Amy Ennis🧃

A quick side brief given over the easter break for guest lecturer Anthony Burrill. We were to research the word Anthropocene which is the human effect on the environment and then create a design using a given icon from Anthonys XYZ foundry. Below you can see my research, my given icon, some design prototypes and my final solution.

Overall I’m happy with how my final solution turned out. I was stuck between adding some sort of line up in or no line up but I decided that this is a festival poster and I’m trying to communicate the essence of the festival so I stuck with a few headliners.

A look into different typefaces that I was thinking about using for my final solution. Ultimately I ended up choosing a font from daltonmag.com.

Some research into various skateboarding magazines front covers, along with other events such as Redbull’s bowl rippers.

some more poster mockups before deciding to use photography for my poster.

Rough mockups for my final design. I wanted 2 of them to be more of a creative style, but I also don’t like how the colours ended up looking in the ferris wheel version. Each design captures a different essence from the festival.

Here are two more narrowed down ideas of a final design.

Some rough thumbnails for the planning of my digital mood-board.

After getting some practice in with the cocktail exercise we were now to create a digital version which develops on from our initial analog mood-board.

As a little side project to get used to using illustrator we were to create a digital mood-board of a random cocktail that was given to us. I was given the cocktail Hanky Panky which is a cocktail made from Gin, sweet vermouth & Fernet-Branca. The drink itself is slightly sweet and slightly bitter with plenty of flavour. The mood-board was to represent the cocktail without showing the cocktail.

After my first initial thumbnail drawings I created a mood-board using images from magazines to further develop what the festival is about.

I started by creating a list of words related to what NASS festival was about. I then translated some of those words into a more direct/detailed mind-map.

I then created direct translation thumbnails of some of the words. Trying to capture the overall essence of the festival.

First day of graphic design we started with a little icebreaker exercise. We each blindly chose a piece of lego out of a bag. The aim of the exercise was to design our own thumbnails using the lego piece included somewhere. We started off with some very basic 4 sketches super quick. Then voted with help from our peers to choose the best design. We were to place that design into two boxes using at least a different angle. After another round of peer voting we were tasked to complete one design as a larger scale in detail.

Sophie Van Schadewijk is a printmaker from Waalre, The Netherlands. I came across her work during my time in the printmaking elective searching for inspiration. I feel as print as its own art-form can be very important for the tattoo industry. Especially when it comes to stencils or reversing images etc. the style of work she produces reminds me a lot of almost a sort of blackwork type of style but I definitely wouldn’t put a label on it. Some small information about her is that she studied graphic design but ended up being a printmaker/illustrator.

I came across some of this artists work while I was scrolling through Instagram. Beatrice specialises in Typography. I felt at ease whilst researching and scrolling through her feed. You can see how she uses type to her advantage to create images. I feel as she has a very unique yet bubbly style to create calming and aesthetically pleasing images. I do enjoy this style of typography personally and I’d recommend giving her a search on instagram. Hopefully you share the same views as me on gaining a calming affect from the work she produces.

While developing my project I decided that I was focusing less on the growth of the tattoo industry as a whole and more on the growth of tattoo's in society and the stigma around them. How through time something that was isolated in certain subcultures and presented with this dark, harmful to the selfs attitude has grown and spread and is now widely considered a positive form of self expression and a respectful art form and profession. I'm looking at the technicality's of the process and the industry, but also the conceptual of people's attitudes and acceptance.

-I tried to evenly explore and incorporate together my chosen electives of photography, graphic design and print as I feel they are all important processes in the tattoo industry.

PHOTOGRAPHY

I mostly explored the concept of growth through the human form, contrasting imagery of clear/empty skimmed baby doll with imagery of my heavily tattooed self. I focused on time and blurred movement representing the growth and change from blank canvassed infant to the artistically expressive skin I now possess.

GRAPHIC DESIGN & PRINT

Print and graphic design were very much intertwined as I focused on simplistic imagery and wording representing the tattooing process and industry, and how it can be perceived negatively by society sometimes, yet that stigma is slowly dissolving as society grows.

I managed to get around to Riso printing my zine today. I had to separate my layers to allow for the different colours. As I had most of my work on a single layer I had to go back on illustrator and make 2 Separate folder layers I labelled one of those text and the other images. I then exported each layer/folder as a high quality pdf from adobe illustrator. I printed the first one a3 black and white and then the second one the same. It was then put into the riso machine. Although we got to choose our own colours I thought bright red and teal would look cool with my concept but I didn’t really love my outcome. I have to wait a few days until its dry so I can fold it into the zine. Overall I’m super happy with what I achieved over the past few days and if i were to do it again I would definitely even out the separate layers a lot more.