Methods and Madness

The methods of madness or madness of the method.

Shooting StarsCertainly shot into the strars

Paper CoInteresting to say the least

BiographyGood fun that one

Shooting Stars

The shooting stars brief was a great opportunity to sculpt an opinion on what was happening within the news and media throughout the past months. I had followed the news throughout the summer. Another War had started in another oil rich country. One of the most circulated papers in Britain had fallen to a outrageous revelation of foul play. Riots of greed run free within our society (day to day dealings of the stock market) and did so in the london riots especially. There has been more news regurgitated this year than in any, I feel anyway. It has been hard to keep up with and have a valuable opinion. Being asked

to have one was a challenge.

The epicenter of any democracy, the media, had shown its true colors. How country is now fighting another War and our confusing economy is apparently in a complete mess. I have fairly strong feelings on all of these issues.

How do i communicate these to an audience?

Our medium was moving image. I love film, moving image etc. Cinematography is a love of mine. Roger deacons and Mathieu Kassovitz inspire me every time i watch one of there films. The moving photograph, this is what i wanted my work to capture. Just a moment in time. I wanted to

film something. What did i want to film?

I created a narrative. Set in 2033 with two characters, 13 and 33. I wanted to somehow touch on more than one subject within the 1 minute time frame that we were allowed, so a conversation over a smoke seemed a good place to start. I wanted to capture just a moment out of a day, just grab a minute out of the day and show my

opinion through that.

11th of september 2033

13: its 9/11 today...

33: has it been that long

13: isn’t it funny how much has changed...since the towers fell

33: well our ability to adapt is part of our survival

13: yeah, i think we have, as a collective community.

33: the media has changed and the politics.

13: they changed and grew together...i mean imagine post 9/11 living, how on earth do you think people coped?? they were just constantly lied to , never ending cycles of jargonistic propaganda , fed more and more popular culture, showbiz and celebrity, unaware of others agendas.

33: they just lied....

13: times like those have passed now, like the media machine would churn out bullshit people printed what ever the government wanted them to print, to get votes...remember the Murdoch empire?? They’re more accountable now.

33: uhuh...Murdoch did well, he was a business man, his business was just manipulation though..9/11 is a big deal, its a symbol of a past time, of something that you and i haven’t experienced. something that had so much impact on the world.

13: the propaganda definitively worked, they went to war because of it... imposed anti terror laws on their own people. People could just be searched for no reason. The police had too much authority and no sense of moral responsibility. They basically bullied them..

33: it wasn’t their fault man, it was the fat cat blue blood politicians behind them, and the money men.

13: they just lied through their teeth

33: they lied to the masses because they had made an idiot society, feeding them uninformative, skewed versions of the truth. i mean look at the media campaign after 9/11...

33.TEEEEERRRRROOOORRRRRR...

(BOTH LAUGH)

33: they invaded Iraq with that media campaign...

13: imagine if people hadn’t woken up, they hadn’t changed....

33: we would be lab rats, controlled with little chips in the back of your neck and went you were late for work they would just turn you off...they would have invented an implant to destroy human emotion and soul...be stuck in that whirlwind of extreme capitalism, consumer rubbish, hardly anything was sustainable, not a lot people were happy. They kept the poor poor and the rich rich...

13: yeah man

33: there was no peace..

I sat with Ashley Moore( Music Journalism), a friend and brother in arms. We talked over the script and then approached Drew Wills (GDNM), another companion and we talked over how we were going to film this piece.

We decided that a continuous track shot would be most appropriate, we had a location and shot the film but disaster struck, Technical failure on the part of my laptop and the version of After Effects i was using (sorry Mark). We then shot a version in front of a fire. A slow zoom out from a full frame shot of the fire to a shot of the conversation. Our hands were passing in front of the fire as the zoom came out to reveal whom they belonged to. We shot this on a Film camera and after rendering I did not have the software to hack the task in hand. Another fail and proof that when working in moving image some

attention to the technical side is worth having.

My finally crack at cracking the piece came late one night in my room. I decided to act the whole script myself. A schizophrenic conversation between me and myself. Acting ‘crazy’ somewhat appealed to me and i feel that it is an interesting piece that captures what i intended it to. Possibly, a schizophrenic conversation between me and myself does distract from the message but i feel it does

engage the audience due to its strangeness.

Paper Co

The paper Co brief was an interesting task to say the least. One comment from a student in relation to this brief “I would sell my soul for Money.” Why? Why is what I

thought and why is still what I think.

Ville Niemi and I worked on this together. Virgin was our first idea but to be honest informing people of how good a MASSIVE COOPERATION is was not really my idea of creating good design right now. Design should be more

than fucking advertising...We decided to work on the government brief, Fire safety leaflet. We saw an opportunity to create some information graphics that had to capture an extremely large audience. This was our challenge and the challenge identified by the government. How do you capture an audience enough to communicate the vital information that we had to give? How do you communicate ‘yet another piece’ of

government information?

How could a �re start?Think about heaters, lighting, naked

Have you found anything that could start a �re?Make a note of it.

People at risk

Who could be at risk? Who could be especially at risk?

Make a note of them.

What could burn?

Have you found anything that could burn?Make a note of it.

People at riskFire hazards 21

Evaluate

1 and 2

Yes No

Yes No

Protect

How can you make sure everyone is safe in case of �re?

Yes No

Yes No

Yes No

How will everyone escape?

Yes No

to , even at night

Yes No

Yes No

Yes No

Remove and reduce risk

Yes No

Yes No

Yes No

Yes No

Evaluate and act3

Train

Have you?Have you?

Yes No

Yes No

Yes No

Yes No

Yes No

Yes No

Record

must

Yes No

Plan

Yes No

Yes No

Record, plan and train

Review

4

5

Here are the spreads for the pages of the booklet:

Our method was illustration and very simple, striped back, modernist design. We made a booklet that could be

folded out into a poster.

As you can see the illustration takes a very simple style on board. We wanted this simplistic illustration because it allowed us to communicate very easily. The style is soft and has a hand rendered touch to it. We wanted to break with the convention of train and airplane information graphics yet pay homage to it. Remix the style and re-

introduce it in a different context.

Helvetica is used. It is renowned for its simple look and amazing readability. Black on white was chosen as it is the easiest colour scheme to read. This also allowed us to use colour more effectively throughout the piece. If you start in a minimal fashion then anything you add comes

into question and more concise design takes place.

After our meeting at PaperCo Ville and I came back with only a few changes to make. The Pitch was good and we felt that our idea was strong. Our feedback mirrored this. ‘ I could give this booklet to each member of staff here’ was

one of the comments from our feedback.

The Booklet gave an opportunity for a 1st person experience when connecting with the piece. The Checklist gave direct instruction and forces the viewer to interact with the piece. The poster allowed groups of people to access vital information and view it from a far. A helpful

reminder on the wall.

I was engaged by the brief but felt the manor in which is was presented to us was hugely elaborate and fairly silly. Going to the BAFTAS etc. I felt that in the eyes of the institute a brief like this was the most important thing we had done. I personally don’t think that any of these briefs gave opportunity for true innovation or came anywhere

near solving the issues of today.

Biography

I worked in collaboration once again with Ville Niemi and Kevin Fitzpatrick. We did not have a name between us. We chose Guy Fawkes. The brief asked us to research into the name. Guy Fawkes had an extremely good Wiki page and we went from there. The research consisted of some first hand research into symbolism. We took a V for vendetta mask and put it in epsom. Nothing really happened and we all agreed the experiment was bit of a ‘flop’. We wanted to illustrate our findings. Inspired by Robert Rubbish and Le Gun we started to

work on one page, one drawing, all together now!

We chose to collectively draw our own version of the tale ‘The Gunpowder Plot’. This historic event inspired us greatly. We chose to create a time line. We hadn’t talked of how this drawing was going to look, in terms of style. That didn’t matter as we each brought our own style and this was about celebrating that. The process of drawing together started with a quick mapping out of the layout and then we were away. As we were drawing we re told the story to each other, reminding, etc. This helped to install the information into our heads,

collective research and learning is powerful.

Our method of researching the actual event were 100% on the computer. Why not? What this allowed us to do was collectively collate information very fast. Within 5 minuets all of us understood a general version of the Gunpowder plot. 1st stop wikipedia. Wikipedia is a great starting point on the internet. The bibliography and reference

spaces often lead to some very constructive finds.

Ville had never experienced burning a Guy, this was made complete sense as it is a celebration of Protestants over Catholics In Britain. It is an example of the legacy that follows terrorist attacks. We burnt a

guy and filmed it. Watch it here:

http://vimeo.com/33570350

Understanding weaknesses and strengths was critical. Each method has its strengths and each has a weakness. Drawing allowed us to display the finding from the internet, we then put the piece back on the

internet, you can view it here:

This allowed us to show our work to anyone who cares to view it. Disseminating through the internet is incredibly powerful. It gave us

a point that all the work could be collated on.

My independent practice started as simple drawing with a calligraphy pen. I have been using the tool for a while now and i feel i am getting somewhere with it. My free hand style is becoming increasingly better and worse. I find myself going in circles until a little improvement or stroke changes everything and a new style is born. I find it hard to be patient with this work and find it easy to get distracted. This is something that needs to change. How would this work be disseminated, who knows. The best answer i can give is somewhere out on a wall

possibly. Out in the public space, a space that is free.

Independent practice

Help

Peace, War, Love Hate

I have taken my style sidewards and i started scanning my type in. Rather than the autographic the critical aspect of the computer came heavily into play. The computer is an ever bettering tool that im just getting to grips with. These are works in progress, Ideas starting

points etc.

Typography is difficult and a challenge that i wish to continue with. I think autographical calligraphy is something that i will carry on with also. I feel that it is going well just slowly. Have time, take care, take

time have care. Learn some patience.

I created this type face out of rules: Squares + 45 degree lines at 0.25pt. The abstract nature i found appealing. It makes it an anti read typeface, more of a code. you can hide what your saying in the

type.

z

a b c d e

f g h i j

k l m n o

p q r s t

u v w x y

Photography is also another medium i have been exploring, i have 4 rolls of film that have not yet been developed. I try to experiment with my photography. I did so with the tilt shift lens. I tried to capture people with my photography. I got one women and a couple of my mates. I think Photographs should be viewed as large as possible and

without distraction.

Independent practice and Studio Practice have both proven difficult for me to fully engage with, my mind is like a sparkler. I get an idea and it goes of rapidly on loads of little tangents. I think i have started to find my feet with this whole design thing. I am excited about next year and i feel some old habits will be kicked out swiftly. Focus is now

the name of the game.

For me the lab didn’t happen this year. What happened was a week of valuable talks. That wasn’t Lab. See you in Lab next semester, starting with two weeks of lab is a dream! I feel inspired and see it as

such a critical two week period.

My work does not hold as much purpose as my thinking does. Is the only roll of a designer to sell others product or work? Is the end product always to create capital? I Feel as if the pressures of the system we live in now almost eradicate what it is to be a creative. But then I pick up a

pencil. Lets all build a geodesic dome and live in it. Fin