Month: November 2024

SYMPOSIUM 2024

Takeaways from a two-day presentation by MAGCD Year 2 students

Students whose work I responded to and why:

Yesim Tuzun – Carbon Pixel book, red

An elegant enquiry, inspiring execution, loved the final book. SImple way of not only producing an academic  research equiry using Graphic communication design, but making a different with it. 

Banruo Chen – Gentrificatin of streets in China, stencils as protest

One of my favourites of the two days, and I won a copy of her written piecein the raffle! A really good presentation.

Yuqing Lei – Knife, equivalence. I didn’t quite get this, but i loved it nonetheless. One of the best presentations I saw, simple, she didn’t need to go in to lines and lines of explanation. The visuals did the talking.

Stella Gong – Roalty Free Image picture album. 

Interesting.

Siqi Hu – Sensory paper.

Fantasuic presentation.

Hazel Graham – Magasine design and feminism.

WOW.

Varada Rage – Not a Typeface

Not being afraid of how type deisgn can be intimidating and use it as an oportunity to break the rules and have fun. 

A research environment can be scary!

Mac Clapper – Rot

The honesty of his MAGCD journey and enquiry, the ups and downs, the genetral comment of rot.

GENERAL NOTES

– Stop motion or interactive presentations, clarity when presenting, invest in a desktop tripod for filming

– Including references and citations on presentations

– “Marginalia”!

TO DO

– Watch Powers of Ten

– Research Matt Silbur

– Research Laura Letinsky

– Look at HOVERSTATE

– Look at COMFYUI

– Look at TOUCHDESIGNER

12/11/24

– Introduced personal approach to the project and relationship with father, intention to translate photos of his life in an attempt to conserve snd archive him in th midst of a ydifcitul relationship in his last years. 

– Material is openly critical and celebratory as per upbringing

– Illustration method. Initially liked kids drawing contrast, reference Louis Rossignol, but that just wasn’t me. Images needed a parity. Started with an outline, adding writing, doodling, found imagery, photos I’d taken, documents. Quick, meaningful and collage-like style. Could spend 2 weeks developing the illustrations , no editing took place for immediacy. 

– Presented as an interactive online piece, ideally a website, to include audio. Paper concertina version presented as a visual aid.

– Linear time, left to right feels right. Vision of lines onto of each other, for whole family. What happens when his line ends and we all continue?

What do you think is working? As a method of translation?

– Emily – a culmination of translations, photos to illustrations to type to memorabilia, like them all together.

– Jane – reminds her of overlaid graffiti text in first project, Methods of Investigation, it feels very warm.

– Highlighted levels of detail. 

– Explained cultural ism of ‘NOT ARF’ to Sid, Cockney east London reference. 

– Sid – sees that extras even of detail. So much more you was to put in, could spider out.

– Max – really like the illustrations. Like the warmth. Kind of balance between empathy and warmth and criticisms, but they’re less obvious. They’re getting a little lost, could they be brought out of separated out? Scaling them up? 

– Highlighted criticism in there,  “Trying to connect with you, Dad”.

Role of illustration is what? What is the illustration for me?

– Illos open the original photographs up, by brining all the things from the photo and audio, it opens ups like a flower, bringing stuff I didn’t know. Good and bad, it enriches the original material. Little tear on Mum’s face as a reference.

–  Daniel Hopkinson, working mens club illustrations, as reference.

Further development…

– Could I appraise the illustrations? Apply a key to them? More structure, catalogue it? All illustrations at the moment are from the hip. Art Direct and appraise the illos in the next stage

– Max really likes illos, likes it when I’m adding handwritten text.  Adding the typography (typefaces) doesn’t fit as well. Doesn’t blend in yet. Use illustration to blend them in more? Give some context to the tear?

– Interactivity- Sid. Animate certain aspects of the composition, a video, come in sequentially. 

– Could this go out to a wider audience? He’s a BOOMER, could that work? Need to sanitise content a bit. Is there a way of making this culturally relevant in a broader sense, like THE DAD PROJECT and assisted dying? 

– Could I access college resources – Javascript? 4DE Computing Lab with Sean, ask for some help with incrementing this with web design. Aesthetically working, bring in context like animated pieces, history pieces, enlarge documents.

– Could it be a type-on-photo project, where I commission illustrators I admire to write on photos about their fathers? In an attempt to bring those relationships closer. Boys Cry Too ref, mental health.

Takeaways:

– Wasn’t forcing development of this project. Finish of a day, try and force it overnight in my head, but then let the material lead. Pleased with this and the results.

5/1

First tutorial notes.

Pdf attached:

Notes – 

– 3 directions presented:

1) Dad time capsule

2) Do Books design motivation

3) James Frey sound collage

– Dad time capsule chosen

– Illustration to include all the little quirks the audio brings

– Don’t need to see the video

– Spider diagram of memory coming off one photograph

– Emily drawn to first direction, lot of passion behind it, is there a way of depicting these combinations, an animation?

– Voice overlay to photo and illo

– Other ephemera could be involved – menus from the restaurant etc

– Could branch out to family

– ‘The Dad Capsule’ title suggestion form Sid

– Could it be sequential illustration or just fully realised, static pieces in relation to the photos?

– Who’s the audience? ME. A way of connecting with Dad, memorialising and capturing him, doing something nice rather than remembering conflict. For my family as well.

– Examples: The Dad Project, Daniel Hopkinson reportage illustration, MajorAFLCOlson website.

– Go do it, don’t focus on the end result like the website straight away. Let it develop.

– Feeling much more confident wit this brief!

CROSS YEAR STUDIO, 31/10/24

Labour 1

Discussion groups: Mark, Dancy, Catherine, Flora

DEFINITIONS:

COMMON

 Cultural and natural resources accessible to members of a give community

Graze animals, collect wood, harvest fruit, catch fish. Resources held in common ENRICH

Free circulation.

Something that you share

VECTOR

A vector is any value given magnitude and direction, Vectors distribute stuff

 Value for distribution

Path to sharing

Vectors for disease

Carrying something

RESOURCES CONSIDERED AS VECTORS FOR DESIGNERS:

Photography

Sensory perception – sight, hearing, touch

Relationships with others – parenting, human interaction 

Shared experience – issues, politics, social issues, domestic experience, specific and by group

Recording – an image, an experience, in any media, to share it

CHOSEN COMMON

Act of recording

VECTOR

Phone photography

OWNS

We own it legally, software provider, phone vector, hackers, the internet, one drive, 

SOCIAL MEDIA direct it how?

Socially

Professionally – Linkedin, insta

IMPACTS

Safety, privacy

Ownership?

OTHER GROUPS EXAMPLES:

Sunlight, colour, colours codes, Pantone

Symbol based communication e.g. isotype symbols

Knowledge, archives

Information, 

Common knowledge

Colour theory

Technical stuff – layout, colour

Perception is a common

Reality is a common

—

VECTORS IN ECONOMICS

We see over time further abstraction in labour, resources and material. Industry is more abstract than land./

Lift, move, drop a vector, industrial example p13 reading

Applying vectoralists to copyright

Creativity as a value for distribution

Copyright law, cheap printing etc

Book –  Copy This Book, good reading example

Ideas and a document hence property rights, copyright becomes PROPERTY

Tension between idea, then material expression I that idea, then copyright laws, then property law

GNU code example – author wrote a license enshrining non-singular ownership IN  the code itself. A foundation for Creative Commons protocol. He use copyright law, but turns it back over into commons. Protects but a vehicle for Creative Commons too. 

Vectors in graphic design – things that we do.

“Vector graphics” dependent on XY coordinates, “raster” images defined by width and height in pixels and bits per pixels.

VECTOR as a vector,  RASTER/PIXELS AS A COMMON

Floppy disk example as a raster image, bigger than the capacity of what its representing!

EXPERIMENTAL JETSET project – Lost formats. Vectors showing scale, new relationships between each as they go up and down in size.

Danielle Aubert – 16 Months worth of Drawing in Excel

Che Guevara – original photo, digitised, made into Shepard Fairey she poster using vectors from a raster image, 

——

Exercise

Flora and I performed meeting online via instagram, we shared a printout of me but via instagram in the middle of us both (other group member, Catherine), we reacted to each other to highlight that there was someone in the middle as a gatekeeper which raised questions of ethics, bias, gatekeeping, big brother.