Live brief Context

When designing the adult interior I decided 'Laura Ashley' would be a good company to base my work on, because they are a well-known interior brand. While investigating their current wallpaper designs I realised that they used a lot of vertical stripes, I used this as a base to work on by adding my own twist and incorporating the pinecone illustration within a diamond shape. 

I experimented with the palette that was set with the brief to see which colours complimented each other and which worked well as a whole. Of all my designs I found the interior for the children was most effective and the one that I had the most fun creating. However one element I need to consider is that the outline of an animal is very key to how it is perceived from a certain distance in the motif design of the fawn and the pinecone, from far away the outline of the fawn didn't look as fawn like as it could have. In future I need to consider this when thinking about the consumer because the outline is the first thing they are drawn to and it is what they will immediately relate to. With the adult interior I feel I have more to learn and to develop, as the overall design was quite harsh and not something I would necessarily see within an adult interior. I could develop this through thinking about my colour choice more clearly and the shapes I used to create them and the proportion of white used in the background. In saying this Hannah, who is the director at Patternmash, was very pleased with my designs and could see them in the context that I had set myself. They are now on the Patternmash blog for other designers to see and my contact details are on there should someone see them and like them. 

Decrypt

Decrypt has been a focus of moving my project forward. I was made aware after our presentations that if I was creating an editorial magazine, I should look at fashion influences and investigate trends this season. Using WSGN forecasting for colour usage and influential imagery. An image that stood out to me ( i heart studio image hand - find photographer + make up artist) I tried to recreate my own version shown below. 

The hand is subtle against the deep Indian ink colouring and dark background contrasting against the Orange (Cherry Tomato) circles in the shape of what could be in reference to the illuminate as the symbol is a pyramid shape and the theories consist of a conspire to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government enlighten intellectually or spiritually; enable to understand). What is so successful about this image is you are immediately draw to the Orange and its futuristic qualities. This image has been inspirational in moving my theme of barcodes forward and how I am going to translate a human barcode into an editorial magazine such as Acne paper. Take elements for the i heart studio image and translate it into my own work. I did this by projection some of my own images on to the face and figure using linear and geometric shapes, static imagery, technology (play button ) and the silhouette. Also looking at how long can translate a more futuristic tone.

These photographs were successful with the light cupping the face and contouring around features giving the image more depth and not seeming flat, particularly in image 1 and 4. Image 4 was particularly successful as the light is projecting a virtual balaclava. With an orange which I previously have mentioned being successful in creating a futuristic look. In order to move these images forward I looked at Brian McNamara and how he uses Rim lights and colour gel to create high impact photographs as shown below.  I would like to further my own images by adding abstract marks and bare skin to create a more decrypt tone to the final image. 

Barcodes

Furthering on from my minor project I wanted to explore and further the theme of barcodes in relation to humans, due to much of my work becoming very linear and representing the bars within the barcode could I in fact make a human barcode? However I wanted to consider this idea within a publication format directed at more of an editorial audience as the photographer Ricky Guest.

Rick Guest, Wayne's World

Guest creates futuristic images of linear moving figures that I felt influenced by as a way of showing a scanned human through photography and his work is often editorial based. This also made me consider other editorial magazines such as 'ACNE PAPER' which is directed at a fashion audience to influence designers which is something  I need to consider investigating as a lot of editorial magazine are rooted in fashion.  An aspect that I really like about ACNE is that it has a single theme that runs through the whole magazine and is portrayed in lots of different ways. For example the latest issue is called 'The Actress' and it looks at current and old actresses and everything from costumes to the theatre. 

ACNE Paper Magazine, The Actress

One thing I really like about the magazine is the A3 size and layout working harmoniously with the spreads. These made me think of the artist Hammershoi because his paintings are clean, crisp, well laid out and these qualities can be translated into the ACNE papers' layout. In particular how they use negative space surrounding the images and text 'framing' each page similar to Hammershoi. 

Vilhelm Hammershoi, Interior With Young Woman From Behind

Drawing

I also wanted to get back to drawing again and so felt that this would be the perfect opportunity to practice my illustrative skills. I wanted my context for this piece to be an interior based surface, I chose to focus on pinecone and fawn illustrations which I intentionally moved towards a Scandinavian/folk theme within the Mid winter brief. I wanted these interior based surfaces to be for both children and adults. A company called ‘Love Mae’ particularly stood out when I was researching for my child interiors, it is an Australian based company that supplies adhesive fabric decals for the home and children.

Using this as a context directly impacted how I did my illustrations for the brief, I was also heavily influenced by children's books and how animals are illustrated when children are the main audience. In order to get interesting texture to the illustrations I decided to draw them on watercolour paper which worked well due to the colouring of the paper being off-white contrasting to the dark fine liner pen that I used. 

I also experimented using watercolour paint in some of the images but these were not as successful as I'd have hoped, so I decided to use 'Kurecolour' permanent ink pens used by graphic artists. The wide nib helped create curves and also added depth to the illustrations by going over certain sections more then others. The fawn illustrations I directed more towards a children’s interior creating a fawn and pinecone motif that would have been suitable for cushions that could be embroidered into with detail. For the wallpaper I went for a singular fawn within a snowy scene.

Live project

So far the majority of my work has been very concept based which I have enjoyed, however I was finding myself getting lost within my own thoughts and getting confused with what it was I was trying to say. Therefore I wanted my live project to be aimed at more of a commercial audience, to show my versatility as a practitioner. I struggled to find a live brief that I felt I could really benefit from and would challenge me. So I decided to enter the patternmash brief, which is set monthly based on a theme to produce a 30cmx30cm surface design. The brief that I entered was midwinter a theme refreshingly separate to my other work. 

Developing CCTV imagery

I also saw parallels in breaking up the image with a Conscertina book which would be quite an interesting way of displaying the images, this made me create a variety of 'tracing paper machetes' and moved into different combinations to displace my flat image into a 3D structure. 

I also wanted to look at creating a contour around the figures in these CCTV images that drew parallels with fingerprints, something integral to the theme of identity. I looked at contouring the figures in different ways to give a variety of a possible 'visual fingerprint'. I also did this with looking at contouring with straight lines rather then curved, once again creating an abstract outline of a person generating a 'code' or even a 'barcode'. 

I wanted to further these CCTV images by printing them on a large format printer to get a feel for them being like a wallpaper, an idea inspired by 'story' in New York which is a pop up space where artists go in monthly and try to transform a space into a topic that is based around their practice. I thought it would be interesting to have a wallpaper of CCTV images and have a room themed on CCTV, mirrors reflecting the viewers face.

I found the linear straight image the most effective and saw it as a human barcode as the outline suggested a figure encased within straight lines which is often seen in barcodes. I liked the concept of people having to be scanned, which made me think of creating movement or an optical illusion and making an image move. Creating a parallel with Bridgette Rileys work and optical art which due to close wave lines creates the optical illusion of movement. 

Bridgette riley warped

This is something I want incorporate in my major project as I feel it has a lot of potential and is very current with QR codes not to mention I could see myself further developing this idea into a publication.

Broken up CCTV

I experimented printing them on a larger scale and also printing them on tracing paper, seeing whether I could layer them in order to create a more three dimensional CCTV image. This was not very effective and so I decided to take elements from the disposable images such as the linear structure and transfer this onto some of my other market street scenes. 

When I think of CCTV footage I think of an image on a TV screen that has a slight delay so it breaks up the image, I tried to replicate this in my images and it worked well because it made the street scene more interesting and also highlighted certain people for the viewer to look at and focus on in a busy scene. The varying widths of the lines that broke up the scene and the fact that they vertically break up the image makes it resemble CCTV more closely. I did this with a number of different scenes to create a timeline and act as stills to CCTV footage. 

The one element that I felt wasn't that effective was the colouring from the disposable camera image because it just seemed quite sporadic.