Professional Practice

Surreal Self Portrait

Surreal Walk

The project was to collect anything that you can see or find along your journey and stick them down to portray what you have seen in a day.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci is the person that I picked out randomly from a ball and my aim is to create anything that has an influence from his work.

I based my project on one of the most known work pieces done by Leonardo Da Vinci which was the Last Supper.

Discourse - Eric Bailey

Eric Bailey is predominantly a painter, although he has a liking for drawing and designing from California. When looking at his work he has been influenced with many elements around him from skateboarding, graffiti, music and the influence of many artists. He paints mostly on canvas with oil based paints and you can see that clearly in his work, there are no perfect curves and lines as he likes to show more than just a perfect picture. In addition, he likes to show the obvious however, having that little more meaning behind a painting. He has worked with Nike and Adidas as well with many other businesses. Moreover, his work to me seems inspiring because of what he paints of, very understandable and easy to analyze, he paints things that I can relate to such as dogs so it is easy for me to be inspired but some of his work maybe labelled as a straightforward painting but it is the way he paints his work makes him different to other painters/designer, he paints every detail through the brush strokes that allows his work to communicate to viewers easily.

Image link:
http://www.shift.jp.org/en/archives/2004/09/eric_bailey.html
http://www.feedmecoolshit.com/interviews-archive/eric-bailey/

Discourse - Estevan Oriol

Estevan Oriol is one of the most respected photographers in America and has his fair share of admiration around the world. He is a Mexican photographer residing in Downtown Los Angelas. His work is predominantly of black and white using an SLR (not DSLR) camera and working with natural ambience and light, this makes his photos look like the past in the present from all the resources he uses. In addition, he mostly takes pictures of those from the hood e.g. Gangbangers, drug dealers or just people from the area, however, he does work with models from around the world for magazines such as XL, King Magazine, Lowrider and many more. Moreover, he has worked with famous celebrities such as Cypress Hill, Bun B, Eminem, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and many other host of known names, within his work he has his own clothing line which includes his images straight onto T Shirts and Hoodies as well as working with clothing brand Upper Playground. Personally, Estevan Oriol is one of my favourite photographers and is an inspiration towards my success (no bum scraping lol).

Image Link:
http://www.individualsole.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/eo2.jpg
http://www.estevanoriol.com/published.htm
http://www.highsnobiety.com/uploads/pics/upperplayground_estevanoriol_calender_tees_1.jpg

Discourse - Homies

Homies is a series of 2-inch figurines that are mainly based on Chicano style characters in the life of creator David Gonzales. The success of the series has been highly recognized around the world as not only the cartoon being a favourite but the sale's of the collectible figurines and posters have hit the market selling mainly in internation al marts. Moreover, since 2005 Gonzales released more ethnic figurines that have a relation to Mexicans such as Filipino, Japanese, Puerto Rican figures as well as having Women and Evil Clowns that have been established as a Chicano significance. However before this, Homies came under a heavy controversial issue with the Los Angelas Police Department (LAPD) citing that this series influenced and advertised the gang culture, thus haveing an affect to violence. This effected the sales of the figurines by stopping shops from selling. Therefore, David Gonzales brought an end to the controversy by creating stories of a more positive attitude such as having former jail mates educating young children how to avoid going to jail and so on.

An image of some of the collectible figurines.

Image link:
http://api.ning.com/files/YkgDrmMRzXz2fLVqgJ8MeOJCetGSKDSqZj*HEwLEequX2H7Oyg6oiAcS1SvOTcnycJdvK5FDICe2Er-xxQecMnB7roq87fig/Homies_Titel.jpg
http://www.pixhost.com/pixm/mrcubby/homies-series-2.jpg

Discourse - Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a world known graphics editing program that us published under Adobe Systems. You can maybe to anything to edit pictures as well as designing something from scratch, therefore, most designing company’s use this program for projects such as advertisements, posters and etc as well as using Adobe Illustrator for its vector based image editor. Personally this is one of my favourite programs to work with simply because I have the hang of doing things but I’m still learning more, when I first started to use this I struggled really bad but practice makes perfect I guess. There are many different editions to this program from Adobe Photoshop 0.63 which was released in 1988 to Adobe Photoshop CS4 that was released in October 2008, throughout all these versions there have been huge improvements through the tools and the performance thus making really good images compared to the past.

The first version of Adobe Photoshop

The latest version: Adobe Photoshop CS4

This is an example of someone's attempt to create a packaging design for Lay's potato crisp.

Image link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Adobe_Photoshop_1_retail_box.jpg
http://www.tritech-computers.com/store2/images/Academic%20Adobe%20Photoshop%20CS4%20Extended.jpg
http://psdguides.com/2009/05/create-packaging-design1/

Discourse - Banksy

Banksy is a British graffiti artist with an anonymous identity. His artwork is influence around politics, ethnic and culture, which is portrayed around the public streets of Britain. His work has been a subject to criticism from the public as well as being in the news about the messages he puts in his work as well as the vandalism of public property, however, many people admire his work because they feel that they can relate to what his views are about and that they respect the fact that he has his way of communicating to a wide demographic that others can’t. He tends to use stencils that range from fairly small sizes to really huge portions that are able to catch the eyes of the public. In addition, he doesn’t only stencil on street walls or pavements but he has somehow been able to stencil on a cow and replace a painting in a gallery with his own duplicate but adding his political views. In addition, he has his work abroad such as in the streets of America, France and etc, I think in countries that have political issues that his opinion really matters to him most.

Image link:
http://scrapbook.citizen-citizen.com/subjectivity/images/banksy_logo3.jpg
http://www.banksy.co.uk/indoors/02.html
http://www.banksy.co.uk/indoors/02_3.html
http://www.banksy.co.uk/indoors/01_2.html

Discourse - Grime (Music)

Grime is a music genre that has been around since 2000 until now that represents the UK. Grime was born within the estates and streets of East London by the artist called Wiley formerly from the Pay As You Go Crew. Grime is influenced by Rap and Hip-Hop, however it has established itself as a more aggressive and dark from the way MC’s “spit” due to the fact that the beat is way above the speed of Hip-Hop and Rap that is set around 140 beats per minuet. Grime has been a subject to a lot of criticisms about the genre not able to have it’s own category slot in awards only to be under “Urban”. However, there are many artists that contribute to producing music but only a handful stand out to the scene that acquire recognition thus making a step to the mainstream. Artists such as Dizzee Rascal, Lethal B, Kano, Wiley and Tinchy Stryder are amongst the few that have been able to establish themselves as hit makers and artist that can produce “good music”. This genre is portrayed as the representation of the “gritty” streets of London and has an influence on their style of designs in the artists cover of their mix cd’s or albums.

Image link:
http://images.play.com/covers/5211092x.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u68/wretch32/wretch32iz9.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61FFhu42jvL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Discourse - Alan Fletcher

Alan Fletcher was a British graphic designer who done designs for clients such as Penguin Books, Pirelli, Cuncard and etc. His work ranged in different types of designs showing how much creativity and ideas he had, they were complex and yet simple and had an innovative way of playing around with letters until they were no longer able to be seen as a letter. In addition, he experiments different positions to place his lettering to become more abstract and also his work portrayed images that looked so compound with only a minimum of elements. So he basically worked with what he had at the time. His influence in his work include bright colors and clean shapes to form a picture or to relate to his objective. He was described as "the most highly regarded graphic designer of his generation, and probably one of the most prolific".

This is one of his pieces for a book cover called "Beware Wet Paint". This portrays his influences in his designs simply as the type just says Beware Wet Paint, hoever, paint comes in all sorts of colors and he has included that to his work as well as the drips. The drips is a significant element of paint so it relates to his work hugely. The book is about most of his work that has been influential in the design world, everything that he has shown to be one amazing designer of his time and to serve as a momento and influence to aspiring young designers.

Image link:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51F3D4HQKXL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Discourse - Ed Fella

Ed Fella is typographic artist as well as an educator and a graphic designer. His work is mostly known for his influence of contemporary typography. When I saw his work, straight away I thought his work is more tentative to artist like Alex Trochut, he is obviously different to many designers/artist out there but his work seems to have a more 'drawing type' look by using different medias such as pens, pencils,crayons and etc to draw out words and use a lot of different colors to dinstinguish his work from others. His work is very respectable but to an extent it doesn't really appeal to me as other artist do, maybe it is because his theme or the way he composes his work is something that i can't quiet understand. His work seems to be something of the past, not very modern which makes him stand out from the rest.

This is one of Ed Fella's work called 'Bunch'. This is one piece of his artwork in the category of lettering. You can see he has put his influences of contemporary type within the way he has worked the lines and curves to form a B. However, he has tried to make the be different adding extra curves, hence the title named Bunch that defines his artwork 'bunching' up lines and curves. He has also added a lot of color similar to a rainbow to be more creative. He is a typographer from the past living in the present working for the future.

Image link:
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/ed_fella.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/thanks-a-bunch/&usg=__0BVBYo5Dhxv4EcT10fZW6A_wFMg=&h=600&w=550&sz=221&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=IRUZl79Pd4jxRM:&tbnh=135&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ded%2Bfella%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26um%3D1

Discourse - Modernism/Postmodernism

To be honest stuff like Modernism and post modernism is something that I tend to not care about, however, it is about art and design and so on so I have taken into consideration of what it is about. Modernism is an umbrella of surreal ideas and a collection of cultural movement within art, architecture and literature that started during the late nineteenth century that succeeded during the twentieth century. The work of modernism is something that you don’t really come across, it is a culture of art that had freedom written all over it, it is an experimentation of different ideas as well as eradication, primitivism forgetting about conventional expectations.

In addition, Postmodernism happened after modernism, when people seemed to lose their liking over the whole theme they created the total opposite. Work that had the influence of anything that had no purpose, they just made work for what happened to be the sake of making art.

Discourse - Alex Trochut

I first knew about this designer when my friend sent a picture of one of his artwork and immediately I thought this guy was sick (good). He is an independent graphic designer who has an expanded liking of illustration, typography and lettering, you can see in his work the passion he has from those elements of design. His work is technically illustrated to form different ideas to make one design, some may say his work speaks for itself through the basis of his designs but I look at his work and think that he puts a lot of thought into it - what I mean by this is that his work says a lot that relates to whoever his client is. Therefore, that's what makes me have an interest in his work and although his work maybe hard to understand when you look at it, the outcome is amazing.

This is one of his designs called Beautiful Decay. This is an apparel t shirt design, this defines what I mean about the technical illustration that relates to what he's trying to work on. The whole design including the title is in a form of an oxymoron in which the name Beautiful Decay contrasts the good and the bad, beautiful speaks for itself whilst decay is a form of decomposition meaning waste - bad. The design itself when i first looked at it was the color, the color represents the "Beautiful" side and when you look closer there are bubbles that represent the same as the color. However, the type of lettering is almost like a grungy, goo look that represents the "Decay" part of his work. Therefore, his work looks difficult to understand/read but when you get the hang of knowing what the message is then you'll know all about his work. In addition he has done work for clients such as Nike, Cadbury’s, Coca-Cola and many more.

Image Link:
http://behance.vo.llnwd.net/profiles/51195/projects/41498/511951190742478.jpg

Discourse - Environment

I’m sure when your asked about environment you immediately think of everything that surrounds YOU. However, when asked about THE environment you start to think outside of your environment and what you start to think about are things like the climate and atmosphere, why is that? Well I start to think it’s because the way that the term environment is used, it can be used in a way that suits you or in a way that everybody refers it to. Environment is the surroundings that exist around us in our lives whether that being someone, something or even somewhere. Generally the term environment branches out into many references from biophysical, systems, social environments just to name a few but there are many more that the term environment means. Natural environments are all living and non-living existents that occur on Earth that can be mountains, volcanoes, oceanic activity and climate. The latter has been hitting the headlines in recent years due to the effect of so called “global warming” which has been stated to have a long-term effect that could be have a devastating result on our natural environment and on the planet itself. So whether you want to help and save the environment its up to you to that, if not then you might as well lay back in your personal space.

Discourse - Semiotics

Learning and understanding what semiotics is, probably be very mind-boggling unless you really want to know what it is. Well semiotics are fortunately everywhere in the environment that we live in. It is the study of sign processes or signification as well as communication, signs and symbols that are both individually and grouped into sign systems, so really it is what we visualize whether that being something that you see in front of you or picturing something or by hearing. However, there are two theories about semiotics that stem from way back in the 1900’s. The first theory was by a Swiss linguist called Ferdinand de Saussure who is known to be the “father” of modern day linguistics, his side is slightly easier to understand in which he had proposed a dualistic perception of signs that contrasts the denotation and connotation of something. He referred them as “signifier” which expresses the form of the word or other words saying what it actually is and “signified” as the mental concept, which is the meaning behind the denoted object. On the other hand, the other theory is from Charles Pierce who was the founder of pragmatism. He suggested that semiotics was to do with symbols in relation to the mind; he broke down semiotics into three categories, which are icon, index and symbols. In addition, the term definition can lead to deeper theories rather than signs and symbols therefore; semioticians are studying well beyond that such as how people interpret signs then how they physically and psychologically understand it.

Cereal Box & Advert

This project was about making your own cereal, whether that being the name, design, box or whatever was solely up to you. Therefore, I aimed to make my cereal for people from young teens to mid aged people, something like Crunchy Nut, Cheerios, Shreddies and so on.

My cereal name is called Choco Blocks Krispies, using cluster snacks to act as my marketing tool and therefore, I wanted to base my color scheme and designs around that.

Postcards

Within this project, we had to create 6 different postcards that you wouldn't find in a shop. Using creative ideas and designs you were expected to make something that you haven't seen before, we were given the option to work around a chosen theme. My theme was about Death Threats, simply because you don't need to buy death threats (you can't anyway) so I thought it was an innovative idea and thought it was something to show and suprise the class. Fortunately, it did.

This is one side that contains articles of recent deaths that happened and I thought that it worked well with my postcard, with this in particular.

This is the other side to my postcard that has a subliminal message to whoever recieves this postcard.

This postcard is of a skull with a balaclava, however, I used articles to show the skulls top face and the balaclava (white area) is to add the subliminal message.

This is similar to the 2 above but I used articles of gun crime.

Again, on the other side I showed the subliminal message.

This is an image of a grave stone, I tweaked the writing to "Wish you could join me", hence why I made the design as a puzzle as you join puzzles together to get the final result.

This is a view when De-assembled.

This idea is of a ransom letter threatening to kill someone's family if not abiding by the threat.

This image is of a typical postcard with the "fantasy" look.

But when you pull out the postcard inside, it portrays an image of where the sender is from. Having a message to help get him/her out of there.

Surrealism

High School Musical

Our Proposal:

To create a fun and entertaining project based around our brief about High School Musical, where the other student in the class and exhibition audience can participate in this project. This idea was brought up as I listened to everyone ideas in class and realized that everyone work was either to common or more then one group where doing the same thing, but these projects all of them had one thing in common none of them seem to interact or gets the audience involved therefore I decided to come up with a fun fair style shoot the duck style game, but instead of duck you had the horrible High School Musical cast lined up with the participants throwing darts at certain targets to accumulate points.

The dart style stand will be 88cm by 198cm with the image edited and printed out and stuck on corkwood for easy penetration of the darts. The group has been split into two. Group 1 will research the material, which they have already done, therefore what is left is to purchase the material and create the stand. Group 2 will be responsible for the measurements of the cast image and printing the image out and adjusting the image so that the resolution is perfect for the game.

The game is just simple clean fun using non-professional darts. You can play it on your own or with another player where they take it in turns to throw four darts at the HSM cast. Each cast has different points on them depending on popularity etc. The player to accumulate the most points is the winner. Plain and simple clean fun.

We all as a group came up with the name so easily as we all as a group had one thing in common "WE HATE HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL!".

Building the frame.

Adding the pads.

This is how it looked when everything was put together...

...Not forgetting the darts.

People enjoying themselves.

Excuses

Within this project we had to make up an excuse as to why we didn't do our project. In addition, ONLY typography is used, therefore no images. The font had to be in relation to your excuse.

This is the outcome of my project. I had used an Old English font combined with all 4 British notes (£5, £10, £20 and £50). I added money as a border to show what I had been earning to relate to my excuse.

A close up of all the words that are combined with the 4 notes.

Alphabet

The brief for this project was to take pictures of things such as natural resources and other objects within our environment that looks like any letter within the alphabet.