#external project

unit 10 // external project

unit 10 // external project

unit 10 // external project - mondo brewing company x camberwell

For the external brief, I chose to work on the Guardian brief, alongside the still ongoing collaboration with Bouldering Bobat (currently on hold due to COVID), as I admire the Guardian as a publication, and I found the article provided very interesting and relatable. It was about noise pollution and white noise, an issue I can heavily relate to myself as I also struggle with noise pollution and use white noise as a coping mechanism. 

I started this brief by reading and then re-reading the article multiple times, going through and annotating which words stuck out to me and had visual connotations. This helped me form a mind-map about all the imagery related to the article and what it all means. From there, I began to focus on the key elements of the article so I could break down what was most important to represent in the images. This ended up being the difficulty of the noise pollution itself, the visual representation of the effect of white noise, and the resulting worry about the emptiness of the white noise. These three things became the visual language that I used to create the piece itself.

I then began coming up with various different options and thumbnails of ideas so that I could have a short period where I simply came up with as many ideas as possible. Quickly I then chose my favourites and turned them into more detailed drafts to submit for the first deadline. One of the roughs was very minimal and was my favourite - I typically don’t do minimalism very much but this time I actually found it quite useful to represent the key parts of this article without any confusion. The other rough I produced was more illustrative and complicated (see below - first is turn, second is main illustration):

In the feedback we received the week after, they said:

“I really liked the turn illustration. Bold, dramatic, simple clean. I'd be tempted to use that on the opening spread and continue the simple clean graphic approach for a turn page spot - along the same lines so they felt connected.”

I took this on straight away, and I agreed with it too. I think with this article it was important not to overcomplicate the artwork, as the basis of the writing is so clear and understandable. The second draft really didn’t match up with the minimal style and they clashed a lot. I should have sent them more than two roughs, but I didn’t know that at the time as this is my first ‘professional’ briefing. I then worked up the draft they preferred, and rethought the turn illustration. 

In the midst of this was the beginning of the pandemic/lockdown, so I ended up having to work on this whilst staying in my sisters home. Luckily I thought to bring the work with me in case I got stuck there (I am now nearing a month and a half of being here as I write this) and also ordered my new tablet to get delivered here just in case. This meant I could work up and finish this in time for the final deadline.

Again, I just mind mapped the various ideas I had, playing around with similar visuals to the main illustration, until I decided which one was my favourite and then worked that into a final image. In the time I spent finalising the original image, I decided on a colour scheme which was fairly minimal in colour choices which continued the minimalist themes, and which allowed me to plan the turn illustration according to the colour scheme. Here are the final pieces I sent in:

I am quite happy with these pieces; they represent a complete experimentation for me, as firstly I rarely do this minimal style, and secondly working digitally for a final piece is completely new to me. I learnt a lot about working digitally for this piece, becoming more familiar with brushes, painting on photoshop and the benefits of being able to play so much with colour, placement and size. It was also good to follow something through to such a clear end, as often my projects are so ongoing it is difficult to ‘finish’ them. Editorial work is new for me, but I really enjoyed it as it was a straightforward assignment, allowing me to just stay focused on something small and manageable at the beginning of this stressful global situation. 

My skills as an illustrator came along greatly during this small project as this was my first time responding to direct, short feedback and minimal tutor interaction. It felt good to be self-reliant and work to a brief like this. I enjoy editorial illustration and this project helped me realise that it is something I would be interested in working with again. 

Cancer Research  

The Creative Challenge

The brief has asked us to focus on either:

Prevention - reducing people risk of developing cancer in the first place. 

Earlier diagnosis - Diagnosing more cancers earllier to increase the chances of survival. 

Consider the target audiences who are :

Supporters and funders of the work who wish to be kept up to date with our work and progress and like to be engaged in new and creative ways. 

Young people (aged between 18 -25). They may know nothing about cancer, or just know that it has affected people around them and theres no way of preventing it. 

The general public.

For this brief we were provided with a lot of information to sift through and take in. I have visited the website and as seen above, made notes in my RSJ. I found out about a lot of facts that I had no idea about. For example, about the fact that the pill can double your chances of cervical cancer if you have been on it for 5 years or more. I also had no idea that if caught in the earliest stage, cancer has between an 80-90% survival rate. 

When discussing about ideas in my group, we started to research how people have used visuals to communicate ideas about this topic in the past. Katie mentioned about a poster she saw where they used lemons as a metaphor for breast tissue, see below: 

Inspired by Lemons

From the idea of thinking about fruit as a metaphor. We came up with another idea of having a woman in a kitchen, where we can see there is some gone of fruit, and the lady is trying to smell it out. The slogan we could then use is ‘you know when somethings off’. This is meant to be about how people can tend to ignore there symptoms. Often we notice a change in our own bodies, but may assume that it will get better on our own or are scared to go to the doctors incase of what they find. 

We decided from here that we would focus on early diagnosis of cancer, as after this one idea sparked another and we continued to come up with many ideas for this aspect.

We started to think about metaphors we could use to represent the body. The group suggested the idea that if our car started to puff out grey smoke, we would take it to the garage straight away, we wouldn’t wait for our car to fully breakdown. We then thought about the idea of using the body is a home metaphor, where we consider the home/house a metaphor for the body. We sketched a storyboard trying to consider the idea of this, showing a house breaking down (bricks falling out) and then the house itself turns into a human. At the end, the phrase, ‘you know when something is not right’ could be used. We considered making this a stop frame animation, and using air drying clay to give this animation a textural quality. 

Exhibition Space 

After this we thought about how in an exhibition space, we could communicate the idea of this more interactively in a space. I then thought about the idea of using mirrors. Initially, I just thought of this as I think mirrors are a useful tool when trying to get people to put themselves in a position, as in automatically when a person sees themselves in a mirror, it causes them to self reflect. We Also felt this idea of a mirror is very relevant because often people spot differences is skin, lumps and bumps etc firstly, in the mirror. We had a couple of variations about this idea, explained below:

Hall of Mirrors - This idea I imagined as a series of full length mirrors that were getting more and more distorted as they go (or start off distorted and then gets less and less distorted). This is the idea of ‘feeling funny?’ This words or words similar would be written on the wall opposite from the mirrors so that they could only be read through the mirrors themselves. 

Cracked Mirrors - This could be a series of mirrors that gets more and more cracked as they go. At the end there would be a pile of glass where the viewer would be able to put the mirror back together.

Mirror Puzzle - Idea of words printed onto a mirror in the shape of a puzzle, so people had to fix the puzzle to read the words. There could be a couple of mirror puzzles to represent symptoms and slogans for each type of cancer. 

Feedback from the crit:

Living with Buildings

The Brief

Ian Sinclair writes beloved best selling books about cities and places. His latest book, Living with Buildings, was inspired by a forthcoming Wellcome Collection exhibition of the same name. To celebrate the book, Brick Lane Bookshop have offered up their window space for two weeks from 12th November. The Brief is to work in a team (Illustration/Animation together with Architecture) to create an arresting piece of artwork that represents the essence of Ians Book. They would love us to incorporate Ian’s cover as a strong visual element. This will create exciting media coverage for the people who win the project.

Initial Ideas and Mind-maps

First we decided on a group. We met a lovely girl called Reem (also my sister’s name) and decided to form a group. This meant that, Cat, Olga, Reem and I would be working together.

 To get started I read through the extract of the book that we have been given on the brief to understand the premise of the novel and what the author Iain Sinclair is trying to communicate . We also decided as a group that we would go to the Wellcome collection to spark ideas and understand more about the  ideas in relation with this project. The welcome collection was very interesting and I found that I learnt a lot about something I never considered much before, this idea of how the built environment can impact our mental and emotional health. From buildings that are built weakly (like the Grenfell tower) compared to buildings that are proven to heal people like a hospital in which specific colors are used to make people feel happy and positive, therefore healing them. (Some notes out of my RSJ are shown above.) 

When we started considering possible ideas about how best to communicate the idea of a relationship between people and buildings, we felt that the simplest and most easy way to communicate it would be to physically use imagery of buildings (or a skyline) with figures involved somehow. We had much discussion about whether this was too obvious a route however did many mind maps considering ideas and ways in which we could convey this idea. We also really wanted to try to incorporate a moving element in the window display. We felt that a moving element would be incredibly eye catching and would stop a passer by. We contemplated about how would do this and then decided on the idea of using lights within our window piece. This would create the effect of a moving element depending on how we were to program the lights but would also be stationary LEDs and therefore would be easy to maintain and understand. (We would have to go to hack space to tell them how we would want our lights to work).

We thought about the simplicity of last years winners, who’s window display consisted of a large orange clock. This was eye catching because of it’s color and had a moving element (a hand that was stuck). We wanted to make sure that our idea was as simple and strong as this one, whilst incorporating the idea of using light. 

Some initial ideas are seen below:

Tutorial with Geoff 1

We had a list of questions for Geoff during our first crit when we presentated our initial ideas.  

Can we include lights?- Yes

Could we use text & art drawing directly onto the window?- yes

How high is the window display itself? - Won’t know till the idea is picked

Do we need to keep the shop visible through the window display?- no

We then went on to discuss some more ideas. These included:

Using beams, scaffolding and cranes to represent revjuvenation and development.

We also discussed the idea of humanising buildings to give them character and personality. The buildings could breath and come alive, to combine our ideas of using the human form and the 3D buildings.

We need to consider how to signify an unhealthy building compared to a healthy building and consider different ways of showing this. Such as breaking down, holes, warning signs, for unhealthy building, compared to upright, modern building, that has been cared for and tended to.

Consider idea using shadows, or a suggestion of a figure.

Our Final PDF 

WE WON THE COMPETITON. SO NOW COMES TO PUTTING OUR IDEA TOGETHER. 

Final Idea Conclusion:

We started off by thinking about how we could best communicate the essence of the book. We were thinking about the relationship between buildings and humans and how we as humans can be so effected by the built environments around us. This concept was very important for us to communicate. We understood by the reading of the extracts and book that Ian Sinclair discusses how the health of a building can really impact the health of us, both mentally and physically. This is one of the reasons we wanted to use the light effects going from a low light to a strong light to represent growth of a building from unhealthy to healthy. This, as well as the buildings leaning on each other until being fully upright. These decisions paired with the walking character we designed to go from more abstracted to fully clear are mean't to communicate this idea of a relationship between the two. The use of the character walking was also a decision we made to communicate this concept of exploration, through cities, areas, such London, Marseille, Mexico, etc but not only this idea of Ian's personal travels but rather all of our travels through our individual built environments and how they can impact us. A huge part of our inspiration initially and the way that we really started to pick apart what Ian was communicating was by going to see the Living with buildings exhibition at the Wellcome Collection. We were inspired by the construction of the space, the colours that were used on the beams, as well as many of the examples used in the space, and it was initially what inspired us to want to make more of a 3D piece rather than sticking to a flatter design. It also really helped us understand how to catch the eye of a passer by.

Release today on Florida label Illuminated Paths as half of a limited edition split cassette of my half-hour audio collage used in my 2nd Year show, DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT SILENCE. For you reverse retro nerds also available as a digital download.

I have had several releases already on this popular underground label including compilations of my electronic experimental music dating back some years. Having my UWTSD work find its way onto the market is this way is very satisfying. I approached the label on the recommendation of a mutual colleague whose own label was folding and wanted to suggest alternatives. Networking, etc. The label is on Bandcamp and distributed via all major and minor digital venues.

“4 artists in total on this one. the ultimate collab cassette.

“Includes unlimited streaming of 'Victory Sunrise' /// 'Don't Talk To Me About Silence (Surrendered to My Function)' SPLIT via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.ships out within 7 days