Thursday 13 December 2012

Typography Art



With the task, we were told to incorporate the knowlege that we have on the word that we picked. My word was was 'Line'. Therefore i had to research on what line was based on and what it related to with a design that would come. And with the reseach i made, these are the following meanings that i got.




After finding out the meanings of the words, we were told to see how these words can relate with images/pitcures so that we can have an idea of how our project would come out. With that in place, these are some of the images that i found that related to some of the words of choice.

Arrow showing direction


Grid


Speed through line


Formation through line


Thereafter, we are now to look at our concept on our final piece of art. How we were going to mix it up and come out with a line based project. Five images were told to taken and then form some sort of a book or storyline with a meaning of the images taken.
I was going to do something related with something that i have a passion for and that being, Music. So i had to explore with how i would come up with a design incorporated with music. Hence, these are a few sketch ups that i came up with from. The images taken were :

  • Guy with headsets

  • Speakers

  • Piano

  • Guitar

  • Microphone



Few sketches of the work that i was to do is below here.

My main idea/concept was to show a flow of the music from the top to the bottom. Hence the project having a meaning from the headsets to the mic. With that in place, i started a few projects on ilustrator and with a multiple consults from the teacher my design gradually changed but i still wanted to maintain the same 'music flow' of my work. Here was a few works of how my work changed from the begining to the very end.


First idea that i had and worked on.


Second idea that i did that had more of the flow of music.


Final Piece of Art That I Did.

With the final piece of art, can see that i used alot of the line meanings to have a design, those being line, curves, shape etc. The knowlegde i had helped because i knew already what i wanted to depict from the final piece of work and hence the transformations helped with ideas coming in. Adding text around certain images helped as well and which also gave it that typography feel  to the images and gave it more depth. Here are the transitions of the artworks to the final art.



After all the research and all the concept refining, i was pleased with my final work because i had got more ideas and more understandings with the work and it helped to change a few  ideas to make it have more meaning.

Tuesday 4 December 2012

Typefaces With Nature

In this specific task, we were told to explore the happenings that are around us environmentally and from there, form a word or expression with a typeface that fits in that natural element.

Here we had to look at the way typefaces are made for us to understand how we can relate from it all. And with that, this is what i made came up from the typefaces that spoke to me.


Friday 30 November 2012

Self Expression

In this task, we were told to express ourselves in any sort of media that we could improvise. Be it photography, images, text, typography, drawing, illustration etc. Expression had to be of the things we have interest in doing it, be it sleeping, art, and so on.

So with that understanding of the task, i noted down the interests and the ideas i was going to use to express myself and what i would do/use to come up with the expression of me. These were the expressions i was to use on expression me as a whole.

  • Music
  • Gaming
  • Fashion
  • Commitment 
After noting down those, i thought about how i would use that to express, so i was going to use a figure that represented me. That figure was going to be a body that had my face, main body and part of my legs, more of like a body picture of me. That drawing was going to be separated into parts that speak to me, so my interests were going to be placed on it, more to give an abstract portrait of me.
The process of how i was going to use were my interests are listed below.

  • Music - Having a passion of music, i was going to find a way to implement this side of me in the drawing. And for that, i got the idea of getting the musical staff that has music notes and that was going to represent the blood flow in my body but not only does the blood flow but the music too. And my heart was going to be a speaker that was going to be placed in the center of my body as the source of the 'pumping' of the blood in my system.

  • Gaming - I have a gaming side to me and i love playing games for fun and keeping me busy and so i wondered how i could use this in my art. So i my first idea was to have a playstation console, as  my main body and have it open where my heart being the speaker would show. But after consultation from the teacher, had to create a more defined art and something one would understand and for that, i decided to stick to the same gaming concept but have an idea and that was to have control pads/joystocks that were going to mirror each other and then have the speaker between in them which would show a more bright and meaningful work. This idea was accepted by my lecture and hence i put it into my final art.

  • Fashion -  To look good is one thing that i also like and have i love to express that in the way i dress and present myself through my appearance. So for that, i was going to use this idea on my face and have a piece of Ray Ban shades that were  going to cover one eye and show that side, The shades were going to be see through/transparent this is to show that i can see past through my own vision through the shades.
  • Commitment - Having a commitment to work is one thing that i do and try my best to strive and throughout the struggle to archive the most of the work i do. And for that i was going to have to find a way to use that expression and i was going to use my legs as ladders that would show someone climbing up to archive his goal.


The materials that i was going to use for the following art were

  • Recycled manilla paper
  • Ray Ban glasses
  • Straws
  • Headphones
  • Shoelaces
With the ideas and all and how i was going to use the materials with the work, this was the final product that i came up with :



Thursday 27 September 2012

Alphabet Letter Making

In this given task, we were told to look at any objects around us that give us the resemblance of the alphabet. These had to be taken by pictures and then we form a grid or a pattern and then place all the letters and the should all look like the alphabet and can easily be spotted by someone. 
With that in hand, this was my final idea of all the objects that i managed to take.


REFERENCE FOR LETTERS

A - Bench
B - Stand alone desk
C - Old casket handle
D - Door handle with shadow
E - Art drawing stand
F - Shelf design
G - Fire hose
H - Seats at eating place
I - Vending machine coin slot
J - Umbrella handle
K - Gate of a fence
L - Markings on a sports court
M - McDonalds paperbag
N - Roofing under design
O - Speaker 
P - Lighting box
Q - Satellite dish
R - Button
S - Neon lighting
T - Trench
U - Piecering ring
V - Trees
W - Design on the ground
X - Gate design
Y - Road signs
Z - Old spanner

Monday 24 September 2012

Copying And Referencing

In the given task, we were told to make a research on the following words and how the differ from one another. These words being 'copying' and 'referencing'. A description or understanding about both needed to be done and for thus, my comparisons between the two were as follows.

Copying - By my understanding, copying is more of a skill or technique that is used to 'copy' ones original information or artifact and then make it their work without knowing or going through the process of the original work. Copying itself is not 100% accurate because depending on what someone might be copying e.g, a drawing, the two copies, original and copy might not be exactly the same because the copy might have less accuracy due to not having a clear understanding of how the original drawing was made. When it comes to the modern digital style of copying, it is much easier and possible to get a 100% because one can easily just copy/cut and paste the exact same information normally off the internet and make no changes to it. So copying could be just a process of regenerating original material.

Referencing - By the word itself, i already understand that this method is a type where as the person getting the information has to refer to where the got the original information that they copied. So simply referencing is more of acknowledging the sources of ideas that you have got and applied to your own work. More like appreciating the original work and showing their credit in your own work. Mostly referencing can be made/seen in drawings, illustrations, information gained from interviews e.t.c.

So with the two being understood, we can clearly say that copying does not show any originality in your work, it is more of a replica of ones work or idea and showing that you are using it as your work whereas referencing is a more better style of working because its a sign that you used someones ideas, information and then created something of your own but still credited the original piece of work and showed appreciated by referencing where that piece of information was taken from. 

Sunday 16 September 2012

Drawing Skills

In this task, we were told to explore types of drawing that we were taught. These drawings were :

  • Speed Drawing - Drawing an object within a given time e.g 30seconds.
  • Contour Drawing - Drawing an object that gives an outline of it without lifting the pen/pencil/marker up and just using one line over and over to make up the drawing.
  • Blind Drawing - Drawing an object without looking at the piece of media. E.g, paper. So you are more of drawing an object blindly whilst staring at it and not looking at the paper.
With those types of drawing understanding, we were told to incorporate that with our task. The tasks for each drawing are explained below :

  • Speed Drawing - In this one, we were told to draw an object within a specific time and those times were a 30second drawing and a 60 second drawing. This drawing had to be recorded to show proof that it was actually drawn in 30 and 60 seconds. Below is the drawing of both 30 and 60 seconds.
  • Contour Drawing - Here we are told to use any pieces of material that will give it a contour drawing feeling. Hence materials like threads, Wires, Shoelaces, Toothpaste, Paper could be used to come up with the 'drawing'. For my drawing, i chose a human face that i designed wires to come up with it. So after using the wires, i used more recycled materials like shoelaces and pink paper i found laying around. The pink paper gave me an idea to use it as the color of the lips and then the shoelaces i used were cut to that i could give it some eyebrows, a beard and some hair. Just to add more 'life' to the contour drawing.
  • Blind Drawing - We were asked to use any piece of recycled material like papers, newspapers, clothes, and just any piece of media that we could draw on as well use different drawing objects like paint, pencil, markers and maybe coal. After choosing the drawing object (pen or pencil) we draw on the material without looking down and just focusing on the object.

Thursday 6 September 2012

Creating A Texture

In this task, we were told to make any piece of art or design that was by the use of natural objects and to refer to how this materials can be used or where the are found. Due to it being natural, we had to use things like sand, flowers, grass, etc.

So for my design, i chose to use sand. I was going to use this sand to come out with a word which was 'desert' why i chose this was because sand is also found in the desert and is also a natural man made artifact so hence i chose that. 
To apply this design, i used glue and piece of paper that i simply wrote down the word desert with the glue and then i applied the sand on top of the glue so that the particles can easily fall/stick onto the paper. There after i added some leaves that i found to add more ''design' to my work, because you rarely find vegetation in the desert, i designed to make vegetation thats found in the desert and that was a cactus. So i simply applied glue and then made the shape of a cactus with the leaves i found. I also added the bush feel to it by finding little dry grass to represent more of the desert feel.



With that being the design i had come out with. I would have come up with a more refined design to show more and maybe have an invert of the sand by having the desert word be left out and the whole place be filled with sand but due to the soggy sand that i found, that was quite for me to complete as well as have having different shades of sand like a desert hence this design for me was one that would show the idea of what was really out there.



Tuesday 4 September 2012

Typeface That Describes Me

In this task, we are asked to choose fonts that we feel describe us by the way the look and are designed. The font also has to show some characteristics of us personally and we have to explain how the fonts speak to us.

With that taken note, my choice of fonts are as follows :


  • Birth Of A Hero


The font above i feel describes me because it has that cool artistic retro look and me being a guy that is personally cool with anything this font describes me. And the way that it has little pieces off the letters to give it that superhero and futuristic look with a touch of graffiti sense also relate to me because I am one that easily caught with a good sense of graffiti sense and something that catches my eye.

  • El&font gothic

This font definately catches me and describes the artistic side of me. Its a mixture of gothic and graffiti. This font gives the graffiti art inspired i have and one that can easily speak to me because it is like a scribbled down font and since i like to scribble down words and drawings, this font describes that part of me that i can easily come up with an artistic designed word or image.

  • Eccentric Std
First look at this font one can easily see that it has that tall feature and also gives that strong figure that has height and this is one font that i like to use. One reason being that i am kind of a tall person so this gives me that feeling of being broad and tall and also it brings out that ancient type of lettering which speaks to me in a way that i have been through alot in past years and that i still stand tall on my feet. 

  • Throwupz
This font gives me the feel of my music side. I have a passion for music and with this font, it has that artistic feel of hip hop that are normally written on walls and not only does it give the musical feel about me but also the graffiti side i have. So this font is collaborated with the musical and graffiti feel i have a passion feel.













Sunday 29 July 2012

Revolution Or Evolution?

In this task, we were told to look at advertising and find an advert that appeals to us in such a way that it may be empty or can need improvement and also looking at the brand history to know the target group so ideas can be easy to work with.

With that in line, my brand that i was to work with was a sports brand called Nike.  

I did some research on the brand and found out that the Nike is one of the biggest sporting brands in the United States. The brand deals in clothing, shoes, boots,, accessories and sports equipment as well.

The above image was with one nikes big mogul, Cristiano Ronaldo standing with chest up infront of a simple back ground and the nike tick top right and website at the bottom.
  • To me, this advert was too simple and plain because it never gave that big feeling of nike. Nike being a big brand and Ronaldo being a big mogul, that meant that something big or attracting would need to be done and hence i chose this image and edited it to add more detail. So i edited it and added more detail in the image below :


From the image above, can see that it looks very different and not plain anymore. Color was added to give it that dark feeling that fades into black, nike logo was taken and placed on the chest and the motto 'just do it' was placed just underneath the shirt and also as a background text to show the imprint of the image. And because everything about nike was there and nothing about Ronaldo was there, i added a "cr7" at the bottom left corner with the same text color as the main text in the photo.




NIKE SHOES







Next was of a shoe type that is under Nike, this shoe is called "Dunk" and is incorporated with basketballers and just the whole concept of dunking. To me this advert was already more easy to work with but one who wouldnt know what type of shoe type this be would wonder where the 'dunk' concept is. And thats the idea that i wanted to add on.






The above image shows a more 'detailed' and more richer advert than the other. This one has a basket baller that is dunking and having that air feeling at the end of the shoes. To make it look more fine and more elegance i inverted the image to give it that cutting edge look, added a little blur and and smudged the baller in the direction of the movement. Then added another baller on the shoe which actually looks like the design of the shoe so this can give more attention to shop buyers that this is one of a kind sneaker. When looked closely can see a Miami Heat baller about to make a dunk. I then copied the same image and then flipped it horizontally and received it and added a layer mask then erased some parts necessary. This was just to add more deatil and also make it look attractive. "Dunks" Text was added at the bottom of the original text and had a gradient of colors picked out from the same image. Gave it more feeling and cutting edge. A faded rim was added at the bottom of the sneaker to add more emphasis on the 'dunk' effect.


With the changes made to these sample adverts, we can see that any advert that is paid attention to and analyzed properly can be made better. In other words, revolution overcame created ideas.

Analyzing Various Fonts Available

In this task, we were told to look at organic matter and inorganic matter and also the color textures that we would find in an image of choice.


So to begin with i had to find out what was the meaning of organic matter and non matter and research on the internet lead me to these explanations.
  • Organic matter - is matter that has come from a once-living organism; is capable of decay and one that has life in it. 
  • Non organic matter - Anything that does not contain any carbon like water. And one that would also not cause decay. One that doesnt have any life.
With the that taken note off, i looked for examples of each and from these examples, i would pick one that i would work with and analyze its texture. 
Some of the examples that i found for organic matter were those of living organisms that would decay later on. Such examples were :
  • Trees
  • Oranges
  • Grass
  • Feathers
Then with non organic matter these are the materials that i found :
  • Sunglasses
  • Chain
  • Bottle
  • Bracelet
These examples arose because the didnt not have any life or have any life that would cause any decay or die.

From the examples that i came up with, i had to pick one that i was going to work with either organic or non organic and examine the texture of the image. I was going to do this by scanning the matter and see what ways i can see the texture.
For this, i used a scanner and then i rolled the orange around so that i could get the peel effect of the orange and see the little 'pores' that the orange has, because the color of it could not really show the texture of the orange, i moved the scanned image into photoshop where i desaturated the image from color into a black and white balance and then changed the image to threshold to highlight the shadows and all. These shadows where going to show the little detail that the orange has around it.




RAW SCAN IMAGE


BLACK AND WHITE EFFECT


THRESHOLD ADDED TO REVEAL TEXTURE




After scanning, i got the texture i wanted and i had a better sight of the detail that i wanted to obtain and think of a design where this type of texture could be applied and to me this looked like a type of texture that could be used on materials that need grip. So i put together the texture from the orange with a small texture of a sample picture of grip and to show that there is a little similarity where the this texture is used.






Above is a the texture off the scanned orange and the actual texture of a grip that is used for side paneling. 


Next, we were told to analyze the the different color shades that are found in an image. Told to notice color shades and how much they are in the image. Color shades to be noticed were 

  • CMYK
  • RGB
  • Patone pattern
So to analyze these, used the soft ware called Adobe illustrator where we were taught how to use and also get the same shades of color. This is the image to be worked on due to the different color variations it has :


After having the image in place had to place the image on a paper where can put the different colors on the side. After that was done, made little boxes by the side where the information and diiferent colors were to be shown. After the box was there, we took the eye dropper tool that collects color from an image, so clicking the box and the using the eye dropper we could easily select any color that we wanted to be in the box.


The image above shows the different colors that i managed to get from the image. These colors were placed on the right where the levels will be shown, the reason for having 3 of each was to have each box with its specific content, that being CMYK, RGB and the Patone level.
To obtain the color shades of each color, we clicked on the color box and then 
Edit -> Edit Colors -> Recolor Artwork and select Color Books where you will have a list of color books and from there we select PANTONE Pastone Coated. Once selected the color box will show the Pantone levels in that color.


The image below shows the Pantone levels that are present in that specific color.

There after we select on the same color box and we can get the different shades thus being RGB and CMYK by selecting which one. So we click on one color box and then select the color shade of choice, in this case we shall select CMYK.

The image above the CMYK color values that the color has and its put in percentages so levels are jotted down so that when labelling, can be easier to know the levels than using this method all the time.

Then to obtain the RGB colors, we simply change the selection from CMYK to RGB after selecting the third box.



The RGB levels are shown above and are placed in values easily seen.

So after obtaining all levels : CMYK, Pantone, RGB in one specific color, the same method is to be applied to the other colors obtained and once that is done, can easily label the color boxes with their specific color shades so that it is easily seen. The image below shows the levels of all the colors obtained.



Friday 27 July 2012

Silkscreen Printing

In this task, we were simply to apply our knowledge of silkscreen printing and using that knowledge and applying it onto out own given medium to do this process.


Before commencement, just wanted to have a rough idea of what silkscreen printing would be and it was defined as a type of printing that uses a wooden mesh that blocked an ink blocking stencil. Thus a stencil was to created and then when that stencil is created, the wooden mesh is placed ontop of it and ink is put on the wooden mesh, after that the person exerts pressure on the mesh, up, down, sideways so that the ink gradually sips through the mesh equally spreading through the medium such as paper, cloth etc.


So a stencil was to be made and then cut out and then get placed below the mesh. 


THE STENCIL TO BE USED





THE WOODEN MESH


There after, we place the stencil at the bottom and then the mesh on top and then  place the ink/paint on the mesh and then start exerting the ink all over the media, so that the ink is done equally, and then once complete the image is shown, i took a photo of my image and then enhanced it after a few tries and errors i managed to obtain, a 'clean' image with atleast the desired type of stencil and design of the stencil i had created.




Understanding the silkprinting and putting it to test help me understand different types of printing and actually see how this type specifically is done.

Optical Illusions

In this task, we were told to make simple optical illusions and talk about them.

So i started with a research on the internet to see a few samples that i will try working on and create my own optical illusion. These are a few of the illusions that i had got from the net and also to try to make a choice of what i can further expand and make my own illusion.



These are the samples of illusions that i had obtained from the internet.


  1. The first one was a clearly type of illusion that is mixed with alot of colors and a simple design that makes the illusion of the image moving when it is clearly a still image. This type of illusion is called a pulsating optical illusion.
  2. The second one was an illusion with boxes and it gave out an effect of seeing grey dots where the boxes would end.
  3. The last illusion was a drawn type of illusion. This illusion at first hand looks like there are only two dogs in the picture but if you looked closely, you would see that they are actually 4 dogs in the picture sharing the same head and the number of legs to give the first impression of only two dogs.
So with these illusions that i had collected, i had a rough idea of the type of illusion that i can work and create  simply and still have the illusion effect. So out of the types above, i picked number 2. The square illusion which i was going to work and in a way, create my own type of illusion.

To make this illusion, i used a software called Adobe Illustrator. I created the same design and layout of the squares and the spaces with the same color. But, to make it more interesting i tried a mix of colors to see what colors of the 'dots' i would get instead of the primary grey dots. So i played with the colors and i finally found two colors that gave me another dot color. These colors were red squares and a yellow background, the mixture of these colors to the eyes would give out orange colored dots in the spaces. This is the image below.


Looking closely at this image, just looks like simple red boxes that are infront of a yellow background, not until you look closely and notice that they are actually three colors in this image. And that color is seen to be orange and that orange is given out in dots that are caused by an illusion.
To broaden my optical illusion and maybe add more detail to it because this to me looked just like copy and paste and changed colors. So instead of using squares i tried other shapes. My first was to use circles and this was this outcome :

Clearly, the was no optical illusion used. Just looked like the circles are there and no illusion effect was being given. I then realized why it didnt work and because the circle is round, it does not have any edges and sharp corners that can give it that effect to have an illusion. This type of pattern was a clear mo illusion image.

The next shape that i had tried was stars. This also gave me an outcome like the circular pattern, same colors different shape, no effect. Even with the sharp corners that the star has, it still did not give me an optical illusion of the dots. I used different colors on both images but still could not attain any illusion.


Can see above that the both images didnt have the same optical illusion as the first one. So to make my illusion idea work with more shapes. I played around with my first idea which just had squares, and i took this to transform the same squares and transformed them into triangles. This was going to give me the same effect but one would not only think that they are squares inside the image but triangles. 



As you can see from the image above, i changed the normal looking squares and then cut them into half to form equally shaped triangles which gave out out the same illusion but again with creativity and not cutting at the same angle, i cut and mirrored the triangles from the first and second line so that the first two of each line would give you a square, an illusion on its own to many that would not pay attention.

Hence this as my final idea, one would see the orange dots quite well but, how many squares can you see in this illusion? An illusion in an illusion it is.