Communication Design Studies

Comm Design Student | Melbourne | Follow me on Instagram @sillycrayons

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FOOD Assignment

http://studio1commdesign.tumblr.com/

Created a new blog for the current assignment, will be posting to the blog in the link above :) 

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Fails

03/06/2016

Well other than the fail of not getting an email back from the two creatives on my list and having to beg the girl I knew from high school to help me out, I have made many other fails on this project....including my expectations, planning things before I get emails back from people (ok no, that may have been a good thing) 

Alright but physical, work related fails...printing. Do you know how hard printing this is?! I had pages print upside down...and I have no clue why. I never had this problem printing my magazine in year 12...it pretty much printed out perfectly the first time I attempted it. Why did pages print out so weirdly when I tried it now? My friend told me when she printed hers the exact same thing happened to her too and she had to trial several prints over and over. 

Above is an A3 print I trialled, three of the pages came out upside down. I’m not really sure why it decided to do this. My friend said this was common though even when you put things right side up. 

I did want my zine printed on thick paper anyway, especially so that it would take up most of the space in the case and appear thick, taking up the space where the CD insert piece was. It was also prefect for the front image I created for the case.

Therefore I decided to print the pages one sided instead and stuck them together with double sided tape to have them double sided as well as create thickness. It ended up working well. But to get to that there were fails. 

To get to any of this really there were fails...I have been noticing this lately, that failure isn’t so bad. It stresses me out as I clutch my heart, breathing heavily as I slowly sink in the waters of insanity...but I need to learn that failure isn’t something to stress over. If something doesn’t work you have to just breath, stop look at what you HAVE, the good parts and not what you don’t have done and the negative parts. Things can be fixed and it’s something to learn from. Also sometimes failures can lead to greater things like the final outcome of all of this :) 

Failures, they’re stressful and disheartening but they are also great and sometimes lead to beautiful things. 

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A closer look

03/06/2016

So here I just wanted to show you guys some of the finer, up close details of the zine and casing. Here on the edge I have painted it in with nail polish just to add a little more to this clear case.

Also as you can see I also painted in the stables, making them match the pink. I have seen this done with many of the zines at Sticky, one zine in particular by Mel Stringer titled ‘Every Morning’ where the stables were the same pink as that used within the zine. I feel like this is a feature that adds to the design, hence it becomes more of an aesthetic aspect than just something used to hold the zine together. 

Above are just two of the pages within the zine. I wanted to keep it simple as I have said and just put my creative’s work on the left and the questions and answers/text pages on the right in the font “impact”. 

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Reflection - Ask me anything

03/06/2016

This was much more stressful than I had initially imagined. I initially emailed Becca Clason and had 4 other creatives in mind. I went into this wanting badly to interview someone who worked with typography, I just feel like getting insight into the way they work, what got them into lettering and all such things would have been inspiring. I also really wanted to incorporate my own lettering into presenting this project, unfortunately I didn’t get to do any of this, I didn’t get an email back from Becca on my questions after getting an email from her that she would happily take up my questions... and there was one week left.

With panic consuming every part of me I quickly punch in an email to Mel Stringer, the last creative on my list, mistakenly sure that I’d get an email back....WRONG! And now here I am about to have a heart attack and break down crying, “WHY?! Why will they not email me back?!”

I then quickly email a girl I got to know briefly in high school. This completely threw me off really, I had a plan and had expectation in the way I would work but now interviewing and having to present Christina’s work gave me a challenge. I didn’t know much about her work and had no idea how I’d ever go about partnering with presenting work of hers. I have always felt that her style was so much more different than mine and honestly I was so scared to email her...scared that I wouldn’t get answers from her but also scared that I would because there’s so much to think about when presenting any creative’s work, you need to be respectable and present their work in a way that presents their work, heroes in on their work, them and their personality and style. 

I have to admit, with Christina’s work this was a challenge, at first I was so lost. How would I be able to work with some’s work that is massively different from my style and the way I work? After getting my answers from her though and reading that music was a massive influence to her work I decided to play off that. 

Her art seemed to have this grudge, alternative style to it I felt. It reminded me a lot of alternative music and so the idea of enclosing the small zine I made in a CD case was perfect. 

I decided to keep the design of the inside zine quite minimal, quite simple much like how she thinks of her work and herself, just a simple girl making simple art that she hopes inspires other’s the way music inspires her. I suppose this is another reason why I wanted to enclose her work and her answers in a zine because when she opens up music she is inspired...perhaps when someone opens this CD case to this zine of her they’ll be inspired. I wanted to create some correlation like this. 

Also wanted to note, I deiced to add extra pink to the stables punched through the zine and the CD case as seen on the edges. These were created by painting them using hot pink nail polish. I figured this would just add to the lovely pink on the CD cover and zine cover. 

I am actually really happy with this. Things happen for a reason and perhaps I was never meant to interview any of the five creative’s initially on my list. Interviewing someone I knew made me think harder and challenged my thinking. It made me think more about how I could highlight just their work and when considering Becca I never thought about the way I would present it, I had the idea that it would just go into a booklet. In interviewing Christina I could also consider asking more personal questions and thinking about how I could make this project more personal to the creative, how I could choose the format, type and layouts. So I guess I should have never panicked or been disappointed not to get an email from my two previous creative’s because it opened up new doors for me and I couldn’t have been more happy with that.

I got to learn so much from this, make new revelations. It doesn’t matter that someone’s work is strikingly different, nor does it matter if they work in something you don’t. Sometimes these are the best people’s work to work with in creating something, you get to learn something so different and sometimes it’s nice working in a style you aren’t comfortable with. I think sometimes from adopting another’s style and still incorporating your own can create interesting results and you learn so much.

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Work In Progress - Ask me anything

3/06/2016

The first thing I went into doing after getting the answers back from my creative was to look at the work she sent me to add into the zine. I wanted to get a sense of the style and feel of her work. I noticed Christina had several images with pink within her work and so I decided to use this. I also went through her Instagram and noted that she mentioned her style was quite simple. Hence I decided to go with trying to keep this zine rather simple to keep with her style. 

After looking through her Instagram and keeping note she heavily uses music to influence her work I decided to search up some alternative music albums. 

I came across one of her images on Instagram that use a label-like font and noticed this similar front used on ‘Snow Patrols’ cover. I like this front, it’s unique but simple, blocky and was reminiscent of her stencilled graffiti work. The font I used her is ‘Impact’.

I also came across the zine below found at the following link: http://www.pikaland.com/2010/04/02/review-whatcha-mean-whats-a-zine/

I liked the cut out and pasted look, I felt this was simple and would fit in with Christina’s style. The font ‘Impact’ was perfect for depicting this cut out look.

I also was caught by the cover for flume’s ‘Disclosure’. I knew I wanted to add photos of my creative somewhere and so wanted to research into music artists that took on unique ways of profile photo style album covers. I also looked into Hasley’s and Bank’s album covers. I liked the one below though and wanted to overlay a kind of outline over her face using my own style, of course. This is where the pink came into play. I wanted to work with an overlay look as she did with one of her works that use photo and graffiti work.

So above were the two covers I had the option of, I was only going to use one of these in my design but in the final design I decided, hey, why not use both? You’ll see why I did this later ;)

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Idea dump - Ask me Anything

31/05/2016

Here is just a sketch and brainstorm of ideas. I am going with the idea of creating a zine that fits into a CD case. I don’t want to give the impression however and lead to much into people thinking my creative is a music artist so I am going to stick to not using a CD as sketched above on one of the pages and just want to use the CD case as an added feature rather than the main feature. I am also wanting to just touch on the idea of my creative’s musical influence by using inspiration for the design from alternative music artists mainly as I noticed she is into a lot of these artist and I see that her art has a similar alternative feel to it not dissimilar to these particular music artists. 

I ruled out the idea to use a cassette case quite quickly after thinking about how my creative should be represented and how alternative music is represented, it does have this washed out, almost vintage, grudge feel at times but it is still also fresh and modern on it’s take so I am going to go with the CD case instead for that similar feel and make the zine that will fit inside a bit grudgy, a bit alternative. I think this will work to highlight her style. 

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Q & A’s

31/05/2016

FINALLY!!! My Q’s have A’s!

Cannot start partying yet though! Anyway so the creative who I am now presenting in my interview is Christina, a girl I went to high school with, currently in year 12 this year. I only just got to find out about her and her work in my final year of school and it’s been great being able to see more of it. 

I don’t want to go posting her work here without her permission so if you’d like to go check out her work please head to her Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/ckyrio/

She works with mainly photography and finds much of her inspiration coming from music, something I find myself finding inspiration from as well.

After not receiving anything from Becca or Mel I reached out to Christina and wrote out new questions for her. I felt I could make these a little more personal than the questions I asked and was planning to ask Becca and Mel, so this was perhaps a positive.

I also got really long, in-depth responses back which was another positive, and I also got insight into her work and it was amazing to hear how similar the way she goes about her work, finding inspiration and many other things she mentioned was unlike things I thought of or do.

Our work may not be similar, our paths leading in different directions to each other but there will always be something that connects creative people to one another. This is just something I wanted to mention that I always find so interesting. 

Moving on, so here are the questions I decided to ask Christina...WITH her answers :)

1. Talk us through how you typically go about a project.

Going about it is a tough one to explain for me to be honest. I'm one of those who honestly loves to get lost about in music, trying to imagine something new to speak about or question. I take myself on a journey in my imagination and piece things together and try to think up scenarios. So the thing you'd see me doing when trying to think up an idea is probably tuning into some music and writing my feelings down.

2. What/Who inspires your work?

I'm inspired by music, music and music. I really like to hear a tune .. And usually within seconds I’d know a vibe of a song. Connecting to how I go about projects, it is what inspires me. The way you feel when you hear something that makes you feel a particular emotion. Although, what challenges my inspiration is video clippings to a song as you can think up whatever you want in your head from just hearing a song. But seeing the real thing chosen by the artist themselves, it makes you see a completely different perspective and I love that. It inspires me so much. It inspires me to try to challenge a viewer.

3. Do you think art and design can change the world? If so, how?

Don't get me wrong, it's been changing the world for a long time. How? It's all from belief, passion and trusting yourself. Trusting yourself that you know that what you just saw could be something else if you were a part of it. Just by making what you want to make, talking to people, reminding them that you understand where they're coming from and making them understand your beliefs. I feel art can be all of us. I get side tracked when answering such a simple question because it can get quite hazy with the ammont of ways you can actually change the world through being creative.

4. What do you hope to one day do with your art? What do you want it to do for people, society or you?

I want to be able to show people that they can challenge their thinking, maybe I could help somebody finally come to a conclusion on what it is they want to produce? There's a lot of people that need that push. I'd possibly want to be known for my own work, but to then help others innovate with the push of my own tweak.

5. What is your favourite media?

Hands down.. My camera.

6. How much of yourself do you show through your work?

All visuals I produce, I try to make it from my perspective as much as possible. Sometimes I'd cut it down a notch just to challenge the audience.

7. What are you currently working on?

I am working on a lot of short films. I haven't made a lot of pieces but I have quite a few bits and pieces, focusing on the moments that we have within our mind or around us that we don't usually take into thought so much.

8. What are some of your favourite projects? Why are these your favourite? What makes them so special?

My favourite project is actually a current one, I've just called it moving images for now. It's creating a clip that only goes for 30 seconds max although majority of the film being the repetition of the last movement seen. This is what I mean, really taking into thought a moment that is easily forgotten about but can now be challenged from seeing it over and over.

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On a search for (Suspect) Creative 2

31/05/2016

Suspect 1 was crossed off the notepad, “how could this be?” she thought, looking out the window into the grey night, rain pelting down on the people that rushed by in long overcoats, umbrella’s shielding them from being pelted with icy cold shards. Her forehead creased and scrunched up in stress the same way the paper she tore out of her notebook did as she pressed the paper tight into her fist and shoved it into the right pocket of the overcoat. She took her badge up, shiny and weighted with responsibility and left the cafe to search out for her next suspect...

Haha, alright, well maybe looking for my next creative didn’t exactly happen like an old detective’s film but it sure makes things sound a lot more interesting and saves you from hearing the stress and panic I went through. Buuuuttt...you’re probably going to hear it anyway, maybe I’ll spare some detail though. 

Right so I quickly decided to email the last *cough* suspect ;) creative on my list, Mel Stringer who I thought was easy to reach and would get back to me within a couple of hours...but this didn’t happen :( 

It is Sunday and I am starting to panic...one week left!! There is literally no time. If the last creative on my list wasn’t going to get back to me who would?! This interviewer needed and interviewee!! (I probably should have taken on the persona of a journalist I am thinking now at the start of this post...it would have fitted better...never mind that...I just thought it’d be fun to add a bit of drama) 

My last and final hope, was a girl I met in high school who was not originally on my list of five creatives. I suppose I wanted to interview someone who did stuff I wanted to and felt I could perhaps do in the future. Although Christina, the girl I am interviewing is still someone who’s work I admire and love I just never thought of her I suppose. “Her work is hers and her style is so different, could I work with that when creating this zine?” Is something I thought, it’s why I didn’t add friends I knew to the list, it’s easier to offend them and their work is so different and I want to highlight their work in this publication and not mine, so and there is this balance you need to find when presenting someone’s work. 

What Christina does I could never do, she describes her work as simple and mainly takes photos. Photography is not a medium I touch all that often. I feel like I am awful at photography and don’t know how to tell a story or make it interesting the way she does. 

This project is definitely challenging me.

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Back to the drawing board

31/05/2016

So as you may have already guessed if you read my previous post...my first creative, Becca Clason hasn’t gotten back to me on my questions, which is just a little disheartening. I did have things put in place too and started planning what the cover and started thinking up ideas for the images I would place in the background for the layouts.

I was really looking forward to trying my hands on typography using materials similar to Becca and so I had sketched out ideas and wrote down some materials I could possibly use.

Before I went into that though I took to writing out ‘Ask me anything’ to get an idea of how this would work on paper before I could start thinking I suppose you could say “outside the page” ...haha, very punny Renae.  Alright, puns aside. 

Basically I was just trying to get a feel for what kind of lettering style I would like, what gave off the feel I wanted, what portrayed the feel of the interview and Becca’s work the best and I obviously had to later think of which one would work with the material I chose. 

(Also to note...yes I even like to make things pretty like this lettering for my brainstorm despite the fact it doesn’t need it...it’s great practise though and feeds the possibly unhealthy addiction I have) Alright so here I just decided to brainstorm possible materials I could use to create the lettering. This brainstorm also feed into ideas for making the questions, my original idea was to create the questions from typography created from food the way Becca Clason does with much of her lettering. I found this would probably be very time consuming though and started thinking instead I could photograph materials scattered over a surface and photograph that to use as a background for the pages. Just things that Becca has used in her own typography to weave into her work.

After brainstorming and looking through Becca’s work and other typography created from food as well as looking at what I had at hand I decided to sketch out some layout ideas for the front page. The front page to me is very important and draws the reader in...people are going to judge a book by it’s cover no matter how many times you tell them not to....also I kinda like books with really great covers in comparison to books that don’t (Don’t look at me like that, I know you do it too) 

So I took this lettering, I liked the curved letters and how it looks free flowing and somewhat welcoming. I also decided on either creating this from sprinkles for a colourful, joyful feel and to make the colours project the diverse nature of Becca’s work or either coffee/hot cocoa powder for a warm, homely, friendly feel. The coffee/hot cocoa idea came from the idea that an interview is undertaken usually in person drinking a hot beverage or a lot of the time getting to know someone or having friends over we sit down and drink hot drinks and eat biscuits. I want to give a sense of feel with that to the readers, to feel welcomed into the life of a creative like Becca, that or see the playfulness in her work by using sprinkles. 

Above are just the quick sketches I made of the idea of using the two different materials for the lettering. The two the the left are the two sketches created having the sprinkles in mind and the one on the right is using coffee/cocoa powder. I also wanted just a few extra pieces thrown in there like a cup, spoons, whisks, chocolate, candles etc. to fill up extra space and give the lettering a background. 

Unfortunately I won’t be able to go through with going outside the paper with this one as I didn’t get a response for my questions. So back to the drawing board it was and onto another creative.

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31/05/2016

Above are a few things I picked up from Sticky Institute a while back. There was a lot of things that caught my attention and the place was absolutely full of inspiration. After not having my first creative get back to me I have had to look at other things for inspiration. The zines from Sticky Institute are one of the many things I am now looking to for inspiration for my new creative. It’s been a while since I have updated on my progress I suppose so I will get into that in my later posts but I didn’t want to forget to post this. 

Something I like about many of the zines in Sticky is the alternative look they have, the grudgy feel they bring. I like that they give this impression that these types of publications were easy and simple to make, thrown together almost but really you can tell there was time and effort put into them. 

Anyway, so hint, hint....kinda the feel I may be throwing in for my new creative ;)

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Questions that need answers - Ask me anything

24/05/2016

Yesterday I decided on a few questions to ask Becca Clason 

I am pretty happy with these questions and can’t wait for a response back :)  Now onto deciding how I will display everything!

Also just wanted to note I do have back up plans if things fail with Becca Clason, although things seem to be running smoothly. I don’t like to think of my other listed creatives as “back ups” though, that sounds really bad...they are all really great and if I could, honestly, I’d interview them all! Haha, however I obviously can’t and so my backup plan is to interview one of my other creatives and just compile it into a zine and go minimalistic much like their style which will work nicely as I don’t want things to look messy and rushed if my first plan fails as one of the things I really want to do with this project is highlight and work with the characteristics of the creative’s work rather than against it. Something I have learnt last year in my art subjects is respecting the work of another artist when using and appropriating it. I don’t want to be disrespecting or displaying a creative’s work that is contradictory to their artistic approach or them as an individual. 

This is just something I really want to be mindful of.

[pkay309]

Playing with Photoshop. #cottoncandy #type #typography #typographyinspired #calligraphy #handlettering #handdrawn #handtype #inkpen #freehand #photoshop #photography

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I realise that perhaps I may not be able to create all my questions from physical materials like I was thinking of doing, perhaps I could do a variety of three dimensional lettering for the questions and two dimensional. Something like this for the two dimensional typography would be nice, laid over a photo.

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Refining Questions - Ask me anything

Today I took to refining my questions, I have loosely grouped them and have disgraced the ones that I didn’t really like so much or wouldn’t be worth asking. 

So I came up with three groupings: 1. Creative Process 2. Influence and inspiration 3. Other (which is a mix of things, mostly just general questions of stuff away from my creative’s work) 

Here are the questions I came down to, which I will of course need to further refine so that I have my lucky 5 :)

CREATIVE PROCESS

1. How does the material you use to create your lettering designs inform the message or vice versa?

2. Talk us through your creative process.

3. What is your favourite material to work with and what are the trickiest you’ve worked with?

4. What was your first attempt at stop-motion and 3D lettering like?

5. How long does it typically take you to assemble your designs?

INFLUENCE AND INSPIRATION

1. What is your fascination with three dimensional lettering and stop-motion?

2. Where does your fascination in typography come from? Where did it all originate?

3. What compels you to create 3D lettering? Do you feel limited at all by 2D typography?

4. Has lettering design been something you have always wanted to pursue? Where did your interest in typography come from?

5. When did you first start playing around with 3D lettering and stop-motion? What got you into doing that?

6. Can you name people or things that inspire your work?

OTHER

1. What are you currently working on?

2. Your typography literally looks good enough to eat! Do you ever give into the temptation to snack while working?

3. What do you do when you’re not making art?

4. Tell us a bit about your studio or where you create.

5. What are some of your favourite things that you have worked on?

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Research for questions - Ask me anything

22/05/2016

So I began my research for questions on this assignment last week. I have been reading and listening to interviews from creatives on several media platforms, magazines, through podcasts and books. I wanted to get an idea for a range or questions, how other’s went about interviewing and I also looked at the responses received from certain questions.

My aim is to receive quite lengthy, in-depth responses, honestly I would love to know quite a bit about Becca Clason and her work. This assignment is of course about delivering something like any assignment but with all assignments we all go about them our own way and create our own goals. Mine would most definitely be to get to know as much as possible from my chosen creative. These creative people are an inspiration to me, Becca’s work I have only just recently found but I am already truly inspired. I have a growing passion for typography and that is only growing more and more each day.

Anyway, I am heading on a tangent. To satisfy what I want to gain from this project I decided to make a list, firstly, of things that would help in my research for questions I would consider asking.

Bronwyn suggested Debbie Millman’s Design Matter’s podcasts to me:

http://www.debbiemillman.com/designmatters/

So the first thing I did was listen through a few of those, mainly the ones she undertook with designers and typographers as the type of questions asked in these I felt would better suit my creative and inform me better on the questions I could potentially ask. Bronwyn mentioned that Debbie Millman usually asked rather interesting, unexpected questions at the start of each interview which I decided to also take note of. Listening for this, I noticed questions about cat’s names, family members and just general things about the creative’s life. This would be a nice ice breaker, especially in a face-to-face interview, it’s a very good technique actually.

The “Books I have” on this list literally just refer to the library books I borrowed....and still haven’t returned...yup, gotta still get onto that. There was one book I had, ‘3D Typography’ by Jeanette Abbink and Emily CM Anderson, which had interviews in the back so I noted some stuff down from that.

Also looked through these lovely things which I once used last year for my interview with two artists for a previous project and they definitely played a MASSIVE help in that so I decided to have a quick flip through them again for this project. The questions here I noticed though there were quite a few generic questions but anything helps and so I jotted some stuff down.

Next I went into of course looking into past interviews that Becca Clason had been a part of to get an idea of questions she has already been asked. I don’t want to be asking questions that she has possibly been asked far too many times as I’m weary of getting a blunt, quick, short response which is something I would probably give if in the position of the interviewee. I, if in such shoes, would rather be asked something new, something that isn’t asked of me often, that makes me think. I also decided to research into Clason’s work to get an idea of her work, the way she works and what she uses to create her work.

Here are just some of the quick notes I made in regards to my research. There are more notes I made over several pages, I plan to refine all this and then see which questions strike similarities and from there refine those and well of course then pick the ones I will perhaps consider asking.

[typographylovers]

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— source / credits

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Just reblogging this as possible inspiration ;)

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Tumblr Reflection after 10 weeks (Part 2)

14/05/2016

So I probably counted this wrong but I ended up counting roughly 54 Original posts, 24 reblogs from students and 8 reblogs from the wider tumblr community.

I am pretty happy with this :)

[silly-crayons-blog]

13/05/2016 "Everything will be ok." SURE WILL!!! Now that these tumblrs are submitted! Phew!! Does anyone else feel relieved? That was hectic! Found this and thought it was just so perfect! It’s the quote Andy always uses on his slides! That typography on those bed covers looks so appealing right now…we already know what I’m gonna do after posting this…gonna collapse into bed! XD Just thought I’d post this to brighten everyone’s night, it will all be ok…we can finally sleep easy…or uh, well EASIER at least. Refrence: Designer= Tamer Koseu, 2009 Book= Brownie, BB 2009, ‘Typography Today’, Artpower, China