What am I doing now!

I have been a bit lazy with the blog and have created a pretty much big gap since I started.
Right now the way I am coping with my second year so far is not perfect, in fact the word I should be employing is slacking. I will eventually work my way out of this mess before it's too late. So far I am still working on the 3 different brief that has been given and am a little bit finding it hard coping with the amount of work given at once with deadlines that are so near. It is something that I did not experience in first year since everything was sort of lay back with no pressure.

This week was not one of the best week I have had so far since the development of two works i have done has been rejected.
The first one is for Personal Professional Development, where I was told the place I had chosen was not good enough to be used since it is known world wide and it seems they wanted something that could only be found in London and that could mainly attract tourist. At first I was a bit sad since I thought it would only make me go back to the beginning. The second piece of idea which was rejected this time was for my elective "collaborative project" (which we have to undertake in second year) where me and my partner which I work with for the project were told to rethink about our idea since it was not clear enough. For the collaborative we are working on a book cover which is called "The War of the Worlds" so we needed to show the meaning briefly on the cover but because there has been so many publication of covers that has been produced for it we wanted to be different and the result caused to the tutors not understanding where we were coming from.

Since all of these things happening on the very same week, I thought and realised that i needed to step up really quick before my work starts piling.

I will soon upload images of the idea we worked on for the collaboration project.

Back to university!!!

I took quite a long break from blogging so I though I would go back to it right now.
I will quickly do a quick brief of what happened since the start of the semester. First week back was quite expected to be treated differently unlike back in first year but I think the shocking thing for me was to probably get three different brief within a week just right at the start. Well there were no other choice but to suck it up and just try and work with it since I knew that if that was just the beginning later would be worse. This year we have been given a choice of choosing another course to do but that would be part of our grades too. The names for the course is elective and within that there are various different types of course we had got given to choose. I chose to go for the collaborative project since I though that not only it would boost my collaborative skills but it would also be a good point for my portfolio. In the first session of the collaborative project, we have been told that the work would be split up in two which meant that in total for the nine upcoming weeks we would have two briefs for it which also meant that we had little time.
I will keep you updated with upcoming subject which may happen.

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It's a funny place, japan by julianna wang

The story of this illustration talks about how the main character (Julianna Wang) though about what japan would be like and how she explores it when going on her trip there. I though this illustration was really nice and i would like to do a little of something similar to this talking about london just that instead of telling it into as if i was a tourist which i am not i will just set out my journey in london with the things i can do in my spare time.
Looking at it again i don't think the fact that there is only one colour used ruins the book, infact i think that is what makes it stand out even more.

Folded poster

Cog Design Visit

I went to the visit weeks ago as part of the studio visits and the place was really nice and quiet, well a good environment to work in. The activity that we did there was not much since all we did was to ask questions about the industry and how it works for them and also whether their design was just based in the print area or multimedia.
At the end of the visit we have been given a gift which was a little booklet that was quite captivating not only because of the design that was on top of it but the opening of the book, i though it was interesting the way it was produced. Has i opened the booklet, there is a bold tittle that says 'CALAMITOUS TALES OF DISASTROUS DATES'. Flicking through the booklet i realised that the information that was inside were quick little stories to read. The illustration were simply draw and were direct to the point of the story that was written.so from this little gift i have received from Cog Design i decided that maybe i should give it a go with writing a quick short story about london. I am really looking forward to produce it.

development of work

I have been thinking of having a theme for my research book but i don't know how it would fit with all the workshops that i have done. The theme that i want to use is 'Voyorism' and the reason i chose that is because london is well known for having a tough security with the cctv cameras and also how people know of the existence of it and maybe try and hyde something by being someone else (which is what i though). I told a tutor of the idea and got a feedback that it was a good idea 'but' that it was going to be tricky working through all the workshops with that theme. Right now am just trying anything without a precise point to get somewhere with this but i am still waiting to go visit an exhibition at the tate modern (as it will be showing from the 28th may and onwards) which will be about Voyorism i just hope that it will lead me somewhere.
I have a bit of different ideas for the poster that i can't really make up my mind yet...which is what i am not supposed to do right now so i will let it slide a bit until i get the image fixed but i will still think about it. Well the ideas for the poster that i though would be to have a one colour image poster or a poster with images that are see through.

Book jacket illustration

When i saw this illustration cover i though it was a good piece of design because i like simple illustrations that are not too complicated. Another thing that i though when i saw this was the title which said "myths of china and japan" which is almost the similarity with the last workshop i did. It is giving me an option to think whether if i can use that bit of the workshop for my cover.

Some random illustrations

These are just few illustration i was drawing during my spare times which i have tried refining them by adding colour to them. i didn't have any specific theme to them they were just doodling images which i though were interested and wanted to take it further.Here i have done a combination of an eye open and closed then i just added more things as i went along; even though what i did was random, the little things i have added kept on forming new things. there also a little man in the middle and if you look though again it might look like a tear or one of them Egyptians symbols.
I got inspired to do this image by a graphic work which i saw at the 'pick me'. I call it the flower woman. What i tried doing here is to make combining the woman and the flower as i think woman are as gentle as flowers and that's how i thought of the blooming women.Lastly the two opposite faces which i had fun drawing because i was thinking that it was silly but still funny to look at. What i tried doing here was two babies head, one smiling and the other sad.

Urban legends of london

This workshop was about myth stories told in london which people are still trying to figure out if they are true or not. For the session we had been given four urban stories to read and then chosed one of the stories and had to pick ten words that we though was essential to make the story into ten frames. Each words had their own frames so i had to choose my words carefully to create frames that people would understand what was going on while viewing.
After creating the ten frames, i had to condense it to three frames which made it a little difficult because i was constantly thinking 'how on earth would anyone understand the whole story through three frames!' but i managed to pick the three drawings that would be good enough to describe the story as well as setting up tension which is how i came up with these three frames.To tell the truth when we started the frames i was not really confident into having the right information for each frames but as i went along it became fun.

Scale2

Ok... this second part of scale workshop was exciting as what we had to do was to build a 3 dimensional outcomes of a part of london (which was part of the tower bridge area) that was suggested by the tutor for that session. We obviously had to work in groups as there was to much to do for just one person. Well, the group i worked in had everyone working on different things but what we were lacking was the scale as everyone was working to a different scale.
The outcome was really random because we focused more on the materials which made it a little appealing in a strange way but there was one other group that had managed to get everything right and the view was really effective.

Tourist souvenir Remix

Who says tourist says gift to take back home with you! which is what we have been doing for this session...looking at tourist gift. most of them were quite funny but pointless to have has a practical object to use on the daily basis.
We had to be in groups to do the next step which was to write as many question as possible about the objects (gifts) that we had in front of us and to help us do so there was the legendary questions starters which were WHO,WHAT,WHEN,WHY,HOW and WHERE.
we then came up with the questions we had to pick three question which we though would be important to think of for each gifts.
After we chose one gift to work on to move on quickly and that was the pen which had some images of famous parts of london joined together and a moving bus (which could only moved because of the water that was inside). So what we had to do after that was to use the REVERSE,DISTORT,EXAGGERATE and WISHFUL THINKING for the pen the images below shows the steps we did.We designed an outcome for a new pen(gadget) that would be appropriate as a gift and that is how we came up with this design. we didn't want to make it to complicated or divert from the original design so we just added a part for the speakers which is on the below part of the pen and on the upward part of the pen we added a buzzer for the sound and also divided the images of which were in the pen we sill left the part of london that every tourist know but also squeezed in the bad areas of london; instead of the bus we used a little person so that wen the buzzer is pressed the little person would move to the bad side which would cause the police siren coming out from the pen.
When designing this pen we though that not only it should be practical by writing but also when your in trouble because london is not as sweet as everyone thinks.

Urban camouflage

I was really excited for this workshop session as i think camouflage is a really interesting subject as you never know what could be behind the camouflage but i didn't really know what to expect from the session. The tutor showed us some slides of various forms of camouflage such as the army outfit and certain animals that had a camouflaging skin. There were also other people that used camouflage on their work which were quite impressive.
Our mission after all the images we had looked at was to do our own camouflage work of the london environment and for this we also had to work with colours so that they determine the mood of the images.

scale1

For this session we went to visit different location. I would say this workshop was more based on plans and the construction of certain buildings in london.
The little models below are plans of london buildings which looks exactly like the areas. The plan is based on the central london area. The scale is well used and everything seems to be in the exact place where they are supposed to be as i could notice places easily.This is a university building not far from the british museum. The architecture of the building is a semetric and the layered rectangles forms a powerful impact when looking at the building.
Below is some shots i have taken from a statue in kings cross st pancras international station.
The two statue are trying to send a message across about the meaning of the place which is a station where you normally say your good bye with whoever you are leaving and i think they quite give a strong impact.
I though the image with the sunglasses may help me later on when i will extend the work since it is using a combination of scale too; the big glasses with the tiny people seen through it. i quite liked it because it gives an idea of watching people without them realising.

processing London

My first very time of hearing about the processing software so i was a little confused on what it was about but luckily for me it was just a tutorial workshop on how it works.
Processing is a software which you can create graphic elements by putting it into codes for it to work. If the code is wrong or with a slight mistake it will not work. I was not able to get a lot of the image shots that i have done but here is a little image that i have made (the board which i have used was only there by code). We had been given different codes to try out to see whether if it will work or not.

communication and texture

We watched some fast motion video about new york daily life and the video were mostly viewed from an upper scale so that we could view the plan of the city and also how the cars were forming another sort of effect.
We also looked at a slow motion video, at a point i though there was a rewind on the video.

Coming back to the london theme...the image below shows the response everyone had in mind about the london environment.And at the end we have been asked to create an image that represent london from one of the words that we listed. So i went for london gold digger and that is what the image i created came out to be.

pick me up

It was really an interesting trip that i have made to the 'pick me up' because of all the design work i got to see and hoe they are really inspiring. Some of the design seems really simple from the view but the techniques used to produce them are complicated and a long process to do so, all of it demands a lot of patience, patience and again patience.
I am speechless about the work but all i can say right now is that it is awesome.....so i will just let you view some of the works that i was specifically draw to them.The image on the right is one of the design which was on the wall at the entrance. I though there was a nice composition going on.

Isotype (WorkShop)

I'm not quite too sure but I think Isotype signification meant 'information system of typographic element'. For this workshop, we looked at symbols which could give out information visually without using type. For example there was a sign which had a figure of a man and a dog beside it facing right; at first I didn't quite understand why it was placed like that until I read on top of it the word come. I then though to myself that there was no way someone would understand that type of symbol indicating to 'come'. Beside the 'come' symbol there was the go symbol but it didn't leave much of an impression that it was a go sign.
After we worked in groups using some statistic research (why homeless people become homeless) to display it in a visual way people can look and understand without having to read any text. we had some statistic about why they become homeless and we quickly decided on how to display the result through paper man.
The two images above are the making process.
Below shows the images of how the outcome of our hard effort came out to be.