I decided on choosing to pursue two live briefs for this half of the module, the 'Hookworms' Brudenell Social Club gig poster, and the 'Penguin Student Design Competition' with a view to keeping myself engaged with my work through having two very different avenues I would have to follow. Whilst this was true at first, the 'Hookworms' brief actually had a much sooner deadline than the 'Penguin' competition did and I did eventually find myself losing steam whilst working on that one.
I thought the best way of responding to the 'Hookworms' brief would be to simply listen to their music and create an intuitive reaction to it which would hopefully mean that what I came up with would be quite different to the artwork they already have. I did enjoy the initial freedom this way of working presented, a poster for a gig can be pretty much anything, they rarely seem to correlate directly to the band in my experience, they just have to be visually strong. As a result I just started playing around until I had some imagery that I liked.
What I really struggled with, was then having to incorporate all the text required for the poster, which I had not considered at all due to the spontaneous way I'd been working up until that point. My first few attempts at fitting the type into my illustrations were terrible and put me off working on the brief for a while because I became so bored with shunting stuff around on Photoshop. I think the next time I'm working with type I should try and hand draw it into my original artwork before scanning it in and then both facets of the image would evolve in conjunction without one lagging behind and subsequently holding the other back. In the end I was actually very happy with the two designs I came up with, but I used a very different approach to type in each, one had the type very much separate to the image but sat comfortably within the composition so as to not take away from it, and the other involved the type being integrated with the imagery much more. I think both worked pretty well so I still don't feel that confident about how type may fit best into my practice in the future, but I do at least know I can try different things out.
With regards to my 'Animal Farm' book cover, I developed the ideas much more over a longer period of time. Working on two briefs at once did help me refresh my ideas for each when I worked on the other, and my 'Animal Farm' cover was particularly helped by that. I started out trying to come up with visual metaphors and doing clever things with Soviet symbolism, but after spending some time away on the 'Hookworms' brief, I returned with the realisation that my work isn't as well suited to that and managed to simplify my idea down to much more stronger visualisations of the themes within the book. I am also glad I managed to avoid using drawings of pigs. I do think I ended up rushing a bit at the end, and whilst my final submission was, in my opinion, a strong image which made an aesthetically pleasing book cover, I don't think it was quite interesting enough and if I had spent some more time playing around with my final few ideas I could have come up with something in a similar vein but more powerful.
Overall, I am fairly happy with the work I ended up with for this project, and did enjoy working on it a fair amount, mainly because I kept the work very diverse so I didn't really get bored, and I managed to incorporate some painting into the process, which I had been wanting to do. I do still struggle with time management though, and definitely see how I could have developed my work much further in the time I had (particularly with regards to 'Animal Farm') with surprising specificity.
Wednesday, 9 May 2018
Studio Brief 2: Individual Practice
For my Applied Illustration brief I chose the 'Packaging and Retail' and retail specialist area, focusing on the 'Secret 7' live brief, but also including some related bit and pieces, such as another internal LAU live brief, '27 Club' and some album artwork for my friends' band. I usually struggle with or don't even consider how my work might be 'applied' to different contexts so this module had the potential to be a challenging one for me and I'm slightly annoyed I didn't decide to do something which would have pushed me further out of my comfort zone.
This is namely because, I actually think that album art is probably one of the least restrictive forms illustration can take. The only requirement really is that whatever one creates needs to be square. This meant that I didn't really have to alter my thinking processes or adapt what I usually do all that much, and as a result I think I definitely became a little complacent around halfway through the project and maybe didn't take full advantage of it's educational purposes. Having said that, I did enjoy the freedom this brief presented and can't see my practice ever evolving into one in which I work according to a preconceived purpose anyway. I did also manage to slip in a bit of painting and incorporate it into the way of working I carried over from 503 which was something I wanted to do.
I had never attempted any album art prior to this and it had been something I wanted to have a go at as music is such big interest of mine and I don't ever really respond to it artistically. In this sense 'Secret 7' was quite rewarding, because it is so open I definitely had fun when I started work on it, particularly as I chose a track which I wasn't that well acquainted with prior so could fully absorb it without any prejudices and without getting bored. However, it actually turned out not to be the best channel through which to explore album art for me personally, as a lot of the elements I was interested in weren't actually relevant to the brief.
For instance, I was hoping to force myself into becoming more confident using type in my work, and gaining a greater understanding of how to incorporate it, but 'Secret 7' requires that you don't use any type on your designs. I was also quite interested in designing a back cover and inside cover art (for an LP) but, again, 'Secret 7' doesn't require those. I was initially planning on using my friends' bands album to try out all these things and although I did manage to play around with type a little, in the end time just got away from me. Because I didn't really map out specific enough aims for myself, considering the restrictions and requirements of the main chunk of this body of work weren't reflective of what I really wanted to learn, I felt I cheated myself somewhat. My work for the '27 Club' brief also felt a little redundant, despite liking some of the drawing I did for it. I didn't really put much thought into it and I think it shows, which is a pity because I am a huge Robert Johnson fan and I think I could have made much more use of my interest in his music given this opportunity.
Overall I think that I squandered a lot of the opportunities and experience this project offered me due to relying too much on the parameters or lack thereof imposed on me by the briefs and by myself. At level 6, I want to take forward the fact my work should be made somewhat for the sake of itself before anything else, but not to let that stop me pushing myself to pursue the things I want to learn about, or using the fact my work isn't really application led as an excuse.
This is namely because, I actually think that album art is probably one of the least restrictive forms illustration can take. The only requirement really is that whatever one creates needs to be square. This meant that I didn't really have to alter my thinking processes or adapt what I usually do all that much, and as a result I think I definitely became a little complacent around halfway through the project and maybe didn't take full advantage of it's educational purposes. Having said that, I did enjoy the freedom this brief presented and can't see my practice ever evolving into one in which I work according to a preconceived purpose anyway. I did also manage to slip in a bit of painting and incorporate it into the way of working I carried over from 503 which was something I wanted to do.
I had never attempted any album art prior to this and it had been something I wanted to have a go at as music is such big interest of mine and I don't ever really respond to it artistically. In this sense 'Secret 7' was quite rewarding, because it is so open I definitely had fun when I started work on it, particularly as I chose a track which I wasn't that well acquainted with prior so could fully absorb it without any prejudices and without getting bored. However, it actually turned out not to be the best channel through which to explore album art for me personally, as a lot of the elements I was interested in weren't actually relevant to the brief.
For instance, I was hoping to force myself into becoming more confident using type in my work, and gaining a greater understanding of how to incorporate it, but 'Secret 7' requires that you don't use any type on your designs. I was also quite interested in designing a back cover and inside cover art (for an LP) but, again, 'Secret 7' doesn't require those. I was initially planning on using my friends' bands album to try out all these things and although I did manage to play around with type a little, in the end time just got away from me. Because I didn't really map out specific enough aims for myself, considering the restrictions and requirements of the main chunk of this body of work weren't reflective of what I really wanted to learn, I felt I cheated myself somewhat. My work for the '27 Club' brief also felt a little redundant, despite liking some of the drawing I did for it. I didn't really put much thought into it and I think it shows, which is a pity because I am a huge Robert Johnson fan and I think I could have made much more use of my interest in his music given this opportunity.
Overall I think that I squandered a lot of the opportunities and experience this project offered me due to relying too much on the parameters or lack thereof imposed on me by the briefs and by myself. At level 6, I want to take forward the fact my work should be made somewhat for the sake of itself before anything else, but not to let that stop me pushing myself to pursue the things I want to learn about, or using the fact my work isn't really application led as an excuse.
Study Task: Industry Research
I found it quite difficult researching album art as an industry, mainly because it seems to me that there aren't too many considerations which have to made. the only requirement really is that whatever the artist comes up with has to be square. This is in fact part of the appeal to me, as I typically make work without too much consideration of how it will be applied to a specific context. The only other particularly important consideration would be the use of type, which is something I did want to work on in my own work, but even then there are so many approaches one could take with regards to that and no restraints upon the use of type imposed by the industry.
Partly as a result of this, and also partly as a result of the fact that at any given time there is a huge amount of music with inherent differences, there also doesn't ever seem to be trends in album art massively. The only trends evidenced tend to be genre specific trends, and even then they don't seem that prominent.
I suppose the only other type of industry research that would have been worth looking into would have been more of a materials/ assembly line process focus, but that type of stuff is probably unlikely to ever be all that relevant to me as an illustrator, unless I'm dealing with a vinyl cover which will be made out of a specific and/or unusual surface which would affect how a potential design will work being printed on it (e.g. glow in the dark, clear etc.)
My research then mainly consisted of gathering together album art which I particularly liked and simply thinking about why I liked it. Even then, there were lots of differences, and all it usually boiled down to was whether or not I liked the design as purely an image in its own right or if I thought it captured the music on the album particularly well, which seemed like fairly obvious indicators.
Partly as a result of this, and also partly as a result of the fact that at any given time there is a huge amount of music with inherent differences, there also doesn't ever seem to be trends in album art massively. The only trends evidenced tend to be genre specific trends, and even then they don't seem that prominent.
I suppose the only other type of industry research that would have been worth looking into would have been more of a materials/ assembly line process focus, but that type of stuff is probably unlikely to ever be all that relevant to me as an illustrator, unless I'm dealing with a vinyl cover which will be made out of a specific and/or unusual surface which would affect how a potential design will work being printed on it (e.g. glow in the dark, clear etc.)
My research then mainly consisted of gathering together album art which I particularly liked and simply thinking about why I liked it. Even then, there were lots of differences, and all it usually boiled down to was whether or not I liked the design as purely an image in its own right or if I thought it captured the music on the album particularly well, which seemed like fairly obvious indicators.
Goals For 504
Throughout 503 I developed a way of working which involved mixing media together to form imagery, namely mono print, photos and found imagery, and pencil/pencil crayon. I found the results of this process to be largely successful. I also enjoyed the fact that collaging all these elements together almost randomly (once I had accumulated a large amount of material as resources) kept my options for each piece of work open whilst keeping the tone of voice consistent. I was also able to create quite complex seeming images physically without having to use photoshop too much. I intended to continue working in this vein throughout 504.
As a way of keeping myself from becoming bored with that way of working, however, I also wanted to try and paint some more, or at least start trying to incorporate paint or other media into this process as a new challenge. I also wanted to keep taking on briefs which involved type as I am not yet very confident incorporating type into my work and always struggle with how to do it.
By May, I wanted to have expanded my practice into areas I hadn't previously explored; applications such as album art or posters and events, or at least begun to develop an understanding of how my work might sit in these contexts. I also wanted to have created some really big work, like canvas paintings etc.
As a way of keeping myself from becoming bored with that way of working, however, I also wanted to try and paint some more, or at least start trying to incorporate paint or other media into this process as a new challenge. I also wanted to keep taking on briefs which involved type as I am not yet very confident incorporating type into my work and always struggle with how to do it.
By May, I wanted to have expanded my practice into areas I hadn't previously explored; applications such as album art or posters and events, or at least begun to develop an understanding of how my work might sit in these contexts. I also wanted to have created some really big work, like canvas paintings etc.
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