'Make your Mark' Brief: My Backpack/Badges Continued...

Moving forward with this idea for the brief, I decided to do more work focusing on the badges. I chose one brooch in particular to start of with, I like the shape and it's simplicity is quite interesting. I wanted to do more graphic style work and just focus on the shape. I started just by scanning in the brooch, printing and doing some continuous line and blind drawings over the top.

I tried to stick to really limited colour, the brooch itself is silver/a little pink and green, so I stuck with those colours. I continued to use bypass printing and layering up different images with line drawing over the top.  For the second drawing, I sprayed a little water to make the pen run, so it was less clean cut.

After this, I tried to layer up different cut outs, and incorporate negative space areas. Not sure how I feel about this spread, I think the shapes are interesting, but I'm not sure if it works as a whole.

I wanted to try something different. and I was looking at Simon Evans work -in particular 'Everything I have', where he has created a visual list of everything he owns. I thought this was really brilliant. I'm thinking about doing something similar with this idea, but for now I just created a smaller more illustrative style page with a couple of drawings in black fineliner. I like this style, and I think I'll use the same style of drawing but apply it to something a little more like Simon Evans' work later on.

'Make your Mark' Brief: Habits/Independent Study.

At the beginning of the week, we spent the day focusing on one possible theme. From my mind map I decided to start looking at the idea of my habits, specifically the rather bad habit of cracking my fingers and wrists. I started off doing some observational drawings and A3 pieces (using varied drawing techniques and media) focusing on my hands in pushed and strange positions. I also began experimenting with type, referencing the sounds my wrists/fingers make when I crack them: 'snap' 'pop' 'crack' 'click'. My initial experiments were okay but needed more research and exploration, they looked a little messy. I liked the idea of incorporating type though!

After this, we made our own paper to work on out of different pieces left over, or from the collage box. I tried to keep the colour really quiet with a few bits of print. However, not all my materials worked, as one of them had a resistant layer so I couldn't use ink over it properly! I finished all three pieces and they didn't look quite right, they were too busy. Our tutor suggested using block/negative space areas to quieten down the busier areas. This really helped, and I'm pretty pleased with how these turned out.

After this, I looked into more areas of type, I went through magazines and cut out appropriate letters in many different styles, settling on a few that I liked. For our first day of independent study we were to round up our work on this theme. I tried using the scanner and bypass printing to overlap my hands. It worked once, but the colour was too dark and I was wasting ink, so I used the failed ones for collage material.

To finish off this theme, I kept trying things out with the scanner and bypass printing, using my previous work to create new pieces. I wanted to refine and simplify what I'd done and create some more graphic spreads. My first one was more simple, I quite like it but I'm not sure it properly works as a spread. I'm still unsure about how busy it is! 

I prefer my second one, for this I scanned some elements of type over the previous work, and also included some bold block shapes, and more white space to calm it down a little. I think the colours flow better, and it's generally nicer to look at! I really enjoyed exploring this theme, I need to stop focusing so much on hands though, time to move on to another few ideas. It was nice to start having a go with type too, as I've not really done that yet. I'm pleased with my outcomes, however I think I should try something a little different for my next theme.

'Make your Mark' Brief.

This is the beginning of a brief all about 'our story'. After answering some quick fire questions I created three double page spreads of graphic responses based on my answers. I was using my favourite colours (Dark red/sea green) and shapes (circles), and also letters and numbers (B, S, I, 8...). I was trying to maintain a balance of shapes and colours across the pages, so it flowed, and also keep a balance between the shapes and the white page.

My first response was fairly simple, I was just experimenting with different shapes and techniques. I like the textured brown paper and also the cut out shapes, but overall it needs more to it. More overlap and texture, and better use of space.

For my second response, I used bypass printing to create further depth in the overlap and colour, and less actual cut out card. I liked this piece, it flows better than the first, and the colours are generally quite muted with little pops of red/green. 

For my last response, again I used bypass printing. The brown paper came out a funny dull pink colour, I quite liked it though and just used it. I think this last piece has a defined colour palette, and the greater use of black/grey sort of complements that. I'm happy with the responses. It was nice learning different elements of graphic design and how far it stretches. I think I managed to keep elements of me in there too with the shapes and letters!