Pick me Up

Ok so last Thursday we had another trip to London town. Luckily this time we had a lot longer to spend there, and a great little graphic design exhibition to go with it. £5 entry, well worth the dosh, and even though it ends today here's the info :

http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual_arts/pick_me_up_2011/

The standard of all the work was really high, but I'm going to focus on 3 that stood out to me the most.

First of all we have Clara Terne http://www.terne.se/newsblog/ with her kaleidoscope inspired images. The colours and smoothness of her work is beautiful. I really love things that could potentially take hours to study properly. Looking at her other work too, the colour schemes are well measured and how she interprests 3d objects into 2d is great too.

The next work is by "Revenge is Sweet" http://www.revengeissweet.org/ a partnership between Angelique Piliere and Lee Owens. The "cut and paste" feel to their work is brilliant, with subtle connections to surrealism and Dali. Again there are connections to kaleidoscopes, but with a much more stark and angular result. The versatility from magazines and adverts to artistic prints is great, and I especially like the interaction of birds and animals in their work because it looks odd yet works at the same time.

Anthony Burrill http://www.anthonyburrill.com/ was pretty much the main event of the exhibition, and had a huge room full of his work and also an activity table in the middle for people to create their own pieces using photocopies of the work on the walls. Simple graphic work with minimalist shapes and block colours, a very recognisable style.

And here's my masterpiece!

Hopefully they'll have the exhibition on again next year - if they do, check it out!

Li

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Waldo Pancake!

Ok, so I think I was browsing some site for "different gifts" which always end up being the same, but I came across this bag:

I love love love this! And I knew it reminded me of something, so checking out Waldo Pancake's website, I found that he was behind the magic of these beauties that I'd seen on LovelyPackage.com a while ago now.

Amazing, I love how the inanimate objects are just speaking to you like a normal person, and not only that, they're dismissive, pessimistic, sarcastic and depressive, which sounds weird but I think is THE perfect personality for an everyday object. So I decided to buy this gem:

And if I had more money, I probably would go a bit wild.

Li

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Rubber...

Designers being designers... or maybe just being any uni student, when we're in the studio we tend to not be doing so much work and be watching youtube vids instead. Don't ask me how we found "Rubber", but when we did we were on to a pretty good winner. In essence, its a film about a rubber tire with telepathic powers, and enjoys blowing people's heads off. Apparently it was a total flop at the Cannes film festival, but this is the kind of twisted random humour that me and my friends enjoy. Anyway, after investigating, I found a pretty cool poster for it:

Now I'm a bit of a texture lover, and I'm always inclined to use it in my own work, so this simple yet rough around the edges look is fab. I know white black and red is a bit of a common occurence, but used in the right context, I think it's great.

(This also reminds me of the ad for Black Swan at the cinema which reminds me of a retro 1930/1940(?) design. Amazing aesthetics for such a mainstream film that could have been so predictable)

Anyway, my good friend Dave, who also found the trailer for Rubber, is a big fan of Olly Moss. I hadn't heard of him before, so had a gaze at his website, and found some of his posters which that "Rubber" had an uncanny resemblance. The screen print look that these have is great, they prove that orange works just as well as the red when complementing black and white, and they convey the film that they are advertising with minimal information. Ace.

Li

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That's a lovely...

Ok so here are some recent gems from Lovely Package.

So first of all we have packaging for food supplements. I'm increasingly realising how much I underestimate typography and how pants I actually am with it. This is one of those clever things that I wish I had thought of (but has probably been done many times before). Clean, bold, sexy.

Now I like 'cute' stuff like this. It makes me happy. Another lovely use of typography, and the simple illustrations and limited use of colour compliments it perfectly. I feel as though if I came up with this at Uni it wouldn't be very worthy, which is a great shame, because I'd push it too far and over complicate it.

An Icelandic design for a beer bottle. The country has always appealed to me, and my parents visited last year, so that may be a factor as to why I like this. Their idea was to have 10 different designs that change annually, which is a bit of a task, but even though these 3 are totally different they still link in because of the black and also the shapes used. And I love the abstract fingers and toes on the woman!

This is the kind of cocky design that I should hate. It knows its amazing. Just look at it staring at you. Pattern - tick. Texture - tick. Modern - tick. Stupidly ace promotional picture - tick. Jealous - tick.

Until another month or so haha...

Li

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Poster design!

Ok, so the lectures that we've had this January have been on "that old chestnut" post modernism, and the designer Bob Gill. I could listen about post modernism all day - which is good because my lecturer, the legend Mr Simon Bell, is pretty obsessed. But the pleasant surprise came from Bob Gill.

I'm helping out a few friends with advertising for their final degree show dance, so when this image came up on the old school slide machine, (which also reminded of me of the good old days as a child) I was rather intrigued...

How fab is it that there is one too many hands and legs? Totally puts across the whole essence of dancing, being intriguing and fun at the same time. The title angle is great, I'm not so sure about the text at the bottom but it helps with the asymmetry so I'll let it off. And even for today, it would still work the retro look brilliantly.

So I thought I'd have a browse at other posters, and 2 words stick out - asymmetrical and angles.

Summery tones, great typography, very snug and perfect hierarchy,

Beautiful movement, contrasting with very solid text,

Simplicity at it's best, great unusual elongated shape, casual yet cosy typography,

Great literal concept of the title, which could be taken too far but has achieved the perfect balance,

Maybe it's good design, or maybe I like to strain my neck to the left. Who knows.

Li

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Op Art!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11791205

God bless the BBC. I knew I had them as a homepage for a reason.

Bridget Riley has always inspired me right from my year 7 art room. Small squares were arranged in a border around the room featuring different artists and their most recognisable piece of work. Of course, a graphic print of black and white is always going to stick out against the realistic painterly approaches of so many other artists before her. Even now I can remember myself gazing and daydreaming at that small image on so many occasions.

And I suppose in a way, this is where my first love of graphic art came about.

My Dad has been a major influence in my artistic life, educating me, in particular with abstract expressionism and post impressionism - which will always remain a firm favourite of mine. But this op art was a little bit of me, and sharing this with my Dad was just as good as learning from him.

I was influenced by op art in my project in second year of uni, on an essay based on "The respect for tradition to a multimedia designer". Basically, I think that the people for this argument are those with a history of fine art; aka me. This essay gave me an opportunity to really express my feelings. As much as I love graphics, a lot of people can get big headed very quickly. Coming from scientific parents with an astro physicist brother, yes I am a black sheep, but along with my Dad's interest and their views on life I felt like I had a much better argument.

The way we are taught in the design area, especially in GCSE and A level, is very scientific. There are specifications that you have to meet, such as research, development, which , in essence, is exactly the same as meeting requirements in science and mathematic test papers. In summary, we need tradition because nothing that we create can come from

thin air, furniture, technology, all products are produced by judging the success of something before it.

I may have rambled slightly, but this is an important opinion of mine.

Anyway, back to the point. I used op art because my theme was "going round in circles". I've always been intrigued by things that make your eyes go funny and illusions that you can only see if you look in a different way - which sounds crazy!

Basically, Bridget also proves the point of being "simple yet effective" which is probably my most used phrase when writing essays. But it is so true! And so strange to come from art when it is probably more relevant in design.

To see Riley's inspiration from Seurat is even more warming, as I used him in my A level art as well. That woman is right up my street.

I think my main aim of this blog is for graphics designers to appreciate the roots in art and design. Inspiration is a key factor in anything that we do, and there is so much out there that we miss.

Li

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Sunflower seeds

Ok, so haven't been on for yonks, surprise surprise.Last Monday we went on a graphics trip to London, and even though we spent 5 hours to travel there and back, which left us with 2 hours to look around, I'm still glad that I went.

My Dad told me about Ai Weiwei's exhibition last month, something very relevant to him because his line of work is ceramics. For me it was also a personal exhibition because of my trip to China this April.

First of all, the sheer volume of 100 million handmade sounds so enormous, yet I was overwhelmed at how insignificant it looked in the turbine hall. Compared to others like Rachel Whiteread's 'Embankment' and Carsten Höller's slides, 'Sunflower seeds' was just tucked away in the far corner. I love how every single one is so individual yet so insignificant, and I think it says a lot about the world we live in today.

Ai Weiwei definitely has guts, sometimes its hard to comprehend how different are way of living is to that in China. But I suppose its like the different battles that the seeds have in different sections, such as on the bottom of the pile or on the edge. Saying that, the Chinese are some of the most kind hearted, hard working and warm people that I've ever met.

Li

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