Dany🍭👀

For our module we had the brief to create anything about a worldwide issue that we would like to bring awareness of. We could create it how we wish whether it be handmade, digital or photography.

I had chosen to look at many topics. I had chosen to focus on a worldwide issue which was mental health. Mental health is something that many people haven’t come to terms with or just don’t accept it in today’s society which is why I wanted to bring awareness to it. I had looked at the topic of mental health but the topic itself has many sub topics and different areas to which would give you the chance to talk about. First I was looking at mental health in behaviour and how people act and behave in a certain way, I couldn’t gather as much information so I didn’t decide to take that route. I then looked harder into the topic and chose something that I could relate with.

I had chosen emotion, but not just emotion in general, I had chosen the topic of “hidden emotion” where people would generally hide what they feel on the inside by covering it up with a fake emotion on the outside like a “mask”.

Once knowing what I wanted to do I was trying to think of ways to create designs. I had done sketches of things related to masks with the mask being the fake emotion and the person behind the mask feeling another emotion (generally a negative emotion like sadness). I had then decided to look more broader into the term mask and realised that it’s just a “metaphor” so I didn’t really have to insert a mask into my final piece I could create something that could link back to a mask as a metaphor.

I was struggling with what techniques I should use to create my final piece. I really wanted to do handmade but was not at all confident in myself as I said before “once you make a decision when doing handmade you can’t undo it” so that made me nervous. I then thought about doing something with photography and digital media mixed but I was running out of time since I was thinking about it too much.

I had then settled with just doing digital media as I have a lot of experience in it and I feel super comfortable in doing it so I had used Adobe Illustrator to plan out my final design. I had outlined the sketch of my model and had then started adding in the details from the facial features to the clothing. Once I was happy with my outline I had gone in with different colours like skin tone, hair colour and clothing colour and had then coloured in the outline of my design. Once I had completed the base colours I went in with a much more darker colour than the original skin tone colour and shaped out the shadows in the skin and clothing and then coloured it in, I feel like shadows would made the design look less simple and more realistic.

Once I had completed the shadows and colour I had then gone in with a second colour that was darker than the shadow colour and had gone over the shadows again creating a three coloured layer effect. The reason for this is because when you look at the design it makes it look more realistic and three dimentonal and gives the design some depth. The last thing I had done was add highlight to the face and streaks to the hair to make it looks super realistic and vibrant, I had used a gradient brush for the streaks so that it would transition from brown to blonde then to brown again without making it look obvious.

Going back to trying to add a “mask” to the design without physically drawing a mask I instantly thought of makeup. A lot of people refer to women when they wear makeup on their face is that it’s like a mask where you’re hiding ur natural beauty. It seemed like a good idea but I was not going to do makeup as I thought it would be offensive to the females of my target audience. I then looked deeper into makeup and pulled up “clown makeup” I had instantly decided that, that would be a better alternative instead of real makeup. I had then started drawing a smiling clowns mouth on my designs lips making sure the opacity was low as I didn’t want to ruin the whole design or make the clown makeup over rule the rest of the makeup. I had then covered the eyes with purple doing exactly what I did with the mouth.

The clown makeup is meant to look imperfect because it’s supposed to look forced as if the person is forcing to smile but really they are crying on the inside. It’s also meant to represent that society forces you to paint an emotion that would look normal to the rest of the world whereas your inner emotion is different and weird in the eyes of others, which is not the case. After I had finished with the main design I had moved on to see what I could do with the extra space around my design.

With the extra space around the design I had decided to use the ink brush tool to draw out words that were negative emotions of what the person in my design must be feeling behind the clown mask that has been painted. I thought of words that also my target audience may be feeling who are young adults and students that are in an educational environment feel all types of ways and not really expressing them.

The whole reason I had created this design is because I could relate to the cause and I can also relate to my target audience as I am a young adult in an educational environment that is going through the same things. Also as I am new in the environment just like other students and making friends isn’t easy it shows that you wouldn’t have many people to express your emotions to so you’d have no choice but to bottle them up.

The campaign I had chosen to go with my design was ‘YoungMinds’ an organisation that helps young adults through the difficult stages of their life doesn’t matter where you come from or what it is you’re suffering from they are there to help. They have been around for 25 years which is why I had also chosen them as it shows that they have changed so many peoples lives over that period of time as well as sharing the same target audience.

Overall I really enjoyed this brief and really like my final designs for this task. The one thing I would’ve changed is to actually step out of my comfort zone and try new techniques that I haven’t tried before as well as looking at other ways I can come up with more ideas.

I had created 2 versions of my final design as I really liked both versions of the design without the clown makeup and with the clown makeup. I had realised that the one without clown makeup could be a person whose finally ready and has the confidence to express their true emotion where as the person with the clown mask isn’t fully there yet.

COLOUR WHEEL

In this breif we had to create a magazine that included 1 front cover and 2 double page spreads that had to have a different magazine layout that each other. The breif was to take pictures of buildings that look very modern in Birmingham and create a magazine on each picture. We had to keep in mind the layout of the text and images, the colour usage, the typography and also the images that we were using to put the whole magazine together.

We had gone around Birmingham city centre and I had taken pictures of buildings that I had found pleasing and that fit the breif, I had kept in mind to take pictures at very unique angles and to take sections of buildings to show the designs of the buildings and to focus more on the pattern and structure in those sections. I had taken pictures of the selfriges building which is a staple spot for architectural buildings and you could take unique shots and every shot would look different and kind of psychedelic. We had taken pictures of Grand Central and also travelled to the Radison to take quality pictures of to.

Once having the pictures we had then decided to focus on the layout of each page in the magazine we had created small thumbnails for each slide which would make it easier for us to pick what layout we had wanted. I had created a title for my magazine and used the picture I liked most to be the cover of my magazine.

Going through each page I had made sure there was a reaccuring theme of imagery and colour so that my magazine can show continuity as well as looking neat and appealing.

We were then told we could take text from other artichtural websites and add into our magazines to give the finishing touches to it and make it look like a real published magazine. I had taken my typography mini task breif in mind and made sure I applied the principles to each paragraph making sure it had the right amount of kerning and space so that it looked readable.

Overall I enjoyed creating the magazine as i had never used Adobe InDesign and creating my very first magazine and to have taken pictures and bettering my photography skills had a positive affect in the final outcome. The things I would change in my magazine is to make it look less simple, simplicity is sometimes the best option but after having compared my magazine to others I had realised that I could have added more or designed it better to make it look different and out of the ordinary. This breif has helped me understand layout when it comes to designing anything whether it’s a illustration or drawing or even type it’s always important.

This day brief we were giving the task to choose from 3 briefs, 1 breif was about childline and how to show the younger generation that they are not alone and how we can come up with a design to motivate them. The second breif was about energy saving and how we can design something to make people use less energy to help the planet. The third and final breif was about getting young adults to go to museums more. The task was to create 30 plus ideas for that breif by planning on a roll of paper thinking of as many possible outcomes and then narrowing the ideas down up 3-4 ideas and creating better sketches for them to then show to the class.

Me and my group decided on choosing the first breif as we were doing something very similar to our main breif and thought this mini day breif would help us with that. We started by choosing whether or not we wanted to choose “hope and positivity” or “difficult feelings and experiences” we started writing down all the things you can do and create to make someone feel hopeful and positive. We were thinking of designs that would show a person that they should be hopeful and that they are not alone with what ever they are going through and be positive as there is help. We were thinking of popular phrases and saying like “we are in the same boat” and “we can pull through this” we made sure we also wrote down what not to include in our designs such as, triggers, not making the design to refinded or detailed and not including drinking, drugs or weapons.

We did the same for difficult feelings and experiences by writing down and sketching out experiences and feelings that someone may be feeling and to show that there is a way to rise above it. We decided to focus more on “hope and positivity” as we had come up with more ideas for that topic than the other. We were creating as many designs for them thinking of more phrases and imagery.

We didn’t get time to narrow the ideas down and to create a more better version of our sketches. Overall I think that the day breif was such a big help as it made us think a lot about different ideas and gave us helpful techniques in which we could add into future briefs when thinking of ideas.

We were given a brief by our tutors to be creating with pieces of paper and to create something either two dimensional or three dimensional out of paper but we had to personify a word and by creating something that links with it. So for example the word bang you would create a three dimensional explotion model out of paper and have the word BANG in it to show that it represents that word.

We were given the absolute freedom to do what ever we wanted, any theme, any word and either in a group or by yourself.

I decided to work as a group as I myself am not too confident in paper cutting or handmade as I feel like that’s what I’m most weakest at, I feel this because once you’ve made a decision or an action when using paper then you can’t go back on it so if you mess up then you have to start all over again and I don’t have the patience for that.

So me and the people in my group decided to choose the word ‘Growth’. At the time the word was very appealing as we could easily create something three dimensional and model the paper increasing in height to show growth. We also had the idea of origami and creating flowers using the origami technique which would also represent growth as flowers do indeed grow. We settled for the origami technique as we found it was the most logical.

As a group we had started creating different flowers from white paper as well as flowers from coloured card, the flowers from white paper were much easier as the paper was thin and card was more thick and harder to fold. Once creating our flowers we started positioning them around the page. We were missing the word which was ‘growth’ we were thinking of how we can implement the word to our design. We thought of making it 3D and having it pop out of the sheet or we could have it curved to represent stems bending.

We had realised we had speant far too much time focusing on the flowers that we didn’t get to think a lot about the positioning of the word ‘growth and settled for a 2D version stuck down on the sheet. I didn’t like the idea of it being 2D as it didn’t look pleasing to look at and was just simple.

Over all I feel like we could have done much better, I feel like the flowers made the whole design pop but I wish I could change the position of the letters and make it stand out more. The day breif did help me a lot with understanding what you can do with paper play and looking at other peoples designs in my class had given me more ideas of how I can do that. I think in the future I would use paper cut for one of my designs to make it look aesthetically pleasing and eye catching.

Typography and hand lettering

Serifs are semi-structural details or small decorative flourishes on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols. An example would be the Times New Roman font. Sans serif does not have these details or flourishes. An example would be the Arial font.Although serifs are considered to be decorative, their appearance may well aid a higher purpose. Serif typefaces have historically been recognised with increasing both the readability and reading speed of long passages of text because they help the eye travel across a line, especially if lines are long or have relatively open word spacing. Others argue this perspective, stating that what we read most (serif text), we read best. This might very well justify for the popularity and dominance of serif typefaces for lengthy text in print, including books and newspapers. That said, the fact remains that many sans serif typefaces exist that are more readable at any size than some serif designs. So whichever style you choose, take note of the particular characteristics and overall legibility of the design. For projects involving lengthy text, such as books, newspapers, and most magazines, serif typefaces are the most commonly used typestyle. Their popularity extends from a combination of historical example and apparent readability. On the other hand, sans serif text typefaces can be used for annual reports and brochures. Sans serifs can also work well for magazines and other materials that allow for a larger design approach.

The typography that Godiva chocolate uses in their products is a mix of San serif and Serif typefaces. The typeface style depends on the quality of the product, Godiva generally likes to use Serif for their products that are more expensive and top of the range as it shows the history of the chocolate brand that has been around for a long time. The other reason for Godiva to use Serif in their more luxury products is to show a much more vintage style. The style that the serif typeface looks like it has been hand made when really it is created digitally, the use for this effect is to make the product look more luxury as the Godiva brand is a high street brand. The response of the general public’s when buying a luxury item with a handmade factor makes them feel confident and luxurious. The San-Serif typeface that Godiva uses is just a visual reason to show Godiva’s growth in making their brand fit with the modern society even though they like to be seen as a vintage brand and proudly like to show off their history. The san-serif typeface is used for their products that are given a modern look and are less luxurious than the expensive brands. The san-serif typeface is normal used for day to day text not like serif which is used for occasions so Godiva uses san-serif for products that don’t have any link to occasions and so they focus that typeface for their audience who just want to consume the product and they don’t really care about the packaging. This is different with serif as Godiva focuses that typeface to their products that are created for occasions like; valentine’s day, birthday’s, anniversary’s and others. Those types of consumer’s care about the packaging and typeface as it goes with reason to why they bought the product and it makes the gift look more luxurious and expensive.

Godiva is a chocolate brand that had originated in Belgium, so I would expect that the text style has something to do with the countries origin. Belgian writing is often expected to be neat and posh and so Godiva implements that factor into their brand as the logo looks simple but posh and neat at the same time to link back to luxury theme. The colours that they use for their text is browns and golds. The brown colour on their text represents the colour of the chocolate which Belgium is known for and it is a dark rich brown colour which links to the colours used in their products. The gold is a clear indication of luxury and richness and the gold coloured text is again used for the more expensive products of Godiva’s which are for occasions.

Overall Godiva’s typefaces that are used in their products shows two sides, historic and modern. They like to meet the needs of audience from the younger generation who is used to modern design and for the older audience that has lived since Godiva existed from the very beginning and are used to the old vintage design. The colours meet the luxury aspect of the brand and also highlight the products colour and their colour palette that is used throughout all their packaging.

The exhibition that we went to was for the artist Ozman Yousefzada who is from Balsall Heath, Birmingham which a place that I am very familiar with so it was surprising to see an artist’s work who was brought up in a location that I was familiar with. The exhibition that was set up was mainly to highlight the roots and architecture that is from the artist’s background as there were many displays of work that showed the bedroom where the artist’s mother and there were specific objects that symbolised the meaning behind Ozman’s work, there was a wig of hair that was displayed in front of a mirror with a comb which signified that Ozmon’s mother would comb her hair there. The whole exhibition has things that reflect back to the artist’s life as well as other things from the artist’s present life with the type of fabrics and clothing he uses to create his work. The reason Ikon had chosen to exhibit Ozman’s work is because he has achieved a lot with his fashion design for women throughout the years, winning multiple awards and also getting a stocklist in Selfridges which is one of the highest retailers in the UK who sell many things, one of them being high end fashion. The exhibition is also made to show the backstory of Ozmon’s life as he came to the UK as a refugee from Afghanistan and how he came to rise up to the fashion designer he is now, this includes the many things his culture taught him as well as his mother and how he blended the UK culture with Afghan culture to create something so modern.  

The exhibition did not have a specific style that was shown but it had a theme which was to do with his culture and his life in the past. There was work that was shown that looked back at old family superstitions from his grandmother believing that burying hair in soil would bring good fortune to the family and also from things like the fabrics and patterns he had used and also saw when he was growing up. When you walked into the exhibition and got deeper inside it did start getting a little less modern and a bit more architectural and antique looking as he did have things like old furniture displayed.

The curatorial process had a lot of research but not as much planning as I had spoken to one of the curators who had set up with whole exhibition and said that they did not really have a certain location for each of the piece of art and the displays they had simply played and moved around the objects to then be satisfied with it. There was one part of the room which was made to look like the artist’s mother’s bedroom and there were things that were all bunched together that meant something but looked unusual all in one place. Even know the stuff that was grouped together did not make any sense visually it did make sense once you had broken it down and realised that it all makes sense. The exhibition had a lot of interactive factors such as projectors that had projected videos on to the screen to show people the story of the artist and what they are known for as well as giving the audience a better understanding about them. The whole exhibition’s space was used wisely to make sure that there were no empty areas for people to not explore. The technical things like the projector were all in rooms that were big enough to contain large crowds to watch the visuals of what was being projected which was a good thing as it shows that the curators were thinking of the people who would be attending.

I think in general this exhibition has been very successful as they have had a lot of visitors and good feedback from the attendees as well as the work that has been displayed all around the exhibition. The one thing I would say to improve is the lighting for the exhibition as the rooms where the projectors were had their lights witched off so that the screen could be clearly viewed but there were some displays in those rooms which were hard to look at unless you had put on the flash. What stood out was the room behind all the rooms at the start of the exhibition that had the red cube which was covered in a patterned fabric and also the whole layout of the bedroom because it made me feel like I was inside the artist’s mind.

Birmingham museum arts gallery was another gallery that I had visited to get inspiration from for my exhibition, BMAG which is the abbreviation term for the museum is a very large well known museum which is more common to people, it has many visitors and it is located in a very touristic place in Birmingham. The exhibitions that the BMAG had was multiple exhibitions from ancient history to culture and architecture which catered to multiple visitors who went to the museum. The exhibitions were produced to bring people together and find out more about culture in Birmingham as well as the history as well. There were exhibitions that highlighted cultures like African American culture and also the Asian youth culture, these exhibitions were created to show the visitors the diversity that is in those ethnic backgrounds and what are things that they have in common with modern day people now as well as what they find different so they can educate themselves on it. Birmingham is a very diverse city so that exhibition would help people out a lot in learning about the different ethnicities that are amongst them.

The museum itself has a lot of exhibitions and each one has its own style and its own theme, as I walked into the museum it first showed a lot of statues and biblical sort of art work and they layout was very neat and in perfect order there was a lot of space around each piece and the style was very luxurious with the colours that were used for the walls and how the art work was placed. It then went on to change to a more modern luxurious style with glass and creative chandeliers and glass work that has been made to attract people’s attention, this shows a theme in the sense of the more you walk into the museum the more it changes in time of era and style. There were many exhibitions with the same sort of style where everything was kept in a glass box and you could only see it at a certain distance but there was surprisingly a lot of interactive parts to the museum as well. The interactive parts consisted of screens and headphones where the person could listen to someone speaking and talking about the art work or exhibition giving the visitor information, it is like the museum has installed virtual curators to inform them of any piece of art work they need help with learning about which is a very cool way to show them that you have advanced.

For the curatorial process I think that they have not planned out exactly where the work would fit according to theme but I feel like the museum has placed the art work based on style and also based on what period in time it falls in as well as the artist that has created it. Each exhibition has its own unique style but the work is not really placed in a specific way. I feel like where the exhibitions are built are entirely by popularity, I feel like the deeper you go into the museum and the deeper you search through the museum, the more interesting it gets over time. There was a very popular exhibition which showed an actual scaled diplodocus skeleton and that was located deep inside the museum, this shows that the museum wants you to first get a look at all the other exhibitions as you make your way to the popular one instead of having the popular exhibition near the entrance then once people have seen it then they leave. BMAG has planned their exhibitions very well making sure everything fits in perfectly and that everyone has enough space to view the artwork without getting their view interrupted. They have used their space wisely not just by exhibiting work on walls but also exhibiting work on the ceiling and on the floors and in other unique places so that everyone has something to look at everywhere they turn.

Overall the exhibitions were very successful as they were all given a lot of room and have also been displayed so everyone can view them, I feel like the Asian youth exhibition was very different to the other exhibitions in a sense that it had not been displayed well enough and it had art work printed out on paper and stuck on a board wall which looked unprofessional as it is a museum and it did not show consistency. It was hard to find each exhibition location as it did not have signs to show you where things were but the assistants were a lot of help. The exhibitions were very interactive and nice to look at to see the theme and style change throughout the exhibitions.

This exhibition work has been placed in a very neat and styled order and the layout of the work is always different always being switched up and keeping the exhibition interesting as people go on to view the art pieces. Another way is that the way BMAG has kept the most popular and eye catching work till last so that people will look through the whole exhibition before getting to the best part.

History behind the Baskerville typeface

John Baskerville developed into a writing master at Birmingham but in 1740 established a japanning (varnishing) business, whose profits gave him the chance to experiment in the art of typefounding. He built up a printing house and in 1757 published his first work, a publication of Virgil, followed in 1758 by a copy of John Milton. Selected printer to the University of Cambridge, he started an edition of the Bible in the year 1763, which is considered to be his masterpiece. He published a predominantly beautiful edition of Horace in 1762; the success of a second edition in the later year of 1970 motivated him to issue a series of versions of Latin authors.

What is the Baskerville typeface?

This typeface was created by John Baskerville. It contains six categories;

·     Baskerville regular

·     Baskerville regular Old Face

·     Baskerville regular italic

·     Baskerville medium

·     Baskerville medium italic

·      Baskerville bold

There are a lot of characteristics in Baskerville so that you can easily recognise it.It is a transitional font that crosses between the modern & the old style.Each letter has a high contrast in stroke weight so that is easily readable for the eyes.It nearly has that vertical axis/stress but as it is not fully vertical you will be able to see a slight slant in the letters.The bottom of the letters are bracketed serifs which makes the letters look stable when on the page there are 4 types of serifs that are different from each other which makes it easy to spot out those differences.The Baskerville typeface has more rounded edges/serifs, softer form it doesn’t have harder edges and lines that you would usually see in a regular serif typeface.The terminals/tails are pear shaped. It also has a larger x-height which is unique to most typefaces which again helps you easily recognise the Baskerville typeface. It is an overall elegant typeface which is used for many occasions mainly seen as a typeface used for luxury purposes.A small “g” loops does not touch the neck making the letter easy to read and recognise.The letter ‘Q’ tail is elongated which shows a neutral balance with the larger x-height.The letter “A” seems to exceed the cap height the same height as ascender.Overall, it’s a stable font with thick stems to support each letter and make it look bold and readable.

The Baskerville is a big part of Birmingham as the creator John Baskerville was born there and had created that typeface that has been used countlessly in Birmingham around the city.