Daniel Samson

Here is my first editorial rough

After a lot of toil, we finished the poster last week. Here it is in all its glory.

I still cant fully think in right way, but it was certainly enlightening.

Here is a list of DVD’s and Books I have been consuming, all of them interesting in some way.

Beautiful Losers

I have already posted a video to this below, but just wanted to re-iterate how good this documentary is. Very inspiring.

Meta-Graffiti

This is basically the next steps in graffiti, perhaps… Basically its a bunch of short films about graffiti in a whole load of different styles, qualities etc. It has kids Clean Bombing trains, people creating animation from graffiti and short narratives. Its pretty much about everything except normal graffiti.

Rash

This is an Australian graffiti documentary, about the scene in Melbourne. There is some very interesting work and also an interesting attitude taken by some of the councils. What I like here is that they cover stencils, stickers, tagging and graffiti, aswell people doing wilder stuff.

Piece By Piece

This is about the history of the San Francisco graffiti culture, very interesting stuff. It starts in about 1982 and goes up to 2004.

Graffiti Instincts

This is a straight up visuals thing, just sit back and enjoy while these guys create. This is a section taken from the DVD, not the full thing.

Brasil Inspired

This is a book on Brazilian art, some of it is street art, some of it graphic design. All quite fresh and interesting though.

New Skateboard Graphics

A book devoted to skateboard deck graphics, some interesting things in here. Perhaps a little light on text though.

Concrete to Canvas: Skateboarders Art

This is about the art that skateboarders create, some of it graffiti some of gallery pieces. All sorts of styles and influences here. This book is really quite relevant to what I am doing.

Sticker City

Although the title is sticker city, its mainly about large scale stickers or pasteups. It has smaller stuff, it has 3D stuff. This is an interesting look at a variety of artists spanning the world.

While looking into stickers of all kinds and graffiti, I have come across some interesting links and bits of advice. This is a list of them.

Paste Ups

This is basically a giant sticker, where you prepare it at home, go out and paste it around town. Sometimes they are hand drawn onto paper, then cut out and pasted. Some times designed on a computer and printed. Below is a variety of pastes for putting them up.

Wallpaper Paste

This is your standard wallpaper paste, it used to put up wallpaper all over the place. I dont think its that weather resistant.

www.wickes.co.uk/Powdered-Wallpaper-Adhesive/invt/610087

Cellulose Paste

This stuff you can buy fairly cheap,it is derived from plants and is odourless. I think one of the main advantages here is that you dont have to carry some premixed paste around with you in a bucket, all you need is the powder and a few bottles of water in your backpack, this can be in a squeezy bottle for ease of spraying.

www.homecrafts.co.uk/products-Cellulose-Paste-Powder_B276.htm

Wheat Paste

This is the standard as far as I can tell, its basically flour and water boiled up, there are different measures, techniques etc. I think this is the cheapest method, but perhaps not the most long lasting.

monumentlimited.com/tutorials/how-to-make-wheat-paste/

Terror Paste

This stuff doesnt sound that nice to make, you need ground glass,wood clue and wallpaper paste. Apparently it is very hard wearing though. The only thing is that you need to use it quite quickly.

www.cultdeadcow.com/cDc_files/cDc-0402.html

Stickers

Vinyl Cut Stickers

These are the stickers you see everywhere, from bands to giant corporations. They are quite cheap and they are very weather resistant.

www.diginate.com/

Label Stickers

This is where you use a laser printer to print onto those white labels you can buy in shops. I dont think these are that durable. Or you can pay for someone else to do it, but if doing this, why not just get vinyl.

www.diginate.com/

Graffiti

Traditional

This is where you sit and create a Burner or other piece on a wall, this can be as quick and simple as you like or as time consuming, some pieces taking several hours to complete.

Stencil

A quick and dirty method of graffiti production, its quick, cheap and easily repeatable. You can use one stencil many times over.

www.stencilrevolution.com

Tagging

One of the most basic forms of urban art, this is about getting your name out there as much as you can. Using spray paints, markers or stickers. Its just about “bombing” your name everywhere.

Debris & 3D

This is where you take found objects or buy objects and stick them places, creating sculpture on the street. So Invader uses small tiles to create retro space invader style mosaics on the side of buildings, others have used toys and stuck them to walls.

This has been extended even further by people like the Graffiti Research Lab, with projects like their LED based tagging and graffiti.

Not to mention their EyeWriter project. This is a piece of software built using Openframeworks, it detects eye movements and lets someone create graffiti without using their hands on a computer, this sounds in itself as slightly useless, until you watch the video. I found it very touching.

During the research session we were asked to come up with a way of collecting information from the others in the group, preferably not involving numbers. We were asked to do this in pairs. We originally came up with height & weight, but this transformed into the shape of the person. The first method we used was to draw around people in the group, this was visually quite interesting but we wanted it to be more accurate. So then we used the light from a projector to cast peoples shadow onto the wall, then we took photos. This was the research part over.

I then decided to take the photos from the session and convert them into a more visually compelling form. So I corrected their perspective in Photoshop, then to get a clean black silhouette I used the threshold tool along with some blurring to take away the harshness.  This was then taken into Illustrator where I used the auto-trace facility to speed up the process.

So this is the first post of my new blog. This week was my first proper week of the new course I just started, FdA Design for Graphic Communication. So far its been fairly laid back, not too much to do, quite different to working full time as a web designer.

So on the first day we did an all day web 2.0 workshop, building a basic blog using blogger and working as a team, there were other aspects in the morning, such as constructing lists and about writing. I think a major aspect of this was just getting to know people and their skills. Our team did everything together, we headed out onto the streets of Elephant & Castle, then wandered about till we found some interesting spots, most notably a community bike shop, it was closed, but we seem to think its somewhere you can go and build a bike. On the corner connected to it, is a cooperative food shop and information centre. We also came across a coffee shop, some artists studios and a Buddhist centre. We then rushed back with not much time to cobble together our group blog. We got everything on there, but it was rushed, I think we spent too much time trying to find the right images.

Edit: The bikeshop and food co-op is called 56a.

The second day was VCT (Visual & Cultural Theory) a shortening I find a little unnecessary, along with PPD. I think most people find them confusing, lots of people asking what they stand for etc. But I am sure in no time that will change. The class itself was really enjoyable, getting together and discussing the meaning of text & image. A task was set where we had to match up postcards with phrases, then justify it. I found it quite interesting peoples varied ideas on organisation and matching. I think initially we had some really interesting choices, but by the time we democratised it and chose the two we all agreed on, the solutions became quite bland and mediocre. I think it ended up lacking any authorship. I am looking forward to more of this class.

So far, that is all we have done this week, I have another class this afternoon, it is labelled ‘Research’. I shall take a stab in the dark and presume it is a class on how to conduct research for graphic design, as we did on the introductory day with list making. Only time can tell. This week I also had a good look around the library, looking at some of the books I have wanted to see for a while, a book on the visual programming language ‘Processing’ and ‘Grid systems in graphic design’ by Josef Muller-Brockmann. It was nice having access to a wide range of books on all sorts of topics again, something I have really missed.

So thats it for now, a summary of my first week at LCC.