A rainy day in Liverpool...

Yesterday I took a trip to Liverpool to go to the Tate and the Walker Art Gallery. It was very cold and rained all day but we still had a good day out! Our first stop was the walker Art Gallery to look at the Bridget Riley exhibition 'Flashback,' tracking her work over the years. This was a really interesting exhibition, her work is very eye catching and optically vibrant. It was interesting to see photographs of her producing the work and detailed sketches and layouts of the technicality involved in producing the pieces.

I managed to take a few sneaky photos before getting into trouble...

‘Ecclesia’ 1985

I love the vibrant colour's Riley uses in her work, they really catch your attention and the optical illusions draw you in and make you take notice. They are very large scale pieces and must take a long time to produce. I find this style and genre of work much more interesting to look at and even though it is quite abstract, you don't have to try and understand what it is about as you do with a painting, you can just enjoy it. The open space they are exhibited in allows them to speak for themselves and you can truly appreciate the scale of them.

Whilst walking around (a lot of walking!) we came across the 'FACT' gallery and we went to the Open eye gallery but disappointingly this was shut until next year.

We also came across a little book shop/gallery space called 'Milk&sugar' a bit like magma....I love buying new books and have added quite a few to my collection recently so resisted the temptation to buy anymore!

The next stop was the TATE to see the 'Joyous Machines' exhibition - Michael Landy and Jean Tinguely.

"Using the most basic of materials his sculptures made poignant social comment, examined the ever-changing relationship between humankind and the machine, and at the same time sent established notions of art spinning – often quite literally."

I was disappointed that we couldn't take any photographs whilst in the exhibition as some of the pieces created really interesting shadows that would have made great photographs and this cannot be seen with images from the internet but oh well thats the rules of exhibitions! I liked how some of the pieces were interactive as it allowed you to get involved in the exhibition.

The piece below was one of my favorite pieces. Quite simplistic but the positioning of the work in the corner of the canvas makes the piece more interesting and you can see the shadow below it as it stands above the surface of the canvas.

Jean Tinguely, Black and white relief méta-mécanique 1957

Whilst in the TATE we had a look at the other exhibitions that were on and I have to say I didn't enjoy these as much, but the DLA Piper Series: This is Sculpture, did have a room where you were given headphones when you went in and were able to listen to music as you looked around the exhibition. I think this was a nice extra touch making the whole process of viewing an exhibition a bit different.

Overall it was an enjoyable and very tiring day despite the rain! x

designs on saying hello...

Being inspired by grahams talk about self promotion I bought the book he recommended 'Business cards 3; designs on saying hello.' Below are a few of the designs that caught my eye...

business card for a beauty salon, making the card into a mirror

foil blocking on a black card stock

making each card a little different...

necessitating audience participation....you have to unwrap the card from gold foil!

Andy Lock

I have took inspiration from a few different sources for my silence project and Andy Lock's work is something that really caught my eye at the beginning of the brief. He is a London based photographer and below is a set of his photographs called 'Lost Horizons' that I have looked at as part of the silence brief...

I love how Andy takes quite inconsequent subjects such as the small toy animals and turns them into dramatic images. The use of shadow and open space create a sense of silence and silent thoughts and have definitely been an inspiration for me.

review time...

So last week I had my mid-term review and although it was something I was a bit nervous about it was really positive and helpful in finding the direction I am going in and reassuring me in the work I have produced so far. I presented my work to Mack and Clinton and got a really positive response which was a relief. They gave me some good pointers in where to head next with my silence project and although I struggled a bit with the brief in the beginning I am now happy with the work I have been producing. I have tried to challenge myself with this brief by taking my own photographs and as this is something I don't usually do I was a bit unsure about whether I was 'doing it right.' I was really pleased with the comments about my photos and having discussed them in my review I am going to pick a few of the best photos and blow them up bigger to have as an extra to my folded poster/book document. So now the review is over its back to working on silence part two....

Manchester artist's book fair...

On saturday afternoon I took a trip to the Manchester Artists books fair in the Holden gallery. It was really great to see handmade work as it is not usually something that I would look at but there were some really beautiful, delicate little books. I did the book making workshop last year and found how difficult it is to get the book perfect with the folds and cuts etc so it was admiring to see work done by artists.

Sarah Morpeth's work in particular stood out to me as she produces very delicate cut out pieces and it is amazing how she can cut in such small detail. Below are some examples of her work and a couple of postacrds I bought from her...

I picked up a few business cards while I was there and it is definitely true what Graham was talking to us about as cards that were a bit different and had had more effort put into definitely caught my eye. Below are the ones I picked up, with various sizes and styles...

The work of Mary Lundquist also caught my eye mainly because of the lovely typography she uses on her books...

G MAN

"Self promotion is one aspect of design that cannot be taught."

Graham gave us a talk today about self promotion, showing some examples of his brilliant work on logos and branding for agencies and his own self promotion. I really love Grahams work as he produces very typographical pieces that really appeal to me and the style of work I like producing. 

So what do you need for successful self promotion? an identity, a portfolio, a website & printed literature.

Being freelance Graham showed us his own identity which he has had a bit of fun with rather than producing a generic boring business card. The bright colour's used stand out and catch your eye and even down to the stock it is printed on shows that extra attention to detail. As he said it is 'those extra bits of detail that separate you from everyone else.' I am going to enter a very competitive market in a few months time so having good self promotion is vital to being a success. I need to stand out from the crowd! making promotional activities varied and distinct...think of a different way to attract attention and get your work noticed. You can tell the high quality of Grahams work and the attention to every single detail and he is involved in every stage down to the choice of stock the work is printed on and also the printing process - you can't just do a great design and think your finished, you need to follow it through to the very end. I love the attention to detail he pays to his work and how he is so enthusiastic when he talks about it...you can tell he really enjoys what he does. It was really interesting to hear about the printing processes and is something I would like to get more involved with as it can really make a design.

Grahams business cards and comp slips continue with the bright colours even giving people a choice of which colour business card they would like - making it a bit more interesting. Even when you have clients you always have to be promoting yourself to get more work.

"Finding clients will be the main battle of your whole career: not only to find clients to start you going, but constantly to be finding them to keep you going."

If you produce good work it should speak for itself but "you have to tell your clients that you are available and willing for more work...don't suppose it will happen automatically."

Seeing Grahams work got me excited about design again seeing how you can have fun and be creative when working with clients. I'd love to produce work as good as Grahams in the future!

Tameside burglary reduction

Following on from the police campaign we worked on we have been approached by Tameside Metropolitan Borough to redesign a burglary reduction initiative card for them. They saw an article about our campaign in the paper and it proves to us that the campaign has been noticed and has created another great opportunity for experience for us. We are currently discussing with them exactly what they want producing but it is more experience for us 3 to work on a live brief. I will keep you posted when things develop...