seen from Russia
seen from Lebanon
seen from Japan
seen from United States
seen from Mexico
seen from Albania
seen from Russia
seen from Venezuela
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seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from Sweden
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seen from United States
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seen from China
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seen from United Kingdom
another example of designing for friends. These are some initial emblem designs of a few of the characters in a book my friend is writing. Unfortunately due to the heavy work load of thus module, I haven’t made as much as progressed as I would have wanted.
Artist and models&theories of practice research video collection
Secret 7″
I underwent the secret 7″ brief earlier on in the module but unfortunately due to the stress revolving around the beginning of the corona virus outbreak, I missed the original submission deadline. I have written up about what was going on with me at the time in my sketchbook which should be present in my documentation. However by my understanding it has now bee postponed until September.
My first attempts was through collage-ing for the song Foffee by Toast. Rather than trying to find a deep meaning to translate visually or trying to represent the lyricism, I simply wanted to try to emulate the mood I feeling whilst listening to the song. A sort of summery nostalgia, chilling in the park with some mates. Really nice, warm memories. Basically just trying to recreate an in-the-moment feeling, just listen to the song and be. Yet again I find it a a satisfying and natural way to get the mess of ideas in my mind out into the open. And as such they do end up a little surrealist, a bit abstract. But that leaves the viewer with the power of bringing meaning to it.
All the following pieces were created around the song Blind Willie McTell by Bob Dylan. (they are all in black & white as I felt this was the mood I was feeling off the song, not wanting to burst in with any colours)
Next I moved on to some mark making and painting as I thought I hadn’t done it in quite a while and needed to breathe-in some fresh air. The initial pieces are evidenced in my documentation as these have subsequently been scanned in and edited. Desaturated, combined, intertwined, overlayed, rearranged to help convey my emotions I was feeling during the song. I’m not sure exactly what they were, but maybe I don’t need to.
Next came something born out of accident. As I was scanning in the previous bits and bobs, i clumsily left my hand on the scanner as it was scanning. I decided to roll with the idea and recompose it properly, trying to add a little more emotion, movement and meaning to it. I have titled it “Mains d'Œuvres” in French as ‘main’ is hand and ‘oeuvre’ means body of work or piece of art and both combined means labour or workforce. I though it quite fitting in reference to the song as it talks about slavery.
And lastly is a collection of pieces entitled ‘photons’ exploring and revolving around the subject of blindness. Personally not being hindered by loss of vision, I tried to represent what I imagined it to be like to not see. The closest I can get to it is having my eyes closed in a dark room just before drifting off to sleep. Prior to falling into the surreal and colourful dream world, I’d just stare at my eyelids. It’s not pitch blackness. Never. Those little darting lights are called phosphenes. Apparently it’s light that’s just bouncing around in your eyes, emitted by the atoms that constitute your retina. This means that if you weren’t born blind, then in most cases you can always see them. Blindness is a very complex and personal topic so I don’t even pretend to know even the tip of the iceberg on the subject, I am merely very intrigued.
So to try and recreate these phosphenes I used only black materials: the base being black card, I then did some mark making with black paint/ink. To add more contrast I etched into the paper’s surface with a screw. The pieces themselves are very textural, reminiscent of braille in a weird way. However I was looking to achieve the visual aspect here, so they’ve been scanned in and edited to reach the darkest shades I could achieve without loosing too much detail.
Research on that topic:
https://scienceline.org/2014/12/why-do-we-see-colors-with-our-eyes-closed/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-ouch-31487662
Evidence of how the design of Beige progressed.
As soon as this covid stuff has blown over (or sooner) i really want to get this printed properly for people to own. And I really just want it to be a physical object, i am missing that tactile part of making work since lockdown started. I have in mind that it won’t be a hardback because as far as i’m concerned they really aren’t optimal in the kitchen, maybe more durable but too big and chunky. It needed to be of a decent size to be able to glance at it quickly when cooking but not too large either. And for affordability when printing i wanted it to fit onto A3. (i went through various design choices/ideas in my sketch book) I ended up choosing the dimensions of my first wooden chopping board i got for making fresh pasta a couple of years back to add that extra touch of meaning.
I based the entire grid system and character sizes on the golden ratio to subtly and subconsciously appeal to the eye. This had to be the trick after all to make beige look nice, as David rightly brought up. But i was confident in Jacob’s photography skills to really nail that too.
I was finding at the beginning and after my first chat with Ian, that the design was too solid and plain, even with the grid system in place. I knew i wanted to push for something more ‘collage’ in style to give it a more organic feel. Overall considering the situation that i am in, I am pleased with the result. I would of course have enjoyed refining it further if I had more time. I would also like to push more into seeing how best it get it printed and distributed. My best pal Tommy’s brother is getting into publishing himself so maybe there is someway we can sort something out, even if it is just him giving me some pointers.
As far as it’s success as piece is concerned, based off the feedback from people I have shown, it’s very positive. I was aiming to entice the viewer to pick it up, have a flick through and be motivated to cook or at least try a few recipes. To attract a wide audience, I aimed to make it contemporary yet different from the norm, gritty but clean, to a professional standard but friendly. I really pushed that last part in my writing. I wanted the text to convey myself as a person, my personality i guess, as if I was right there cooking alongside them. Basically I just wanted it to be enticing enough for people to try something a little out of the ordinary.
In this project I was also trying to test my not comfort levels, but maybe more my boundaries. Use this colour that I dislike and make something out of it. As normally i think i’d use elements, textures, colours, shapes, etc.. that i find interesting, pleasing and such to create work. So it was a bizarre but gratifying to change it up.
Download your free copy of Indoors Zine for some comfort (and a laugh!) while we’re all stuck inside.
what I have been trying to continuously do during this module is take on relevant small jobs from friends and connections of mine. Here is another one for my DJ pals Alistair (who mixed at VisMas) and Ashley’s livestreams. Ever since lockdown we have not been able to attend any house parties or nights out and as such that whole part of our socializing has been cut off. The two of them would always be mixing at our friends parties and as such have decided to try to translate this into an online digital format.
For the design I was aiming to keeping the style similar to that of their aesthetic, being well into sreet stuff, so keeping it grungy, a little graffiti. My idea was to combine a can and a vinyl into one shape. I used a grid underneath to keep everything proportional and inline. It also ended resembling a speaker so happy accidents. I like it when something unexpected like that turns up in a design only adding further meaning and intrigue to it. Another funny detail was when I randomly selected that grey it ended up have the RGB hex code of #2B2B2B much like in a DJ set when you have to back to back (B2B). I then also created some little name titles to keep visual consistency on the stream’s design. I really enjoy working, even it is for very little or basically free, for people I know as I would like to think that I am helping them seem more legit, more recognisable or quirky than if i hadn’t been involved.
online presence and work experience
during Employability fortnight, I was already in the midst of updating my online presence. I ditched wordpress as i found it very clunky and not very logical for Wix like we used for our group blog for 501. I wanted something speedy, ready to present to possible employers asap. This is why I opted for a free website hosting platform like wix as i knew this was somewhat of a temporary setup before i can properly invest some time in a neat site of my own. So helvexit.wixsite.com/portfolio has been up and functional since sometime in January, having been finessed and altered based of feedback from tutors and peers. Alongside this, I rewrote my CV which desperately needed some updating and based off the sessions we had one CVs during the fortnight, made it more coherent to being a creative practitioner.
My plan to contact employers and such to gain work experience or a placement over the summer kind of took the back burner after a few attempts as i began getting more invested in live briefs and projects. I find it an extremely demoralising and little-rewarding process to go through as it feels like slamming my head against a brick wall. I’ve been through the tedious experience before coming to uni when i was looking for an apprenticeship and so i think my brain has very little motivation to push for it as it seems so fruitless. And then when COVID came around i pretty much gave up. I don’t know if it’s my mind playing tricks on me to get away from doing it but I would much prefer opportunities to come up more organically. That being said one of the design firms i contacted has gotten back saying they currently wouldn’t be able to do anything in this situation but would organise a Q&A style online call to still asks questions and gain insight into how they function.
I have also been doing small logo and design projects for friends and family to keep me going and build my body of work and to support them of course. There may also be an opportunity of paid work from a freelance mate of mine for a project he doesn’t have the time to complete which is exciting. I have also been thinking as everything is online now, I could get on fiverr and at least get some stuff there as I know Damon is doing that quite successfully.
As other online presence is concerned, I have www.instagram.com/helvexit_design for most of my work and keeping people up to date. And then mostly as just somewhere for me to dump my photography and have an online gallery is www.instagram.com/grisaille_35mm/
Also ever since Steven’s workshop, I have been toying with a few ideas to create an ‘identity’ for myself. I have always found this extremely hard to do. Summing up my personality and who i am as a creative practitioner is really hard to do in just one image. I’ve spent the better part of like 4-5 years doing it. It always changes and I’m never happy with it. So this time I tried to just create something quick (as I’ve discovered recently that sometimes when I simply let myself create without putting thought into, I am really content with the results) using basic shapes and don’t attach too much meaning to them immediately.
this is the result. I played around with some doodles I’d drawn in a little sketch book of mine. I can now in retrospect probably try to explain why I made these choices and the meaning behind them. The circle represents the dot to ‘i’ in my name symbolising myself. The triangular shapes depict mountains, back in Switzerland where i grew up, where my roots are as an practitioner and a person. (I’m finding it hard to use the word ‘home’ in reference to there at the moment since I really don’t know where my home is at the moment) The dividing line represents a fracture or a separation, not sure what of yet. The angular momentum to the right hints to a movement forward, towards progression and change. Again everything is proportional to each other, playing of maths (which is weird because i find maths hard to wrap my head around yet know of it’s importance and presence in the human and natural world so I nearly feel obliged to remain attached to it).
See. I can make things work: from a few shapes i made haphazardly in a few minutes, I can attach meaning and ultimately see myself in it.
Due to me being not being able to use the facilities at uni, trying to recreate a collage style for my cookbook, Beige, I had to get a bit crafty with finding ways around it. Since I couldn’t print out photos and collage them or even scan bits in, I would have to do everything digitally. I borrowed my mates camera and had a little first set up (image 1) where i used a solid background colour (to help with background removal in photoshop using colour select, see image 2) and laying a bit of plexiglass to flatten the pieces. However this failed for several reasons. Firstly the green was present in the shadows adding more problems to the already overwhelming colour grading down the line. The camera also couldn’t focus properly on the details through the plexi resulting in a blurry image.
So i switched it up (image 3-4) using a white background and had a bounce board thing and went to the brightest place in the house to properly illuminate everything and flatten the shadows. This allowed for much more detail and clarity and was able to cut out the background quite easily with a few photoshop tools. However the nightmare that was colour matching all the beige’s throughout the photos to maintain a somewhat similar tone, i will not forgot. will definitely keep this in mind for next time to try and figure something better out. But it got the job done.
