Academic Progression

Theory as Practice Essay For our theory as practice essay I am a little undecided about which topic to continue on with, the session with guest lecturer Jonathan Lindley and his lecture on Anti-Branding and 'Adbusters' I personally found it to be an interesting subject to talk about. We were given the task to:  Come up with two essay questions relating to the chosen topic.  To provide two definitions of chosen topics Obtain a book relating to the chosen question/topic.  The two topics I am currently still torn between are: Discuss the effect of subcultures on influential graphic designers.  Brand versus Anti-brand. How have graphic designers worked with or against brands, and to what effect?  Task 1: Essay Questions Anti-Branding: Do anti brand movements effect major companies or is it overlooked without change? Does anti brand provide a solid enough point to inflict a reaction with the general public? Can anti brand ...

Typographic Transformation During a seminar we were set a task to undertake where we had the choice to either create an illustration or animation to make a typographic transformation where both words are opposite to one another an example of this is hot and cold or light and dark. I chose to do an illustration for this task. my initial idea were to use the words 'Life' and 'Death' and using these words, depict an illustration about trees and their life span, beginning with a seed as it sprouts to a plant or tree eventually loosing all of it's leaves and dying.  I created a rough design that provided me with a basic shape and intention, the roots spell out life as the canopy would spell death I initialled intended on creating an illustration of this using either Adobe illustrator or Photoshop.        Developing upon this session I in fact changed the idea to something a little more simplistic, although the life to death design is a potential idea I much...

Venture Through Huddersfield Before joining the university of Huddersfield I had never visited Huddersfield. To gather my bearings I thought it would be a good idea to venture through the town to not only find my way between the train station and the university but also find some places of interest and leisure that I could visit throughout my time at the university. I came across a church in the town centre, although I personally prefer more modern structures, the architecture of the church was appealing, I might consider drawing architectural features of the church in my spare time. I took two photos of the church using my phone, one part I particularly liked about the church was the clock tower with it's angled corners.                In comparison to Manchester, I did notice that Huddersfield has a very brown/black colour scheme to its buildings, the brickwork having a sandstone look to it. I...

Portrait Manipulation Our First Workshop we had with Rob Lycett explored with Photoshop and editing self portraits that were taken a couple of weeks prior, we were shown different ways we could use various tools such as edge refinement to effectively separate our portraits from the green screen background, I had a rather difficult time with this due to my hair being excessive and wispy but after playing around with image refinement I was able to overcome this and begin editing my image. This was a progressive screenshot of my 'self portrait manipulation', I experimented with a variety of tools such as hue to change the colour of my hair (which was originally dark green) and skin. The combination of the Marquee tool and blur effects helped me achieve this glitch VCR effect, my inspiration for this was a 80s vapour wave retro styling, strong examples of this style can be seen in the game 'Hotline Miami' and the Movie 'Drive'. Using a box with a blur effe...

Bitmap Experimentation and an Introduction to Indesign Each Thursday afternoon, students have a 4 hour workshop with either John Kelly,  Rob lycett or  Sarah Nesturuk. The students have been separated into three groups, group A which is my group, covers the graphic design students, group B is a combination of both graphic design and animation students and group C are animation students. The first workshop my group had was with Rob Lycett. As a warm up activity he introduced the group to bitmapping in Photoshop. Bitmapping is where you convert an image from RGB format into a BMP format, the image will first be prompted to be converted to grayscale before the conversion to BMP. Then you can choose intensity and shape for the bitmap effect, Doing this results in a black and white newspaper look which adds a textured feel to the image.  We were provided with a range of photos to choose from that we could edit, I chose a skull on a tree stump as my image. Below ...

During one of Rob Lycett's Thursday lectures, one of the Various Books we were suggested to read up on was a book called 'Everything Sings' by Denis Wood. The book features an innovative portrayal to mapping, the maps are rather unusual and possibly considered impractical which is what I like about them, Maps are created with a purpose and a job, to get you from point 'A' to point 'B'. Denis creates these maps but in a very different perspective instead of showing roads and train lines, he illustrates a map of a small vicinity where the only thing illustrated are little circles and squares labeled "disfigured trees". Denis surveyed a place called Boylan heights and throughout this book he documents various neighbourhoods using creative and interesting subjects such as 'Squirrel Highway' where he observed how the local wildlife would traverse, in this case Squirrels would use the telephone wires to travel safely over roads.  One of my pers...

After receiving the brief for TFD1413 Theory as Practice - Assignment 2: Essay. I have annotated information, useful notes and important deadlines that can help me generate ideas and an understanding of what will be required to create a good strong essay that relates to both the brief and subject matter. The three subjects of the essay consist of:  Discuss the effect of subcultures on influential graphic designers and/or animators. In what ways have the prequel or sequel influenced contemporary graphic design and/or animation practices? Brand versus Anti-brand. How have graphic designers and/or animators worked with or against brands, and to what effect? As groups we created small mind maps and/or notes about the three subjects such as, what do they mean to each of us individually, and examples on how we could plan out and eventually create a solid essay based around one of three subjects . Bellow are scan copies of my own annotated brief for this Assignment....

With the first Brief  'A Sense of Place'  being provided,  our first session in relation to the brief heavily aimed towards the students developing early ideas and bring out our creativity by seeing what a sense of place meant to us individually. To accomplish this, the class were given sticky notes and were then tasked with writing down words, phrases and sentences in relation to sense of place, collectively as a class we would then stick them all up against a wall to create a mind map. For this session I chose to do city life, due to living in Manchester for most of my youth I thought that writing about the city life with it's pros and cons could be a solid initial idea that I could develop upon throughout this project.  Along side the sticky note session I also created a possible idea in relation to the brief about living in a city and experiencing 'city life'. Understandably city life isn't for everyone, but personally I enjoy the architectural hori...

Thought Bubble Leeds 2016 On the 1st till the 6th of November every year in Leeds is an event named Thought Bubble, Thought Bubble is a comic book convention and annual art celebration of sequential art in all of it's forms. It was first formed in 2007 as a none profit-making organisation that dedicated itself to promoting comic books, graphic novels and animation as an important national and international art form I attended this event and being able to view all the artwork that all these independent artists and illustrators have created was inspiring, there was never two similar style of artwork throughout the convention, each artist had their own characters and worlds that they had spent months to years perfecting. I was able to network with a lot of the illustrators and artists who were set up there which is perfect because I have personally aspired to do this sort of stuff as a hobby and getting insight from these artists was an ...

Convergence For our second lecture of Theory as Practice, we had a guest lecturer called Jonathan Lindley. Jonathan is a UK based graphic designer and music artist who is studying his PHD at the university of Huddersfield, his work and craft has been implemented heavily into music focused projects, eventually creating a record named Subversive Current. this is the cover art for Jonathan's record 'Subversive Current' I think the artwork Jonathan created for his album is really striking and inspirational, I love the graffiti style combined with real life photography. It's clean, modern and sticks to a minimal colour palette. Additionally his use of anonymity by illustrating skulls onto the individual shown on the album cover adds a unique appeal that suits with the style of the cover's design.  Jonathan introduced us to 'Convergence' which means to gather from different directions and to eventually meet. convergence is the transl...

Concertina Sketchbook For the first half of the sense of place project we have  been provided with an A5 concertina sketchbook which is a spineless book that opens out landscape, providing us with enough space to experiment with ideas relevant to this project. With this sketchbook we have two sides, one side will show all of our primary research where we will carry out the research ourselves, such as going out and drawing up maps, signs and various pieces in relation to the project. The other side is secondary where we will fill the pages with artwork of artists, photographers and designers that we are inspired by.  I am excited to get this sketchbook underway and even more so to get it completed but currently I am unsure about what to add and how to add it. I don't wish to make the sketchbook look messy and carelessly thrown together but at the same time I don't want to take too long creating it.

Design Manifesto   ‘An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea’. Oscar Wilde (1981) During the lecture we were introduced to design manifestos. A manifesto is a published verbal declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government. A manifesto either accepts a previously published opinion or public consensus, or promotes a new idea with prescriptive notions for carrying out changes the author believes should be made. It often is political or artistic in nature, but may present an individual's life stance. Referring back to Daniel Eatock, Eatock created his own conceptual design manifesto, It consisted of: Begin with ideas Embrace chance Celebrate coincidence  Ad-Lib and make things up Eliminate superfluous elements Subvert expectation Make something difficult look easy Be first to last Believe complex ideas can produce simple things Trust the process  ...

'All designs begin with little ideas' Today was our first lecture for the 'Theory as Practice' module. The module lead, Dr Anna Powell introduced us to Theory or 'How to have an idea'. The aims of the lecture were to:  Define theory and consider why we should theorise our practice. Discuss how engaging with theory and critical discourse can support or inspire practice. Discuss why we should take critical perspective in relation to our own work. Look beyond commercial design: Think about ideas, authorship and identity in relation to practice. ‘There is no reading of a work which is not also a re-writing’.  ( Terry Eagleton    literary theorist).   Visual Communication  The colours of the shell logo is iconic, the combination of bright yellow and red is not only to add a striking appeal but the reason behind the choice of colours is down to shell's home initially being in California and the company was keen to stress their links with ...