This is the first of a series of posters I am producing to support my research into originality for the Post Graduate Diploma phase of my MA. It is a pastiche of the Milton Glacer’s Dylan poster and plays on the concepts or originality and evolution.
The following is from my MA in Digital Image, more of which will be available at www.thedigitalmagpie.com
This is the study I produced to illustrate some of the theories and concepts I have explored in my essay , ‘Towards the rise of the Digital Auteur’
The following excerpts, quotes and images were compiled for a Graphics in Context lecture to 2nd year degree students.
It’s starting point was a mention of the ‘South Kensington system’ in the book Pioneers of Modern Graphic Design by Jeremy Aynsley in which he states that;
“this lead to the large scale production of books, magazines, posters and adverts on an unprecedented scale, for education, instruction and education. This led, for economic and practical reasons, to the concentration of large scale printing houses in cities.
The responsibility to train young workers for the graphic trades and industries had previously belonged to the guilds, but now trade schools and colleges of art and design took on the task. The model of design education was largely based on what was known as the ‘South Kensington system’, named after the area of London where the British government established the School of Design in 1837. A network of similar ‘branch schools’ was subsequently set up in manufacturing towns and cities throughout the country”
(Aynsley, J, 2004, p14-15)
I wanted to discover more about the South Kensington system, the Government School of Design the network of branch schools, as these seemed to be the first stirrings of a formalised commercial arts movement. I found an interesting article on the V&A website by Denis Rafael Cardoso which shed more light on the formation of these schools and the Governments growing realisation that art was being used on the continent to promote goods and services and that it had value as an industrial craft. HE states that;
‘The teaching of art and design changed dramatically throughout Europe during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Generally speaking, instruction in fine art and in crafts became increasingly separate, as academies of art sought to distance their members from the world of trades and to cast themselves in the role of guardians of a liberal profession. With the ultimate disintegration of the system of guild apprenticeships, the provision of practical instruction in applied arts and crafts slipped into a state of unprecedented neglect, aggravated by the widespread introduction of new manufacturing techniques and methods of production. Read More
Let’s face it not every brief contains the words, ‘if possible the campaign should be banned’.
The brief was to produce concepts for a company specialising in financial dispute resolution and debt reconsolidation for mainly blue collar clients in and around the construction industry.
Since the credit crunch they had seen a huge increase in clients requesting help dealing with banks that were refusing to extend overdrafts or extend credit terms. This had traditionally been a small area, with most of their work being in debt chasing and contract dispute resolutions.
The commissioning agency wanted a campaign that would position the client firmly outside the traditional financial environment that had been so badly discredited after the crash of the last 12 months. The simplest way to achieve this was an aggressively anti-bank campaign, that sailed as close to ASA rules as possible, which if banned would create free PR opportunities that would reach a larger audience than had the campaign actually been allowed to run.
My solution, though actually just a series of factual headlines, takes advantage of a simple mental letter swap and the currently held opinion that most bankers and in fact w…….!
I’ve just sent my first batch of students blinking into the sunlight of a long, well earned, summer break and now seems the perfect time to look back and reflect on my inaugural year in lecturing. Read More
Saw this and it made me laugh. We are guilty of falling back into out comfort zones but perhaps this is taking it too far. The trouble with a huge industry like this is it stifles experimentation, because by their very nature some experiments fail and Hollywood doesn’t do failure!
Here’s an exercise for you; put ‘creativity’ or ‘bright idea’ or ‘imagination’ or any other word or phrase you can think of that is associated with ideas and creative thinking into Google, then click the image button. One image will dominate your search; the lightbulb. Almost from it’s first appearance over 100 years ago the lightbulb, or Incandescent light bulb as Edison named it was seen as the perfect expression for man’s ingenuity – knowledge replacing ignorance, the moment of genius – the little, apparently empty, glass orb that could instantly banished darkness at the flick of a switch seemed to embody all that was good in us.
Until now. It seems that the universal symbol for man’s innate creativity, is to be sacrificed in an effort to save the planet. Am I the only one who sees the irony in this? This symbol of our ability to solve problems has become the problem, this icon of enlightenment had a dark secret. It is now seen as wasteful and inefficient not, after all, such a good idea! Read More
Every now and again you find a solution to a client brief that is so elegant that you can’t believe no one else has thought of it before. This is one of those solutions
When doing any branding work I like to get the client to define their company or organisation in as few words as possible, this helps to focus their minds on what lies at the heart of their business. So this in mind I asked the client the question and they replied that, ‘basically we open doors for our clients, we unlock funding they probably won’t realise they are entitled to’.
As I explored the shapes and forms of various typefaces, there was something about the simplicity of the three lower case characters set in Helvetica Neue Heavy seemed very appropriate. So I started to explore the relationships of the three characters more fully. The more I played with them the more I was convinced that I was missing something. I went back to my meeting notes and the phrase, ‘basically we open doors for our clients, we unlock funding they probably won’t realise they are entitled to’ instantly leapt out at me and I realised that what I was missing wasn’t something in the relationship of the three characters, but something in the spaces within the characters.
Once I realised what I was looking for the solution seemed ridiculously obvious, as though it had always been there, and actually it had, it was just waiting for someone to see it!
Add a strapline and the brand came to life. One of those moments that makes being a designer the greatest job in the world. Took it to the client, client loved it, job done.
Spring Cleaning
I was doing a bit of spring cleaning and backing off an old external drive and I found this. It was designed for a small company who offered specialist teaching programmes on citizenship and personal development aimed at high school students. It’s funny the stuff you forget you’ve done and how with hindsight every now and again you can rediscover a piece of work you are really pleased with.
