Contextual Review

During Part One of Graphic Communications I have been enlightened to many aspects of design and communication and having the opportunity to explore these avenues has given me more insight to my specialist choice, Illustration.

To begin the course, Ideas Factory definitely opened my eyes to different ways of thinking about approaching a project. Previously I hadn’t been trained to think about concepts in more abstract ways rather than just literal which made for some more unexpected outcomes. My initial approach to the words “air, wrap and futurism” had me thinking of futuristic dystopian landscapes and city-scapes so researching different types of futurism and the works of Lebbeus Woods led me to my outcomes. Woods’ often thought about how architecture can affect the societies around it, and so I thought about making a futuristic installation by a traffic crossing to raise awareness to air pollution, as increasing air pollution in the future is inevitable. I tried to represent the juxtaposition of polluted air to purified air and the effects it may have on an individual. Bringing this idea to life through my illustrations has been my most effective way of working, and for the proposal I refined my ideas into a campaign type poster.

The introduction to Core Design and Typography Say it Loud gave me an insight to the use of text and how to manipulate the presentation of the words to convey specific feelings. Researching designers like Bob and Roberta Smith, his bold approach to presenting slogans and his distaste for any rules and expectations had me thinking about the bold ways to approach my typographic outcomes.

My approach to the topic of “fear” was supposed to convey a sense of discomfort and paranoia while also contrasting this with the choice of font to question the original fear and its power over you, and I think working with someone else’s “fears” and using it as a basis for my outcome was very effective. With Making Meaning, I was inspired by how meaning within words can be found and interpreted in any way you choose, but taking this and making it into a coherent idea took an interesting detour and I find that this is effective for my idea development. After taking a piece of text from some type of food packaging, my original intention was to make a type a product campaign about water scarcity and drought around the world, and this had me thinking about water as a human necessity and how many are denied access to this. The final outcome of this unintentionally turned into a kind of horror film, featuring the product of the “medicine/water bottle” presented in a very thrilling and unsettling way with added sound effects to enhance the ambience. I thought that creating a video would improve the representation of necessity and desperation through visual and auditory methods. When developing a poster the two previous tasks aided me with new ideas in terms of conveying meanings through words and images. As visualising my ideas through sketches and drawings is my main method of conceptualising my thoughts, the phrase “whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard” initially reminded me of escapism or rebellion and so transferring these drawn ideas into a more refined visual concept was a successful approach. By Hand made me think about how a feeling of organic energy can be carried through text and lettering, and it is quite comparable to the liberating feeling of illustrating my ideas.

Still and Moving Image intrigues me in the way that reality can be captured through a camera and altered and presented in any way. Do, Undo, Redo gave me the opportunity to convey ideas through physical objects; in this instance clothes and materials. The fluidity of this medium was a refreshing way of working. Researching the Riot Grrrl movement and the concept of fanzines, my final approach to this was a punk inspired fanzine presenting the 3 different categories since the punk movement heavily promoted non conformity and self-expression.

From researching the design collective Letterproeftuin and their attitudes to experiencing “the fun in the printing process” it made me appreciate the Drawing into Print workshop, and I have always enjoyed exploring traditional printing methods and how to implement them with my illustrated ideas.

Developing concepts using these methods within different pathway introductions has given me a lot of insight into different forms of communication. Considering all the workshops, conceptualising and executing a creative process comes most naturally to me when physically drawing and illustrating and I wish to develop these skills in the future to see how I can combine them with communication techniques. I believe taking the Illustration pathway would be the best way for me to communicate my ideas.

Dezeen. 2019. Lebbeus Woods archives | Dezeen. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.dezeen.com/tag/lebbeus-woods/

Wikipedia. 2019. Riot grrrl - Wikipedia. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_grrrl.

Wikipedia. 2019. Retrofuturism - Wikipedia. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrofuturism.

LETTERPROEFTUIN. 2019. LETTERPROEFTUIN. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.letterproeftuin.com/.