Thursday - 26-01-12 - New Books

Like most people I do enjoy a good book, and although I struggle to find the time; when I do it is nice to find something that I can use for personal satisfaction and motivation as well as pass relevant information onto my students. The two books below are not brand new on the shelf but are at this moment in time great reads. Both discuss the theoretical sides of design and relate it to personal insights and perspectives. 

"Seventy nine short essays on design" is written by a designer I have come to love more and more. Michael Bierut is an iconic graphic designer with groundbreaking results in typography and logo design, his work is forever being published and this little read opens up your eyes to just how many other aspects of the world truly evolve around design.

"How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul" is a book written on a personal level by Adrian Shaughnessy. I have seen this book many times in shops and online; but it was only through borrowing it for a while out of my work library that I found myself glued to the pages and simply had to purchase my own copy. It speaks the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about design, the theory, practicalities for designing and how designers should be.




 

Thursday - 26-01-12 - Light / Dark Student Exhibition

I was asked this week to produce the Art work for an up and coming internal exhibition at work.  Light/Dark is an eclectic mix of students work form the Art & Design access group at South Essex College with a special private view of Jen Hales MA showcase. The show will be going up over the weekend with it being open to the public from Monday PM to Friday. The design was inspired by the rotation and experimentation of basic shapes overlapping, allowing a series of new forms to appear. The deisgn plays on its own opacity to give the overall shape depth and balance.




Friday - 21-01-12 - Jen Hale Design Lecturer

Ever since I started this blog almost 15 months ago I always had other lecturers and tutors compliment my efforts for maintaining documentation of my work as a designer and a tutor at South Essex College. Everyone I have ever spoken to about blogging has always ended up with me telling people "You must do it", and It is great to finally see some of my work colleagues jumping on the Blog band wagon.  

Jen Hale Is a colleague of mine who also comes from a Graphic design background. Currently working on the final year of her MA she has decided to publish her current work up online. Some really interesting work is in the making and I look forward to seeing Jen's final body of work and end of year exhibition.


Tuesday - 17-01-12 - Seven Deadly Sins - WK1 Pride

The team started to finish up their "pop art" reaction to Heinz baked beans. with a bit of acrylic paint on the tiles sticking to the idea of Litchestien dots, the piece is really starting to come together. There is still a little bit more work to do but we have received some great feedback.

Thursday - 12-01-12 - Adaptations - John Stezaker

This week the Year 2 Graphic Design team presented their outcomes based upon John Stezaker's montage work. each piece incorporated a chosen film scene that was then adapted and photographed it to portray a character within the film. Very Simple and yet so effective, it was a great eye opener to discuss appropriate imagery and aesthetics. 


 







Wednesday - 11-01-12 - Google Doodle

As a continuing part of Unit 12: Computers in Art, the team are now looking Into branding and packaging design. The overall aim of the project is for the team to design marketing and promotional material for global giant "Google". This week the team were asked to produce a piece of hand made type based on Jesse Hora, this will eventually become part of their promotional poster once the piece has been produced digitally.





Tuesday - 10-01-12 - Seven Deadly Sins - WK1 Pride

Term 2's brief entitled "The seven deadly sins" brings together a series of Consumer brands and sins coming together through narrative image making. Each week the team will be given a new brand along with a sin and a task that incorporates using that brand as a choice of media. This week the team worked on the production of a giant tiled collage piece made from Heinz baked beans. Using Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein as key inspiration and points of reference, the idea behind the piece is to make an over the top sized piece of work that exhausts colour, scale and pride. Due to be completed Next week.





Tuesday - 10-01-12 - Recorded Journey

Last Term as part of the 1st years Unit 1, 2 & 7 Evolution project the team was introduced into the idea of a recorded journey. We discussed and looked at a wide variety of artists and designers that have been mentioned previously and used imagery taken from their  home to college journey. After six weeks of exploring a diverse range of materials the teams set into groups producing a large scale collaborative piece of work. There was a total of four final recorded journeys that were produced on lining paper, each measuring 0.6 x 10 M each. Below is one of my favourites from last term.