alana lacy art

Finally! It is here! After some blood sweat and tears (and some serious Illustrator meltdowns... my computer needs a serious fix before next semester) my zine for the Ask Me Anything! brief is done. I decided on the not-very-creative-but-suitable-I-suppose title of “5 questions with Klaus Voormann”. I guess the rest is pretty self explanatory; hopefully you are able to zoom into the spreads to properly see them. It would be an extremely long post if I did pages rather that spreads :( But his story is very interesting, and I learnt so much about him and see even more respect and awe in him as a design god than I did before. 

Overall I adored the zine making process and this one especially. Drawing and writing are a power couple in my eyes; they tell such a 3-dimensional story when put together. 

FRONT COVER

SPREAD 1-2

SPREAD 3-4

SPREAD 5-6

SPREAD 7-8

SPREAD 9-10

I think all my fellow peers beginning uni this year, and indubitably my teachers too, could agree that this was certainly unlike any beginning to uni ever! A PANDEMIC. A pandemic stopped nearly all my first face to face tertiary  education classes ever! At least it’s a good story to tell my kids. And upon that, mobile learning will continue right through to the end of the year too. But there were pros as well as cons! I got to sleep in, no money spent on mykis, no hour and a half spent on the train travelled to and from uni. But, I mean... I was so looking forward to uni life! And collaborating face to face. I also liked dressing up in different fashion everyday and life hanging out in the city. 

Regardless of the crazy variables that stopped us from working face to face together, I still really really enjoyed Communication Design studies. Andy was the BEST he was always positive and bursting at the seams with creativity and fun! In fact, I feel like the online format of communication, (we used Collaborate Ultra, which was very smooth running and efficient in my user experience), perhaps allowed me to get to know my teacher better. I also got to know my classmates well too, as I think sometime we can become a bit segregated when seated on different tables at uni. On this platform, I feel as if we were all equally collaborating and hearing and seeing each other. 

I learnt alot through the classes and tutorials and lectures this semester. Reflecting back, we did alot of activities revolving around collage and typeface. Oh and the first brief! That was fun too, when we had to create a question out of something, a material or object, related to that question. We looked alot at the Bauhaus, and their values and principles when it came to their revolutionary style of design. Another highlight that has just resurfaced my memory was visiting the Melbourne Art Book Fair at the NGV in it’s final days before lockdown because of COVID-19. I loved that and wanted to return the following day by myself to take a real proper look but the opportunity was sadly snatched from me. Also the HUUUUGEST congrats to Andy and Karen for winning the MABF first prize! That was so impressive! But I’m not surprised you guys are an incredibly talented pair. 

Here are some random little knick knack bits and pieces of inspiration and media by both Klaus and also from other random external sources that I think may add to the aspiring and growing character of the zine that I am currently rearing. They may or may not be able to make visible inspired appearance in my zine, considering I am nearing the light at the end of the tunnel, the finishing line, relatively soon. 

As I perhaps explained in a previous post, newspaper format is a big theme that creates the basis, or perhaps metaphorically the skeleton for which the meat of the interview is set upon. Out of curiosity, I tried to see how newspapers were typically formatted in Germany in the 1960′s, relative to Klaus’ early historical and cultural context. This is German, but to my surprise, not from the sixties... 1732?!? This really baffled me! Newspapers looked that good all the way back then? Regardless, I loved this aesthetic, though it was simple and typical. It just seems well formatted, better so than newspapers these days. 

This project has challenged me to work a lot around formatting, text, font and typesetting. I see my world so differently now, I am always looking at signs and products and ads, specifically at how they are typeset. Researching Klaus’ immigration to England for work, I looked up typical English street signs to signify the cultural context change. Again, I’m not too sure why, but I really enjoy this! Simple, yet strong and bold and so English, if you get what I mean. 

A screenshot I had in my archives on my computer of artistic inspiration. I have a folder simply dedicated to things I accidentally stumble across on the internet, which I often refer to in times of a creativity drought. Unfortunately I don’t have the URL for this one. But I felt a subtle connection between the artistic mediums of this piece and what I aspire to create in my Klaus zine. The dark black and white photograph, with the collaged illustrations pasted upon it. The artist also appears to have drawn in charcoal upon the original photograph to exaggerate the stormy and rustic nature of the scene. 

This, as well the image inserted below, are some new Klaus artworks I have dug deep into the internet and found. The appear to be very journal like; they are documenting the Beatle’s early days venturing into Hamburg. They were nearly more popular in Hamburg than they were in Britain! I like the sketchy approach he has taken; different to the delicate inking one I have previously explored. It is also a bit more relative to my typical style of illustration. He also appears to wrote notes, or annotations, which furthermore deepen the story and character behind each drawing. 

It is coming down to the final days in terms of production of our finals briefs for semester 1 in Communication Design Studies! And, I suppose, the whole unit altogether, which soddens my soul a bit (this is totally my favourite class...) This week was not a definitive class but rather a catch up class for any of us to receive final feedback from the lovely Andy Simionato. My zine is going steadily; once more another pinup discussion on Google Docs allowed us to not only get feedback on our work but to also to give it to our peers, as alike last week. I would have liked to have put more of an input into my progress as I feel like it’s not much of a step up from last weeks, but I guess any progress is good progress. 

My pinup board with a whole heap of ideas, images and words spitting in a disorderly manner across the page. You can see my thinking patterns and thoughts of indecisiveness or conflict in the captioned diagrams. It was good to receive some positive feedback: Solveig kindly noted how she liked the style I was portraying Klaus’ story in, and Jazelle too kindly commenting how she liked the subtle contrast of the collage and drawing, and how she believes it worked effectively. 

Klaus Voormann 

This week we had a warm class discussion pinup session showcasing our progress so far in our projects; it was so great and inspirational to see the wildly creative media forms and ideas my classmates are implementing into their projects, and how talented they are in executing them! 

I have worked hard this week producing drawings and sketches and making digital collages that would somehow emulate the nature of Klaus without copying and appropriating his unique and striking style, the most significant and trademark example is of course the illustrations on the Revolver cover. To do so, I highlighted a few key elements that, from my research, I believe somewhat channel the essence of Klaus’s vibe or style, however still being able to stay true to my own style. 

- Collage; Klaus utilised collage within many of his works including the cover for Revolver and the Anthology covers; it’s a universal medium that I heavily plan on using. 

- Newspaper; Klaus manifested the format style of 1960′s newspapers in his design of some of John and Yoko’s promotional material, hinting at the political statements embedded in their music and the controversial nature of the general public’s response. I think that emulating a similar style using fonts would help create this. 

- Graphite drawings; as well as the traditional ink fine liner drawings Klaus made with the very unique stringy line hair as seen on the Revolver cover, Klaus also spent a large amount of his artistic career exploring and mastering graphite, in the form of quick sketches but also beyond beautiful refined portraits (refer to ‘George in the Ocean of Waving Grass, a few posts back). I think this quite universal and not entirely derivative of Klaus’ style; in fact, graphite it actually my typical medium of choice. Therefore, I think I will illustrate Klaus’ story accordingly to his textual response in my personal style, in graphite (with conjunction of collage, of course!)

My screenshot of one of my layouts for my zine that I used for the pinup discussion. As you can probably tell, it’s still extremely unrefined! I have repeated the designated question for this page, “What was your affiliation with the Beatles?”, in a variety of fonts that appealed to the newspaper aesthetic I am aiming for. I also had a handwritten one but it clashes a bit with the density of illustrations. I think I am leaning towards the Helvetica one in, second form the top: however, it’s perhaps not so much quintessential of the 1960s context but moreso of now. However, I don’t think it matters really all that much; keeping in mind it still has to appeal to a modern audience. 

In order to capture the kind of journalistic aesthetic of the interview, I decided to make my own background texture comprised of layered collages newspaper bits and strips. This will ideally lie behind the interview text and illustrations rather than just the stark white. 

My illustration of Klaus in my style. I plan to do a few of these of Klaus from different angles and different expressions throughout the zine. 

My graphite illustration of the Beatles in concert in Hamburg, matching up to Klaus’ anecdote referring to how he first came into contact with the Beatles. I plan to add some collage elements into this to spice it up a bit. 

This week in class we explored the possibilities of typeface and and font, more specifically the way that new irregular and totally unique text bodies can be manifested through the medium of collage. This was executed mainly through using the naked eye to see forms in magazine or newspaper that vaguely or prominently made out letters. I found that a huge array of possibilities could be utilised to make these typefaces. A collation of smaller images could be used to make out the form of a single letter (such as what I did for my depiction of ‘Y’ and ‘!’), or alternatively a singular large cut out. 

As per according to traditional collage methods and techniques, the essentials for this activity included scissors and simply glossy magazines and/or newspapers. We were split into breakout groups with two other partners in mine. As per according to Andy’s instructions, we picked a simple yet positive phrase, “Howdy!”, for which we each assigned ourselves to make two letterforms each in order to develop the whole phrase as a team. My particular path of execution was to find intriguing forms; statues, faces, hands, and both natural and manmade forms and textures took my interest. I then uniquely arranged then to create the united body of a ‘y’ and ‘!’ as previously explained. We then uploaded each of our contributions to our groups Google Doc slide, aligned them together, and were left with the finished activity! I especially like my team members’ vision in creating the ‘H’ with simply the bodies of the two women, and the ‘D’ is simply just a very unique form, that does make out a d, but I wouldn’t have expected it. 

This activity was perhaps coincidentally extremely beneficial for me in terms of my artistic vision for my zine about Klaus Voormann. He was a very talented man in his use of collage within his works, and I think it is a bold factor that defines his unique style. Considering I think emulating his exact illustration style (as explored in previous posts) would somewhat be a plagiarism or discredit to Klaus, I think I will definitely intend on using collage techniques as well as my own personal sketch style to illustrate his story/his responses to my questions.

My depiction of the letter ‘Y’, using collage techniques, as a segment of our groups phrase “Howdy!”

My depiction of the character ‘!’, using collage techniques, as a segment of our groups phrase “Howdy!”

We spent most of today’s class discussing a range of possibilities that were to be included within our Tumblr blogs, along with review of our ideas on our current brief, ‘Ask Me Anything!’. I have recently been expanding on the depth and variety in the text for my interview with Klaus Voormann, however I have also been keeping in mind the medium for which I will present my findings. 

I have always had a profound appreciation and fascination with books and magazines, their layouts, illustrations, typographies. Recently I created my own personal zine which showcased a collection of film photos, collages and drawings. I love looking at other peoples zines and how unique and one-of-a-kind they all are. It was my first time ever making a zine, after giving in to the overt inspiration I’d been exposed to, restrained at home looking at a library archive of online zines and creatives’ websites to pass time. Even though it’s a very small zine and could be alot more creative and full content-wise, it’s taught me alot about the principles of zine and publication design and layout. I even went and got it printed and binded at Officeworks; the metal binder is not really desirable for a zine but it was unfortunately my only option.

I plan to use a zine as the mode of presentation and communication for my interview with Klaus Voorman, as having this small stepping stone as practice for the endless layout and illustration and text possibilities. I would love to illustrate and the scenes of the answers he provides to extend a deep communication. 

The opening page of my personal zine

Here’s a photo I took, framed by the white border which is really just the background of the page. My Klaus Voorman zine will not follow my same aesthetic or stylistic qualities, (perhaps the greyscale aspect), as I want to capture through illustration rather than photo his story. Only really the medium of the zine I guess relates back to the task at hand, but still helpful. 

Following up from last weeks Friday lecture on Bauhaus and the different kinds of letter forms and typefaces that were generated as apart of their unique and revolutionary style, we as a class completed a workshop where we similarly cut out paper shapes, in either square, triangle or quarter circle shapes and rearranged them to create letters in this particular style. The first letter is a sidewards ‘M’ or a backwards ‘E’. Although the Bauhaus originates from Germany, this gives me very Greek alphabet vibes. I also ad to used various origami paper instead of plain coloured paper, but I think I like how it turned out.

Still thinking about and inspired by Klaus Voormann as explored within my previous post, I decided to physically familiarise myself with his artistic/design practice. It could be a very large possibility that I incorporate some of his techniques and his overall aesthetic or style within the design of my zine dedicated to his interview. However, I am keeping in mind I do not want to plagiarise his intellectual property, so I suppose this is only for experimentation purposes. However, I would like my zine to be largely illustration based; perhaps drawing the interview in each frame or page, with the words surrounding his face, or illustrating his answers. I could possibly use my own style of illustration, in ink to give the hint of Voormann’s style? That’s simply just my initial vision, however I like the idea of it. It will require me creating thumbnail sketch layouts of how I visualise each page looking. However, there are steps to take before that as described in the brief: first I must figure out what the five proposed questions will be! 

So just for fun and practice, and invest in Voormann’s materials and techniques of ink and collage, I decided to recreate the Revolver album cover using myself and some close friends as subjects in the essence of his portrayal of John, Paul, George and Ringo. 

Myself as inspired by Voorman’s depiction of John.

Seb as inspired by Voorman’s depiction of George.

Bon as inspired by Voorman’s depiction of Paul.

Marlon as inspired by Voorman’s depiction of Ringo.

Today Andy assigned us our next brief upon the completion and submission of our last one on Friday. Our third assignment, “Ask me anything!”, requires us to identify a historically significant artist, designer, architect, art-movement, design-object, or even a typeface; then interview one of these with 5 questions of our choice. We will then present the interview as a digital publication.

This assignment immediately sparked an endless range of creative possibilities of who or what I could interview, and the many mediums of digital publication for which I could creatively present my findings. I have recently been playing with the principles of creating my own personal zine recently, which I have loved doing and am becoming more familiar with, so I now feel that format was meant to be pursued for this project.

Hanging out in isolation means I spent most of my time cooped up in my makeshift studio, painting and drawing, fuelled by music. I’ve always been an avid fan and appreciator of both the Beatles’ music and also their creative direction, which was very breakthrough and ‘avant-garde’, or ‘experimentalist’, considering the cultural and historical context of the 1960′s. I have recently been revisiting their records again, and now with some newfound knowledge of communication design and its sub genres upon the entry of this course, I became even more-so than I was before invested into the design of their album covers, which in my opinion are amongst the best ever to have represented the music industry. 

I love them all, however the one that strikes me most in terms of intricate design and artistic direction input and mixed mediums was “Revolver” (1966). See below to check it out. I get lost for 10 minutes exploring every inch of it; maybe it’s because it’s a fine, ultra detailed artwork in itself, but I think it really draws and invites its viewers in to explore its contents and is thus, successful design!

“Revolver” album cover art, Klaus Voormann, fineliner ink and collage, 1966.

A vintage advertisement I found at the “Revolutions” exhibition at Melbourne Museum last year, encouraging Beatles fans of the time to buy Revolver.

I naturally did more research: Who made this incredible artwork/design? What was his relationship or affiliation with the Beatles? Did he do any more work? Is he still alive? 

He is a German artist, graphic designer and musician named Klaus Voorman, now 81. In summary, he shared a flat with George Harrison and Ringo Starr of the Beatles within the early sixties, forming a solid association with the group as both a business partner in the corporate visual design team, and as simply a very close and fond friend of the foursome. In 1965, Klaus was commissioned by John Lennon to design the sleeve for the album Revolver. Voormann had a style of "scrapbook collage" art in mind, using part fineliner and part collage for the work, which would go on to be his signature style as an artist. Voormann placed various photos taken within 1964-65 within the tangle of hair that connects the four faces. The drawings show each Beatle "in another state of consciousness". The cover won the Grammy Award for Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts, 1966.

Klaus Voorman, pictured left, hangin’ out with George Harrison on the right (my favourite Beatle!)

Upon the Revolver cover, his artistic affiliation with the Beatles extended. These are some of the many other absolutely wonderful artworks he has created of the group in his creative vision and incredible technical skill which have intensely inspired me. 

The original concept for the album, which was originally called “Remember” before it was changed to “Revolver”. It was developed only a bit more within the portrayal of the details of each band members portrait.

“Flight to Toronto” (couldn’t find what year this one was originally created unfortunately) 

“Decade of Eternity” 

“George in the Ocean of Waving Grass”; I think this one may just be in graphite -- so beautiful though, one of my favourites. He remained good friends with especially George until the end of his life, and worked with him during his solo career.

Klaus Voormann also designed the Beatles anthology album covers, which were released in the nineties. Still employing the collage technique, using picture only however. 

Today is the hand in of our first brief submission, “Ask More Questions”. After taking much consideration after my experimentation on Monday and asking for opinions from my teacher and classmates, I decided to follow my creative intuitive at I decided to go fourth with the trial with the collage of close friends of mine, which is the medium that ultimately spells out the question that I finally decided upon, “How does design bring people together?”

The final product: after each letter was traditionally manually composed, photographed, made a PNG on Photoshop, and placed onto an A3 plane on Illustrator, I composed each letter together to create the appropriate word. I also enlarged the words “design” and “together” as I believe those words are key to the questions core values.

This is a progress shot of me composing letters on Illustrator and working out how I will evenly distribute each letter accordingly across the A3 plane. Also helping me figure out which letters I need to create next.

After a short absence from transitioning from face to face uni classes to online due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we are now working on our final submission for our first brief, “Ask More Questions”. The main objective of this brief is to compose a burning question we have about communication design, and with such using materials that relate to that specific question, physically create the typeface for the phrase. I have had some ideas regarding the possible mediums and questions, and decided to test them out this week. Here are some of the possibilities:

Testing the medium of a printed collage of people (close people I know). The question this medium would compose would possibly be something along the lines of “Can design build friendships/relationships”?

Testing the medium of simply different kinds of foliage and vegetation from my backyard, such as vines, ferns, flowers, leaves, even mint. This question might be something like “How can design help build a sustainable future?” 

This week in Communication Design Studies we delved deeper into our discussion within Friday’s lecture regarding ancient methods of communication, more specifically within the Mesopotamian times, and how natives relative to this time went about using clay and a various array of carving tools and utensils. To really grasp this concept, we were given play dough as our ‘clay’ and popsicle sticks as our ‘carving devices’ in order to recreate the physical experience of this method of carving writing and communication. Here are some examples of some exercises we did to example this:

Carving my name, with 5 minutes.

Carving my name, within 1 minute

Carving my name, within 30 seconds.

An interpretation of a cat.

A simplified interpretation of a cat.

A short message to a class member.

Week 2, Friday