing them with the group I now feel I have narrowed my ideas down. Over the next two weeks leading up to my tutorial I am going to focus on the idea of capturing a moment in time; in the eye of chaos freezing a moment in time and finding some sense of silence even when it may be chaos surrounding you - it therefore becomes a silent image and within this looking at what people are thinking....your thoughts that people never see; subconscious thoughts; irrational thoughts and memories. 

In the tutorial we discussed that this stage in third year can be a time for experimentation and this is what I am hoping to do with this first brief. To try and experiment with my work and not be disheartened if it doesn't always work. I think this is going to be quite a challenge for me as I like to know the direction that I am going in and where my work is leading to but I'm going to try my hardest to be more experimental.....I have to say I am finding it quite difficult at the moment as I am not set on a specific idea but I'm trying to be open minded and I hope a brilliant idea will come to me soon...watch this space! x