Creative Typography

As part of my Creative Typography Elective directed by Suzy Wood, I am developing my own concept typeface. 
I have decided to base my typeface on fluid motion, and have begun photographing ink falling in to water.

My typeface is going to be drawn from the various shapes that are formed in this process - I  am spending the Christmas break working on this brief.

Consume Peckham - Jonathan Payne Ltd

Last Thursday, our documentary films were screened at the Peckham Multiplex Cinema. Each of the films are based on different businesses in the local area; my group's was with Jonathan Payne Ltd. And here is the end result:

'Jonathan Payne Ltd:

By Genevieve de Rohan Willner, Thanawat Singtosap and Emily Crook

This documentary follows a Peckham-based construction company, owned by local resident Jonathan Payne. Following a recent start-up, Jonathan Payne Ltd is soon hoping to become Peckham’s local construction company of choice. With a tight knit team of 8 men, Jonathan Payne Ltd are currently working on three sites in the Peckham Area. The documentary follows the team through their daily routine as well as the ups and downs of the trade. Stereotypical views on builders are questioned, as they reveal the realities of manual labour. The voice of Stuart, Jonathan Payne’s site manager talks us through his personal experiences as a builder as well as an overview on his team and the dynamic amongst them and builders in general.'

Animation - Shape Rainbow

'Shape Rainbow - A film in 16 sections by 2nd-year BA Graphic Design Communication students at Chelsea College of Art and Design, made in response to a brief by animation artist Max Hattler.'


This is my group's section of the film, which shows a transition from dark blue to violet, and triangles to lines. The film was made by close-up filming particles of icing sugar in the air against a bright light. We made a lens hood with a small triangle cut into it, this changed the aperture shape, giving the triangular effect that is seen in the first half of the film. We then animated individual triangles using After Effects, to make them remain in shot for longer and control direction/colour etc. 

The entire film will be up soon!

Found Alphabet

A starter project from the 'Creative Typography' elective I have been attending this term.

Biography Project

First big project of term - everyone in the group was to pick names of various influential people out of a hat. We each had to research our person's life, work and philosophy, and eventually refine and use this information to produce a creative outcome. I picked Emmeline Pankhurst - the leader of the suffragettes. I spent time looking into Pankhurst's beliefs, and the lengths that she went to in order to gain votes for women.

One of the things I found most interesting was the violent protests that Suffragettes took part in, to fight for what they believed. Women for the first time would step out, chaining themselves to the gates at parliament, vandalising, and even sustaining hunger strikes when arrested. I was immediately able to link this to the protests we have seen in recent times, which made me begin to look further into the nature of protest in general. 

Comparisons are easily made between protests almost 100 years apart.

I thought that Pankhurst's quote - 'The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics' sums up the beliefs of the suffragettes, so I felt for my final outcome I wanted to include this message. I then looked into ways I could portray the message. This is what I came up with: 

I felt that this message presented in cross stitch added ironic effect, as a hobby usually associated with the traditional housewife is completely contradicted with a message of outbreak and protest against the expectations of women at the time.

Although Pankhurst was successful with gaining the vote, women's rights are still an issue present in society today, I decided I wanted to take my cross stitch to places where I felt Pankhurst would be if she was still alive and protesting today. So I went to parliament, and hung it to the gates. The guards weren't too happy..

I feel like the project could have gone a little bit further, but do think I successfully refined my research to a point of interest, and produced a final outcome which sums up the beliefs and philiosophy of Pankhurst. 

Consume Peckham

Consume Peckham is our most recent project, which involves creating a short documentary film based on a local business in Peckham. The films are all going to be screened to the public at the Peckham Multiplex cinema in December.


I am in a group with Genevieve de Rohan Willner and Thanawat Singtosap..and am really excited about the project. After visiting Peckham and a few of it's businesses, we have decided to base our documentary upon Jonathan Payne Ltd, a local building company. We have met with Jonathan, who is really keen to let us follow him and his builders through their daily routine, so filming has started involving some very early mornings!


Here are some stills of what we've been filming so far:

(Stuart - our favourite man to interview!)

Illustrated Website

Nice to see one my t-shirt designs feature on the front page of Illustrated People's new website. (well half of it anyway!)

Illustrated People

I have spent nearly two months interning for Illustrated People, and have had so much fun. It's been such a good insight into how a design studio works, and I am really chuffed to be able to say that a couple of my designs will be going in to production! They are going to be sold on both the Illustrated People website, and Topshop, in which the company sells as a concession.

I spent a lot of time doodling and experimenting, nice to be away from the laptop screen.  It was interesting having to visualise my ideas in context whilst designing - nothing could be too intricate or detailed or the print wouldn't work so well.The first design I came up with was this panther print, made by brushing ink over a stencil that I cut. The image is then exposed on a screen - then printed onto jersey.

and here it is!

Here are a few of my other designs which were also printed:

Summer Work

Well into the summer break now, and I have actually been a lot busier than I initially thought I would be which i'm really happy about..its really nice to be making the most of the long holiday! 
I started off with a week spent in the Popular design studio with Peter Chadwick. Although I was only there for a short amount of time, I learnt so much about how everything works in the professional world, and was lucky enough to participate in some live projects which was a really good experience. 

Whilst working with Peter, I designed this banner for Trekstock. The banners were placed outside the Trekstock pitch at both Field Day and Underage festival, promoting t-shirts designed by bands such as Metronomy, Foals and Maccabees exclusively for the charity. 

More recently, I have been given the opportunity to start an internship with clothing brand, Illustrated People. I am working amongst the creative print design team, who are responsible for coming up with the designs to be screenprinted on to each piece. I have only been interning for a week and am loving it already, but I am working with the company util the end of summer, so more to come here!

Oscars Night

My group's section of the poster for Oscars Night. Each group designed their part of the poster following a particular spec, I then volunteered to put the poster together to be printed. It was A1 in length, and looked great on the night! Oscars night was fab - I was actually nominated for best actress but my performance just wasn't worthy of the award..best work on my acting skills for next time. Here's the final poster - click to enlarge.

What's Round The Back?

Has to be said - dressing up as a clown at a busy London pub was one of the more bizarre tasks I have undertaken this year at Chelsea...

Final Project of the year was film, with Ed Gill. Each group was given a different title for a film. The brief was to take our title, and based around it, produce a 1 minute long film with a full narrative. A script, time plan, storyboard, costume/location specs also had to be made in a pre-production booklet. Each film was to be played at Chelsea College's 'Oscars Night', with awards for various categories. My group's title was "What's Round The Back?"


After a lot of ideas, planning, filming and stressful editing with Jonny Holmes, Hannah Perse-Clarke and Joe Hayes, here is the final film. Enjoy!

Ziggy Played Guitar

My final, redesigned sleeve.

(Click to enlarge!) 

My main aim in re-designing the sleeve was to strip back the bright and busy colours the sleeve originally had, and represent the extravagant 'Ziggy Stardust' in another way. The box idea was taken from the cardboard boxes on which David Bowie rests his foot in the original sleeve photo.

I looked in to the geometric pattern on the jumpsuit worn by David Bowie in the photo, as I thought could be an interesting thing to work with. Here is the jumpsuit again:

This same pattern was also used on his book - 'Moonage Daydream'.

I decided to create my own geometric pattern, similar to the fabric, but consisting of various things relating to Bowie. This includes the permanently mis-matched pupils sizes in his eyes, the famous lightning bolt, parts of the guitar he played, and platform boots. 

I also added emphasis to the words 'TO BE PLAYED AT MAXIMUM VOLUME' which feature in very small type at the bottom of the original sleeve's back cover.

Taxonomy Print Workshop

A one day workshop that involved us taking a part an object, arranging and printing. Lots of fun. I used a lovely old clock, (shown above) bought at Battersea car boot sale. Taking the clock apart proved more difficult/dangerous that I'd anticipated, it seemed to have a mind of its own and was springing all over the place. Nevertheless I enjoyed the process and the results. 

Some of my print experiments, not all successful but I really enjoyed the process of mark-making:

Bodoni Poster Print Workshop

A recent workshop involved the designing of a letter in the 'Bodoni Poster' typeface, using Adobe Illustrator. Each letter of the alphabet is soon to be laser cut and printed. I was happy to be assigned with the letter 'E'; above is the final design and below are a few trials I came up with. Decided to go with a slightly intricate, floral design. 

A POPULAR BRIEF

So back to uni from Easter - our newest project brief has been set by designer and art director Peter Chadwick, from Popular UK and before that, Zip design. Pete showed us a variety of his work within the music industry, with album cover designs from the likes of Primal Scream's 'Screamadelica' cover, to Groove Armada's logo, to promo work for Swedish House Mafia.


The new project is to redesign our favourite 12" Vinyl Album cover. I think this is the most excited I have been about a project in a while! I knew that the best place for me to pick up a great vinyl cover was back home, to the vast collection that belong to my dad. With hundreds of classic covers to choose from, it was more difficult that I thought! Here are a few of my favourites:

Bowie's 'Hunky Dory'

 

Blondie's 'Parallel Lines'

Sex Pistols - 'Flogging a Dead Horse', both sides (I particularly enjoy the back, shown below!)

But my cover of choice was 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust' and the Spiders from Mars, David Bowie. This is an album my dad had me listening to as a child, and I love that as a concept album, it tells a story of Bowie's alter ego character, Ziggy Stardust. The cover has been put together by Terry Pastor, who added inks to a black and white photograph (taken by Brian Ward) to create the bright, surreal colours.

What I really enjoy about this cover is a small instruction in the bottom left hand corner on the back, reading "TO BE PLAYED AT MAXIMUM VOLUME." It's so easy to miss, and after a bit of research I found that it has actually been removed from more recent re-released copies of the album. In my re-designed cover, I would like this to be brought back and made even more significant.

Have lots of ideas, can't wait to see how it turns out!

Inspire - Moving Image

This is the result of my first ever project using Adobe After Effects. The brief was to create a piece of kinetic typography, using a sound clip that we find inspiring. I used an excerpt from a TED Talk by Paula Scher, talking about her design practice. It was a massive challenge getting to grips with After Effects for the first time, but I'm quite pleased with what I managed to come up with in the end.

New Languages

Our penultimate project for the term was titled 'New Languages'. All about taking a current process, and subverting it to create a new experimental 'practise'..
As the brief was left pretty open I was slightly perplexed by the whole idea of what the project was about, but decided to start my research by investigating processes in which I take interest. As I can play both piano and flute; I thought I could use my musical knowledge in the project, and achieve a 'New Language' by investigating the way in which music is notated, eventually creating my own way of visualising music.

I began to look in to the relationship between colour and sound, and was interested to find Newton's theory stating that the 7 colours of the spectrum can be seen to correspond with the 7 notes of the musical scale. Therefore, music could be visualised using colours to represent each note. However I gained a higher interest in the 'graphic notation' technique used by experimental musicians such as John Cage and Cornelius Cardew, where symbols as well as colour are used to create musical notation.

A page from Cornelius Cardew's 'Treatise'

I decided that I wanted to take a similar approach to this when creating my own form of musical notation. So I went about doing this by first picking a well known piece of music (Tchaikovsky's Dance of The Swans - Swan Lake) and creating my own musical score made up of shapes and colour. Here is 2 mins worth of the piece (click to enlarge):

Although it looks quite confusing first time around, I have picked every colour shape and movement for a reason. Each different colour shows each different instrument of the orchestra; I picked the specific colours by researching what colours are already associated with each instrument, and also by personal opinion of what suits. The symbols and shapes represent the kind of sounds being produced. I have produced a key to explain this below:

I found this project really interesting - but something I'd love to do is turn it all around, i.e. hear how my musical notation would be interpreted by an orchestra, with no knowledge of what it is based on. I wonder how it would sound..!

Sign Writing

Sooo having had a slightly daunting amount of work over the past couple of weeks, the blog has been somewhat neglected..but now that the deadlines have all passed I've got a bit more time to show what I've been up to lately. 

We recently took part in a Signwriting workshop with Chelsea GDC graduate Lizzie Gove. It was really interesting getting to grips with traditional sign writing techniques, producing hand-rendered letterforms. Very different to anything I've done before! 

Using mahl sticks and special ink/brushes

First attempts..

I had a lot of fun and would recommend signwriting to anyone, but will give this advice: When spending an entire day inside a room with a lot of white spirit (the ink used for signwriting needed thinning) and little ventilation, be more careful than I was..

Perhaps the least fun part of the experience for me!