Secret 7 - At Last

The feel of this song immediately reminded me of Raoul Dufy's concert hall paintings, all the warm red and orange colours and musical stuff.

I wanted to give a classical, jazz bar vibe to the image I made, but I kept having abstract thoughts about lighthouses and mermaids and sailors. I decided to include a scaly pattern on a dress to satisfy my mermaid thoughts.

I was getting really frustrated with everything I was doing with traditional media so decided to so it digitally. It was interesting to make the scaly pattern so I learned a technique there but I feel like my image lost some of it's initial 'story' or feeling that some of my roughs had. Without the development work and ideas the image doesn't actually hold up that well on it's own. The colours are pretty successful though.

Initial Research

I am focusing my project on Greek Mythology - but I want to focus mostly on the gods and stories to do with them and their characteristics. I chose to do this because Greek Mythology is such a broad subject with many different stories so I thought narrowing it down to one aspect would make the project more manageable.

There are a lot more Gods than I anticipated, almost everyone is a God in greek mythology - or a demi-god etc. So to narrow it down further I only focused my research on the 12 Olympians (&Hades) though I suspect it will need narrowing down past here as well or I'm going to get very stressed trying to make too many images.

Shown are a selection of my sketchbook pages, where I have compiled some visual research of the Gods. I'm not sure what I want my final pieces to be so rather than just focusing on the appearance of the characters themselves I researched symbolism to do with them as well. The images of the Gods themselves I drew from reference images of statues.

I'm somewhat interested in pattern, so turning the symbols into a repeat pattern might be a fun project to do!

I was still a little interested in trying to include space, and thought the colour schemes of the Gods could be based off the planets they align to, for example - Zeus as Jupiter, red and orange. However I soon dropped any space elements because I didn't want to overcomplicate my ideas, as this is a problem I often have with projects.

I think turning my research into these visual pages was a good plan as it gave me something in my sketchbook to look back on and refer to visually rather than just a chunk of writing on a blog I could forget about easily.

I have been gathering research from a variety of sources including www.theoi.com, a DK Eyewitness Companion on Mythology by Philip Wilkinson and Neil Philip and the Mythology of Greece and Rome by Arthur Cotterell

Design Bridge: Patterns, round 1.

Using my initial prints I've attempted to make some patterns using photoshop, though this is the first time I have attempted patterns I wasn't really sure what I was doing. I looked up a few tutorials to get the hang of it. It took me a while to get the dispersion of the leaves right so there wasn't so much blank space.

I had had some feedback saying that my development work looked a bit feminine, but I didn't think it did, however when I started to make these patterns I thought they did start to look less neutral and more feminine. I tried adding blocks of black in to make the design more dynamic or strike a balance between masculine and feminine. I think the closest I got with the first lot of patterns was upping the contrast so the colours were more striking.

The bamboo pattern I think is more gender neutral, but I struggled to get it properly lined up. The colours really work, and I like the layered effect, but also wonder if this is too busy. If I were to continue with this I would probably have to re-make the whole thing because of the problems lining it up.

I think it's back to the drawing board this time.

Lizzy Stewart

Lizzy Stewart has done a few pieces based on Greek Mythology. I personally like this piece as it clearly shows the story of Leda and the Swan, but the aesthetics of the piece are more modern as it has been made in recent times rather than being a classical painting.

My favourite thing about the images are the fact that Stewart has included come links back to the ancient Greek origins by using the patterns on various parts of the image. It's subtle but effective!

D&AD Shutterstock: Lino prints & More development

I had been enjoying lino in a previous module and wanted to try something more intricate with it, given the drawings with lots of lines I had been doing I thought that it would be appropriate for this project.

I wasn't sure about the format of my images as two of them were portrait and one landscape in my roughs however using lino helped make the decision of using a square format so that they are all the same and work as a set rather than one looking out of place.

I had a hard time getting the prints to come out well as they were quite big (30cm x 30cm). I was unsure whether it was that they didn't have enough ink on them or if it was a pressure problem. It might have been more effective if I had used the hydraulic press down at vernon street, I will keep that in mind next time I do large scale prints. I managed to get a couple of prints good enough to use, as I was always going to add colour in another way.

Lino is a bit of a tricky customer as I have a hard time remembering A- that it's going to print backwards to how you cut it and B- what needs to be cut out and what doesn't! I initially thought that I would cut out the lines and reverse it in photoshop so they are black but I liked how they turned out with white lines (also on the mouth I had cut out the teeth so if I reversed it they would be black). I still tested it out on one image but I think the black with white lines made it look more dramatic, and I'm interested in playing around with textures and colours on these images.

I've done some tests using fiery brusho experiment I did while thinking about the colours and feel I wanted for the image, it has given some interesting textures and a bit of an idea of what a final image could look like.

Design Bridge: Market Research? Kinda

While deciding on a colour scheme we thought it would be beneficial to put out a survey, to find out what people like from their beauty products - favourite scents, their regime and what colours they think would be appropriate for gender neutral packaging designs.

From this survey we decided that the best colours to use would be a turquoise/green, orange and yellow. Since we are doing three different products - a scrub, a mask and a moisturiser we could do one colour per product. In a practical sense it would make it clear what each product was, and easier to hypothetically buy in store as at a glance the customer would know what they're picking up.

It was also found that citrus is a popular scent, perhaps we can incorporate this into our designs.

Most of the answers were given by women, and a few non-binary people it may have been helpful to get more information from men as I think it's more difficult to get men to engage with beauty products and to get a better grasp of what everyone wants we could deliver something really inclusive. That being said I think this survey has been helpful in making important colour decisions.

Design Bridge: Initial Drawing

One of the reasons we chose the name 'Taboo' was the whole Adam & Eve covering themselves with leaves, so we decided to go with a leafy pattern as we also wanted it to have a natural feeling to it. So I've started off just drawing leaves, we don't have a set colour scheme yet so I've been doing green, purple and orange because I consider those pretty neutral colours plus leaves generally are green, or orange in autumn.

I did one painting of thorns because I was trying to think of something that would be natural and leafy but also have a bit of an edge so it didn't seem too feminine. This got me thinking about different kinds of plants, like venus fly traps and poisonous plants but I thought this is probably too sinister for a beauty product!

"Feeling Thorny?" on the thorn painting was playing with the idea of being risque or putting jokes on the packaging to link back to the name 'Taboo' - I'm not sure how well this would come across on packaging, it might be interpreted as crass especially as we're trying to come off as sophisticated and consumable by a mass market.

I felt like to make a pattern I needed something more shape based, some of my stronger work from another module had been shape based too so I made a lino leaf. Instead of printing it with actual printing ink I did it with watercolour which gave this quite nice and soft blotchy leaf shape, which I really like! I've tested making another leaf shape out of this in a darker colour, and combining it with paper cut to make a bamboo type pattern. I think both of these have the potential to be transformed into viable gender neutral patterns.

I'm going to play with this stuff digitally, I have never made a pattern before so I'm hoping I can learn how to do it!

O Brother Where Art Thou?

Thinking about the modernisation of Greek mythology - as a lot of it generally stays in the past with that ancient Greek aesthetic.

O Brother Where Art Thou? by the Cohen Brothers is a satirical film set in the Great Depression, which is loosely based on The Odyssey by Homer. The plot and characters correspond with each other but it is not just a film adaptation of The Odyssey.

George Clooney's character - Ulysses Everett McGill corresponds with Odysseus

Obviously this film is not Greek mythology so monsters and gods have been reimagined as human characters. John Goodman plays the character of 'Big Dan' who corresponds with the Cyclops in the Odyssey, which is clearly represented by the fact that he wears an eyepatch.

Also the Sirens feature, just as women washing their clothes in a river - like in the Odyssey their singing lures the protagonists to them. Keeping them by / near the water brings a clear connection to the mermaid-type sirens greek mythology.

I'm not greatly familiar with the Odyssey so I found this chart online listing the corresponding elements of The Odyssey and O Brother Where Art Thou? Events, characters, main plot points etc have been adapted to match the time period and tone of the film. Making it a really unique adaptation of greek mythology. 

Another element is the 'Suitors of Penelope' - Men who are potential suitors to Odysseus' wife Penelope live in his house with her and 'use his riches'. In O Brother, Everett's wife has a new fiancee, his kids keep saying "He's a suitor" - Everett also accuses him of using his pomade (his riches).

(O Brother Where Art Thou? is one of my favourite films, it's so good everyone should watch it) 

Secret 7 - Imagine????

I accidentally ended up doing imagine, how you may ask? I'll tell you how.
I did a truly awful drawing of John Lennon as a joke, and it was so scary I thought I could take this and make it worse

And thus I did. I forgot to take a picture of the original drawing before I messed with it. I just added paint over the original drawing trying to make it as scary as possible, I think it's a success the painting is scary. Though once you say "it's John Lennon" it's obvious who it is so for the sake of keeping it secret I just kept trying to make it more and more abstract. Cutting it up and rearranging it on paper and in photoshop.

The final image is really quite abstract but I genuinely like it! Especially the colour! I'm not sure it really suits the song at all apart from perhaps an other-worldly, dream like feeling it has to it but I don't really mind as I didn't invest too much time into it and just fell into doing it by accident.

Soap and Glory - Thoughts on Things

Soap and Glory is a brand that, you may be able to tell, are geared towards femininity. There is a lot of pink. Despite this a lot of their products are really fun and have risqué names or descriptions ( see 'sexy mother pucker lip gloss below ) 

Since we decided to call ourselves "Taboo" we had some ideas about incorporating something risqué into our branding, like a dirty joke or something funny. Soap and Glory would be a good basis of what's on the market already and what we could get away with if we did pursue this idea. However the brief suggests this branding should appeal to a wide range of people and maybe something a bit risqué wouldn't translate outside of the young adult range. 

D&AD Shutterstock: Development

Started thinking about colour and style. I'd realised that I had made the 'Quest for Coffee' really quite epic but didn't think I'd added the same level of drama to the other two images. So I went back to the initial definition of the archetype, as I'd got more caught up in the everyday aspect that I forgot to amp it up a notch.

Add caption

With my tragedy image I got thinking about the classic tragedy mask. I started shaping the mouth into more of this shape to exaggerate the drama of the image. I've really enjoyed how all of the roughs have come out for this as I think it does have the intended effect. I think the bright high contrast colours really work with creating drama.

 I especially liked the red with all the lines, as it adds a level of detail - I'm not used to working in this style but I liked how it turned out, I think it could add something to each image if I continued that style. I've tried out the lines with the coffee image as well and I think it looks cool, I'm going to do this in lino as I am interested in doing more intricate print work. 

With 'The Voyage and Return' I found that the voyage is usually to a mystical land, so I thought about how to make the city appear exciting. Using the same swirly line technique, I could just give it some mystical looking clouds. 

For the coffee image I want to give it some really epic red/orange/fiery colours like an epic Lord of The Rings / Mount Doom style thing.

Secret 7 - Clearest Blue

I listened to the song a few times and looked through the lyrics to get an idea of the feel and the meaning of the song. A lyric that stuck with me was "If ever I try to push you away
You can just keep me there". So I wanted to make an image that had a comforting feeling to it and a sense of trying to keep someone you care about with you. 

My initial idea was to have the little fingers crossed, like a pinky promise. ("tell me, tell me you'll keep me") However this is really hard to draw and looked totally ridiculous even with reference, so decided on just hands crossing as if someone's trying to reach out to the other. 

This was a small brief so I wanted to do these pretty quickly, and not invest more time than is necessary as I have already done that for another small brief (whoops). 

Since the song is called clearest blue I did think that it should be at least partially blue. The song is quite soft, but also has this hard electronic edge to it so I chose to do this drawing in coloured pencil to match the softness. I think the combination of blue, with pink and yellow flecks on the hands works, it's gentle and not overpowering. The triangles add a bit of edge to the image and also direct the eye into the centre. 

I tried a few different combinations of triangle positions, colours and filters etc. I wasn't sure about doing a blue filter over everything because I didn't want to overuse the 'clearest blue' theme, but I do think in the end it was best to do so just because the white background is so bright and the blue helps to soften it on the eye. 

Gender Neutral / Unisex Packaging

The first thing that came to mind when thinking about gender neutral packaging was Freederm, because it's a spot cream / cleansing product that's main target audience is spotty teenagers - regardless of gender.

The packaging is pretty simple. Their colour scheme is blue and white, and though blue could be interpreted as a 'masculine' colour the shade and pairing with white makes it look more clinical. The whole aura of the packaging is 'neutral' it doesn't scream feminine or masculine.



http://www.thedebrief.co.uk/style/fashion/why-we-re-giving-three-gender-neutral-cheers-for-unisex-cosmetics-20141227679

‘My daughter was just reaching puberty and said, “Can you just grab me some deodorant?”’ he told me. ‘I went to the shop and went to the girls aisle for personal care. My daughter's Barbie days were long gone, but everything was still all sparkles and hearts and flowers – with the sinister addition of names like Minx, Tease and Be Sinful. She's 12. She just wants a deodorant!’

Things weren't much better in the boy's section, where everything was blue, grey or black and named Adrenaline, Control and Power. ‘It really hit home with me,’ Sam says. ‘I've always brought my kids up to be equals and to treat each other as equals. But right at the age where they are most vulnerable, the industry splits them into what a boy should do and what a girl should do.’

"It is, he says, the ‘sexual stereotyping’ that has him riled. ‘For young people, skin and hair have essentially the same structure,’ he argues. ‘There are very slight molecular differences, but personal care formulations don’t work on a molecular level when you’re washing your hair. Shampoo doesn’t differentiate between girl hair and boy hair when it’s on your head. It’s irrelevant.’

- Sam Farmer who has set up his own line of gender neutral beauty products after seeing the divide between male and female beauty products. These are pretty nifty, I like the use of different bold colours - I think it's good to have bits of variation between packaging, it's clear they're a set but don't look all the same and you can easily see what you're picking up from the distinct colour and letter on it


I feel like a lot of gender neutral packaging is really bland and think it would be good to branch out more into pattern. A lot of strict gender roles are already in place and this project is about breaking them down rather than conforming to the already set standard of gender neutrality. Anything could appeal to anyone of all genders there shouldn't even be a set 'pink is for girls, blue is for boys' thing BUT there is, so let's tear this wall down. 

I absolutely love this soap packaging as an example of something gender neutral, the pattern is there and makes it look more interesting and appealing but has not been made so "feminine" that it would deter a non-feminine audience. A simple black and white paired with a colour reinforces the neutrality of the product, plus alongside the pattern it doesn't need to have a bunch of 'gendered' colours messing with the design. SOME GOOD STUFF HERE. 

Design Bridge

"Men have a greater awareness now of the importance of taking care of their skin," says Jeremy Muijs, co-founder of unisex beauty brand, Grown. "This awareness has resulted in a willingness for men to try products that aren't strictly for men. Women's products tend to be more sophisticated and enjoyable to use."

I thought this quote was relevant as it shows that skincare is a universal thing that men are interested in as well as women (and other genders). 

Applied Illustration - Thoughts and Things and Stuff

Thinking about a theme for this project I immediately thought of space as I always think of doing something space themed - it's a pretty fascinating thing. I got some books out of the library -

I will criticise myself for being narrow minded here but as much as I like space, I'm not sure there's much scope for it in this project. All I can think of is sci-fi story book illustrations or covers, or a basic educational book - most likely for children. Should I be pushing myself to find something suitably space themed? Or should I find a topic with more scope for exploration? I don't want to limit this project and I feel as if I will just end up falling into the pit of drawing space themed ladies and I'd like to try something different.

I have also considered Ancient Greek myth and legends, this idea sort of stemmed from space as Roman/Greek gods aligned with the planets and constellations and such so I wondered if there was a way of linking these two themes.
Also there is scope for character design, illustrations for stories, book covers, perhaps even editorial pieces? As you can just use a photograph for space whereas for something about ancient Greece you can use a pic of a statue or one of them images off a vase.

Study Task One: Publishing and Book Design

Yusuke Oono

http://www.loftwork.com/portfolios/oonoyusuke/

These 360degree books are so wild and fun looking!! They illustrate classic stories such as 'Snow White'. When stood up the books have a 3D diorama feel about them - they're more of an art piece maybe even a sculpture - but still a book that could be 'published'. I think this still counts as Publishing and Book design it's just a vastly different take on traditional ways of illustrating a story. 

Some of the photographs I've seen of these are very beautiful and atmospheric with the right lighting too. 

Jacqui Oakley

http://jacquioakley.com

Oakley's website  features some of the clients she has worked for, which includes magazines and books. She has also done installation work and various other illustration projects, the website also features video interviews. But it appears she has done a lot of publication and book cover work

This piece is for 'The Inferno Collection' - a mystery series. 

Oakley said that since she is usually hired to create "nice" or "pretty imagery" it was refreshing to be able to draw skulls and fire!

Despite being contemporary Oakleys work has a vintage feel to it. Particularly this piece with its colour palette and textures, I think it looks pretty cool!

It's interesting to see this set of books - including cover, encasing box and inner illustrations. There's merchandising and such that comes with published stuff - limited edition collectors items and such (boxes, bookmarks, prints, other such goodies) 

Lisa Kokin

http://www.lisakokin.com/book-art-altered-one.html

Kokin's altered book art is rather fun, although I'm unsure if it would fit under the category of Publishing and Book design. Hypothetically they could be informative or humorous but they are mostly art books rather than something that could be mass produced and published - I'll include this anyway because I think it's a fun idea and there's no reason why this kind of idea couldn't be transformed into a publishable item.

(I believe Kokin may be working on some published books as there is a section on her site that is under construction!)

Camille Rose Garcia 

http://www.camillerosegarcia.com

"Garcia’s layered, broken narrative paintings of wasteland fairy tales are influenced by William Burroughs’ cut-up writings and surrealist film, as well as vintage Disney and Fleischer cartoons, acting as critical commentaries on the failures of capitalist utopias, blending nostalgic pop culture references with a satirical slant on modern society."

Garcia's work fits into publising and book design as she has done a few book cover and inner illustrations, particularly for fairytales or childrens fantasy stories - below are the covers for Cinderella and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I find her illustration work for books like this interesting as she obviously has quite a spooky and gothic style but seeing it applied to stuff usually marketed to children. It makes me wonder if these spooky illustrations are still meant to be marketed towards children or whether it's for a more adult or teenaged audience who still enjoy the stories - spicing it up with some funky illustration. 

Joe McLaren 

http://www.joemclaren.com/

This illustrator relates to publishing and book design as he does both cover art and inner illustrations for books, both fiction and non fiction and from different eras - versatile. Also editorial illustration - which links to publishing. 

I like the hand-crafted printed quality McLaren's work has. Maybe because after 504 I'm still on a bit of a printing kick! - and these look very lino/woodcut-eqsue, which half give his work a "ye olde" feel but I think the use of bold colour and composition in the imagery keep it looking contemporary. 

Creative City Guidebooks!

"These well-designed travel guides from Victionary pull together the best locales for creatives in six big cities: New York, London, Tokyo, Barcelona, Berlin, Paris. The series is called CITIx60, named for the 60 creatives who handpicked the spots highlighted in these volumes. Each are wonderfully designed and illustrated and each contains an illustrated map of the city."

Everything I included so far has been either an art book or illustration for a fiction book, so I thought I would include these illustrated travel guides. It's pretty cool and shows a different use for illustration - for a factual, informative purpose rather than just illustrating fiction. 

Other 505

http://www.piotrowskipawelart.pl

Alison Woodward

Brianne Tweddle

http://thelibraryoflostbooks.blogspot.co.uk

Some more weird book things that I think look really cool! I'd love to explore non standard books as I think they're really unique and fun and offer something more interesting and creative than a regular book.

Publishing and Book Design VS Character and Narrative

My first instinct tells me to go for character and narrative, as character comes quite naturally to me. I enjoy designing and creating characters - and would definitely like to work more with narrative at some point. However I feel like going for this would be just working within my comfort zone, I feel like once I find a theme and connect it to character I have an idea in my head about what I want to do and that ties me down, I won't move on from it. Pursuing narrative is an exciting prospect but I think I'm risking just falling into what I always do anyway and I want to do something new.

The idea of publishing and book design intrigues me, as it is broad and can connect over several different areas including education and childrens books, character and narrative and to a degree editorial and reportage - so there are lots of possible avenues to explore. I am also intrigued by the idea of non-regular format books, I feel like there's a lot of room for experimentation here and it's something I haven't tried - obviously I made a concertina publication for 504 and will have to make a publication for 501 too so I'm not saying "I'M GOING TO MAKE A  WEIRD BOOK" but I would like to look into it and experiment if it is appropriate for what I pursue.

A Clockwork Orange : Almost Final Designs

These are the rough layouts for possible final designs for A Clockwork Orange. The two are pretty different, so I'm not really sure which one I should submit, after further editing. 

This design is pretty Lo-fi, I threw it together in about 10 minutes after getting frustrated with my first design. It's quite creepy and unsettling, as the block orange shapes stick out from the pencil drawn face and off white background. I think it's got a bit of a vintage feel about it that suits the tone of the book but also - I think this design is something you'd expect from an A Clockwork Orange cover I'm not sure it offers anything new. I would have really liked to have used the eye with the big orange tear-drop on the back, as I think it had potential to be great. I would have liked to have been able to fill the blurb into the shape but the size of the template put a lot of restrictions in. I couldn't figure out arranging the bar code around it so it looked good, it always covered the edge of the tear drop and if I made the tear-drop any smaller it just looked bad on the page. A positive of this design is that the writing shows up better against the background, there's less interference than in the second design. 

This design is more graphic and dynamic - I think this would appeal more to a younger audience as it's more striking, with more of a modern edge but keeping some hand-crafted qualities. The stripes and number suggest the prison setting in the book. I love the stripes but it's kind of difficult to read the blurb against it - there is some interference. Maybe larger / bolder text or a different font would help. I am a little worried that the imagery looks a little too graphic novel-eqsue, but I still like it I think it jut about works and definitely gives it a more modern look.

I considered this as an option but thought the front being wildly different from the back would make the overall composition much too busy and chaotic. 

Responsive: Secret 7

The Brief: To create a design for the front of a 7" single sleeve for one (or more) of the songs featured. The design cannot contain the name of the song or the artist - to keep it secret. 

Secret seven was a competition I was really interested in because I love music and drawing based on music is something I really enjoy doing! I decided to do three sleeves for this.  

 I chose to do  Chvrches - Clearest Blue. I hadn't heard a lot of the songs beforehand so I decided to go with Chvrches because I had heard of the band at least.

Etta James - At Last. Another song I'm familiar with. I don't know it very well but I'm definitely familiar with the tune and vibe of the song.

The Jam - Art School. I know other songs by the Jam.

I'm a little underwhelmed by the selection of songs, nothing really stands out to me so I don't really have any ideas right off the bat here.