Daniel Samson

This Tuesday we had a PPD (Personal & Professional Development) session, the main aim of the session was to understand the course grading and asking questions about how the course runs, where people end up etc. I found having the chance to just ask questions really helpful.

The second half was second year students showing their work and talking about it. They also gave us a bit of advice about how to approach the course. After this we were asked to organise a series of development books into the categories discussed earlier. I think instinctively we got most of the work into the right grade, which was quite heartening.  Very good knowing what we are aiming for.

Good session all round.

On Friday we had the Collage session with Darren. The aim of the workshop was to produce a series of collages, trying to express one of eight different themes; Composition, Editing, Contrast, Rhythm, Texture, Repurposing, Juxtaposition, Surrealism, Narrative and Humour. Within the workshop we had to choose one of these themes and stick to it. I chose to express narrative, but one of the things we all quickly realised was that it was hard to express one of these without invoking the others to some degree or other.  I found that narrative and rhythm were very related, along with juxtaposition and humour. When it came to the group evaluation it was interesting the diverse opinions on the same collage.

Speed Collages

After finishing our two collages we were then tasked with creating as many collages as we could in 15-20 minutes. My method of creation was to cut out headlines or interesting pieces of text and then place them next to a picture, trying to create some other meaning. I found it quite hard to not worry about what it was creating, as just placing them randomly did not seem very rewarding. At the end of this I had created 8 different collages, some of them turned out well others not so well. But it did make me appreciate the rapid speed of development, I can see it as an interesting spawning ground for future projects at least in the early stages.

At the end of the session we were set the assignment, which is to create 100 collages on the above themes by the end of term. I am currently considering the best method for their creation. I thought it might be interesting exploring the random side of things, so rather than trying hard to create meaning let the meaning come through on its own. One method might be to cut out a large number of pictures and blocks of text as before, then write a number on the back of each. After this is done, create a small program which would randomly select pairs of numbers, then each of them could be created physically. This could be explored further by assigning descriptive tags to each of the collage elements, then the program could only select two pieces based on their tag similarity. With this method you could combine two different sets together to create interesting new meanings. The classification system would have to be researched first however.

All in all an interesting workshop that gets us creating without Photoshop, without the ability to resize, change colour etc. If we want these kind of things we need to think of other ways of doing it. I think that exploration with hands is really important as you can easily get bogged down in small details when the actual idea is poor. I find it especially refreshing as I have worked as a web designer, when doing mood boards for projects it would all be done in Photoshop for speed, but I think there was something missing.

On Thursday I had two sessions, one of which was the VCT session and the other a Letterpress introduction.

The VCT sessions purpose to present a piece of work that had both Text and Image, then talk about why we chose this particular piece. The group then asked questions and discussed it fairly in depth. Some interesting debates arose about the modification of typefaces and whether it is morally correct to do so. Unfortunately only about 2/3 of the class could talk about their choice as we discussed so much, which is a good outcome. I will be talking about mine next week.

The Letterpress introduction was really interesting, although it was cut short by a fire alarm. We set our own names and had a go on the proofing press. Then we started to create a grid on which to place a larger piece of work. This is going to be concluded next week and I will post some pictures and progress then.

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.