Doodle session.

Lecture doodle.
Inspired quite a bit by this

Of Montreal.

Every bit as amazing as I'd hoped, and for once, my camera was a success. Slightly blurred, but I love these pictures.

This is me, excited.

That's my picture.
In the Argus.
Eeeeeeee!
I'm more excited than words could describe, and bought six copies :D
My first ever thing in print! And it's not even that good! If this is how far I can get with my not so good work, imagine the towering heights I could achieve with some better stuff! The Metro, maybe? Or is that dreaming too high...?
(But no seriously, I LOVE the Argus, and also, wonderfully, Of Montreal are in the magazine section that I am the cover of. That rocks so much.)

In other news, I almost fainted in screen printing this morning, but luckily disaster was averted by a swift exit and a long sit on the floor outside. I'm not quite sure what was wrong with me.

So, how's it going?

Not too bad. I submitted my Argus illustration this morning, although as I thought, they'd got the dimensions wrong. I initially said I wasn't going to do it again, but I have done now, so we shall see if they want it, or if they'll just crop one of my existing drawings. I'm happy either way to be honest, if it means I'll see one of my images in print.
Newspapers are notoriously fickle though, so I'm not getting excited till I'm holding a copy in my hands with my picture in.

In other news, I'm quite enjoying the Erbar project.





This is what I've done so far. That bottom one is a little bit off, I'll fix that. To be honest... I like these enough to stop now and put them in the final crit, but I'll carry on, because as I say, I'm enjoying it.

Developing.

It's not colourful, and I'm not sure how well it represents 150 years of Art and Design in Brighton, but I like this a lot more than what I'd done before. Now, to make it colourful and relevant...

The Argus celebrates 150 years of Art and Design Education in Brighton

And here is an illustration I have done for them.

Erbar

Currently working on creating a 4pp magazine spread, based on a typeface randomly assigned to me. This typeface is 'Erbar', by Jakob Erbar. We have to write between 200 and 400 words on this typeface, and then set it out across the four pages. Black and white, typographic work only.
Here is what I have written, pretty heavily based on my references, but totally reworked, and with quite a few of my own ideas and thoughts.

""My aim", wrote Jakob Erbar, "was to design a printing type which would be free of all individual characteristics, possess thoroughly legible letterforms, and be a purely typographic creation."

Jakob Erbar was born in 1878. After training as a type compositor in Dusseldorf, and studying type under Fritz Helmut Ehmcke and Anna Simons, he spent most of his life working and teaching in Cologne.

The typefaces he designed were Feder Grotesk (1910), Koloss (1923) and Candida (1936), but his most notable creation was his eponymous typeface Erbar, and it's variants (Lucina, Lumina, Lux and Phosphor), which he created between 1922 and 1930.
It was based on the most basic geometric elements - line, the circle and the arc. Other designers took these ideas on, such as Rudolf Koch with his 'Kabel', and probably most well known, Paul Renner's Futura, but Erbar was the first on the field with these ideas.

The typeface is no longer available in digital versions, as it has been superseded by Renner's Futura, however, this typeface should not be overlooked, as it is a beautiful Sans Serif. With many letters based around the circle form, the whole alphabet has a harmony and unity - it is clear to see the same curves and lines being used in as many letters as possible. Yet despite his claim of trying to create a printing type 'Free of all individual characteristics', the tail of both upper and lower case 'Y's is distinctly unusual, following the pattern of the 'Z', and the cross strokes of both the lower case 'f' and 't' cut off at 45 degree angles.

Interestingly, he designed two Erbars, both with different X-heights, and, as previously mentioned, took the family further with it's variants, Lucina - a set of white on black capitals, Lux - a version with contrasting outlines, and Phosphor - an inline version of the bold Erbar weight. None of these are available in digital formats, but may still be found in metal type in some letterpress workshops.

Erbar is an underrated and underused type, despite Futura's quality, Erbar represents an exciting period of German type design and innovation, and deserves more recognition."

References:
'An A-Z of Type Designers' by Neil MacMillan
'Letters of Credit' by Walter Tracy
'The Thames and Hudson Manual of Typography' by Ruari McLean



Above is an example of Erbar.

£2 Coin, final drawings.

Here are two final drawings of the Olympic themed £2 coins... Done in Illustrator, which was a bit of a learning curve (Quite literally at times, WHO KNEW how easy it was to set type round a circle :D)... Opinions welcome.

Moment of genius, or sheer desperation?

Ok ok ok... After literally HOURS of sitting in front of this screen, faffing about in photoshop/indesign/illustrator, doing rubbish little drawings, or just putting my head in my hands and trying to THINK...
I may have struck upon something I actually like.

I'm not sure what it is about it, as I say, possibly I need to take a step back and have another look at it tomorrow... but yeah, I quite like this idea. (click for a bigger view)



I'm really struggling with the project though.
Ah well.

Just thinking.

Something a bit girly and flowery.
I love these.
(From last summer)

Cheer me up.

I'm not enjoying the fur project.
So here are some happy memories.

Yeah, so... don't wear fur.

I saw this woman in town today (is it wrong to take pictures of strangers? I don't know...) I was walking along behind her for ages, and was amazed by how real her fur coat was, you could almost see the form of each tiny little individual creature in it... I wanted to touch it, but that definitely would have been wrong.

But yes, the Anti Fur/ PETA project!
Ideas developing...
I think that 'shock tactics' - in anti fur campaigning (And much else, for that matter...) are over done. Be it the blood and gore, the naked celebrities, the statistics... people just ignore them, look away. People choose not to pay attention to that kind of stuff, it's all just another one of the many barriers we put up in day to day life.
I think that the best way of capturing people, drawing them in, and hopefully getting across a very important message... is by creating something beautiful, and intriguing. I think that people let their guard down when they see something that catches their eye and interests them... and I for one am certainly more receptive to a message that is presented in a visually appealling way.

My tutor didn't seem to like this idea, or possibly I didn't explain it well enough, but I'm going to soldier on anyway, and hope for the best...

My main idea currently is to create a simple fur coat form, out of animal shapes, because I think sometimes people get disconnected from the fact that it is actually ANIMAL SKIN they're wearing... not just another sort of fabric.
I'm thinking of accompanying this fairly aesthetically pleasing image with some more shocking text... something along the lines of:

"Your coat is made out of the skin of dead aninals.
Skin that was peeled off while the animal was still alive, screaming and writhing in agony.
Then left, still blinking and twitching, on a pile of dying corpses, muscle and flesh exposed."

Here's what I've made so far. For the final piece I'll spend longer smoothing out the animal shapes, and laying them out so they fit together a bit better, but this is the basic idea, and colour scheme, and how I'd like it to look.

A PETA project, which I do not want to do.

Because I don't like PETA.
Nothing against animals. I like animals. I hate seeing a racoon skinned alive as much as the next human being. But I really resent their self righteous, over-emotive, accusatory propaganda campaigns.

But yes. This project is about fur. And being anti it.
All past anti fur campaigns that spring to mind seem to involve either gore, naked women, adorable animals with big eyes, or a cunning mixture of the three. I wanted to avoid those cliches, although it's proving difficult. Here's an initial idea.



I tried searching for 'gore' in google, but all I got was Al. In the end I had to hunt for 'exposed muscle'.

Honestly... I'm really pleased with this. I have a funny feeling the tutors won't like it, but meh.
Possibly needs better wording though.