RICHARD TUBBYEAR 2

SEMESTER 2

PaperCo

This was an exciting project, as we were working with a ‘real’ company for the first time. Me and Swornima Pradhanang initially made our own separate ideas, and them came together to discuss them. At first, I thought about making a leaf-shaped box to house a booklet, emphasising PaperCo’s green credentials. However, we decided on making a box in the shape a logo and theme the company used on their website, and the net I created is on the far right.

This is the final outer casing for the book. I really enjoyed making it, and was very rewarding to see it when it was complete. The book had tree rings running through it as a way of linking it to nature and sustainability.

This ‘call to action’ postcard would be sent out to potential clients, and they could say whether they wanted to recieve the box with the book.

This is our design for the website - after getting the ‘call to action’, the client would go here either by typing in the address or by using the QR code, and they could order the box and book.

Manifesto

I really enjoyed this project, and I found that being in a group with people that have similar interests to me really inspired me to push myself.

Work by:

Richard TubbSean NganSwornima PradhanangTihana JurcevicKirsty WellsAbby ScottAmy ConnellyPatrick WilfordMatthew Jeffery

I had a chance to really push my illustration with this brief, and I found it adictive and good fun. I plan to continue this over the summer, perhaps creating a set of playing cards based on the club to the right.

This was the Neil Drabble workshop, drawing on our manifesto brief. I didn’t enjoy it as much, but it was something different that I wouldn’t usually do, so it was interesting in that respect.

Mark Pawson

I’ve never made badges before, so this was definately new territory for me. I found the constraints quite helpful in focusing my minde, and I love the results.

The previous workshop made me realise it doesn’t have to be hard to get your name out there, and so I thought about cheap, easy and conpicuous ways to advertised myself. I came up with the idea of bumper stickers, as they are a novel and often forgotten way of getting a message out.

Origins

I began this project focusing on areas of design, and I chose the history of printing as a starting point. However, this doesn’t really interest me so I decided to move on to my great love: cars. I decided to keep it simple and focus on the changing shapes of them rather than the details. The individual drawings follow, with the finished piece after.

Making Do

In this project we had to re-use an existing magazine to create something new and different. It was interesting to see what everyone came up with, and my group decided to make a shirt out of it.

Aphorisms

We had to create a 30 second film conveying the meaning of our aphorism - ‘oil and water don’t mix’. It was quite challenging as I’m not used to working with film, and although it wasn’t that interesting to me, the final result was well worth it.

Work by:

Richard TubbClaire GarnhamJo BirdRichard HeavenCharlotte BryanSteven Demezas

I decided to continue the project by using illustration, as this is one of the directions I wish to explore further. I created a few simple sketches, each telling a different aphorism.

Martin O’Neill

This was one of the best workshops this semester. We had to create a given letter out of whatever we could find, and it was great fun gathering the stuff as well as seeing the end result.

Thanks to Richard De Cazalet for the group image

I wanted to continue what I’d started, and so I decided to chose a room in my house and make something to represent it from the objects that are in it. The first was my bedroom, and I chose to make a t-shirt, and the second was my kitchen, so I made a giant fork.

Brighton Museum & Art Gallery Brighton University Gallery New Steine Hotel GalleryHHHII

This was quite an interesting mix of all sorts of art and history, from product design to ancient Egyptian artifacts. The gallery space itself is a good size, not to small that it’s over too quick and not so big that you collapse from exhaustion halfway through. The first bit you walk into houses the product design. It was fairly interesting, although it was mainly Modernist stuff which I don’t find exactly amazing, although there was some strange and different pieces in there. Next was art from around the world. This had all the usual things from Africa, Egypt and Japan, but it was the Aboriginal art that I found interesting, as it’s not often you see it, and I’m also looking at it in my independent practice work. After that, there was the modern art section, which was terrible. One of the bits of ‘art’ was a 10x8 foot canvas painted beige. Nothing else on it. Hmmm... There was also a fashion section, but for some reason I’ve always found fashion design to be abismally boring and uninspiring, a bit like a vegetarian at a meat market, so I skipped that bit. All in all it wasn’t too bad, there were certainly some good bits mixed in with the weirder and boring stuff.

HHIII HHHIIThis was a small gallery housed in the University of Brighton. I strolled in without a clue what was inside, and it turned out that it was about the conflict and continual squabbling over the West Bank. There was a mixture of paintings and videos, with the paintings varying from very abstract to very, very, very abstract (crap). There was one that I did like, which was a sort of silhouette of the West Bank Barrier, it had a presence and a simplicity that the others didn’t have, plus you could actually see what it was meant to be. The videos were just odd, they didn’t seem to link and were just films of the most random things you could think of, like eye surgery and a baby’s cot. Needless to say this wasn’t the most inspiring thing I saw all day.To sum up, it was a very small exhibition with a very direct focus. One or two pieces interested me but the rest didn’t grab my attention.

This was an odd one. The gallery is situated in the hotel’s dining room, which made it a bit awkward to look at the pictures as there were people munching away at their lunch, giving me weird looks...The place itself is very tiny, or cosy, depending on how you look at it. The pictures on the wall were by two main artists. The first, called Romany Mark Bruce, is primarily a sculptor (one of which was outside the gallery in a park), and his paintings focus on the human body much like his 3D work. They were well done, with lots of movement in them and full of colour. The second artist was someone who goes by the name of Funky Red Dog. Coincidentally he went to Epsom art college in the early 90’s - small world! His work is much like that of Banksy, with pictures of a dog doing human things sprayed through a stencil. I thought it was quite funny and well executed, if a little monotonous. To conclude, this gallery was quite strange (in a good way, I think) and housed some different but inspiring pieces of artwork.

HHIII

Visiting GalleriesThis was an early project, where we were asked to visit 3 different galleries and write a review about each one. I chose to look around Brighton, and found three very different galleries. My response to them draws on the Aboriginal art that was in one of the exhibitions.

The Girls

This workshop involved us playing with the idea of identity. Wanting to keep it humourous, my group decided to swap into each other’s clothes. Whilst being fun and incredibly embarrassing at the same time, I also found that it didn’t really

convey the message that effectively. I decided to expand the brief and played with the idea of 7 main aspects that make up identity. Also, I looked at how genes are seen as the very foundation of who we are, and the result of this is overleaf.

The Lab

I thought this was a great idea, and I had fun creating pieces of work to fit thr brief ‘make me think’. I focused on typography this time, and tried to keep the work simple yet eye-catching.

Design Investigation

I found this incredibly useful, as there’s nothing like talking face to face (or email to email) with a designer from the industry. I learnt many valuable tips, and I will definately be starting to ask and talk to many more designers and creatives.

These are some early ideas for what my book could look like - I wanted it to stand out and be different to what people think books should look like.

These are some of the ‘happy accidents’ that happened whilst I was producing my book. They are what is left from me dabbing my letter stamp set, getting rid of any excess ink. I love the seemingly random way they explode across the page.

I began by basing my book on nightmares, so I started drawing anything ‘scary’ that came into my head.

These are some rough doodles of where I wanted the illustration to go, my theme being nightmares.

Here I tried to loosen up my illustration, and so I moved into using ink. These designs, based on the ‘Rorschach test’, were intersting but I didn’t feel excited by them.

This was an idea for a page in the book. The nightmare is based on a real one, after I put a post on a forum asking people about nightmares that they have had.

These are 2 different designs for a set of books inside a case. I found the first one a bit boring, so I moved onto the idea on the right. It works by having a key on the side of the case, and each book corresponds to that colour - the book covers themselves are completely devoid of any text.

Another more intriguing idea I had was to create a fake book, one that looks real but when you open it up there’s another book inside. The inner book is held in place by foam, and I really like the way this has turned out.

I was beginning to feel that I was getting stuck in a bit of a rut with continually doing nightmares, so I decided to try something a little different. These houses are inspired by

the ones drawn by Colin Thompson - an illustrator whose work I’ve loved since I was little. They were great fun to draw, as you have to work out the history behind them.

To further the designs, I decided to colour them in. I did this using Adobe Photoshop and was ecstatic with the results. To externalise my work, I decided to print copies out and stick them around the uinversity library. As far as I know they’re still there.

Evaluation

This semester has been extremely valuable and good fun. I’ve really enjoyed the way we’ve been fortunate enough to get in ‘real’ people from the industry to do workshops with us and share their techniques and experiences. My favourite was Martin O’Neill’s workshop on creating letters out of rubbish. It took me out of my comfort zone and made me realise that you can create a lot from what people assume to be waste material. Another brief I really enjoyed was the PaperCo one. It felt ‘real’ and professional, and it was daunting but rewarding to present our ideas to the company in person. One thing I didn’t relish was the amount of open-ended briefs. Although these can of course be good, I find that limitations interest me more and help me to focus my ideas and methods. I went to a few exhibitions and shows which helped me to broaden my knowledge and had an impact on my personal practice. One was situated in a restaurant, which was quite weird as there were people eating there at the time. However, it had some inspiring works and made me realise that you don’t necessarily need to use a conventional gallery space to get people to view your work. I felt that the Lab was an outstanding idea, and really made the university feel like a ‘proper’ art college. I believe it should be run all year round, non-stop, and that the work should have been left on the walls and not painted over. All in all, this semester has had a lasting positive effect on me. It’s helped me to focus my practice into a few specific areas, and I feel prepared and excited about the third year ahead.

Websites

Olga’s Gallery. (2011). http://www.abcgallery.com/E/ernst/ernst.html(accessed January - May 2011)

Giger, H.R. (2009). http://www.hrgiger.com/(accessed January - May 2011)

Thompson, Colin. (2011). http://www.colinthompson.com/(accessed February - May 2011)

http://chix0r.deviantart.com/(accessed March 2011)

http://simanion.deviantart.com/(accessed March 2011)

http://mymorphine.deviantart.com/(accessed March 2011)

http://lv21fish.deviantart.com/(accessed March 2011)

http://khmelic.deviantart.com/(accessed April 2011)

http://poindexter9.deviantart.com/(accessed March 2011)

http://tuzzz.deviantart.com/(accessed March 2011)

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk(accessed April - May 2011)

http://wonderm00n.deviantart.com/(accessed May 2011)

Books

Fully Booked - cover art and design for books. Edited by Klanten and Hubner. Published by Gestalten, 2008. ISBN 978-3-89955-209-6

Bookbinding for Beginners. Edited by John Corderoy. Published by Studio Vista Limited, 1967.

Seven Hundred Penguins. Edited by Penguin books. Published by the Penguin Group, 2007. ISBN 978-0-141-03188-0

Experimental Formats - books, brochures, catalogues. Edited by Roger Fawcett-Tang. Published by RotoVision, 2001. ISBN 2-88046-508-7

New Book Design. Edited by Roger Fawcett-Tang. Published by Laurence King Publishing Ltd, 2004. ISBN 1-85669-366-x

Bookworks. Edited by Sue Doggett. Published by the Apple Press, 1998. ISBN 1-84092-090-4

Eighty Years of Book Cover Design. Edited by Joseph Connolly. Published by Faber and Faber, 2009. ISBN 978-0-571-24000-5

Front Cover - Great book jacket and cover design. Edited by Alan Powers. Published by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, 2001. ISBN 1-84000-421-5

Exhibitions

Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. (2011). Exhibition. Visited January 2011

Brighton University Gallery. (2011). Exhibition. Visited January 2011

New Steine Hotel Gallery. (2011). Exhibition. Visited January 2011