Connor

Communication Design Studies Visual Diary

[connormcnamara]

REFLECTION

When coming into this course, some of my person objectives were to learn a bit more about the history of design and to continue designing and expanding my skills through a range of different methods and media’s. I can say confidently that with each lecture I learnt more and more about all the introductions and movements throughout the history of design, I also feel within the workshops in this course I was able to learn new many new techniques to help with ‘pushing my design until it breaks’.

 While I found many of the movements we looked at in the lectures such as the early print stuff like Gutenberg’s influence and the bold, exotic work done by the Memphis group in the 80s, I was most intrigued by the influence of the Bauhaus and its impact on how art and design is taught.

 Throughout the semester I also really enjoyed the hands-on nature of the classes and the time we got to explore, think and create freely with a range of different materials and methods in groups. In particular I feel as though the collage making and prototyping really and helped me expand my ideas and I also loved learning my about zines and in the future, I aim to explore print design even more.

 Thanks for a great semester Andy and Karen!

[patriciaco]

Generative Design

Generative design is a revolutionary new method of creating artwork, models and animations from sets of rules, or algorithms.

Cedric Kiefer and Julia Laub are the creators behind the book Generative Gestaltung; and founders of Onformative, a studio of digital art and design based in Berlin. Their work is focused on driving past the boundaries of design by using alternate mediums like coding, lights, music and even dancing. They explain that they deal with topics that interest them, such as scientific subjects and topics based on nature and current issues.Their process is very open and experimental, first they look at the topic and what they want to express with it and then they choose the medium to express it. 

The book »Generative Gestaltung« deals with the creation of images by using codes. An image is no more created manually but through a visual idea which is translated into a set of rules and then implemented in a programming language in the form of source code. The consequence is that such a program can not only create a single image but also completely re-design visual worlds by changing the parameters.

- Onformative

The fact that Cedric and Julia studied communication design and are now the authors of a book that has become one of the key reference works on generative design inspires me as a comm design student to look beyond simple design solutions and explore more processes to express my creative ideas. 

Full article: https://www.freundevonfreunden.com/workplaces/cedric-kiefer-julia-laub/

[berber1998]

POST MODERN ART...

Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath.  Post Modern art began in the late 20th century and is still going today, some of the known famous Post Modern artist which made an impact are   David Salle known for the drunk painting.  Robert Rauschenberg also a famous artist  an American painter and graphic artist .

[multcolib]

A current project in our special collections is to enhance the cataloging of our incunabula and early manuscripts collection, so we’re spending more time with these beauties including this copy of Petrarca’s Opera Latina, printed by Johann Amerbach in Basel in 1496, with this being a particularly handsome rubricated leaf…

[connormcnamara]

As looked at in the week 5 lecture, here’s some “Incunabula” which was early printed books after the invention of Gutenberg's press and until 1501 in Europe.

[manandmanandman]

[connormcnamara]

Memphis breaking into the shoe scene!

[nordacious]

🔼 memphis ascension 🔼

[connormcnamara]

I didn’t do as much research as I would have liked through the semester so I thought I’d take the time to look into some of the area’s we covered now. One of the those being the Memphis group which emerged in the 1980’s in Italy, the Memphis group focused on design that was, exotic, bold, colourful and asymmetrical. I actually really like the power of the Memphis style when implemented into architecture such as these stairs.

[joannetriesdatavis]

- Final Reflective Statement -

Entering this course, based on what the course would offer, some of my personal objectives were to learn how to work with materials, and to expand my general knowledge of design (the practice, the industry, history, etc). I certainly feel like I’m well more comfortable working with materials now than I first was when I entered the course, but I admit that there is still much ground to cover. However, I’ve learned many new things about design through Andy’s lectures.

It was fascinating to learn about early printing, post-modernism, and the Bauhaus “movement”. I also enjoyed the skills I picked up over the semester, like prototyping, planning, group-work, zine-making, and doing design research. The most inspiring were the concepts I’ve delved into, like design ethics and artist’s books.

I was mostly inspired by Andy & Karen throughout the course, and it was a great privilege to learn from them directly (so many lessons that couldn’t fit into less than 200 words.) Going forward, I plan on developing my zine and collaging skills, and exploring more of that intersection between art & design, which is essentially what the course has taught me so far.

—

Since it’s our last piece of assessment, I just decided to have a little fun with it. Thank to the extra free time now, I went for doodling and illustrating my reflective statement, at least to decorate this Tumblr one last time.

The sincerest thank you to Andy & Karen for conducting such fun, engaging class activities and lectures, and for making me feel excited about becoming a creative in the real world.

Cheers, everyone. x

[connormcnamara]

Love the graphics, very relevant!

[alice-cohen]

WEEK 11 LECTURE: 

This week we discussed the future of design and what our role is as designers. Erik Kessel’s ‘24 Hrs in Photos’ demonstrates how the internet and its users are bombarded with countless images everyday. This provokes the question of whether or not your imagery is going to have a lasting impression or if it’s just going to get quickly lost and consumed unless it’s done for the greater community. 

[connormcnamara]

Powerful image, really makes you think about how you can elevate your design to have a lasting impact 

[milovisuell]

Memphis Group

GRAP2199 | Week #9 | Lecture/Relevant research

The Memphis-filled apartment of Raquel Cayre. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

1986

Pee-wee’s Playhouse debuts. The spirit of the Memphis style (though not necessarily the philosophy) enters the mainstream. The movie Ruthless People, drenched in Memphis-inspired décor, comes out that year, too.

October 1991

Karl Lagerfeld, who filled his Monaco home with Memphis furniture, sells his entire collection at Sotheby’s.

February 2016

Supreme releases an apparel-and-skate-deck collection designed by Alessandro Mendini, who exhibited in the first Memphis show.

Schwartzberg L. (2017). The Memphis Design Movement Is Having a Moment. Retrieved from https://www.thecut.com/2017/05/the-memphis-design-movement-is-having-a-moment.html

[jamietung]

Memphis is just wonderful

[wotf-isthis-blog]

Memphis is just so fun! 💛

[highlybodacious-blog]

Those Supreme decks are so cool

[sineadhdesign]

the colours and shapes are e v e r y t h i n g

[connormcnamara]

I love how bold and fun the Memphis style is!

[jordanrendevski-design-deactiva]

REPRESENT

Throwback to one of our first lectures, when we decided it would be a good idea to have a gang sign.

Use this gif to show your allegiance. 

[connormcnamara]

Assessment 3- “Ask Me Anything”

Here is my final presentation for the “Ask me anything” assignment, not really sure what to call it but the idea is that each of the five questions are on a different ‘layer’ in the overall Photoshop document as my chosen designer, Nikola Vukotic works primarily in the area of Sports Design and photo manipulation within photoshop.

[connormcnamara]

Communication Design Studies workshop 18/4/18 

In this workshop Andy and Karen ran through how to best use InDesign for laying and and setting up a zine which providing us with some handy tricks and shortcuts. This prompted me to look further into what other shortcuts and tools I didn’t know about and according to the picture below there was a fair few.

[connormcnamara]

Communication Design Studies Lecture 18/4/18

This lecture focused on the future of design and we looked at  a number of strategies used by artists and designers for dealing with the  endless flow of images and visual material. But from this lecture I was most intrigued by learning that adobe have been collected data via creative cloud in order to drive an  artificial intelligence project called Sensei.

[berber1998]

I was very happy with my chosen questions and how the artist answered them straight to the point and also in depth too allowing the reader to get to know the artists more even though there are brief questions

[lydiarosejones-blog]

Ask Me Anything!

I thought it would be a good idea to share the finished product of my Ask me Anything! assignment, I created a jam-packed and vibrant interactive A5 book to represent the colourful and paper filled world of Tommy Perez.

All images were taken from the Instagram page and Website of Tommy Perez, I am quite pleased with how the book turned out, the binding was by stitching in the centre of the pages and hard folding of 200 gsm paper. 

[connormcnamara]

This little details and interactivity in this is amazing !

[connormcnamara]

Communication Design Studies Workshop 11/5/18

In this workshop we explored the idea of prototyping. This allowed us to experiement with bringing our ideas to life in physical form. As my designer designer focuses primarly on using photoshop to create image manipulations I plan to have a strong link to Photoshop in the final design and I had been considering utilising the Photoshop interface within the design to create this link. 

By Prototyping I was able to further explore this idea and came up with a concept of having the Interface as a base with each page being a different layer as pictured below.

[stefcheng]

Progress #9 - Ask me anything!

YOOOOOO guess who just made their first pull tab book thingy! I did! And also pretty successful too… the making of this reminded me of the days back in primary school :) Currently I’m just focusing on elements of the zines that I might like to include.. once I’m happy, I’ll try and see how to combine them all into a foldable zine! I managed to fold out the house-like zine that i sketched - which was a success! 

PROGRESS #9.5 - ASK ME ANYTHING!

I actually got another reply from one of my creatives! Super exciting! However, I’m having a really hard time choosing which creative i should end up doing. I think I might end up doing both of them, but turn in one that I like most! It’ll be a great opportunity to be in contact with them too :)

[connormcnamara]

I really like the pull tab idea!