Reverting to Type

The 'Reverting to Type' Letterpress exhibition is running until 22nd Jan at the Standpoint Gallery in Hoxton, which includes Chelsea GDC first year's 'Cockney Alphabet'. The exhibition has had a mention in Creative Review magazine, check it out here

Iconic Photo

Me attempting Mick Jagger by David Bailey. So much fun. The original:

Final Shrine

The photograph was shot from above as we felt this would appear as more of a shrine, and it includes hands to imply banter between people.

I'm pretty pleased with the final photograph. We managed to find a perfect tea set thanks to my wonderful housemate Eloise, and I feel the colours and symmetry of the photograph are effective.

Plus it's been 'absolutely bloody cracking' working with B-radz.

Tea and Banter cont..

So I have been working with Bradders, eventually to produce a 'shrine' combining our two passions: tea and banter. As a starting point we decided to have a day out, looking around for tea-related things with a banter along the way. We visited the fine china section of Harrods and were soon asked to leave as photography was prohibited. But we got a few pictures, and saw how tea sets were arranged which gave us a few ideas for how we could incorporate tea in our shrine.

We then stopped for tea in a lovely shop called L'Opera in Knightsbridge, a very educational experience especially for Bradley..

Perhaps the most valuable part of our research day was a trip to the Ceramics section of the V&A. There was an overwhelming collection of tea sets, and an interactive 'design your own teapot' game.

 Bradley designing teapots..

The teapot designing reminded us of an initial idea, which was to somehow add subtle banter phrases to delicate china tea cups. As an experiment we used Letraset transfers on teacups found in a charity shop. 

We liked the idea of subtle additions of banter, but feel that for our final shrine, the 'banter biscuits' would actually show this more successfully.

However instead of words such as 'Banter', 'Lol' etc, we will make biscuits that imply banter in conversation; phrases rather than single words as banter does come through chat. We hope to find a beautiful teaset (we think blue china looks best) and create a tea-party setting, which we will photograph with the biscuits creating some sort of banteriffic narrative. Fingers crossed.

Christmas family photo

Say Cheese

Manifestos

Project brief - You will create TWO pieces of typography. One will be your interpretation of a manifesto issued between 1880 and 1930. The second requires you to produce your own manifesto. This should reflect the technological and cultural changes that beckon in the 21^st century.


I decided to produce an interpretation of 'The New Typography' by Moholy-Nagy, taking inspiration from some of his own typographic compositions.

And for the second part of the brief, I decided to produce a guide to being 'The Perfect Housemate' for my own manifesto.

Can't Cut This

Signs we made for the student protest against education cuts.

D for rent.

I spent all of yesterday in Graham Bignell's letterpress studio in Hoxton. Was such a good day, I had never experienced letterpress for myself so I learned a lot and really enjoyed myself. Everybody was given a letter of the 'cockney alphabet' (A for 'orses, B for mutton, C for miles etc.) and had to create a design that would be put together with the rest and hopefully chosen to be part of an exhibition in December.

Getting my final layout just right was a long and fiddly process, but I really enjoyed it. Made me realise how much type is taken for granted with the use of computer software; it's a shame that nowadays the creative process that comes with letterpress is almost a thing of the past. The day went by so fast, I had a lot of fun and would love to go back again. 

Tea & Banter..

Decided to play around with the idea of tea and banter combined on Photoshop. This is a very initial idea with not a huge amount of meaning aside from swapping the usual tea & biscuits with tea & banter. Maybe a batch of these should be made for real?

I just ADORE

Brief was to create a 3-minute individual presentation on something we are just nuts about. I spent quite a while trying to work out what my presentation could be about, and decided it would have to be something that I could not go without every day. And that, for me, is a nice cup of tea. Came up with a short film of me and my cuppa.

Cuppa' tea from Emily Crook on Vimeo.

We have since been put into pairs, and will create a 'shrine' combining our two passions. I have been teamed with mr Bradley Bell, who just happens to be passionate about a bit of banter. Tea served with banter, could be fun!

Logos Logos Logos.

New brief was to design a logo which communicates "Introduction to Study in Higher Education", with our own personal mission statement as a starting point.

My mission statement was the idea of moving away from the ordinary/expected, and thinking 'outside of the box'. (Yes - mahoosive cliche.)

First task was to come up with 100 logo designs, from which a final idea was to be picked and refined. This is what I rustled up:

and this is the logo that was picked out for refinement in the crit at the end of the week:

Here are a few of the variations I made on the chosen logo:

I then started to experiment by producing this shape in 3D and taking some photos, showing the arrow falling out of the box in different directions:

I liked this idea as it was a bit more interesting than the original design, but the photographs needed a lot of refinement in order to become logos. I took the photographed variations into Photoshop, and after a lot of attempts at getting the angles and positioning of the arrow just right, here is the final result:

Typographic Moustaches

We had an hour to make a 'typographic moustache' over lunch. Grabbed a scalpel went for a French approach..

Inspire.

One of our first projects.

In groups of four, we were given a different location around Chelsea college and had to come up with a 3 minute presentation which would 'Inspire'.

My group's specific location was on Marsham st, a quiet area with not much to be found but a few business men and a nice looking restaurant. Our aim was to add a little excitement to the area!

Day 1!

Everyone was put into groups of those with a surname beginning with the same letter as their own..and had a bit of fun presenting each particular letter visually.

Notice the 'C' shape, filled with chairs, coats, cards, coke, crunchie bar, cardboard, etc etc...

New blog

So I've just started my degree in Graphic Design Communication at Chelsea. This blog will mostly be dedicated to the things i've been up to at uni, as well as other bits and pieces i might feel the need to share..

Enjoy!