What is yellow?

I figured I may aswell update my blog.. even though this is currently offline on word.. I have an hour to kill on the train when I go see my friend Anna Sangha in Lincoln at Uni, so I figured I’d do the draft version now. Her blog (even though she probably hasn’t updated it in ages) its www.annacanvas.blogspot.com

Anyway.. the recent brief we had was ‘What is yellow?’ Since the beginning of the course, we had a pack of materials and a few random items.. one of my random items was a yellow toothpaste and was later used for numerous briefs and tasks since then (the colour theory work, placing colours into groups) For the new brief, from the work we had on that chosen colour, we had to answer the question, what is yellow in 10 resolutions A5 squared (150mm x 150mm)

I began by describing words, objects, context and phrases all to do with yellow, as shown by Fred Bates breaking down the brief to truly understand what was being asked for. It was a really good way of working, giving you the ability of putting down your ideas fluidly about such a vast subject, from there you can make some creative links (see my a2 sheet below..)

From there, as we are told time and time again to be visual with our ideas, I drew some simple ideas and created a few concepts for what can be achieved  (7 in total I think) Although illustration isn’t my strong point, I really wanted to create something bold and fun with some doodles.. My drawing style of characters is very basic shapes and smiles formed which I though would work really well witha brief like this. My original concept was going to be ‘Yellow in situation’ creating 10 resolutions of yellow characters made out of yellow objects in yellow situations. I found our while researching in groups that in certain areas a football is yellow when played in winter, so to add more yellow, I featured players made from yellow rubber gloves to make the image a little more fun J from there I created a few more examples and progressed with the production.

Originally when experimenting the concept I really wanted to create the characters as vector formed graphics, bold colours, clean lines and subtle shading and gradients.. (similar to the work of the Gavin Strange –  www.jam-factory.com ) until I truly realised my skills on illustrator.. terrible. Instead, I went for a more low-tech approach of recreating my sketches in greater detail and rendering with good marker pens instead.. the results weren’t as good as I wanted, but Iam pleased with some of the outcomes. Maybe something to investigate into with some more induction sessions and practice with illustrator in my own time.

Just to keep on the right track, I booked myself into a ‘student surgery sessions’ (who writes this stuff? ..really) on the Thursday and had some more guidance with Jo. It turned out really useful and put me more in a direction with my work, answering the brief a little better. The original concept although good, didn’t really answer what was yellow, just showed yellow.. so back to the drawing board so to speak the concept changed to ‘Yellow is visability’ It didn’t really take more modification, I was more placing the imagery in the correct order and emphasising the look of visibility. The resolutions now included, traffic lights, vehicle recovery, bouncers at a nightclub, a nightlight and a taxi.

Below are the finished articles, placed in order and on the board for the harsh views from the interim crit from Friday afternoon. In a crude way of ‘judging’ work that had been created the work was removed from the wall in order and leaving the most successful piece on the wall. Apparently from the work, the links weren’t as clear as others, but although I think they were, and some feedback I got from friends. I think it was probably me spending all week with the work that made it obvious to me, quite a bad habit to be in..

*image coming soon*

Chuck Anderson

Chuck Anderson born 1985 from Grand Rapids, MI creates amazing light effects as an overlay for photography. It looks brilliant! He's done work for everyone from adidas to threadless, to fall out boy to mcdonalds, to D+G to sony and microsoft.. to name a few. Full listings and more amazing pieces on his website www.nopattern.com  The ones above, are my favourites and really inspirational to look at. Something to aim for? and only 23!

I need to dedicate more time...

...to photography. I have a really nice camera, that I just dont use as much as I should to its full potential. Maybe dedicate an evening/afternoon to purely photography to get a larger library and improve techniques. Maybe involve the 'randomiser' for themes? 

New brief... what is yellow?

A brilliant brief! im actually really excited about it.. no pictures just yet, but the ideas im generating I think could actually be quite good. A proper blog tomorrow, i just felt I had to say something today. Its not the kind of thing i'd usually do, but taken an interest recently for.

You'll see. Not that anyone actually reads this :S

Insaneee.

Just wait for it to start, a few minutes in and watch the longboard footage. Just found it while cruisin blogs.

Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD from adam kimmel on Vimeo.

tony Cragg

Caught my eye when visiting the Leeds art Gallery, and its relation to the colour work we have been doing. Unfortunately from what ive researched, this is the only piece of its kind created by Cragg, his usual work is sculpture, and sculpted drawings.

Fontastic.. and the shortest day.

Hello, thursday was the day we revealed our fonts to each other, discuss our ideas and see what can be improved.. Below is my font, created by Emma Price which i really like. It displays mature, travelled, detailed and organized qualities about me really well (which were the words we agreed on) and it looks really professional. Might make it into an actual font. Oh! that reminds me, recommended by adam a website to create your own fonts.. fontstruct Ive only made one so far, but i will make more soon and keep experimenting with it.

We also created name badges for each other displaying our font we made for the other person. I made the badge a little bit more personal by having a nickname and including her childhood imaginary friends name on the badge, a nice little touch.

Thursday afternoon, I attended a typeset induction and learnt how to set type.. it only took us 2 1/2 hours each to make a sentence :S it came out really nice though.

You take individual letters from massive trays of characters to form words and sentences. Quite a relaxing process, but i wouldnt want to do it for an entire newspaper like it used to be done.

Friday, which was probably the easiest uni day so far was our screenprint induction that in total only took about 2 hours in the day to complete, which was nice! Using a monoprint made, we photocopied it twice, and manipulated one of them to create two layers of a print to be screen'd above the original magenta print and below the manipulated photocopy.

Below, adam at work printing our designs, all placed on one large screen to save space and time. Which each took it in turns for all the prints to be produced.

After hours.

Just coming up to 18.00 and theres people still  here in the studio. Im actually in amazement that people are here so early in the course for such a short project.. you wouldn't find many people at NCN staying later, infact the studios weren't even frikkin open after 5pm some nights. Its good, sat listening to music, talking and each working towards the deadline on thursday. Its a nice place to be. At the moment we're creating fonts for each other based on information we've collected. I have Emma Price, check her blog here.

Ive been mixing up some fonts to create a hybrid the would suit her, some of the words collected were fun, traditional and polite.. which hopefully ive sumed up quite well. Here's the development im working on.. AS WE SPEAK..

Rockin the lightbox (can't wait to get mine back up in leeds) adding serifs to pointy font to help the fun font a more traditional look.. see what ive done there?

The work space! probably the most space ive had while im here, a plus for staying late so you dont have to share with 52 other people :S i wish we had more table space.

Couple of sample fonts on the new 'book pro. but only on Word :( hopefully have some more software soon.

Testing with pencils on tracing paper, attempting to do it as neat as possible.. its not working. 
And the studio! looks good with this few people in it. Well back to work, i might add to today later if i progress any further. x

Bugger it.. ill do it now :)

Colour! mine was yellow.. i thought it wasnt great at first, but when we started work, it actually looks really good. Working with different yellows in different shades and tones and organising them into different orders. Made some quite nice collages.

The complete circle made of all the colours joined together flowing from one to another. Dead impressed.
Combining colours on different layers to see the effects.

Im actually scared.

Not scared for my life, oh no im fine in that department.. just scared about the lack of content on this blog. Just scrolling through BAGD's blogs and just looking at some of the things they've put on. So i need to add to it.! Here goes..

Ive had such a good few weeks meeting people and starting the work, its been a really weird experience of learning, not something im used to. In my old college it was all about outcomes and final pieces that were like posters and adverts, nothing really that we learnt until now. Its been really interesting and as days go im more and more glad ive come here. 

In the first few weeks I had a good balance between work and going out, getting a chance to meet new friends and enjoy leeds a little bit, but its also been good for the work. Over the summer we had a brief to recreate visually 2 letters in the alphabet, mine were A and H... i was a little worried, but kind of glad I didnt have U and X.. When we came back, we were put into groups for a 5 day brief to persuade and encourage people that out vowel (the groups) was better than the others.. It came out really good, ours was an advertising campaign I did the photography for to show the other vowels in bad situations in order for the A vowel to come on top. 

The example for the 'E' poster, it was a campaign for 'Exhibit A' treating the other vowels as threats to society. I thought it was good, but we weren't voted the favourite. It was a good confidence boost to see what can be done in just 5 days, without any actual learning. 

typeface! The randomizer stuck at uni.. (ill explain another time) and i got the two shapes circle and rectangle from the box, and from that we needed to form a typeface in print.. I decided to use potatoes, (take it old school) :D and i think it came out really good, with restrictions given. People commented that it came out with a 'x-ray' effect.

Just a quick snap of the studio with one of the wall pieces we've all been part of. Another brief from the randomizer.. we each had a word and it needed to be interpreted in 100 letterforms, my word was dissect. :S sooo worried at first but once I got started, wasn't so bad. As quite a few people said, it looked really good having 500 pieces of work up on one wall, just looking at what people can achieve.

Just a few examples of work, with the different words. Mine are the line of B's shown below..

fourth row down, in the centre column. I can't remember who did 'layer' on the left hand side, but they were sandwiches! brilliant.

Last week we had a print induction to the MASSIVE FACILITIES. Seriously 5 times the size of NCN's print room, and it wasnt even the only one, theres more in our building too! brilliant. Anyway, we had mono printing all day in the induction, but may seem a little bit boring, but at times it was tilting between creative genius and pre school fun, what you can do with CMYK and a few stencils. I have my prints back but unfortunately issues with my scanner for the prints on my mac, but i did take a few pictures with my phone of the plates which looked good.

My stencils laid over the top gave the nice effect, the ink began to seep through the paper stencils after constant use all day, which gave a nice effect on the later prints made. As soon as its sorted, they'll be on. the next image is actually the back of the plate I was printing off, after working all day on a dirty table, it created quite a nice print.

Some of the best work is always accidental, this is one of my favourites, I think it would be hard to recreate a piece like this by trying, probably why I like is so much. We've had quite alot of work this week already, plenty to do with colour, which ill post tomorrow night.. i think its abit late now.