Gold!

These pictures are amazing...this blog just keeps on giving

Momart Greetings Cards

'Fine art handling' firm, Momart, issue artists to create a greetings card each year. I found some examples on the V&A 'Search Collections' site, and I must say I was amused.

Here are some examples..

Artists include:

Tracy Emin, 1999, a napkin with 'stay faithful to your dreams- Tracy Emin' written on it.

Tim Head, 1987, an abstraction of a common Christmas motif, enhanced with the use of flock. Sir Anthony Caro, 1993 and his bronze belt buckle cast.

Richard Deacon, 1996, Draws amoeba like forms for his festive commission

Damien Hirst, 1997 uses his signature circles, which have been screenprinted onto perspex.

My personal favourite is Langlands and Bell, 1998 and their watched named frozen sky, which displays 25 three-letter international airport abreviations on its face.

Merry Christmas!

More Christmas musings here

Tissues & Bones

“You cannot experience your own interior by closing your eyes and concentrating on it. In order to discover your own contents you have to investigate the inside of someone elses” -Jonathan Miller

[210mm x 148mm, pp. 18, card cover with tissue wrapper]. Edition of 50

I recently purchased a beautiful item from 'Bracketpress' – and edition of 50 by Alice Smith, which contains a series of visceral explorations, named, Tissues & Bones. The booklet contains full bleed illustrations, with a card cover, aptly encased in tissue and secured with a silver/grey ribbon. I also got sent a compliments card 'from the desk of Christian Brett', which I thought was a great touch.

Inspiring!

Here is issue 9.

Bolton Portraits

I got commissioned to create exhibition signage for a community project at the contact theatre. This was insightful as it gave me an idea about working in the real world and preparing files to send to an external printer. It was strange not having complete creative freedom, but was good practice working within such restrictive guidelines and still try to make something creative. I was pleased to find out that I would be paid for this work, making this my first ever paid graphic design job. I learnt a lot about how to prepare a document for printing, simple things which aren't relevant in a university envoronment, but are very important in the outside world.

STATIC

Static;

inert, motionless, stagnant, stationary, immobile, fixed, constant, changeless were a few words to trigger the ideas process. When I considered further I thought about ideas of interference and interruption, at first in a conventional sense, but what if interference and interruption were applied to something else.

Four key words describe my interpretation of static.

Interference

Routine

Possession (s)

Influence.

How could I interfere with a step by step process, perhaps removing a step or interrupting a step. Shaking the printer whilst it was printing, moving an image whilst it was scanning, drawing something, perhaps rubbing it out DeKooning-style. I began taking photographic slides and interfering with the developing process. Scratching the slides, obstructing with shapes, covering faces with fish net, drawing pins and electrical tape. Even removing the film altogether and creating photo-grams from my belongings.

From interference I began to look at influence. How an influence can be an interference within someone’s life. Everyone is exposed to millions of different influences. Another type of interruption of process, the process being our lives. I wanted to map my own influences, painstakingly attempting to collate everyone who's ever influenced me. I decided to hone in on artistic influences and then eventually feminine influences, mapping each woman who has inspired me and trying to smash and collide these images together to create an amalgamated female form

I thought about what it is that makes up a person, routine being one aspect, influences being another and I felt that personal possessions were important also, I explored my purse containing ephemeral things that make up a person day to day, ever changing collections of receipts, scrap of paper, stamps, copy cards etc. Things that were material yes, but also individual and bespoke to a person. No two purses would ever be the same.

I thought about how routine can be something static, people develop a living pattern, have rituals, obsessions, these can be quite mundane things, I thought about how I could map my own routine, instead of it being mundane, it would have a new context and perspective, allowing me to re-think and analyse.

I needed a way to bring all of these these themes together in one coherent way, I decided on the idea of a book-box format. The box resembles an expander file, hinting at the archival nature of the contents, and inside each word is represented by a separate entity of beak book, each book has a definition of the word and my response.

Avant-Yard, Le Restaurant Surréaliste

Final outcome for my Surreal Restaurant.

Eventually it became appropriate to introduce image alongside typography for the restaurant. I will probably develop this project further in the future to expand it to a 'space' to create an all encompassing experience.

But for now, as I said near the beginning of the project,

Surrealism is said to be the 'total liberation of the mind.' In terms of the typographic restaurant brief I thought about how the actual act of choosing something on a menu is taxing on the mind and is definitely not liberating. What if a menu didn't list endless dishes and side orders, extras, specials, appetisers etc, but rather provoked a feeling or thought.

So here is my 'Menu of Thoughts'

Identity of Restaurant

Wallpaper Sample (from a collection)

Escher Alphabet

I have been looking at the impossible drawings of M. C. Escher in relation to a typographic restaurant brief I have been completing. I found this interpretation of his work in regards to a typeface in which each letter reflects a different Escher masterpiece