Primary Research: Photographs

I decided to look at body language as another way of communicating messages, I like because it's less literal than something like text messages, it leaves a lot to be understood on the reader's part. So in response to this I decided to collect some first hand photographs of people in different stances, I find the face the most interesting area to look at as there are a lot of expressive features such as the eyebrows, eyes and mouth.

The body posture in this photo is quite suggestive to feelings of boredom and frustration.

Research

Sorry for late updates, things have been a bit mad lately!
I've been struggling to get a good beginning on the project so far, when I'm trying to produce images it just feels as if I've got massive mind block!  In order to get some more inspiration for possible ideas I've been doing some research into designers that I find relevant to my theme.


In a crit at college it was suggested that I try re-working photos, perhaps with vulgar slogans or suggestive phrases, so that seemingly innocent photos now have a sense of dark humour to them! I had a look around and found Barbara Kruger, her images fit perfectly to the idea of misjudged context, the brash type changes the whole context of the photo!

Barbara Kruger:

I like how her work is quite challenging to mainstream ideals, it makes you double take as you expect the photo to be quite positive at first, but the phrases really add a darker meaning to the images.

I tried something similar with a photograph that I'd taken of a girl laughing hysterically, then with red vinyl tape I outlined her figure and wrote the word "UNHAPPY" across the image (I would have uploaded a photo but my scanner's broke again!) it was a quick experiment and I'm not too happy with the aesthetics of it but I do like the idea behind it.

Final Major Project

So at college we've started our "Final Major Project", it's a 10 week project as part of our confirmatory stage, in this we choose our own theme for the project and must carry out research, that should lead to a thought out final response. 


I had trouble picking a theme for mine as I didn't want to seem too cliché, in the sense that people could instantly guess what it was, I wanted there to be some guesswork to it. At first I looked at stuff like "Street Art", I really like the rebellious of it, that it challenged the mainstream, however it didn't feel like I could really take this as my own without copying someone else. Then I moved onto "shock tactics", the idea being that I could really communicate something to a view, something that would really catch their attention, maybe not always in a good way either... Again it just seemed as if it had already been done a million times before.


Eventually I came up with the theme of "Messages", I really like this idea and got quite excited about it, it's broad enough so that I can look at literal means i.e. phones, email; but I'm more interested in the less obvious things, the way we get messages across, how do we interpret those messages? I think it ties nicely into my previous ideas as it takes the "interpret" aspect from both street art and shock tactics, it's more about HOW we look at things than actually looking AT them.

Gary Oldman, Pretty in Ink

Here's another one of my final ideas for the Little White lies Brief that we've recently finished, I'm really happy with how this turned out, the contrast of  the black and white works really nicely. Compared to some of my other ideas the form of this image is much less structured, because I drew the original image from 2ft away with a stick in ink, the portrait has a loose/flowing feel. I used courier (Again) but this time I drew it freehand in ink onto cardboard then scanned it in, I wanted the text to retain some of it's hand drawn feel, as the shapes aren't all perfect but I still cleaned a lot of the bleed up on photoshop; I think it's worked rather nicely.

The main idea for this image was to make it all a bit of a jumble, because the film's about secrecy I wanted the text to appear coded/embedded, as if it's emerging from the image of Oldman.

Little White Lies D&AD Brief

So here's a couple of finished designs that I've been working on as part of the Little White Lies brief we were given at college; The brief was part of the D&AD student competition, the target, to create an illustration of selected film's main characters. The choices were Super 8, Drive, Tree of Life, Black Swan & Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy... I chose to do Tinker, Tailor.. because I'd seen the film beforehand and thought it was a brilliant film, both in cinematics and the plot, there was a lot of moodiness in the film and the main character Gary Oldman was quite interesting as the character 'Smiley'. Because the chosen brief was illustration focused, with the final design needing to be a portrait of the main character and our class were specialized in graphics we were allowed to deviate from the original format and change the focus onto key objects / scenes in the movie; rather than a facial shot.

I wanted to keep the colour pallet quite dark as this tends to be the overall mood throughout the film, so I've mainly used monochrome within my designs, however I may redevelop some ideas to include colour. A key aspect I wanted to include was the use of 'Courier' typeface, with courier being a more computer friendly version of original typewriter, I thought this would work nicely in my ideas, as well as being able to play around on the actual typewriter! The font is a key part of the design because typewriters are often associated with formal documents in the era that the film was set. Overall I've really enjoyed this current project as it's steered more towards the structural / editorial style of graphics that I prefer.

Geo Law illustration!

I first came across George Law's work in 'Now Then' magazine in July last year, Now Then is a free independent magazine based in Sheffield that regularly features designers/illustrators as the main feature, the magazine itself looks into popular culture around the city and is definitely worth following!

Back to the main topic however, I'm really interested Law's work and have been a keen fan ever since my eyes rested on the quirky creatures, bold lines and statement colour!

Not long after that, he produced the designs for the posters and merch for 'Tramlines' festival 2011, the design worked really nicely because it gave off the hectic yet fun vibe of the festival and keeping in the local Sheffield feel by adding the tinsley water towers, a perfect icon of reference for locals and visitors alike! Law's quirky style shines out in all his work, digital and physical. Personal favourites of mine are his own personal projects such as 'Deities of Geoda' & his watercolour collections, the use of colour and simple line really make the illustrations jump out! I'd definitely recommend anyone to check out his other stuff!

Looking Up.. On Photoshop!

Checkered Sky

I made this image as part of my development for the project 'Looking up/Looking down' I'm really happy with how this image turned out! Due to the sheer number of squares and their dominance as a focus point, I wanted to keep the total number of focuses to 3, to prevent the overall image from looking too busy. 


The contrast between the graph paper and the blue sky make a really nice / subtle background for the squares to be placed on top of, helping them really stand out. I got the idea of the squares from the original image, where there were 3 buildings, one of which was covered in these large squares, resembling a cheese grater! I tried using the building in the composition but it looked too busy, so I removed the building and re-drew the squares myself on photoshop.