The Dancing Printer
I think I got that thing you get when you are at home for too long and get so ridiculously bored that even the smallest, most pointless thing will entertain you for a few long hours. Having said that here's a short film I made of my printer whilst at home in Norwich last week after noticing that whenever you print something it does a little (happy?) dance. It amused me so hopefully it'll amuse some of you.
Back in London now so slightly less cabin-fever-ish...
Loads more stuff to come soon hopefully as and when I get some free moments
Film Poster
Movie poster for our film 'Golden Foam' will be collated with the 9 other groups posters and be printed as one long reel. Photos to come of when that happens and stuff. Oscar night is almost upon us, hopefully there will be some photos of that too appearing at some point after Thursday!
Lights, Camera, ZZzzZzzzzz
Started shooting our film 'Golden Foam' on Friday, here's one of the first stills which we shot in Luke's house. Shooting now on Tuesday and Thursday with final hand in on Monday.
Tax On Oh Me
Last Wednesday the entire class spent a entire day in the Graphics Studio with Nigel & Pete who organised something of a one day print workshop for us.
We were each told to bring in one mechanical or electrical item that that had once served a purpose in our lives and that we no longer needed. We then were told to take them apart into as many pieces we could manage and arrange them by size, shape, colour, material etc. Above are is my super old digital camera pre disassembly and my final taxonomy piece from the workshop. After arranging all of our pieces very neatly and photographing then we were told to ink up and print as many of the pieces as possible in a printed taxonomy. Things quickly got messy, photos below...
R.I.P. Gil Scott-Heron
This is a bit of an out of the ordinary post for me I'll admit
This post is a dedication to an extraordinary singer, songwriter and poet who has died aged 62.
I discovered Gil Scott-Heron and his work whilst working on a college project last term and have not stopped listening to him since. The results of the work have still not yet been finalised but, due to recent events their release may get pushed forward by the people I have been doing it for and hopefully you will see it soon.
I'm not going to link you to any of his music, you can find it yourselves. His recent collaboration remix album with Jamie XX is highly recommended though. Instead here is a quote of his I get to see every so often painted on the wall of his record company's office. I only wrote it down last week; to me it's perfect.
Music, for example. Buying music is an investment.
To get the maximum you must
LISTEN TO IT FOR THE FIRST TIME UNDER OPTIMUM CONDITIONS
Not in your car or on a portable player through a headset.
Take it home.
Get rid of all distractions, (even her or him).
Turn off your cell phone.
Turn off everything that rings or beeps or rattles or whistles.
Make yourself comfortable.
Play your CD.
LISTEN all the way through.
Think about what you got.
Think about who would appreciate this investment.
Decided if there is someone to share this with.
Turn it on again.
Enjoy yourself. "
R.I.P Gil Scott-Heron 1949 - 2011
Slowly But Surely
Yesterday we had our third meeting with our tutors about the current film brief. Now halfway through we have 3 weeks left and have just decided on the final story of our film, the real work begins now I guess but I am super happy with the idea and can't wait to make this film.
Just got back from Canary Wharf after doing some location scouting. Such a weird area but managed to take some nice photos one of which is above...
LP
Just some hand drawn type I did as as test for the LP redesign brief this week. After coming to Peter on Friday with a selection of different ideas and concepts we decided to go for a combination of all of them. Not going to reveal too much just yet as I want to do some test shots and stuff but I'll be making something physical and photographing it.
Five Leaves Left
So bar our film brief we only have one other ongoing project this term. We have been given a brief by Peter Chadwick, a pretty famous "graphic designer" to redesign a 12 inch vinyl sleeve of our choice. I chose Five Leaves Left by Nick Drake as it is one of my favourite albums but with probably one of the worst designed covers I have ever seen. Everything about it is shameful, especially the kerning of the title. Shudder. Going to try and have as much fun with this project as possible. See as vinyl is such a physical format I want to try and reflect that in my process so there will be a lot of drawing and printing going on over the next few weeks. Working with a square is not something we do a lot nowadays as well so I am really going to try and take advantage of this fact, how I'm not quite sure though. Hopefully development will be being posted up pretty soon.
Butex Scholarship
A poster I have designed as part of my application to the Butex Scholarship 2011. Each year BUTEX awards a number of scholarships to students studying abroad for either a semester or for a whole academic year. Each scholarship is worth £500 to each student and all you have to do is design a poster promoting study abroad, seeing as I am a graphic design student I couldn't turn it down. Going to print and send it off next week, fingers crossed!
Golden Foam
Ok so time for some new projects. Last Tuesday we were given our first film brief by tutor Ed Gill who worked with some of us last year on foundation at Chelsea and who has made TV ads for Innocent Smoothies, Sony and a ton of other companies as well as some pretty awesome music videos.
We were put into groups of 4/5 and just given the title of our movie and told to produce a one minute skit based on our initial ideas. Our film title is 'Golden Foam'. We have just under 6 weeks to produce, film and edit the movie itself with the final results being screened at our very own oscar night at the end of term where we are going up against all the other films to win oscars handmade by each group. We're also going to be producing posters and other promotional material for the film which will be collated and put into a programme which will then be printed and sold on the night.
That's all I'm giving away for now, above is a picture of our group. I love the idea we have for the film so much, just really excited about this project. Below is a film I found as part of my research, completely unrelated now but so nice.
Zoetrope pt.2
Okay so here's another update on my layered zoetrope project. I am still waiting on the video to be finalised and stuff so that'll have to wait till the next time I post about this which probably won't happen till it gets all signed off.
This in short is this is basically a run through for when I present my work to my class and my tutors. Nigel has a saying that if you tell an a difficult idea/concept 10 times to 10 different people that you slowly get better at it, so that's what I'm trying here.
Above are a couple of photos of my final zoetrope and the equipment I used inside my GLAMOROUS studio (Ben's room, thanks for that) to shoot the video. As I explained in my first post my original idea was to create a triple layered zoetrope where the first layer would be a cutout shape, second a printed acetate sheet and third a printed card sheet.
I started by designing the base for my zoetrope, initially trying to work out how to have three circles, all on the same level and all spinning at the same speed. After a lot of head scratching I came up with the neat idea of a tiered base which meant I could place it onto a record player and use that for my rotation. After designing I got it all laser cut, basically to try and minimise any error I might make if I tried to make 3 perfect circles by hand in the workshop. Last minute I changed my mind about materials, choosing corrugated card instead of mdf as I was worried about weight and the spinning power of the record player.
Also got my first layers laser cut, again for the same reason. Bought some acetate and got my third layer printed.
Sadly after a lot of long afternoons and quite a lot of frustration I still haven't got anywhere near having 3 animating layers that remotely look like they have anything to do with eachother. In the end I think I was a little ambitious trying to get one layer to work was hard enough, let alone three working all together.
HOWEVER, all is not lost...
I started thinking about playing around with layers still, but instead of animating them having something else going on instead. Light is such a versatile medium I wanted to try and incorporate it into this piece. I bought a piece of frosted plastic from paperchase and dug out my industrial light, setup my tripod and started filming. I'm super happy with the final results which hopefully you'll be able to see pretty soon (fingers crossed).
Even though the results are completely different to what I had initially imagined that was the whole point of this project. The direction I took this project in has so much potential, hopefully I'll get the chance to explore it a whole lot more soon. The point of this project was to experiment, try something new, make something awesome looking even if it doesn't have a purpose. That's where I was a little different though but all will be revealed as soon as it's all done and dusted...
Facecake
Having a trawl through my pictures earlier, came across this gem of a snap of my 21st birthday present from Francesca Pequeur. The one and only the I had on my wishlist, Facecake. Cheers m'dear.
Zoetrope pt.1
Okay, so this is the first of a series of posts about a piece of work I am super close to finishing which should have happened around a month ago but it took a different direction and proved to be a bit more of a challenge than I expected, in the end producing a totally different result than that I had first conceived.
The brief for this project was called "New Languages", we were given the task of discovering either a brand new or already existing technology/technique and taking it somewhere new with the aim of creating something completely original that neither we or anyone else had never done before.
Instead of try and create something brand new using loads of computers, programming and technology I opted for a slightly different and more analog approach. I came up with the idea of making a triple layered zoetrope. For anyone who is not familiar, a zoetrope was one of the first forms of animation. A cylindrical drum which on the inside has 16/17 frames of animation which when span can be viewed by eye through slits at the top of the drum - pictured below.
My idea was to reverse the zoetrope so the images were on the outside of the cylinder and incorporate three different layers of animation into one image. When viewed from the right angle it would look as though they were one image but when moved slightly then the illusion would be revealed. The first layer would be a cut-out shape, the second would be printed acetate and the third would be a printed layer.
Look out for the next posts coming pretty soon and you can see what actually happened, hopefully with a video once it's been approved the people I've made it for. All very exciting stuff.
Print Is Not Dead
Rob Orchard - Delayed Gratification
Tim Hayward - Fire & Knives
John L Walters - Eye Magazine
All three men are heads/editors of their respective independent magazines which they are all at different stages of starting up or doing business with. Each of the magazines, though similar in format all have completely different subject specialisms and with it, completely different approaches to the way they approach the running of their magazine.
Rob Orchard with Delayed Gratification has coined the term 'slow journalism' to as a direct reaction to the internet generation of journalism where every story must be investigated, researched, written and published all within a matter of minutes. His magazine is a quarterly publication of exquisite journalism and beautiful infographics, a modern almanac. Other than a website DG has no online presence whatsoever, launched only last year it'll be interesting to see what happens to them.
Tim Hayward with Fire & Knives has created the ultimate foodie magazine, based around his passion for food and journalism he gets people equally as passionate, interesting, literate as him to write his articles. By his own admission he is "basically printing a blog" taking talented writers who have not yet had much exposure and giving them the opportunity to have their work published for no fee which then leads to them having more work and the magazine gaining more exposure. They have a website and a twitter account which allowed them to get enough subscribers based on a mock-up issue to print their first issue and have gone on from there to bigger and better things.
John L Walters from Eye Magazine, I don't really need to explain their ethos. If you read this blog chances are you'll read theirs too and maybe even their magazine and have a very clear idea about what they're all about.
Despite their differences in topics, journalistic ethos and relationships with the internet each of the mags. and their directors/editors are passionate about publishing and printing. The magazines are their souls and it shows in printed form. When asked about 'the green issue' of the environmental cost of printing a magazine Tim summed it up nicely "No-one has ever thrown away a copy of our magazine" stating "We design a beautiful object as possible, it is not disposable media. People keep them. The first thing I see people do when they get the magazine is smell it, personally I think that is much better as a form of interactive media than facebook or twitter." All of the magazines tick those boxes. There was a small library of tonnes of independent magazines which we flicked through over a drink and were even given a couple of complimentary copies of Eye Magazine, Fire & Knives and Article (see the photo above). All of the magazines were beautiful, like popular magazines like 'OK' and 'Hello' they are printed media but overall they are in a world of their own.
My copy of Fire & Knives is just amazing. Overall well worth the fiver entry I'd say.
Chillin' with the guys below, John, Tim and Rob (right to left)....SWAG
Boy Can Sew
Spent all of yesterday fixing my slowing breaking laptop case with a scrap of leather I bought from a shop in Brick Lane about 2 years ago. Was really nice to make something with my hands for once and very satisfying to know I've fixed something myself and hopefully given it another couple of years of use. Looking forward to see how the leather ages and whether or not my stitching will hold up to me throwing my laptop + case in and out of my bag on a daily basis. I have always loved this laptop case since I got it almost 2 years ago now and always get compliments for it whenever I produce it from my bag. Now have a whole new level of love for it.
If you're in the market for a new laptop case check out the company I got mine from. http://www.colcasac.com/
Stop the Violence
Now we all know the easiest way to a student's heart is free stuff. This coming post pretty much justifies the rather large amount of time I spend surfing teh internet and it's creative blogs looking for work that inspires and excites me. This is Colossal is one of those blogs, a personal favourite of mine and the other day as always I was reading through the newest posts and came across one about this rather neat looking book....
'Stop the Violence' is a collaboration between Thirst founder Rick Valicenti and Photographer Francois Robert and his series of the same name. Each spread of the book features an individual letter from the alphabet—compositions made of human bones arranged by Robert—in juxtaposition with a page from President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech from 2009. The book is 36 pages long and quite extraordinarily more than a foot in height. Everything seems pretty normal up to this point however when I came to the end of the post there was a link to a website where you could request a copy of this rather amazing book FOR FREE. Amazed, I clicked through the link and filled out the little form with my address etc and 10 minutes later got an e-mail saying that my copy would be shipped by the end of the week! Another 10 minutes later I tried to access the page again set up a link from this blog so anyone else could request one but the edition had 'sold out'. Not sure how that's possible with a free book but anywho, no idea how many were printed but I'm guessing pretty small numbers and the publisher (Classic Colour) seem to specialise in really limited runs. I'll post again when I receive my copy with more details and pictures.
Who said you can't get anything for free these days....
Video above taken from Thirst's Vimeo page:
Pictures below taken from This is Colossal:
Always Remember to Print Fair Children
This week through the most tedious link imaginable I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to help with the setting up, hanging and dismantling of 'The London Original Print Fair' at the Royal Academy. The print fair is an annual exhibition where printers and galleries come together to showcase and sell their wares to collectors and the public for a very short 3 days. There was a huge mix of contemporary prints from artists such as Gavin Turk and Damien Hirst to more classical fine art prints which was nice to have although it was quite intense walking round trying to take it all in. Below are a few photos I took of pieces that caught my eye when I had a walk round on Wednesday. Overall it was an invaluable experience to see how an exhibition is put together and hopefully I'll get the chance to do myself one day.
Not So Innocent
Ok so over the past month I haven't posted anything here at all due to a pretty epic 12 week term and rather a lot of work. All of this work is still in progress and will be uploaded over the coming weeks as and when I get it done but for now a project that I have finished...
In short, I made a 30 second advert for innocent smoothies as part of a competition they are currently running. The only rules were that the advert had to use the music provided by innocent and involve the super smoothie character (see above) 'saving the day' in some way. Thanks to Jules and Don for being sports and agreeing to help me film/play a part in the ad itself. If chosen my advert will be on t.v. and I could win £5,000...which could come in very handy at the moment. Watch the ad below and I may be asking you to vote for me fairly soon, fingers crossed...
Read The Signs
This Thursday we spent an entire day having a workshop with ex Chelsea student Lizzie Gove who taught us the basics of sign writing, a subject she studied in depth for her dissertation and final degree project. It was great to spend a whole day doing something physical instead of staring at a macbook for hours on end as I seem to be doing a lot recently. It was quite a challenge at first to get the brush technique and the ink viscosity just right but after about an hour of painting some not so great letters we all began to get the hang of it with some people clearly having a natural talent. During the afternoon we were set a mini brief to paint an alternative word for 'gorgeous', the idea being that everyone in the class would paint a different word, the end results would be scanned and put on one sheet of A1 paper and then each student would get a copy. I chose the word killer as I particularly liked doing 'k's but my 'r's let me down somewhat. Ho Hum. Below is some of Lizzie's actual final work which I saw in last years degree show and have recovered from her flickr in the depths of the internet. It was great to talk to her over the course of the day about a subject she clearly loves, knows an awful lot about and is very good at.
Lovely stuff.
D.I.Y. Fisheye Lens
So this is going to be quite a text and photo heavy post, apologies in advance.
On Saturday my friend Joakim who I work with at American Apparel was showing me his portfolio for his application to the Graphic Design Communication course I'm currently on at Chelsea. On one of his pages was a bit about how he had made his own D.I.Y. Fisheye lens out of nothing but a lens-cap, door peephole and some bluetac with what looked like some amazing results. My imagination was sparked and almost a week later I have my own D.I.Y. Fisheye lens for my Canon 550D.
Above are photos of the finished products and the parts I used to make it.
Door peephole, bought from Leylands for £4.31
Hama 58mm lens cap, bought from Amazon for £2.57
That's really all it takes.
All you need to do is drill a hole in the centre of your lens cap that is the same size as the viewing end of your peephole. Unscrew the peephole into the separate parts and thread through the hole and screw back together. BE CAREFUL that the end part of the peephole sits nicely inside the depth of the lens cap otherwise there is a huge possibility of scratching your lens! Other than that, attach to your camera (obviously make sure the lens cap your drilling will fit your lens), set your camera up just so and you're ready to shoot some fisheye shots!
Below are some photos I took about 2 minutes after I got home from Chelsea with Ben in our garden and house. The camera I'm using is a Canon 550D with the kit 18-55mm lens set on manual focus mode (very important) and non-flash setting. This is such a cheap and easy way of having your own fisheye lens. Let's face it the quality was never going to be brilliant but the photos do have a certain lomography-film-likeness that people are spending a lot of money getting with plastic cameras nowadays. I also took a short video whilst out in the garden which I will upload pretty shortly after adding some audio to cover up my inane chatting about fisheye lenses whilst wandering round our garden.
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