Jackson pollock

I have researched in to Jackson Pollock because of the Matt De Jong brief we were given. I decided to look at his work because we were told that a fine artist that may influence are work. We were looking at making drip paintings for the covers of our records so this is what led me in the direction of his work. 

What I enjoy about his work is the patterns the splats and drips make by chance of landing their. His work is very original and fun to recreate. Known for being the pioneer of Abstract Expressionism.

Matt De Jong - Workshop

https://www.tumblr.com/search/nuavaccines

Matt De Jong is a Graphic designer who is well known for his record covers for music artists. For one of our workshops he came to us with a brief for the vaccines. We had a vinyl cover to design, 3 inner sleeves and what it would like within an app and a new logo.

For this brief we had to include some key features they wanted us to include a picture of the band with the covers. They also gave us an extract, which spoke about how the world has become westernised and how they wanted to recover the times before people were so easily connected by technology.

Matt gave us the idea to approach the idea by using a fine artist as research and use their style of working within ours to give us inspiration. We firstly had a look through the bands picture they had supplied and realised they had a running theme; we took this in to account. They had been traveling Asia. As a group we thought this would be the best path to go down, because this meant we could elaborate on the brief using one of the themes of getting back to basics and away from technology. We decided to play with the text and find artists that use Asian artwork. We found two amazing artist which were Keiichi Tanaami and Yayoi Kusama. We intergraded this work with another style of working by looking at Jackson Pollock and his drip artwork. Our out comes for these practises are all on the Tumblr blog link above.

After this we had the idea of making models of the artists rather using the pictures. We decided this because we thought it would add a fun element to our work and differentiate us away from the rest of the designs. We wanted to try as many pieces as possible to see what the best out come would be. To make our models we were going to use modelling clay called Fimo but instead we just used coloured modelling clay. We did this because the models were only going to be photographed then re-edited.

By this point we had all the images together and had a good set to work with and edit and layer text on to. Alex designed a text around the Asian theme we were using and got the inspiration for our logo from a previous band called Wutang clan which almost have an Asian inspired symbol for their logo.We decided to have a big white and black V as the logo, obviously taken from the name of 'The Vaccines'. Presonally I thought our work was to brief and quite interesting. We worked well as a team and had a lot of creative output between us. If we were to do this again I think we would all agree and work more efficiently together and quicker.

Group Participants- 
Alex Richardson - Designer: Type and image
Zoe Jackson - Ideas, Research, Virtual Designer
Jamie Popple - Ideas, Research, Virtual Designer
Jason Durrant -  Ideas, Research, Blog Designer
Alicia Lolotte - Model maker, Research, Ideas and Practice

For make your mark I have decided to produce a short video that shows me remaking my top 3 album covers for a song. I have done this to ‘Tell don’t sell’, which was part of the brief, to share your own personal story.

I have portrayed this through the use of pictures, collage and music. Music plays a major role in my life, whether I am just walking to the shops or doing University work. Here I have tried to portray myself through three songs, all quite different. With different genres, tempos and singers. Each song describes a little moment for my life. I have chosen three of my favorite songs that relate back to a moment in my life. Such as the first song was one I heard when I was younger and reminds me of the moments I started to like hip-hop music. The second is by an artist who has always been a favorite of mine and since the moment she came on the music scene I have been a follower. The third song reminds me of a holiday which was taken a few years ago and  we traveled through portugal

The design aspect of this is by the use of simple typed text as a narrative. To inform the viewer on what they are watching and what I am aiming to do within the montage. I start the video with a small illustration of a vinyl and the idea of what I am going tot do throughout my work. I have chosen a vinyl because I use small vinyl sleeves in my video to recreate the images on to. I have done this because the images on vinyl sleeves are a piece of artwork and can be looked at in detail when they are in big format.

The use of collage/ montage is because I enjoy collage a lot. Collage is a technique I have used within a few pieces of work and I enjoy using it to create detailed pieces with minimal effort. The use of using found objects was because perfection can’t be recreated. So I used the found objects as a challenge. Some pieces turned out well where as some I found challenging to put together. This is shown in my collage for Eliza Doolittle, the piece is sparse in graphic information. I listened to the music to find inspiration for the designs. Dependent on what the song was like would depend on the out come of the design almost like Kandinsky’s work. Using video was very new for me and doing this has broadened my artist skills. I have learnt how to add effects that are pre-set in to the programs or create my own with the tools provided on the program. It has been a learning curve for me. There are areas I would like to improve and change within the piece. Such as the image quality and how I shot the piece. I would have used proper recording devices rather than a DSLR because it would have been easier to capture the image. I believe this is something I will change in the future as I create more videos, to enhance the images I have captured I have put them in to black and white. Another aspect I would change about my piece is the duration. The clips are 2 minutes each but I would refine them to the highlights and make it more interesting for the viewer. When filming the piece I should have had more materials ready to use to prevent stumbling and wasted time within the footage.

My influence for my work was Barbara Ryan I enjoy the composition of her work. Where she uses montage and edited clips within her video to explain what she is doing and the message she is sending out. Barbara uses clips of Twitter and other social networks to show who was connected and viewing her work whilst she did the challenge. Barbara’s message is strong and helps viewers to explore their creative side and put their thoughts in to action. Without a challenge within art how can anything new be created?

Make your mark

Here are the front and back cover I have designed for my own 12 Inch record sleeve. I have done this rather than a sketch book because I believe the questions I have answered on the back of the sleeve would be what I would go through in a sketchbook/ art log book. I have designed a record sleeve because my idea was to recreate 5 different song covers. At first I wanted to recreate the 5 top covers personally giving them a professional finish but because you can't improve on perfection i decidedIi would only using the materials I could find around my house. Making collages, i did this whilst listening to the song to get inspiration of what to create. I did this once before and the out come was not successful. The images I produced were great until i involved my own hand written text. So i went back and made the video again, cutting down the amount of covers to 3. This made the video shorter. Each re-creation would take 2 mins. Meaning the video its self is now about 6-7 mins long. I have also put the video in black and white to because it made the images stand out more and boosted the effect.

I have used images of myself on the front cover because the task is meant to depict something about us. Explain information about me. I have music to tell a story about me because it is quite a big element in my life. Using it to study to or just walk around in daily life. Here i have used 3 top songs that have either influenced me in some way or bring back a memory. I got the inspiration for this idea from the D&AD 15 projects in 24 hours.

I have kept the cover very simplistic because I wanted the text and images to speak for them selves.

PopularNoise

These are a few examples of a vinyl covers remade to hold the vinyl differently. It has become more aesthetically appealing for the viewer when it has been made this way.

Also the use of a serif font with monochrome colours to make the packaging fashionable.

New Blood Entry — Ice Cream for Change

http://www.dandad.org/awards/new-blood/2014/unilever-white-pencil/2660/ice-cream-for-change/

To help with the discrimination against gay propaganda in Moscow. Ben and Jerry's created packing which changed the original logo in to names of gay couples and sold them in Moscow. This was like a secret advertising.

New Blood Entry — 24 Hour D&AD Challenge

Barbara Ryan

http://www.dandad.org/awards/new-blood/2014/dad-tell-dont-sell-make-your-mark/2413/24-hour-dad-challenge/

Barbara Ryan loves creating and set her self the task of creating 15 of the briefs within 24 hours. From 7am to 7am. She recorded the whole processes and this was the outcome. 

An imaginative form of documentation.

I like the use of the dual cameras, and also the time lapse to speed up the process of the 24 hours to show her work ethic in full. I hope to produce a visual treatment along these lines. I love the self explanatory use of twitter feed snippets. Also the use of live streaming made her work even more challenging to stick to the time limits she set her self.