I spent some time thinking about my research question and how I will form this into a project. I started by answering the questions provided to us. What is the general theme? Printmaking and traditional design processes. What are the current/contextual/historical issues of the general theme?
'The death of print'
Use of computers within design (Graphic Artist/ Graphic Designer)
Increasing use of 'pastiche' in modern design.
What do I want to know or be able to do in regard to this theme? Form this into a question that implies a conclusion... I want to explore how relevant the use of traditional print processes is in the modern day design industry and whether these can be incorporated into UX design and design for web. I also want to look at how these processes are becoming more fashionable, for example sign painting. How does this relate to my (increasingly specialist) practice? Design for Print is an area which really interests me and I personally want to start exploring the use of some of these processes in my own work. I feel that this project will help me gain a better understanding of traditional processes and give me scope to experiment with them. Is there value in the use of traditional print processes in an increasingly digitised world?
In The COP seminar yesterday we looked at a few different theories, primarily Deconstruction by Jacques Derrida and Pastiche by Fredric Jameson.
We started by looking at Derrida's theory of Deconstruction. This theory evolves for Structuralism and Post-Structuralism theories in the 70's and 80's. The understanding I gained of this theory is fairly vague and after researching further into it I realised how deep this theory goes. It applies to a vast range of subject areas but in this session we looked into the way this theory applies to Graphic Design and Art (especially Ellen Lupton's writing on this.)
Derrida believes that in western society we have a tendency to ‘create dualistic oppositions.' For example speech and writing, presence and absence or mind and body. Derrida says that we often create a hierarchy between these oppositions which privileges one over the other and his writing questions these assumed hierarchies. Derrida believes that these hierarchies are superfluous, each dichotomy needs the other to exist. For example, for there to be presence, there needs to be absence. Or as Lupton puts it ‘Deconstruction attacks such oppositions by showing how the devalued [...] concept inhabits the valued...’
One of the oppositions that features in Derrida's writing is between speech and writing. He writes that we value speech over writing; ‘speech draws on interior consciousness, but writing is dead and abstract’. We looked into the way that this applies to typography and some examples of work which try and adhere to this theory.
The second theory we looked at was Fredric Jameson's theory of 'Pastiche.' I found this much easier to grasp than the theory of Deconstruction. Although I don't necessarily agree with Jameson's theory I can see where he is coming from and the points he was trying to make with his writing. Pastiche is essentially a piece of creative work that imitates another practitioner or another period in History. Fredric Jameson is a Marxist Political critic, essentially an anti-capitalist. He says that 'postmodernityhas transformed the historical past into a series of emptied-out stylizations.' Essentially the re-appropiation of historical visual styles causes us to lose touch with history and provokes a fascination with the present. This is turn means that these visual styles are commodified and consumed, which in itself enforces capitalist thinking.
Personally I don't believe that this necessarily a bad thing. Isn't progression made by taking things from our past, altering them and combining them. Nothing is every truly original and I don't think everything should strive to be modern and new. There is so much valuable material from the past and I believe it would be ridiculous let all this fall into the confines of history. These visual styles can be used effectively in the modern day and personally I think they should be used.
The Royal Studio is a design studio based in Portugal. I came across their work fairly recently. I find the way that they break a huge amount of design rules whilst still creating something really interesting, legible and like nothing I have ever seen before inspiring. The chaotic style of their work is something which I have taken inspiration from for OUGD504 Studio Brief One.
These book covers by Jack Kerouac made me want to experiment with gradients. In the past I have avoided them as much as possible as I felt they are difficult to use tastefully.
The focus on the typography and the minimalism used within this publication was something that really inspired my work for the 'Speaking From Experience' brief.
This work by Jiani Lu was one of the projects that gave me the idea for studio brief 4. The idea of collating experiences for others to learn from them was interesting and I decided to do a similar thing but with experiences from more than one person.
For studio brief 3 we were each given a Bruce Willis film and asked to design a 2 colour poster for it. Die Hard was the poster that I was given. I looked online at existing alternative posters for Die Hard and found a huge array. Below are some of my favourite. Although this was good research and gave me some inspiration a lot of the posters were very similar to my initial ideas. This was irritating as I wanted to do something original and the huge amount of Die Hard posters already out there made this more difficult.
I wanted to do some more research into effective viral campaigns. I looked online and found this article in Forbes magazine. The article talks about how and why campaigns go viral. The article is concluded with 'three top tips' and these sum up the main points of the article.
1) Focus on psychology, not technology. Think about WHY people talk and share
2) Remember that social is more than social media. Don’t forget offline word of mouth
3) Follow the Six key STEPPS: Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, and Stories
Another member of my group told me about a TED talk which also looks at the reasons that videos go viral. Kevin Alloca, an employee at youtube gives the talk and he has some interesting ideas. He says that for something to go viral there are 3 things needed. The first is a trend setter, this is someone with a large following such as a celebrity of some sorts. They are needed to endorse and promote the video. The next is Participation. When the audience can get involved with something it makes it much more memorable. The third is unexpectedness. Only by surprising the audience can you get your message across effectively and make them want to share it.
One of the campaigns I looked at straight away was 'The Whole Picture' campaign for the Guardian Newspaper. The campaign was designed by BBH London and as well as the poster campaign they produced a video that went viral. I decided to look at this as it was encouraging people to read newspapers, essentially the same objective as our campaign. Although the campaign is really strong it didn't really give me any ideas for the campaign.
I looked online at a few different blogs that had compiled some of the most effective viral campaigns but again none of these inspired me for our particular subject matter
As our group had decided in the first session together that we wanted to focus on News and current affairs I thought that it would be interesting to do something with interviews with the public as News channels often interview the public within their coverage of a story. This reminded me of a video I had seen previously. It is part of a series of videos that runs on an American TV show. The videos are called 'Jimmy Kimmel Lie Witness News.' Essentially the videos are made to show how ignorant the public can be by asking them false questions and showing how they answer.
I thought that this was definitely an avenue we could go down with the video for our campaign.
Stanley Donwood is an English artist best know for the work he does for Radiohead. He has created their entire visual identity, producing all their album and poster art himself since 1994. He is close friends with Thom Yorke, the Radiohead frontman and has worked cpllaborated on other projects with him.
These pieces I have shown are Lino Prints. I really like his style of illustration within these pieces and the high contrast effect that is achieved with the Lino. The intricacy in the design adds to this effect.
I took inspiration from Donwood's work for the secret7 brief and developed one of my thumbnail sketches into a design in a similar style to these pieces.
I came across this work by Robert Del Naja in Exit Magazine. Robert Del Naja is an artist from Bristol, he works in many different mediums but originally gained notoriety as a member of the graffiti crew 'The Wild Bunch.'
Del Naja has been involved with Massive Attack for a long time, producing a vast body of work for them. The image shown above is the graphic that Del Naja designed for the single 'KarmaComa' which is interesting to see as this is the track I will be designing for in the secret 7 competition.
His work has a lo-fi feel lo it which I really like, the designs aren't clean or minimal in anyway but use different mediums together to create some really interesting graphics. I ike Del Naja's use of texture and the layering that he utilises in his work. It is interesting to see this work and I have taken inspiration from it but at the same time I want to ensure that my designs aren't too similar to this. I want to do something unique and different to the majority of Massive Attacks artwork.
I looked online at some existing editorial design for inspiration for my layout designs. I looked at the recent re-design of Surf magazine and I feel that this is one of the projects that inspired me the most. The use of minimal graphics, a limited colour palette and the way the body text is laid out creates a clean, simple aesthetic which works really well. It is readable and eye catching at the same time which I would like my layout designs to be.
Another one of the editorial design projects that I looked at was Countrywide, a property publication. This was another design that really stood out to me and that I took inspiration from. I especially liked the use of lines to divide up the page and I also took inspiration from the use of infographics
