Project Proposals

For our studio project we were asked to produce 3 proposals for a final piece that our sketchbook research will lead up to , these final productions could be anything that linked into the sense of place brief , Below are my 3 ideas;

Proposal 1 - To produce an Info-graphical Map of my chosen city and document key places that relate to the music scene and industry related with that area. I will look into specific bands and base my themes around the chosen subjects i researched. I plan to present the finished piece as a large A2 poster that will work as both an informational piece of work and aesthetic piece of work. The style i plan on using for my production will be a simplistic vector style that i will use to illustrate the buildings within the city that doesn’t make the map too complex or detailed to an audience.

Proposal 2 - An animation that gives you a virtual tour of the music scene of my chosen city. The animation will take the audience through key places that are iconic to the Bands i choose to research. The animation will contain promotional samples of songs so i can provide an audio track of the the bands without having to obtain a license to play the songs on the animation. i plan for the design aspect of the animation to be simplistic illustrations of everything i chose to include within the time-line. this could be from album covers , to portraits of band members or key locations and objects used.

Proposal 3 - Design a campaign to re-introduce and re-brand old music back to the city where it originated from. This will involve creating posters and other propaganda related to the bands that i have chose to research. 

I feel that proposal 1 is the strongest as my research focuses specifically on similar material to the final idea , i also feel that it will be able to show my full potential as themes such as animation are not my strong point.

After Effects 2 - Book promotion

The second after effects workshop showed us how to link our frames together that we created in adobe photoshop. It took me a while to get the hang of this as i had 83 individual frames which all had to fit together in 10 seconds. 

I struggled to use After effects slightly as it was a very different interface as to what I'm used to using when designing print based media. I feel that in this session we were focusing mainly on creating a basic animation but using After Effects to stitch it together. We didn't focus on many skills that came specifically from the software , only basics such as: audio control , Opacity levels and creating solids for frames. 

Personally i felt that my animation was successful and gives a basic brief of what the book is about via the visuals. I feel that it worked as i used a lot more slides to create my animation as oppose to the 10 slides we were given to work from as a basic. However i do feel that there could be a quicker route around animating certain parts in After Effects therefore i am eager to see how this could be done. this is what we will be working on in the next workshop session using simple vector characters. 

Below is my Animation that is currently uploaded to Vimeo.

A Clockwork Orange from Ben Moulson on Vimeo.

Genealogy Continued

In this Seminar we continued looking at Genealogy. Instead of looking into future Genealogy we looked at what a Genealogist is and what type of work they do. This seminar we didn't have any specific activities to complete however we had a range of videos that will be referenced below.

"The Genealogist examines the Preconceived and questions the phenomenon that we tend to feel is without history." 

We learnt that genealogists question the rules of items what already exist. We looked into objects or items that would have been classed as no history , we highlighted: Goodness , Badness , Punishment , Madness and sexuality. we looked into these to see if the mind could create a sense of history for these objects and see if you can go back to the beginning and re-create them. 

The Guardians point of view advert shows that a story or an object can be re-created or misinterpreted depending on how you look at it. Similar to how Genealogies work. 

Influence and Behaviour

Behaviour - the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially towards others.

Influence - the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something, or the effect itself.

In this lecture we discussed how Behaviour and Influences can effect peoples work in different ways , ways we identified that could effect you in every day life were:

-Political
-Psychological 
-Personal 
-Cultural
-Social 
-Informational

We started by looking at Edward Bernays who was a pioneer in public relations (propaganda). Sigmund Freud (Phycologist) was Bernays uncle therefore allowing Bernays to have a psychological insight into his propaganda techniques , allowing him to adapt them to suit mass audience. he later published the propaganda book (1928)

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." - Edward Bernays (Propaganda 1928)


Wolff Olins - http://www.wolffolins.com 

"We didn't want the logo to be the Houses of Parliament with a hurdler going over them and a brush stroke"

Wieden and Kennedy - Were assigned to create a campaign for Nike during the time of the 2012 Olympics. They focused on more of a cultural aspect for the campaign titled:  "find your greatness". The campaign didn't focus on the athletes but focused on key people in different environments to as they couldn't use any branding to do with the 2012 olympics. Focusing on the people associated and involved with the olympics was a way to unite the audience that couldn't make it to the olympics or were watching abroad and to show that they can be involved in the sports just as much as the athletes can.

FCB inferno - The company used the stats of  The London 2012 Olympics to create the "This Girl Can" campaign. This campaign focuses specifically on motivating the women of Britain to partake in sporting activities as there is 2 million less women than men that partake in regular exercise. But there is a huge opportunity that between the age of 14-40 75% of girls/ Women want to exercise more.

Red Bull energy drinks are a good example of Deception within industry. 'gives you wings' is Red Bulls famous slogan , claiming that the 'Wings' improve your performance. A $15 lawsuit was filed against Red Bull to say that there statement isn't true and they eventually lost , resulting in you been able to reclaim $15 back on Red Bull products if you still have the receipt. 

Further Skills- InDesign

Within workshop week i caught up on the InDesign session that i missed a week ago due to a lecturer being absent. I really enjoyed this session as it showed me how to used some more advanced skills within InDesign. We mainly focused upon two page spreads and the techniques used to create a unique looking spread.

 Above is an example of the double page spread that i created in this session. One of the main techniques i used when creating this piece was how to type along a certain path or shape , that technique is how i created the left hand page. On the left hand page we also learnt more advanced options to edit text with , and how instead of creating separate boxes you can alter the layout using one single text box. The Left hand page then leads onto the right page creating leading lines for the eyes. I then used the type in text tool to create the circle which looks like the ball of yarn that the cat is playing with. 

We were shown that you can also import images and items from other adobe software (although i already knew this it was a handy thing for the group know). This is how we got the cat onto the document. We imaged traced pictures of animals and expanded them to create an editable vector image then exported them to the InDesign package where we could use the shape to our advantage. Other tools we were shown was the path finder tool and how it could be used to split objects or in this posters case wrap text around the image.

If i was to improve this poster i would edit the layout of the text more as i feel it looks very basic , however i didn't have enough tine therefore i left it fairly basic.

Afterwards we were shown how different settings on Adobe Photoshop can effect an image (Above). Starting from top left and through to bottom right;

RGB Colour - Used for screen display , colours will be vibrant but will differ when printed as RGB is used for display.

CMYK Colour - Used when printing CMYK colours are usually slightly darker than RGB and are used specifically for printing. CMYK stands for Cyan , Magenta , Yellow and Key (black).

Duotone Colour - This effect has been created using InDesign where you set the colour to only let specific colour of an image through. In this case the colours are black and red therefore it has made the image look completely red with some shading of the house still visible.

Greyscale Colour - Greyscale colour is just a more technical way of saying Black and white , Only black and white shades of colour will be visible in this mode.

Halftone Screen - Halftone screens are commonly used in screen printing however they can also have good effects visually on print media. The screen is made up of different shapes which you can choose on photoshop which the thickness of the lines creates the quality of the print.

Pantone colours on Halftone - I added two Pantone colours to the Halftone screen to create this Pop Art styled vibrant image , one of the colours substituted the white background and the other replaced the white giving me the vibrant effect.

Pantone is a standardized color matching system, utilizing the Pantone numbering system for identifying colours. By standardizing the colors, different manufacturers in different locations can all reference a Pantone numbered color, making sure colors match without direct contact with one another. Pantone Colours cannot be printed unless the code is entered manually to the printer.

Below are Examples of posters I made using the Pantone colours and there codes for printing:

Joan Cornella

This week i visited the Joan Cornella - Contains Adult Themes at the Munro House in Leeds. Joan Cornella is an artist i have followed for quite some time and who's work i enjoy very much.  He is mostly known for his 6 panel comic strips that he paints using bright acrylic paints. He creates characters that are drawn similar to 1930's styled cartoons. The twist on Cornella's work is that although his pieces may be colourful he paints very crude scenes that involve very controversial themes such as : Nudity , Racism , Murder and Social issues. Hence the exhibition name - Contains Adult Themes. Cornella has released two books his first titled , Mox Nox and the second Zonzo.

Information on Cornella's exhibition and his own personal site can be found below:

https://leedsgallery.com/whats-on/exhibitions/contains-adult-themes-joan-cornella/

http://elblogdejoancornella.blogspot.co.uk

Workshop Week - Live Brief

As part of Workshop week i signed up to the Live Brief project. As a part of this project i had sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) therefore i will not be able to document on the work i have produced for this session until a later date.

However i can personally say i enjoyed the opportunity we had been given to take part in this task and i feel that it has given me a small taste into what working for an actual company would be like. Even if my designs aren't picked to be used i feel that they will establish foundations for what i can work towards in the future , providing i receive feedback on my work.