TEN MAGAZINE PRINTED (IMAGES)

This is the final piece of 10 Magazine, the piece I’ve been working towards making all the products for! So her is a preview of how it looks with the Screen Printed Sleeve, and double page spreads! Hope you Like it, comments are very welcome!

500 Word Brief///Publication Made By Myself For Effect, not to be fashionable.

WHAT HAVE I BECOME?

I have become an observer to the art and design movement, the ever changing and flowing stream of the art and design consciousness. I am neither original nor am I unoriginal, I focus on what i consider to be fashionable and trendy and follow the movements closely, until it burns itself out, then i move onto the next. I understand that all of what a designer must be is what has come before, that what we produce for the future must follow the rules of yesterday to be accomplished.

When working, my preferred way to create is a hands on approach, using analogue techniques and mixing that with technology to produce realistic outcomes with either precise outcomes or experimental finishes. Im always inspired by music, it fuels my motivation to create and design, without it  I would simply be emotionally ill-informed. After looking at the work of John Baldessari, a contemporary artist, i came across his book Titled ‘Music’. He works around the idea of specific sounds; be it the smallest of background sounds, he then paints large block colour, often circular, in found images or his own photographs of musicians. This is done to  replace colour with facial expressions or backgrounds to emphasise the unheard harmony of constant background sound behind the music or important visually emotional information to the viewer.

It is here that I observe Geometry and its fundamentals of shape that, in my minds infancy as a child, still effects my consciousness into my adulthood as a designer and artist. The Likes of Minimalists such as Donald Judd and James Turrell, both use geometric shape to represent spirituality, its effects on space and the human psyche have both influenced the ideas of geometry in my recent work. James Turrell’s projections in his 1966 instillation titled ‘Spirit and Light’  created illusions of shape in space, using the existing architecture of a four walled room to display colorful projections of 3D shapes.
I often try to engage people into my work using a pallet of playful and vibrant colour capturing a nostalgic theme, representing the childish qualities in myself and bring that out in others. I’ve also recently taken on illustration as a principle medium to be used in my work, it is a stream of my consciousness i enjoy to visualize with pen on paper. I find contemporary illustration a greater influence on my work than that of design or photography. It is the endless possibilities, styles, mediums, characters and designs that can be created, it is the fundamental process to design and is the first process we learn from our childhood.

Looking over my pathway of research i have evaluated that i am a very contemporary designer but looks to the past of art and design movements as a form of acceptance of how i work today, i have finally considered myself to be mixture between an artist and designer and enjoy the cross-over without it being a hinderance to how i proceed in my work, past and present.

TEN Magazine Animation!!!

This is the 5th attempt at an animation for my magazine 10. Its a little bit rough round the edges but im pretty proud of it for my final piece. The idea that it was created all by hand and hand animated like the animations i’ve posted up on my blog. I’m not a fan of Flash and find its not a fan of me so we keep our distance Anyway i hope you enjoy it as much i liked making it, even though i think i might have a repetitive strain injury!

Death Day Re-visited//Ten Magazine Product!

I have always been obsessed with the fundamentals of time and have feared it on many occasions, in connection to my fading period of life, i have felt the need to create a respectable life, and hope others will remember me for at least one generation. Funny how Human life is remembered but sparingly and often merely for text books and literature, if famous or infamous, but with a disconnection of human emotion.

So i set about to redefine the concept of “What if We knew the day we would die?” and set it in a period of time, thus creating the time mechanism, in the style of a wrist watch. I created it out of paper, one because of time and limited access to materials, but also because i enjoy the playful infancy it creates, this being imagined from a sense of nostalgia as a child, obsessed with how old i’d be in 2005, and then reaching 2005 and wished i wasn’t 20! Its a mockery of mans obsession with Life, its disintegration and the inevitable.

Another collaboration Project, this time between Thomas Morris and I. His magazine project theme is assorted with 10 different collaborations with some of our closest and best artists in the university.  Needless to say he’s a great designer and artist himself! Our project together pulled inspiration from a book called ‘The Intelligent Eye.’ by R.L.Gregory. So i set about creating an illustration for a poster and we both decided on the type and format. Soon enough the whole poster came to life and with a pair of 3D specs turned amazingly 3D, it has been one of the best outcomes i have made to date, and a great experiance to work with one of my best friends.

What If We Knew The Day We’d Die?

Now i know i wouldnt want to know, but i didnt make this one up, someone sent this in, i think it was Gemma Dunn….morbid huh? Well what if you did know that day you’d die? You’d have done everything you’d have wanted to, there would have probably have been some sort of massive loan scheme where you’d pay nothing until you die….that makes no sense, well neither does this! How about making some pennies and making cakes for the day you die, bit like the pointless day of valentines day…..but hay, lets make cash and become capitalists! HAPPY DEATH DAY!!!

What If We Could Talk To God?

What if, Ey? Gosh wouldnt it be swell? Well Probably not, i rekon even if we got the chance to speak to god, and all tried asking whats the meaning of life, he’d laugh…”That’s the whole point.” he’d say, “What is it? The experiments still on going!” Until he knows we wont. So i made these tickets, because i know the Britsh Race Loves a Que, for the bank, shopping or even to have a number 1 or 2. So i set about again down in the print room, to produce some lovely/beautiful tickets full of gold! Got the idea of black and gold ink mix from my very good friend Thomas Morris, who pointed out that the Sam Sparrow song, ‘Black And Gold’ is all about God…..funny i thought, and the lyrics are equally beautiful! So here they are….not the lyrics…the tickets

What If I Could Be Geometric

This was a really fun project i collaborated with my girlfriend Emma Hand. We cut, glued and stuck many different shapes and colours and stuck them to our bodies! Basically that’s it, i have a love for the geometric, mixing this with those good old colours to make a fun image and little project. The idea isn’t to really sell the cubes and pyramids, but to maybe make it into a poster, but at the moment, i just love it as a single image. The idea was a little self indulgent! Basic shapes Basic Idea, Cool Image!

What If We Could Change The World?

This project required a little bit of image sourcing, I’m not sure if what I’ve done is copy-rite, but i have changed the images using illustration. However this one isn’t to be sold, its just part of my project. So I’ve made a little booklet with the images in, and they’ve come out really well, someone said it was quite a sensitive piece so i guess ill have to believe them! So the idea was to using documentary photographers photographs to use as the idea was that their images were in some way helping people to see the world through the lens and changing it. So i set about re-creating the images by illustrating over the top of them and merging the two together to create a new meaning to the scenes. Enough said.

Blue Boy T-shirt! WHAT IF EVERYTHING WAS A COPY//
Rummaging around in a charity store i came across this little gem. Apparently this piece is title ‘blue boy’ by Thomas Gainsborough, however upon closer inspection, this isn’t actually a print of the original, it’s a copy. So i set out to use this remarkably kitsch image and create my own, modern version of the blue boy.
With Fashion playing a big part in how graphics interprets its next step and direction, t-shirt design has become a huge trend and carrier of artists works and designs. The theme then was to create a trendy, kitsch print on a t-shirt.