PROJECT 3: Climate Change poster

To start the process of this brief, working with the research I had, I played around with a few simple ideas. This process of creating thumbnail sketches got some ideas off the ground to begin with and was an important step to developing a solid idea that could lead to a final product.

Working with coloured pencils helped me create quick little sketches that still had enough detail to easily transfer into a bigger, more final version (whether it was digitised or by hand on a larger scale).

When creating these images, I tried to stick to a theme/message I had decided on through brainstorming the initial drawings which was of diminishing earth resources and the deterioration of the climate. After looking at Milton Glaser's piece titled "It's Not Warming, It's Dying", I was inspired to try and create a simple digital visualisation of the deterioration of the earth and so chose a sketch I had done to develop and digitise.

After losing my USB stick, I lost all files of this design as I created them on a computer at Ravensbourne and so therefore had nothing to bring back and develop and so was left with no choice but to submit the above image as the final due to being too close to the deadline to start again.

Despite this, I felt I achieved what I was aiming to express with this piece but woulda been nice to play around with the effects of the illustration and the overall layout. I feel like the text pieces I put in could've been strengthened or maybe even completely changed. Another option would be to completely leave out the text and keep it with the illustration as this could've gone for a very simple route which would create an ambiguous element which would enable viewers to openly interpret.

PROJECT 3: Climate Change research

Project 3 was based on climate change and the upcoming Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris this year which aims to come up with a way to drastically slow down and eventually prevent the damage of climate change in the world. After listening to a presentation from a representative of ClimateUK, we were asked to produce a poster expressing the severity of climate change to persuade people to attempt to cut down and help with the fight against environmental damage and the depletion of the earth's resources. 

In preparation for this task, due to it being our first project with an actual client brief, I wanted to look at the significance of graphic design in the world of propaganda and also get more of an idea of the statistics when it comes to climate change to attempt to have a solid base to work off. I started with looking at the ClimateUK website and the NASA website. Both these sights had the same kind of idea when it came to climate change, but both gave different statistics. This made me think of the difference of opinion between the UK and the US when it came to climate change. The fact that both these corporations had the same general theme of climate change being detrimental to the human race, they both seemed to have different scapegoats when it came to blaming a particular element of damage to the environment. 

Because of this I wanted to more focus on the overall damage to the world as a whole and avoid statistics and instead focus on achieving a sense of solidarity from the viewer and try produce a realisation that climate change is real and very dangerous rather than blaming it on a particular part.

Looking at Milton Glaser's 'It's Not Warming, It's Dying.', this showed a very simple piece of graphic design that expressed an image of the damage done with a very blunt visual statement as well as the very blunt title  to project such a strong image through such simple means. Due to the purpose of this work, Glaser's work had to be strong at expressing the message he wanted to in such a vast way, and the simplicity of his piece achieves that as it was easily translated from a standalone image to an overall recognisable brand. The green to black gradient over the circle was created as a badge, shirts and even marbles which got his work out there to express his message.

From this research I learnt how simplicity is key when it comes to branding and graphic design to produce a recognisable image as recognisability is a massive part of expressing a message, which graphic design is often used for.

PROJECT 1: Graphics Pathway Interest Page

After passing my assessment of the Exploratory Stage, I opted to take the Graphics Pathway. To start this stage off, we were given a simple project for the first week to run alongside the Big Draw project in drawing week. The task was to create a square shaped image, 180mm in size, that reflected a particular interest in the world of Graphics that meant something to us. Having a major interest in typography and branding, I wanted to create something that reflected the importance of recognisable branding and how it mixes with typography to create a very large part of graphics.

Using an image of the Moon I had developed into a wallpaper a few months ago (as my surname is Moon) I decided to incorporate that into my design to pose as the branding theme. This mini project exercised the ability to experiment with different ways to express a message/theme through a brief that had many restrictions (such as size, layout, etc.)

Experimenting with written typography and digital touch-ups, I produced the above image in an attempt to express my interest in both typography and branding. The typefont was created in Illustrator after selecting it from an idea I had drawn out by hand in my sketchbook. This showed me the importance of creating quick sketches by hand that can then be digitised to create the final outcome. I also drew out the "love heart" to express the importance of emotion in art and how it can affect people and how graphics can be used to commercialise this effect art has to a globally recognised scale. With the "loveheart" I wanted to keep the hand-drawn aesthetic so just used a scan of the page I drew it on and placed it into the entirely digitally produced piece.

3D DESIGN: Bridge

On the last day of our 3D rotation came the biggest task so far. The idea was to create a bridge out of cardboard, parcel tape and bamboo sticks. To start off, it was wise to research the different kinds of structural bridges.

Suspension bridges

This type of bridge is where the road is suspended below taller structures by cables on suspenders.

Stilted structures

These are structures that are suspended above by pillars or "stilts"

In groups of 8, we then sketched 1 or 2 ideas each inspired by the research we made and got to work.

Despite not being the most aesthetically pleasing bridge out of the class, our piece certainly did it's job as it was able to carry the remote control car used to test quality without fail.

3D DESIGN: Structures

On the first day of our 3D rotation, we were instructed to create a structure capable of supporting a bottle of water out of one A2 piece of paper and 60cm of masking tape. The bottle had to be elevated 20cm above the ground and we were given the measurements of the bottle and told to start. I started with decorating the paper, which I probably spent too much time doing as I then found myself rushing to sort out the actual structure. My structure was fairly simple and was designed to resemble a vase of sorts. Despite being capable of withholding the weight of the bottle, there was an issue of balancing and this seemed to be due to the hollow structure and the crumple of the paper resulting in an uneven setting.

Carrying on with the idea of structure and how form and function are very important elements of 3D design, the next task was to create a structure that could support body weight off the ground using corrugated cardboard and parcel tape. The conditions of this piece was that it had to be 30cm off the ground and each component we made it out of could only be a maximum of 20cm high. 

Knowing that triangles are notoriously strong structural shapes, I decided to use that aspect and create triangular prisms to set up a "house of cards" kind of style, as shown below.

Despite my best efforts, this model failed due to the fact that the body weight on top of it cause the prisms to fold on each side and collapse. Learning from this, I feel it would've been smart to reinforce the sides of each prism.

FASHION: Collages and Stencils

For the introduction to fashion, we looked at how the world of art and clothing coexist and depend on each other. Looking at some quite extreme cases, we saw how art has inspired fashion designers to create pieces either based on or similarly styled to a particular piece of art.

The point of this was to try and inspire us to adapt one of our own favourite pieces of art into a piece of clothing. We started off with creating stencils of particular pieces of clothing (i.e. shirts, t-shirts, jeans, skirts) and layered them over different parts of the artwork we chose. The effect of this was an abstract crop of a larger piece of art that appeared as it would if it was printed on the clothing. A more professional example of this could be seen above in a dress by Yve Saint Lauren which was inspired by a piece by Piet Mondrian and opposite is a piece by Albert Kriemler inspired by Claude Monet. I wanted to look at Andy Warhol's work for this use of stencils as I felt it would work well. One of the pieces I used is his collaged portrait of Mick Jagger shown below.

I quite liked my outcomes below as I believe they captured the abstract element Warhol's work typically has due to the harsh cropping the prints take on the templates.

Furthering on this idea, we looked at working with collage to create a more 3D look to it with different textures. For this, I looked at other pieces of Andy Warhol's work as they have a nice abstract layered effect which I wanted to create through collage. One of the pieces I used was his portrait of Judy Garland.

Shown below are the 4 outcomes I produced using the collage style, I tried to work with tearing and layering to not only create a unique "shattered" look but also to create depth that could compare to how the collages would look if created into a prototype. Each collage consisted of a photocopy of a model and a photocopy of an Andy Warhol piece which was then torn and stuck into various shapes and then experimented with using different texturing techniques such as looping (top left), folding (bottom left) and layering (bottom right). The piece in the top left is then an original attempt by myself at recreating a similar look to the sketchy Warhol style using tissue paper and felt tip pens which were selected to be similar colours to the collage in the top left.

To finish off the week, it was time to create a functioning piece of fashion design inspired by another piece of art. The piece I chose was a painting I saw in Tate Modern by George Condo titled "Big Blue"

Due to the layering of colours on this piece and the shape that element creates, I wanted to recreate that. I started with sketching some ideas.

I found this process quite easy as the piece I chose I instinctively saw the shape of a dress within it and so went with that. Due to the limitation of working with paper that we were set with, I thought the best way I could achieve my design efficiently and successfully was to use coloured tissue paper. I then taped out the shapes I wanted to stick the tissue down in using double sided tape and got to work.

I then wrapped this around a mannequin and started to shape the dress.

Once complete, it was then modelled on one of my classmates to photograph for my sketchbook.

Despite having no experience or real interest in Fashion, this week has taught me a lot about the industry of both production and promotion and has interested in the way it was approached as it was not what I was expecting. I am relatively proud of my final piece but I do believe it could have been better if given more time in certain areas such as the shaping of the tissue paper. I also could've used more material to really gain the layered effect I wanted, despite achieving something not too far off in this piece.