Category: Field yr 1

#TOOTOUGHFORTEARS

#Tootoughfortears was also a project which in fact I enjoyed the most. My team was able to communicate really well even though we were on christmas break.Working in a group process really helped me as a designer to meet at a point with everyone else and to adjust some of my ideas. My role in the group was to create a poster reflecting the mens thoughts and how they might feel about the  stigma on mental health in the society. To create series of posters I used my knowledge on Photoshop and Illustrator to create illustrations and use them in various poster designs. As a group I believe we created strong outcomes which all members of the team worked as a group. As the project was launched just before the break, we did most of our work back home however I managed to stay in contact with the group and update them on the stages of the poster designs. I received regular feedback which was motivating and supportive. In addition, next project I want to design all of the ideas digitally rather than pick one of sketched idea. This way it will show the development more effectively.  I believe I engaged in the group conversations, giving my opinions when needed. Campaign project was a good way to start the field which first we were with our course. This made us get used to the working in a group which then we moved onto collaboration. I really enjoyed the topic we chose and I think the topic enabled us to create detailed outcomes. As I developed my part of the project I focused on having a soft language and tone in my posters due to the topic which is very sensitive. To me, I wanted it to be emotional and make the reader understand what I’m saying. For this, I kept the posters simple and clean. There aren’t any big imagery or lots of text. Overall, I was motivated in this part of the project and enjoyed working with people in my course.

DE-GENDER COLOUR

Field was a challenging yet a good project. It was a task which we had work with different people who have different working methods and styles so for this it was really challenging at the start to create a group working method. The first week, I wasn’t much involved because the rest of the group didn’t communicate as well and I left lost. However, the oxymoron project really made me be part of the project and I became more engaged and tried to communicate with everyone. I think we created good outcomes in the end which shows the purpose of our protest very well. I learnt to be able to work with different people who have different styles as we all have to at some point after university we will be working with people from different backgrounds. So in that way it was very useful and beneficial to me.  This project we managed to create different outcomes for each week and this was challenging. As a group, I think we could’ve worked more effectively in some aspects so that we could’ve made more placards in different styles. In that sense, I think that’s something we all need to improve for next project. In addition, for next project being more organised will be my personal target as we left the screen printing on the last few days which caused stress and it was challenge trying to finish them all before the deadline. I feel that I tried my best to communicate with all members and spoke about my ideas and thoughts in the group. I used my skills on typography and layout to design placard which reflects the purpose of our protest. In addition, in those past 4 weeks I did engage with my team, attending most days to finish off the work such as screenprints, making the placards etc. I really liked the project Protest as creating outcomes from activists point was really interesting and oxymoron task was also something new and interesting to design. The process of field was really challenging as I mentioned before. In fact not the project outcomes but working in a team with people from different course and their work methods really was challenging. However, this was also a way for it to be really beneficial to learn about how people work which makes it interesting. At some point, our different styles clashed as some of the outcomes don’t fit in with others which it can be seen clearly. However, I think this adds a value to it as it shows individual style and how they see the project. Overall, I really enjoyed the field project even though it was challenging at some points but  I’m happy with the outcomes we all produced and created as a group.

 

The final thing we had to do was do the final touches on the placards. The first placard was ‘REAL MEN DON’T WEAR PINK’. Which we screen printed on few days ago. The pink cross on the print was added once it was all dry. The reason we chose pink was because as the purpose of the protest is go against the rules about gender colour so the use of pink is act of rebellion. For this reason, use of pink really made the placard stand out and it was created an aggressive effect. The hierarchy in design is focused on the ‘don’t’ which was the main purpose. We chose to keep it all same size and font. The pink cross did complete the design and other members of the group created their placard in the same style.

The second placard which was screenprinted by me. I used the design I made from the previous week. However, I changed my idea earlier as we decided to use the placards created by the illustrators for the ‘blue is a gender colour. We used there design for that slogan but I decided to go back to ‘Tomboy’ quote. As it was a last minute decision, we had few problems such as the time. I had a day to do the screenprints and let it all dry. However, as I knew which design I wanted to do the process wasn’t as stressful. Firstly, I changed the design to from just one ‘tomboy’ text to use the repetition. The difference between two designs can be seen below. The right side the final design and left is the old version. The reason I made this change because I think screenprint looks really good with repetition, digitally it might not look as good as it looks crowded but on paper it could look different.My team mates agreed with the decision too. I did make some small changes such as the size of the text, I made it smaller so it doesn’t fill up all the space as I was going to paint on top of it.

I’m really happy with the placard I made I think visually it’s very strong and has the aggressive language of the protesters. On the photo the colour of the paint looks lighter but in real life it’s dark blue. I think using a hand painted detail really helped the final look of the design. Giving it the hand made effect which is the  main idea of the placards in the protests. I think the screenprint turned out good, it’s not neatly done which it fits in with the context. Some areas are lighter than others but I think overall it was a good outcome. I did agree with the David without the colour it didn’t fit in with the rest of the designs. As our main colours were black, white, blue, pink.

This is the final version of my placard. I didn’t have time to paint the ‘and what’ text before the presentation but finished it the next day. I think the bold type really makes the text stand out especially on black background. The text ‘and what’ completed the poster and it needed colour as it looked very simple with lot of empty space. The contrast between colours creates a strong visual effect.

FINAL PLACARDS

I’m happy with all of our outcomes I think they all have similar features which completes the whole project. The presentation went really well as David liked the screenprints. As I didn’t have time I couldn’t finish off my placard it didn’t have the ‘and what’ paint which David said it needed colour. So the next day we added colour to the placard and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were asked to create a placard in his style but using our protest. I’ve mentioned about  his work in other post but I thought I should do more research and figure out the key features he includes in his placard.

Stanley Green is known for being a famous human billboard carrying his placard in Oxford Street. Green would walk around the street carrying his placard by himself. His placard was created by him, expressing his thoughts on protein. Looking at his placard, his style is very simple and clean. The use of words, he keeps them short and lists words. The use of white on black really stands out the text and eye catchy. The text fills the whole cardboard and there’s even extras stuck on the stick such as’ booklet 12p’. I made some research about his booklet which he wouldn’t charge for the booklet but would take donations. Visually his placard stands out, especially the way he uses the slogan ‘less lust from less protein’ .

Stanley also had a booklet which included all his work on protein ‘Eight passion proteins with care’. The red bold text is the first thing you look at as a reader and you can read the key point of the booklet which makes it easy to understand. The contrast is very strong as the use of light background and dark red really makes the text stand out.The use of red  and bold, heavy weight font makes the readers interested.Also, the layout is different as the position of the main text is right in the middle and there’s texts under and below it.

References:

http://www.christopherfowler.co.uk/blog/2014/02/05/london-eccentrics-the-protein-man/

 

Today we did the screen-printing using the quote ‘Real men don’t wear pink’ using black paint. We made 2 copies which one of them we will cross over the word ‘don’t’ with red paint as that’s style we are going for the most of the placards. We made one screenprint and didn’t have the time for the second one which was going to be ‘tomboy’. So, I decided to paint it on the placard as seen in the photo. I wasn’t sure if I was happy with the outcome because I looked like there was something missing. As I decided, I was going to write ‘and what’ with paint but the white paint was really dry and it looked very streaky. So, I decided not to use that one and started making a new one with a different quote. This will be for the Stanley Green style using white on black. We decided to keep it clean and simple like this poster without any imagery. The quote I started doing was with ‘Blue is a gender colour’ in the style of Stanley Green.

I chose a design which I think I could develop and create some screenprints out of it. I chose the slogan ‘tomboy’ as it’s a common saying in society against women wearing masculine style especially blue tones as blue is seen as a male colour. It fits perfectly with our protest and out of all of the sayings I had listed it stood out as it was short and effective. The first design I had in mind was just tomboy written in white on background as I wanted to keep it clean and simple. I knew it would look better on screen print than digitally. However, I started to make more designs using different layouts and adding colour to it to see whether it would look better. The designs below I’ve used the font Multi display bold on Illustrator and used the repetition style to draw more attention to the design. I think this kind of symbolises how women hear these things from people daily. Repeating the words also creates a good contrast in black and white as it stands out more so I think this could work well with screenprint on black paper. Also, the other design I used colour which was in our colour scheme to match the rest of the work being created. Colour does look good and I let the words repeat end of the page and they change colour half way. I don’t know whether it would work on screenprint or it would create more effect but I think I will try both ways to see which one visually feels stronger.

This design is the one I think would look really good on screenprint and I think I could do that ‘and what’ with paint brushes. This would create more hand made feel and doesn’t look digital as most placards used in protests are made my the protests. The meaning of ‘and what’ is going against the stereotype. I think the use of type and paint goes well together to  creates an aggressive style and which Davids feedback was to make it more aggressive. I decided to go with this design and make screenprints.  It’s useful to create digital versions and then change things around if needed.

Once I finished my research, I started to design some of my ideas on Illustrator with the slogans. As I was searching up sexists sayings about gender colours I came across “Real men don’t wear pink”. So I used that in the first set of designs I made on illustrator. I used black background on white text. To decide on the font I went to Adobe Typekit to find fonts which were heavy weight and had more aggressive language and more masculine. I think these features works well with the context as it’s a protest the fonts shouldn’t be delicate or soft. Considering all these elements I chose to use Multi Display Bold, Upgrade Bold, Paralucent Bold, Macho Bold. I think these designs do work well and they create a simple but strong visual effect. As a group we thought crossing out words in a placard would be very effective way to go against those sayings. So I decided to try that out digitally on Iluustrator. I think it would work well

These are the first 4 I designed on Illustrator. As a group we decided that we should keep our designs simple white text on black. We thought this would make them more effective and makes them stand out more. Scribbling out words was our initial idea for the placards so I used them trying out different fonts and style. I used Multidisplay Bold in large pt to cover most of the space. This creates a contrast and with the red and pink strokes it stands out. I really like this idea and I think I will create more designs in this style using different fonts and layouts to create visually strong placards which fits our protest. In the presentation, David told us we could be more aggressive in the language which I do agree and will use his advice in other designs.

The designs above are the other designs created on Illustrator. I’m still following the group decision with black backgrounds and use of colours but trying to create more visually strong designs. These designs I played around with type and layout. The use of repetition to emphasis the word ‘Tomboy’. I think this would be an effective technique to use in a placard as it’s an aggressive context so repeating a words could work well. The last one which was something new and I think it could work actually painting it rather than digitally. The feeling of it you can’t really get it digitally but on an actual placards it would look much better. I used a thick paint brush on illustrator for ‘and what’. The meaning behind that is I thought about it in a context such as ‘tomboy’ is being said by someone in a society and protestors are saying ‘and what’ is them questioning and going against those stereotypes and labels. When I asked my group they did like the idea. This idea can be developed into series of placards this way. Also, we’re already doing a placards using screen printing and crossing out words with paint. I want to carry on making more designs.

The new designs using similar style but with new slogans. I thought it looked dull with just words so I added s small details emphasising the blue and pink by adding a paint stroke under the word. I think this emphasising the word and makes it stand out. The hierarchy in the design changes as when you look at it you pay attention to Blue then start reading the text. I think looking at it from this perspective I could have added that to the word stop to convey the message.

 

I wanted to do some research on visual posters and placards made and used in protests which are mainly created by the protesters themselves. I think these visuals are very important as they can grab peoples attention, they show protesters  passion and their thoughts on those simple cardboard placards. I think this is why they are so powerful as it’s how they feel, what they want to change or to stop. I was looking a photos from protests which stood out to me for inspiration.

 Protesters hold up placards during the Women’s March in London on Jan. 21, 2018

This photo of protesters which they are holding a placard really stood out to me and I think it’s visually it is so powerful. The placard is simple, but it is smart. I think the most powerful placards are the ones which only have some words and simple ones created  by protesters all hand made. As in our project, we want to create placards which hold the same style. We can mainly do this in Stanley Green placard which he only uses white text on black background. However, there are few details such the text isn’t a full long sentence just words after words.

Protests when Trump visits UK

Reading the interview on The Guardian artists speaking about the art in protests and about political art. We can clearly see that amount of work being produced has risen significant  as Anti-Trump protests, Women’s March, Brexit etc. All these political and social protests allowed artists to create more art. It was a very interesting interview reading artists opinion on art and politics.

 

References:

http://time.com/5134820/british-suffragettes-centenary-women-rights-inequality/

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/11/protest-art-miro-elmgreen-dragset-isaac-julien-sarah-sze-doug-aitken-interview

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/poster-power-dramatic-impact-political-art/

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/activist-art

Our project is for the week is to create several placards focused on our protest. It should all be mainly focused on typography. In the launch we were shown few artist work to give us an idea and to understand what’s been expected. In the launch, Occupy London: J Barnbrook was shown with his mainly type posters, also protein man Stanley Green’s work was very interesting. Using these artists as influence we’re asked to create several placards which one in the style of Stanley Green. To start off the project I made a map mind of everything that comes to my mind and researched about artists shown in the launch presentation.

To start off with I made notes of ket features in each artists work shown to us and they were mainly heavy weight fonts. The work I liked the in J. Barnbrooks is the financial times where he mixed few fonts together. I think that looks really good and very effective. Also, at the end of the projects we were given further research links I searched up Liz Mcquistons work. Her work is very interesting and can be easily applied to our project. It has a strong effect in the posters. The main feature which stood out to me was the ripped effect. This gave me the idea of a sexist quote which then is ripped apart and the word is replaced. Looking at her work really gave me few ideas. I then thought more about these sexists quotes then maybe we could do a stencil and spray them on a big A2 cardboard. This could be done for Stanley Greens placard. I then saw the poster hang up on the wall in the graphics corridor which is a tweet from Trump. I thought I could use the sexists quotes said in the society about gender colours put them in a quotation. Dan already had an ideas about his quotes and about crossing out words. So, combining mine and his idea we said this could be will one of the placards we will make.

I did research about  fonts on Adobe Typekit to find fonts which are heavy weight, fits the context and also chose both feminine and masculine fonts which we could use in placards. The next step for me was to find sexists quotes so I did some research and thought about what do people say when a boy wears pink or girl wears blue. Gathered all these stereotypical sayings and quickly sketched them in my sketchbook. The next stage is to decide on the font we will use and colour scheme.

GENDER COLOURS RESEARCH

Doing some research on our protest topic would really help us understand the matter and develop our knowledge so we can produce good outcomes which reflects peoples thoughts and opinions about the topic.

“If you go back to the 18th century, little boys and little girls of the upper classes both wore pink and blue and other colors uniformly,” said Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology, in New York. In addition,  pink was even considered to be a masculine color. In old catalogs and books, pink was the color for little boys, said Leatrice Eiseman, a color expert and executive director of the Pantone Color Institute.

An article titled “Pink or Blue,” published in the trade journal The Infants’ Department in 1918, said that the generally accepted rule is pink for boys and blue for girls. The reason for pink being a boys colour is that it’s been more decided and strong colour. Yet blue is is more delicate and dainty which they said was suitable for a girl. So if the gender colours were completely different back then what changed the concept. Looking into gender colours shows that it is socially constructed, it changes depending on time and place. In the articles, it says that the whole change happened when manufacturers wanted to sell more infant and kids clothes. So they started to colour code clothes in 19th Century before then most children wore white clothes. However, especially in America this colour coding changed as in some states some brands used blue for boys and pink for girls. But in other states it was vice versa. Stores like Best & Co. in Manhattan and Marshall Field in Chicago branded pink as a boy’s color. Others like Macy’s in Manhattan and Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia identified pink as a girl’s color. Artists had a big impact of the colour coding  such as 18th Century paintings by Henry Huntington. His painting ‘The Blue Boy’ a boy dressed in blue and ‘Pinkie’ a young girl dressed in pink. To him he had a colour code in his paintings to identify gender. So many people accepted this as the right way and associated blue for boys and pink for girls.

As I was reading some articles I came across even in 1884 FDR was photographed at the age 2 and dictated that boys wore dresses until the age of 6 or 7. In todays society, a boy wearing pink is seen so rebellious and against the masculine culture which they are immediately labelled as ‘gay’ or ‘not manly’. It’s clearly not acceptable for boys to wear dresses in todays society.

                                     Franklin Roosevelt wears a dress, New York 1884.

References:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/12/health/colorscope-pink-boy-girl-gender/index.html

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/

 

Today we had our presentation. Some of the group members didn’t send in their work but we added in all of the work we’ve done. Our oxymorons were liked and we had few feedbacks from David. He said he can see collaboration between me and Dans work but not in other works. For next project, we said we will communicate more often about our work which will help us make better outcomes. The next project us focused on graphics and we’re making placards. After the presentation we had the project launch.

The final oxymoron I sent is:

 

I started to digitalise the sketches on the sketchbook on Illustrator. To create the hand I used paintbrush tool and thinner strokes to create the outlines first. Once I had the outline done I added some thick strokes in darker areas of the hand and kept some strokes thinner for lighter areas. The illustation  below is the first draft which I like the outcome. I then created the gender symbols in pink and blue then placed them in the palm which looks like its been squeezed. For the bursting colours I thought about using other colours as well as pink and blue.  As a first draft it does work out but I’m not happy with the hand as it doesn’t look so neat and the colours bursting I’m not sure if they all go well together.

 

As I was struggling with the hand illustration I thought about scanning the sketches I made on my sketchbook and using them. I scanned the drawings which had more detail. I then added the gender symbols in more solid block way to change the style. I tried with and without colours bursting I think I like it more with the colours bursting out because it fits in with the purpose of our campaign. The colours are the same but I made them smaller than before as I think they were too big in the first one. I’m not sure on using the scanned images because I think they’re too detailed and I wanted to keep it very clean. I could add a color to the hand rather than keeping it black and white it might be lost with the vibrant colours.

 

These two are the final designs which I feel confident with, there are two versions. The first one is under a skin toned light yellow background with thinner strokes on hard and blue and pink strokes exploding. I changed my idea on different colours bursting because I think the meaning of the act gets losts if there’s other colours as well. So I kept it very simple also it links with Dans video better because he used only blue and pink. The second version is white thicker but simple strokes in the hand and only colour in the hand with white background. When I asked my team members they chose the second version. I agree with them as the second version is clean, simple and it does show the messages clearly. The bursting colours are lot bigger and spread out but as the hand is filled with colour it all balances each other out. I’m very happy with the outcome and Dans video as well. We had many ideas but chose this one which we think fits the protest manifesto.