Gentletude

It's been six months since my last post on this blog, so here's a quick post to remind myself that it's good to do this kind of thing more often than not. A lot has happened since, probably too much to write about in full, interesting detail so we'll start with my latest piece of work.

A typographic kindness manifesto in response to 'Gentletude' - a competition brief that aims to promote gentle-ness and kindness using typography. A never ending gif that can be easily shared via e-mail, facebook, twitter, ffffound and any other website/social media you care to name.

Super simple, super colourful.

Typoholic

It's a pretty rare event that I have time to blog about anything at the moment, (so unbelievably busy with college it's pretty unreal) so when this book appeared on my desk a few weeks ago it was put to the bottom of the list of stuff to do. However after a few quick photos here is something pretty cool.


The lovely people at Victionary publishing have included mine and Hunter's Anamorphic Typography project in their most recent book named Typoholic. Not only that but they also asked me (of all people) to write a 300 word foreword about what I thought experimental typographic design should encompass which took quite a while from the boy who is awful with words. Needless to say it got done though and somehow everything made it into the book which was released a few weeks ago. I'm happy that people are still enjoying our project and very proud that someone thought it was worth including in their book. Another life box ticked there I think...


Typoholic celebrates modern typography at it's most playful. Featuring 288 colourful pages of custom types, from digital to real life installations, it offers a thorough review of modern type-making. Separated in to two parts, the first Typoholic Font to Form, focuses on type-related projects, while the second Typoholic A to Z, is a collection of contemporary illustrated typefaces. The book examines a diverse range of sculptural, illustrated and photographically created letterforms and alphabets as they in appear in graphic identities, art projects, advertising and much more. Available now from all good book sellers! (or amazon)

A Sense of Perspective

About a week ago I was sitting at home on my laptop surfing the internet trying to do work as per usual whilst fighting the urge to go on Facebook too much when I received this message on Facebook.

"Hey Joseph!
I don't know if you remember me, but I was in your book binding class. ( I did this french fold for my portfoilo and I remember you liked it) I know you might think this is so random that I added you but what I discovered yesterday was too interesting that I had to tell you. 

So last summer, while I was surfing this Korean site (kinda like Yahoo!), I stumbled upon your project. Back then I didn't know who you are and I absolutely had no clue that you were going to FIT as an exchange student. I remember loving your project and thought you were not aware that your work was on a Korean site, so I twitted this news to you. But you didn't reply so I was like.. well whatever and forgot about it.

Then yesterday, I just found out that this project was actually your work.

How weird is that?
What are the chances?
I thought you are just a design student who lives in England and I twitted you without thinking that I'm actually going to meet you somehow.

seriously,
this event totally changed my perspective."

This message was from Ja Young Kim, a girl who I'd met in my Bookbinding class whilst I was at FIT and who I had talked to quite a bit over the semester and who's final project was an amazing japanese stab bound, french folded portfolio of her work. My mind is still a little blown a week later and now I am starting to realise the real potential power of Twitter as a medium for recognising and connecting people.

Melancholia

A couple of months ago me and my housemate Katrin went along to the Roxy bar and grill (where we had our film premiers last year) in London Bridge to watch 'Melancholia', a film by Lars Von Trier. I have always meant to post about it since but it has been at the back of my mind till the other week when I was talking to a friend about incredible movies to watch.

One of the most beautifully shot movies I have ever had the pleasure of watching it was also one of the most thought provoking and after it finished me and Katrin were talking about it's meaning and aesthetic until well after we got home. Odd, but then most of the best things are quite odd in themselves. Having watched the film and watching the trailer back now it's hard to work out but I cannot recommend watching this film enough. There are some many little amazing details that add up to make this film one of the best I've seen in a long time. Kirsten Dunst plays an amazing role, I feel like I could write an essay about the content and context of this film.

The Love Competition

Once again, as always it has been far too long since my last entry on this blog and once again for the usual reason of me being busier than ever with college work,internships and outside projects. Now however I am on my Easter break and am back in Norwich for a week of hanging out with family and friends whilst eating as much food as I humanly can.

So over the next week I'm aiming to blog a little bit more about what I've been up to lately inspired by this film I stumbled upon last night which is rather wonderful. I won't explain the premise of the film (it should be obvious from the title) but have a watch and maybe it'll inspire you to reflect on love as you have experienced it in whatever form and from whatever source.

Eightfold

So tonight is the launch of our publications at the Eightfold exhibition at the Russian Club in Dalston, Kingsland Road. It is the official launch of Timbuktu magazine which I am happy to say is being collected from the printers this afternoon with some serious hype behind it. I have spent the last 2 weeks frantically sorting everything out for the first issue and am immensely proud of what we have achieved with this publication. It'll be great to see the final product, printed and bound, with our very special front covers as well which should make it even more awesome. ANYWAY. If you happen to read this before this evening and you didn't already know about it then please come down for an evening of beers and freshly printed publications. The exhibition is from 6-9pm only so get down early! Pictures of our finished publication will be up soon.

 

Location Location Publication

This is a bit of a nothing post really, just a bit of an update on everything that's been going on I guess over the past few weeks. 

The deadline has passed for submissions to Timbuktu and we ended up with over 40 pieces of writing which was a little unexpected and very overwhelming. We've read through all of them now and have whittled them down to 14/15 pieces we really like and think work well as a group. Getting started now on the layout and design of the actual book which I'll be taking control of mainly and letting everyone else get on with the image making process for the inside images.

Above is a photo of me standing in Wendover woods, the location for one of our photo shoots which we will be using for the publication. We were there for a whole day this week scouting locations and walking around in the mist. Won't give too much away right now but it's an amazing place and one I'd like to go back to in my free time and not for work. 

Production wise have lined up some super exciting finishes for our cover and inside pages which I can't wait to get all together into the final printed book. Our deadline is the 15th of this month. Ah. 

Timbuktu Magazine

Above is the mission statement myself and Mia came up with as part of the brief for one of our second term projects titled 'Territories'. We had to use the title as a starting point for the concept of a publication that we had to then present to the rest of our year group and persuade them that ours was the best. In short we were one of the eight successful groups chosen and are now going on to work on our publication along with four of our classmates who voted for us.

Really genuinely excited about this project and what it could entail for us within the next month or so and indeed the future. At the moment there's a lot of emails flying about trying to get this whole process started and trying to get submissions in. If you have any interest in creative writing at all, or know of anyone who does please click on the image above to download a printable PDF version of the brief with everything you need to know about what we're asking for.

Alternatively click HERE to get a PDF of the mission statement and brief.

Alternatively contact me via email (button above) to get a copy of the brief or just to ask any questions you may have about what we're doing. Below are the alternate media we'll be using to get in contact with people and get our brief out into the world.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/167058120074138/
Tumblr: http://timbuktumagazine.tumblr.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Timbuktu_Mag

Multi-Layered Zoetrope

So here is a project I completed a little over a year ago and is something that I am immensely proud of. Have been looking forward to sharing it since I got it done and have only just got the permission to do so here goes.


This video shows a multi-layered zoetrope, custom designed and built by myself as part of a first year college project titled "New Technologies" where we were given the task of either inventing or using an existing technology and taking it somewhere new. I mentioned this project a little in my blog last year. Always hinting about showing the final product which hasn't been possible until now.

I custom designed a tiered, slotted base from corrugated cardboard allowing up to three layers of materials to be used within the zoetrope. The outer layer is laser-cut card whilst the inner layers can be printed media or in the case of my first test, manipulated light layers created using semi-opaque plastic, coloured acetate and fluorescent lighting (see photos below). 


The video itself reflects the song I chose to work with, very hypnotic, keeping your interest but in the simplest way possible. It was produced as both a college project and as part of a project I was working on as an intern with the brief of providing song with an interesting backdrop to be played on youtube that wasn't a still image but at the same time was not a full blown music video. Hopefully I may get to revisit this project at some point in the near future and take it further than I have here. So many possibilities of what to do with it in my head it'd be great to be given the chance to take it further with materials etc and see where it could go.

Video was shot using a Canon 550D fitted with Pentax 50mm Lens and was edited in Final Cut Pro. Other than some slight colour correction this video was shot entirely in camera, there are NO additional effects in the video. Below are some stills from said video (linked above).

29/2 - The Leap Year Book

Here are pictures of a book I have been working on for a few weeks now for our project ' Cataloguing Collections' which we were given on our first day back at Chelsea. For this project we were required to produce a book using traditional bookbinding techniques to catalog a personal collection.

For my collection I took inspiration from a book I received from my mum on my 11th birthday which had all these amazing illustrated facts about everything that happened in history on February 2nd. I decided it would be cool to replicate this idea but instead focus on a more abstract period of time which led me to look into leap years and the 29th of February. A day lost in time, rightly so to allow for the rotation of the earth and the length of a real year to catch up and align every four years resulting in an extra day.

This year is a leap year and so I decided that it would be appropriate to base my collection on events, births and deaths that have happened every 29th of Feb. since they began in 45 B.C. Using pictures and a special reference method I have created my own index system for representing each leap year's events, ones that aren't celebrated and often forgotten but to some people were huge milestone's in their lives.

Some pictures of the finished book, thanks to my housemate Katrin for helping photograph it. Presenting it on Thursday at the crit. for the project.

It's Been a While

It's been a while since my last post. Since then I have returned from my four months in New York, have moved back to my house in London and am now back on my course at Chelsea. I'm super excited about some of the work we've been doing already but won't have much to show for it until next week when hopefully I can post a bit more about what's happening with pictures.

Above are pictures of this awesome postcard I bought in N.Y. which changes its message depending on the angle you look at it. Positioned it so that when I'm sat at my (new and most amazing ever) desk on my laptop it says YES but anywhere else in the room it says NO. 

Good, forceful inspiration I think you'll agree.