OUGD402 Lord Whitney Studio Talk

Last week we visited Lord Whitney's amazing creative studio space where they specialise in creative direction, set design and art direction. They gave us such an inspirational and motivational talk that I personally really benefitted from. I found it really engaging to hear and follow their story of how they got from university to where they are today. One of the main things that was made clear during their presentation was to keep doing what you do because you love it, keep making creative things and turn something that you love into a career. Initially they both started out not being very confident that they could make a living out of what they do, but they did it anyway, and people started to notice, which is how they began to get paying clients to come to them. I really enjoyed the talk because it made me feel more confident that if I am passionate about something, I can make it work if I persevere. It also made me realise that it is a lot of hard work and I need to be willing to put everything behind it. One thing that I particularly liked was the fact that both girls seemed very down to earth and easy to talk to, because they are young also, I felt that they could relate well to how all of us are feeling now which aided their presentation.

Reflecting on their talk has made me want to go out and ask for experience at design studios like this or work at a festival as this was something they highly recommended. 

OUGD402 The Tetley Presents - Picture Book - Roger Palmer: Winter Garden

I recently visited The Tetley, centre for contemporary art and learning in Leeds City Centre. The building itself is absolutely stunning, in an art deco former brewery HQ, I particularly liked the old out of use lift. While at The Tetley I saw two exhibitions: Picture Book and Roger Palmer, Winter Garden.

Picture Book
22nd January - 6 March 2016
Featuring: Craig Atkinson (Cafe Royal) / Christian Barnes / David Barton / Nous Vous / Landfill Editions (Mould Map).

This exhibition looks at image-based artists' books, spanning graphic art, photography, craft and visual communication. I found the exhibition bright and compelling with most of the work being colourful and engaging. It gained a lot of inspiration for my current book project, I aim to engage more with colour and choose interesting combinations. I also really liked the simplicity of the illustrations which made me feel I need to be more confident in my own designs.

Roger Palmer: Winter Garden
22 January - 6 March 2016

The exhibition featured a mixed-media representation of a tropical palm tree. The palm tree was presented on a 6m high wall combining vinyl, ink and acrylic paint. It was a really interesting piece which has inspired me not to have any limits regarding a piece of work I want to produce, encouraging me to try whatever ideas I might have.

OUGD402 Photography and Lighting Induction

Today we had an introduction into setting up the lighting for a photoshoot. I really enjoyed the session as I felt like I gained a lot of valuable information and I took some successful photographs. I am hoping later to photograph my colour theory leaflet and my cookbook so it was really important that I know how to set up and properly work with lighting.

Standard settings my camera should be set at:

I took along with me some of the books I made in book binding to photograph:

I then moved on to look at another object to photograph:

Overall I really enjoyed the workshop and it has allowed me to become more confident in my own photography skills, making sure that I can document my work more professionally. Hopefully I will make use of the photography rooms and equipment to help push my work further.

OUGD402 Nest Issue 08 Magazine Launch

Nest Issue 08 Magazine Launch:

Nest is Leeds College of Arts, Student Unions, very own magazine, which is extremely popular. After reading issue 07, I found it really inspiring to see other students work from different disciplines come together to produce something for the set theme of the magazine. I also really love the clean design of the magazine and the way it is laid out, which helps to show off the work perfectly.

The launch for issue 08 was held at The Midnight Club - Studio 24 in Leeds. It was a very nice space for the magazine to be presented in, due to the theme of the magazine being light, there was lots of dramatic lighting to create shadows, and an engaging space.

Due to the nature of the event it was quite small and I wished there was more for me to engage with, as me and my friends felt awkward and out of place as there wasn't much for us to do. This is probably due to the fact we're still quite new to things like this, so didn't need to speak with anyone. There were some interesting pieces on display, I particularly liked the large bird sculpture. After reading this issue I found some pieces had really strong compositional elements working well with the light but I didn't find some of the work to portray light as interestingly as I had hoped.

OUGD402 Studio Brief 02 - Self Branding - Ideas

Ideas:

I began my idea process by simply looking at what I could make out of my initials to provide a strong brand logo for myself. After playing round with ideas I actually found it really difficult to come up with something that I was happy with.

I then started to search for typefaces that had an interesting 'g' and this proved to be really valuable!
Some of the images I came across:

Straight away within these lower case 'g's I could see my initials a g and an s. I also just liked how striking and beautiful they were on there own, they demanded attention in an elegant way. I had a look at a few different typefaces that had this type of lowercase 'g'.

I had a look at these typefaces all at different sizes to see how they would stand out, as on some of them the stroke thickness is quite thin. My two favourites are Marion and Palatino, but after writing out my name in both I found that I liked Marion the best. Letters had a slightly thicker stroke and a higher x height which wasn't as flat and spread out as Palatino.

As I already mentioned with the lower case 'g' I could envision my initials 'g' and 's'. I began to edit the single letterform so that you can subtly see both initials.

Although it might not be very obvious that is is my initials I still think this will provide a strong visual logo for me, as it is an interesting shape. Now that I have a logo I need to work out what I am going to apply it to.