Christopher Davis

Graphic Design

Year 2

METHODS OF MADNESS

What is a Grid?

A pattern of regularly spaced horizontal and vertical linesPower system: a system of high tension cables by which electrical power is distributed throughout a regionA perforated or corrugated metal plate used in a storage battery as a conductor and support for the active materialAn electrode placed between the cathode and anode of a vacuum tube to control the flow of electrons through the tubeA cooking utensil of parallel metal bars; used to grill fish or meatExample of Typographic Grid Layout

In the program illustrator you can use the grids to create an 8 x 8 inch compositions out of the text below. Your charge is to visually differentiate the header or title, subheads and the body of text. (Showing the example of how useful a grid in designing apiece below must takes time with making fit correctly)

Making and breaking the Grid…

Looking at different styles of grids from magazine, computers and a toy I try to look at what way I could take from what I was looking at and break it down. The most common place would be a grid from newspaper or magazine but I wanted to look further then that, so I looked at a RUBIX CUBE, which is full of, colorful grid shape colours.

Making it would be taking the cube and leaving it as it is, so the colors are all matching. Then to break it I would start play-ing around with it until the grid is not matching, that would be my theory of Making and Breaking the Grid

Grids

Examples of what I think grids are from books to town maps, I could show you so much that relates to what I’m talking about.

To break the grid I choose to do it with images and the why I broke them by copying them into Photoshop and cutting them until they were separate blocks or crop them into blocks and keep overlaying one another.

After looking at different forms of breaking a grid I choose why not take a product, such as the rubix cube and the method of breaking it would be playing with it¬. Swapping the colour patterns so that they our not matching it a way of breaking.

To push this project one more step I decided to take the photos of the rubix cube and making a small video. The clip will be the cube breaking out of it prefect organized colour grid into a unorganized grid.

Some of the captions from the video for an example

Open Systems

A system which interacts with othersThere are no boundariesAllows input from other sourcesThe human body…

This is an open system as it allows input from other sources (Food) and produces its output (PooPoo).

“living organisms are considered open systems because they take in substances from other environments, food air and return other substances such as carbon dioxide and excretion back into the environment” – www.enotes.com -open and closed systems

Closed Systems

This system has secure boundaries. It has no interference with any other systems and produces its own inputs and outputs within its environment.

Open and Close systems

After having a talk with the rest of the class on open and close system my mind was full of different views on what an open or close system could be. My thoughts on the topic were that an open and close system could be anything that you want it to be, for example I was thinking a tube map is a clear example! With all different routes represented by colours and names to help you understand it clearer, with some routes closing on one line another opens on a different line.

Examples of a tube map and other images showing the human body and it organs designed in the pattern of a tube map. This really shows the 2 open and close systems one of them being the human body and the other is the London under-ground.

WHAT

Choose name from the list.Investigate this person’s biography.Communicate your findings in a format of your choosing within a 2 minute time slot.

HOW

Choose three methods of inquiry that are new, or unfamiliar to you.Find how they work and use these methods to investigate the person that you have been given.Take this process to the limit, well beyond normal expectation and to a point of madness.Gather material and consider the most characteristic or appropriate manner to show this work in the format described.

WHY

This brief is intended to develop ideas from both units, 2A: Methods and Madness and 2A: Independent Practice. By choosing to interrogate lives already lived it asks you to consider your practice and ambitions in relation to others; bigger narratives, systems and hierarchies.

Biography

Point: Internet- Wikipedia and typing in John Walter’s Website

Beginning with typing in the name “John Walter” the results I got were:

John Tudor Walters (1868–1933), British politicianJohn Walters (broadcaster) (1939–2001), British pro-ducerJohn Walters (cricketer) (born 1949), BritishJohnnie Walters (fl. late 20th century), Canadian-born broadcasterJohn P. Walters (fl. c. 2000), American academic & government administratorJohn L. Walters (born c. 1960s), British musician & journalistJohn Walters (born 1979), a.k.a. John Stagikas, American wrestler

Looking at the results above and compare the facts of each one and found they were not the john Walter I was looking for. After doing another search I came across an artist under of the J.Walter, clicked on to his website and found he was the one

Looking at the results above and compare the facts of each one and found they were not the john Walter I was looking for. After doing another search I came across an artist under of the J.Walter, clicked on to his website and found he was the one

JOHN WALTER....?

To approach the biography I had to look at different methods of research, instead of using the basic style I always use. Below shows the approach that I took in a step-by-step format.

Beginning with picking a name out of the hat in class…. the name on my paper was ‘JOHN WALTER’. My reaction was “who is this person?”. To follow he project I stayed away from the Internet and used the library’s resources to find out who J.Walter was. After looking at books and magazines I failed to find any information so I moved to my last resort and goggled he’s name and found this:

Who is John Walter?

John Walter studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford and the Slade School of Fine Art, London. In 2006 Walter completed a residency at K.I.A.C. in Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. From 2006 until 2008 he was Sainsbury Scholar at the British School at Rome.

Screen shot from his website showing the style of work that he experi-ments into with watercolours. The painting of miss piggy from the TV show “the Muppets” was done in on a 56x76cm piece of paper in 2010, Walters style from what I can see by he’s website is that he brings an abstract look to the paints and he is very free with what he does. He works with different style and patterns and combines them into a design or portrait.

Walters work is mainly focuses on portrait of well know faces and characters from television. By doing this he’s paintings with be easily recognized which is different from some other artist who sometimes confuse there audience with technical pieces.

Installation of watercolours as part of ‘Chopsticks Optional’ at The Nun-nery, London

Below are captions of the emails i sent to the link i found on his website and also the replys i got back.This was a new step that i try out, because whenever i do any research i dont really email the person directly so this was a plus and also a bigger plus on getting a reply.

The replys i got were just to help me understand him alot more and how he worked to try and get a sense of presenting his work

A normal way to present for me would be to do a powerpoint presentation of the artist work and brief look at the history of that person. So trying to think of of a way of taking information anf turning it to a way that would be happy to communcate the biography of John Walter. So looking at his website i founda page thats is a short CV on his life, so ive desided to take the layout of the CV and design a new way of reading it.

To show my thought pattern for this project I have taken pictures of the notebook I used to plot my design of how I will present.

After developing an idea for the layout I decided to start design the timeline that I would present. I wanted to make it easy to understand so I basically got the information and placed in the year it fell in a black font to make it clear.

To present my biography work I chose to take the CV and transform it into a 3 A4 page (landscape) timeline. Created using Photoshop I have taken the information and placed in order from he’s early days of learning his craft till resent exhibitions.

This will be presented by hand in front of the class without any digital media.

WHAT

You are to design a situation or scenario in the college environment that changes human behaviour (whilst not infringing on the university regulations).

HOW

The first thing to do with a brief that asks an open question such as the one above is to interrogate it. Open questions invite a broad range of responses rather than require a pre-scribed answer.This brief will be facilitated by a series of tasks and studio-based workshops. These will put the brief in context and provide opportunities to turn ideas in actions.

WHERE & WHEN

The work will be undertaken LIVE on Tuesday 26th October as part of your formative assessment alongside later on in the week (Thurs & Fri) your ‘work in progress’ portfolio with other work that you have done this semester.

WHY

Arguably Graphic Design could be said to have at least 3 underlying purposes.1. To identify 2. To instruct/inform 3. To persuadePerhaps you would like to add more...

PERSUASION

After talking in the our group we started to plan out ideas to see how we can get a differ-ent reaction or make a person to something different. Below shows the sort of brainstorm I came up with to generate a plan for this project. (Pictures taken from my notebook)

We had to do a task to show the class at the end of the day of changing peoples daily rou-tines. From example taking a door and saying it not in use or a computer that’s working but putting a sign on the screen saying out of order.

More examples of what we did

After splitting up into pairs we had to come up with a live demo somewhere on campus. Just having our tutorial and talking about the project we took the concept of competition and tampering.

The main idea we choose was doing a survey with the students and have the chance to win an IPod but the tampering would be in the pen, where the holder would get a jolt when pressing down the pen.

During this idea the pen we had broke so we went out on the morning of the demo to get a new one. Sadly we could not find one cause they were sold out, so we decided to re-think the plan and go with a zapping lighter.

The plan was to ask someone to help us with our project on capturing flames or something really strange. Hoping they would fall for the trick and capturing all of this on video, then edit and uploaded to show the class.

Here are some stills of the video “shocking lighter” showing the subjects reactions of how it affected them.

TODD JAMES

Todd James (a.k.a. REAS) is an internationally recognized artist who began his career as a child in the New York City subway system. He is a co-creator of the seminal Street Market exhibition at Deitch Projects in New York, which was selected for the Venice Biennale in 2001. James’ work has also been shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the Tate Museum in Liverpool, the Parco gal-lery in Tokyo, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Collette in Paris, Lopez galleria in Madrid, Lazarides gallery in London, Todd James is represented by Gering Lopez Gallery in New York City and V1 Gallery in Copenhagen.Todd James lives and works in New York City.

Unorthodox

Shooting the Stars

Take one of the recent news items listed below.

• CHILEAN MINERS INCIDENT • WIKILEAKS • CHERYL COLE• FRENCH PENSION CUTS • AIR CARGO IINK CONTAINER

Analyze how and why it has been represented and constructed in the media. Then challenge, change or fictionalize the event and produce a new interpretation, explanation, exaggeration or even insinuation, us-ing any media or format of your choosing.

This brief is about our tendency to impose pattern and structure onto lived experience. That we do this has profound implication for us as both consumers and producers of culture in all its manifestations.There is a pattern-making or meaning-seeking tendency, hard-wired into us that shapes and determines the ways in which we perceive, interpret and interact with the world.We are predisposed to this for a number of reasons, so for example we still share along with our monkey ancestors, a tendency towards visual paranoia in as much as we as likely to ‘see’ a threatening face rather than just a random configuration of leaf and shadow because this may just save our lives.Furthermore, our human ancestors insisted that they had discovered constellations in the heavens and attributed them with all kinds of magical or theological significance, whilst in fact they were just staring into space, joining up dots of light and drawing all kinds of conclusion.More recently, the stars culture, provide us with to sate our appetite forREADING LIST TO FOLLOW....and media mores of our celebrity a fabulous (literally) opportunity meaning faking.

After choosing my piece of news I look at all of the story that were happening in France and trying to get a clear view on who the cut was going to affect the most. My idea was to look at the common person and allow them to have there freedom of speech, taking away the limits on newspaper was one idea with one bad story and a good one.

I read from the BBC, Guardian and other French reporters and one of the topics that kept creeping up was the fact of dinner ladies leading the charge on the marches. So I thought I would deign posters to get the attention of the public with a fake demonstration that was going to take place in Paris.

FRENCH PENSION CUTS

Showing the thought pattern of my approach with the shooting stars brief was as basic it can be with try-ing to get a simple message across to people.

Examples of French newspapers

The first designs of the news papers showing two different stories of the French pension cut. The first shows the paper with no limits, getting the view of an average old woman who wants to show how she feels. All text was translated into French with the first paper saying “FUCK THE CUTS” with an old woman giving the finger.

First set of posters with sentences that I found while analysising the newspaper text.The colour theme is the French flag and gave some of the words different colours.

Reminding us of the dinner ladies leading the march this poster shows someone holding a spatchula, rep-resenting the working class French citizen it stands for their fight is this whole argument on pension cuts. Around it I have added a quote from the BBC website with the words NO TO CUTS at the top with the date below. To grab the public’s eye I have got the JOIN THE MARCH in blue keeping with the theme.

Thinking about the demonstration I choose to do a mini campaign that involved posters advertising the date, also a mini website that showed the countdown

Still using the same layout as the other poster I started to do a bit of ad-vertising for the March against the pension cut. The theme was time and communicate it with strong words but within a simple format.

Still keeping with the time theme for this set of posters, I started to play with the layout and numbers of the designs. Each one has a different style and setting to keep the public up to date with the going’s on for the march. Leading down to the final countdown.

Example of the style

Take a mundane event that you have experienced and RETELL/RE-PRESENT THIS STORY adding signifi-cance and meaning.Think about ways in which you could retell the story from this morning’s workshop. e.g. varying points of view, sequence, narrative, framing, illusion and all other possibilities...(This could be explored in any medium appro-priate i.e. info graphics, photography, illustration, typography, sound, film, animation, performance etc).This brief is about permutations and variations. If we can look at a piece of work from a number of alternative angles and then reinterpret it in various ways this process gives us access to new ways of thinking and seeing.The ability of being able to see something from many different perspectives is invaluable. Perhaps you can create a different meaning to your story by the way that you recreate it? Consider the CONTENT, FORM, and CONTEXT.

This was the sheet of paper that was the starter point of this project. We had to take the story and show it in dif-ferent ways.

Here are the two ideas I had to show this story, the first being a silent movie layout style. By taking out the text on the paper and moving it to a black page making the illustrations just images without the text. The next idea was a basic script layout with just using the text.

For my own story I have chosen to take pictures of me reading the newspaper. The story is being told from my view.

More examples of the newspaper which has turned into a stop motion video with me drawing over it because of being bored and how I feel about it then.

FINISHED

THANKS..