#thepracticalseries

[baileydremel]

THE PRACTICAL SERIES: JEFFERIES’ FINDINGS

Over the weekend we were tasked with a little project we could do. The idea was that we were to find letters around the house in stuff like pipes or cracks in the ceiling, either naturally or by flipping the image. The idea about this was based on the way we are isolated in our homes much like in Hitchcock’s film ‘Rear Window’.

A quick note: I studied the hell out of ‘Rear Window’, so I’m pretty well versed in the idea of looking into the little details. I looked into the meanings of that film very hard and ultimately became much like Jimmy Stewart’s character ‘L.B. Jefferies’

Anyway, I went around my house late at night and looked intensely for letters of type in everything and here is what I had found:

Fig 1: The collection of letters I found around my house.

Here are a couple of my favourite findings:

Fig 2: The letter W in the horns and ears of a marble rhino.

Fig 3: The letter X in the grout in the tiles.

When doing this task, I recognised the idea of perspective (I’m planning a post about something about perspective). Depending on which way you look and where you place your camera, you can get a different result.

Fig 4: The letter N that is formed from the handle and the shadow of the handle.

This is a great example of how things would change depending on your perspective. When looking at it from this perspective, you can see the letter N formed. If you rotate it, it’s a C, or an F. But if you look at the same item from above, it’s the letter S.

Fig 5: A completely out of focus image of the same handle as the letter S. I just noticed there was an O in the cord.

This was a very good task to try to explore the idea that typography, inspiration and design are everywhere, even in the little things we take for granted.

I probably will do this again tomorrow during the day so I can find more letter

[baileydremel]

THE PRACTICAL SERIES: VIRTUAL PIZZA

In the surprise week 13 class we all caught up and got some final feedback on Ask Me Anything projects before we submitted it. It was good to hear everyone and see how much everyone had progressed throughout the course of this project. What’s great is seeing how everyone too the feedback they were given and then adapted their work to address the feedback. 

When I started this class, I thought I had completed my zine. I was happy with how it looked and felt ready to submit it. I still thought it was a good idea to get some feedback on it so that if there were any issues, I could fix it over the weekend so it was ready to submit.

Fig 1. The full zine on a single page.

Karen gave me some great feedback on some things that I didn’t really consider, such as alignments of text and visual elements and some things that I could adjust before submitting. Some of the things were that:

- The alignment of the text on page 4 still looked off.

- Could move the text around on page 5 so there isn’t the orphaned word.

- The gaps between certain elements were inconsistent.

- I could move the text around on pages 8 and 9 so that a staple doesn’t go through the text. 

- The exclamation mark on page 14 looks off.

- The word references doesn’t really need to be on page 15.

- I could remove the page numbers.

So, looks like I still have a lot of work to do.

I will say, these things are just little details and not major issues, which, in my eyes, gave me the confidence that I was on the right track with things. I think that this feedback was vital as I would have never seen these things (I’ll probably see them when I submit the zine, like always)

[baileydremel]

THE PRACTICAL SERIES: LETS GET CRITICAL

In this session we looked through everyone’s (or at least everyone that posted their work on the slides) and got feedback on what we could work on and if the direction we were going was the right one.

After the last practical class, I dramatically changed direction for what I was doing for my zine. I took myself of the position of art director and made myself the art curator, taking what Paul Renner had already created and piecing it together into a beautiful exhibition that showcases his work. This is shown in one of my previous posts where I had that lightning spark of creativity (and I still have it which is fantastic)

I posted my spreads up into the slides to get some feedback, but I watched and listened to the feedback others were given whilst I was working on my zine. I think this was a great idea by myself as sometime, the feedback others are given can push you into a more positive direction. That’s how I eventually got to the current spreads that I uploaded.

I was amazed at some of the work other students have done. I saw comic strips, posters advertising a chair, a recreation of a cookbook and an animation, all having different identities but still having the same structure. I think this is what makes this course a great one. The idea that everyone can bring their own design knowledge, expertise and, most importantly, their world view and display it in a vastly different format than anyone else. We can still understand it because of it’s structure, but it’s fingerprints are entirely unique.

Anyway, here are my spreads that I uploaded for the session:

Fig 1. Spreads of pages 2 and 3.

When getting feedback on this, Karen pointed out that there were around 5 different fonts on these two spreads alone. I remember only using two (Condensed and Standard Book Futura) but then I remembered that colour, style and size all are considered different fonts as well. What I should do is change any body text to just be standard Futura Book and any titles into Condensed Futura. 

Fig 2. Spreads for pages 4 and 5.

When Karen was giving feedback to other people, she mentioned something about a tilted type box. I didn’t know what she meant until she came to this page and told everyone that this was the first tilted type box she had seen in the class. I figured out that she was talking about how all the text was at a 30 degree angle (something she mentioned in a previous session that I remembered). She did say that having the same image twice doesn’t really work so I should probably change that. She also said my grids were a bit off so I might look into that soon.

Fig 3. The spreads for pages 6 and 7

A lot of what was said for the previous spread applied here but Karen mentioned that she liked ‘The book that got Paul Renner in trouble with the Nazis’ which was what I wrote personally. I found that quite interesting.

Fig 4. The spreads for pages 8 and 9 (the middle page of the zine)

I really like the idea behind this spread but this was kind of thrown together at the last minute before class. Karen said she like the idea behind it but, once again, the lines of type were a bit off. I agree because the ends of the 3 don’t quite match up. Also, the red was a bit too much so I will tone it down a bit.

Overall, the feedback session was great to have and I look forward to what’s in store next week for our final session. I think it would be great to see everyones final works and how they progressed through this course. It all looks fantastic now and I wish I could take some of these home to add it to my collection of zines.

✌

[baileydremel]

THE PRACTICAL SERIES: TEARING PAGES

In this practical class, we were first introduced with the task of adding our spreads to a Google Slides document so we can get some feedback on our work. I’ll show these later on in this post, but for now I will talk about the InDesign tutorial that Andy gave us during our class.

The beauty of online learning is the idea that you can easily swap between classes at will without the trouble of moving parts. It was great to see that we didn’t need to log off and back on and that all we had to do was just wait till Andy joined the session. I remember times in high school in which I had to pick up all my stuff (and as an art student, I had a sh*t ton of stuff with me always) and move across the country because ‘the teacher didn’t want to move classrooms’.

Anyway, Andy taught us a few tricks in InDesign which were to make our lives so much easier. For example, the shortcut to place an image is CMD/CTRL + D (I’m very old fashion as I just go to file and then place). The beginner things he taught us I kind of knew beforehand from my previous projects. What he taught us next was mind blowing.

In InDesign, there is a thing called an ‘A Master’ spread which I have ignored for so long because I didn’t see any difference between them and the normal pages. Andy told us that the purpose of those pages is that they act like a base for every single page and anything you put on it will appear on every single page. For example, if you would like the page numbers, you can add a special character for them on the pages (which will be shown as an A) and when you go back to the normal pages, you will have page numbers.

Fig 1. The pages tab with the A-Master’ spread I was talking about.

I wish I knew this before. I painstakingly added the page numbers to every page in my old projects. I spent so long trying to make them look the same and be in the same place. AND YOU TELL ME THAT I COULD SET THAT UP IN THE MASTER PAGES AND FORGET ABOUT IT! I was (to say it the millenial way) shook at the prospect of that. 

I suppose that these things will reduce the amount of time it takes to create stuff. I know it took forever to do stuff like this manually so now I can save some time and focus on the content of the document rather than the decor. This day will be remembered in history as ‘the day Bailey found out he was an idiot’.

After the tutorial, Karen came back to class to quickly give us some feedback on what we should work on for our AMA project. I have recently lost my creativity for some reason so I didn’t have many ideas. I went with my initial idea of ripping pages and adding text to them in InDesign. Here’s some of the spreads;

Fig 2. The spread pages for 4 and 5 for my project.

Fig 3. The spread pages for 8 and 9.

When looking at these pages, I feel a sense of disconnection between myself and Paul Renner. My initial idea was to do something like this for every single page but it doesn’t really look appealing. It’s off, and I’m a perfectionist.

Whilst Karen was giving feedback, I took note of a thing she said about how we were ‘showcasing the designers work rather than our own’ and ‘bringing our questions into their designs’. I feel that my work is me trying to force my way of design into Paul Renners design and it isn’t working well.

Also, although it was a bold decision of mine to include some images from Nazi Germany’s propaganda, documents and including their flag, I think that detracts from the message of Paul Renners’ work. He didn’t like the Nazis, so why am I adding their work into a book about him. It was initially to link his book to the Nazis, but it didn’t work well. Once again, inserting myself into his design world. The image didn’t look great anyway, so I’m probably just gonna cut it.

I think this is a good chance to look back in time and take some design decisions from the Bauhaus and the works around at the time and try to find a way I can include them in my zine. I also had the tagline on my front cover ‘the father of Futura’, so I should try to include Futura in more than just the original typeface. I like my cover, maybe I should look at that.

Today’s class was a real wake-up call to what I need to do. The problem is, I have no creative flame in my body to create something. Argh!

[baileydremel]

THE PRACTICAL SERIES - BABY’S FIRST ZINE*

*if you don’t count a zine I made a couple of months ago as a test.

In today’s session we got our hands dirty (not really) and made a zine. Well, four zines, two of which are templates which help to in the creation of a zine.

We began if an A4 sheet of paper and folded it in half twice to make the sheet the size of an A5 piece of paper. We were then tasked to start from the front page and write 1 to 8 on the pages. We would then open the sheet and be amazed at the fact that some of the numbers were upside down. Wow!

We then repeated this with another A4 piece of paper but we would fold it once more to make a smaller, 16 page. We did the same process and unfolded to see number all over the place.

We were then tasked to draw pictures and stuff in it so we can see how the shapes transform from a solid page to a mini-zine. I was very creative in this and even got some colour involved in the process. Have an image of my very creative and original artwork!

Fig 1: Some very creative artwork.

It was also very interesting to note about how images would be cut off if you put them on pages that split. Take this image for example:

Fig 2: Another page from my mini zine.

It made me more aware of creating images that spread across two pages of a zine. Maybe I could use that to my advantage. I’ve got a zine called ‘Who is the real Julia? No. 2′ which takes advantage of this as it confused you and disrupting your perception of a face and ‘the real Julia’.

Fig 3: The cover of ‘Who is the real Julia? No. 2′ zine. 

Anyway, we then created little templates of our zines and marker out the lines that would be cut, making sure we take into consideration bleed and making our artwork extend out into the bleed. I kind of already knew about this from previous classes but its good to see it physically rather than digitally.

When I was making these zines, I remembered back to a couple of months ago when I made a test zine called ‘MINIAGITATE’, which included artwork that I submitted into the Arts Agitators Zine which was themed ‘Agitate’. I had a different method that what was shown today, which was to cut a hole in the middle to it would fold into a book. It was 8 pages and I was very proud of the result.

Fig 4. The folded out version of my ‘MINIAGITATE’ zine.

Karen was talking about how she used the method she taught us to layout their books and zines. I think that is the best method of doing it, having something physical that you can look at instead of putting it digitally and printing it out and seeing that you stuffed up the layout. I know it’s the best method because, along with this zine, I found my trial zine, with the numbers to let me know how I should layout my work.

Fig 5: The trial zine to figure out the layout. 

What I learnt today was that I am a good problem solver, even if I don’t know it.

All this lead us into making a trial, layout zine for our upcoming project. I did a little trial for my zine for the middle spread and I look forward to seeing it physically.

Fig 6. A draft of the middle spread for my AMA zine.

We moved onto doing stuff in InDesign, but I feel confident with InDesign at the moment so there wasn’t really much to say about it.

Overall, this class was good and helped me to figure out what direction I want to go for this project.

To top this very long post off (aka an essay), here’s a GIF of my MINIAGITATE zine.

Fig 7. The ‘MINIAGITATE’ zine I made using photos, ripped pieces of paper and a black and white filter on Photoshop.

[baileydremel]

THE PRACTICAL SERIES: PRINCE OF APPROPRIATION

This practical class was very intriguing. The first thing we discussed was our progress with our ‘Ask Me Anything’ project. I got confirmation of my questions from Karen before so I was pretty much on track for the next class (which we’ll look into InDesign).

We were told that it’s a good idea that there should be a nice pairing between you and your candidate. I’m currently thinking about how I am going to layout my zine and what I should do to differentiate between me and Paul Renner. Maybe I could use a collage of things relating to the question I am asking Renner whilst Renner’s pages will be clean and use the typeface Futura and maybe have some pictures on it. I’ll probably follow what he did in his books.

This is because I can probably mix my style and way of creating things with images, ideas and things around Paul Renner. I’ll also probably use my handwriting typeface that I’ve been working on lately (more info on that soon).

Another thing about this was that someone said that they had a ‘silly question’ and Karen replied something along the lines of ‘the only silly question is the one that is left unanswered’. Does this somehow link into the project we are doing? Is this a thing we should take onboard? Should we always ask questions, no matter the stupidity? Probably.

Anyway, after a progress update, we looked into doing an activity around the concept of collage. I love the idea of collage and have experimented on it for one of my previous projects (for a zine a group I am in is working on). It’s kind of fun to tear up pages and create new artworks with it.

Fig 1: One of the submissions for the Arts Agitators ‘Agitate’ zine which is coming soon.

We looked at an artist called Sergei Sviatchenko who did a lot of work on collage. I really enjoyed his work and how he would always keep everything that he cut out so he could use it later. I especially loved the fact that he got special clearance to carry scissors with him on a plane but unfortunately, that’s not the case now.

Fig 2: Two collages that Sergei made. I like the left one and the face that it kind of looks like a face. <SOURCE>

We also looked at another artist called Richard Price but his works are more controversial than Sergei’s. He would specifically adapt other peoples photography and create his own artwork with it. For example, he created a paid for exhibit where he printed screenshots of Instagram posts onto a large sheet of paper and hung them up. Is that moral? No. This gets into the topic of artist appropriation and who owns and therefore can profit from original work.

Fig 3: An image from Richard Prices exhibit. <SOURCE>

From my perspective, if someone else is using your work and not adapting it to create a completely different artwork that has more originality in it than the original work, I see it as OK, but that leads to the idea of originality. What is considered original? The text in this post may be original, but would you consider Fig 1 original? If you go back to one of my previous posts, you’ll see a very similar image but of a face instead of a hand. Which one was the original idea? Would you base it on who created it first, but then everything was already created and therefore we won’t have art or design anymore. ARGH!

 The reason why we looked at all these works is that we were tasked to create letters of type by using collage. It was quite challenging because I’m still not used to finding letters in pictures that aren’t of letters. In the end, I found a couple of letters in the Woolworths Fresh Magazine from 2017. Here’s the image of the letters I found.

Fig 4: The letters I found in a magazine.

It was funny when my group tried to make a word with the letters as we got confused what group was what slide and ended up doing something very Richard Pricey.

That was fun. 

[baileydremel]

THE PRACTICAL SERIES: TRI-TYPE

*I could not think of a better title*

After our Easter break we looked at examples of where people found Helvetica around their house/street/work. It was very interesting to see some similarities (such as doctors offices or medical centres) and how people distinguish between Helvetica and other San-Serif typefaces like Arial. I found out that you can also tell that the typeface used was Helvetica by the lowercase a (if there is the little flick at the end of it). Sweet!

We were then tasked to do something with our coloured paper that we brought with us. Whilst we were discussing what we would say to our past selves about the previous project (Hello, my question is...) we were told to fold a square piece of paper into the typical origami fold and then cut those pieces out so we had triangles. We were then tasked to make the letters of the alphabet as a collective group which was difficult at the start due to the nature of Online learning but it got better as we went.

I’ve noticed that as we progress into this online learning program, we are becoming more comfortable with talking to others online and discussing ideas. It’s kind of turned into this weird but wonderful experiment of what a university is.

Anyway, I got the letters M through to T. I actually found this task slightly easy because my favourite shape is a triangle and I have experimented with making a typeface only using triangles for my social media (I wish I had photos of that). It was interesting however that some shapes needed to be made through negative space as the triangles would interfere with the shape and make it unrecognisable (such as the T and the N) I also made the P in negative space as well.

Here’s the result.

Fig 1: The ‘Triangle Type’ 

Things I like now that I am looking back at it:

-How the counter of the P is a triangle

- I think the N image is upside down, but it still looks like an N anyway. It also looks like a bird.

- The overlap on some of the letters is nice and reduces the size of the letter without effecting it’s shape.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the result of this little bit of type. I saw some of my peers works and some of them are amazing. I especially like how some people used the round shape of a circle to still make the same letters as I have.

[baileydremel]

THE PRACTICAL SERIES - I’M A MONSTER

It was a very interesting session today for ComDesStu (Communication Design Studies). 

We looked at some peoples pangram pastas first and they were pretty creative. One person did a similar concept to me (with the yarn) but made it continuous, which was pretty cool. I might have to grab the string out again and do mine again just to top that.

We also looked at some examples of bad kerning. Kerning is the space between letters and if letters are not far enough, it can lead to some really bad designs. I remember an example where therapist was split between the ‘e’ and the ‘r’. I’d hate to be that business. Karen told us that we are not going to be able to unsee bad kerning but TBH, I’ve been seeing it for my entire life and have complained to my family about bad kerning numerous times (I look crazy to them but that’s OK).

We also looked at the typeface, Helvetica and been asked to look for examples of Helvetica around the house. I already found one on my bedside table, a card game called ‘F**k the game’ (seriously, it’s called that).

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IMAGE CONTAINS TWO OF THE SEVEN WORDS YOU CAN’T SAY ON TELEVISION. 

Fig 1: An example of what I think is Helvetica I found in my room. 

I think what’s important is the factors in which influence the decision on whether or not the typeface if Helvetica. I currently judge it by two things: 

1. The lowercase ‘a’: The shape of it is very distinct as it has a little flick at after the counter (I think it’s called a counter) and the shape of the counter curves upwards.

2. The lowercase ‘e’: The counter of the ‘e’ is like a semicircle with a straight line cutting through it. 

As you can see, this card game’s type has those two characteristics. I will try to further analyse the typeface to determine if it is Helvetica.

I also realised that ‘Tumblr’ uses Helvetica as well. I found it in there code that they’re using it as the main body text. Neat.

We were also asked to what the ‘Helvetica’ documentary. I have added that to my todo list and will be what I watch instead of the same Vox videos I watch continuously.

After all that, we were introduced to an architect called ‘Alessandro Mendini’ who was an architect. He did a drawing which described himself as ‘a dragon’. This dragon included aspects of himself such as his passion for poetry and architecture as well as design. For the last task of the day, we were tasked to draw ourselves much like Mendini did with his dragon.

Here’s my result.

Fig 2: A photo of myself as a monster.

This was a bit difficult for me. I always have a hard time analysing myself and discovering aspects of myself so this task was a bit of a challenge but I ended up taking an outside perspective. ‘How would I describe this person’ was how I ultimately approached this task.

I’ll explain one aspect of this monster that may be confusing. The face is a diamond and has the text ‘diamond of a synesthetes’ (I spelt it wrong on the sheet as it is a very difficult word to spell). This is because I have a form of synesthesia which is related to music. When I listen to music, I see a diamond and a square. The square moves around the diamond in time with the beat and the diamond pulsates and moves with the music.

Fig 3: An basic example of what I kind of see.

Other than that, everything else is pretty self explanatory. I labelled everything much like Mendini did. A thing I did note however was that most people did a monster that a base of a human figure. I was trying to figure out why this might be the case and I was thinking that this may be because as children, we were to get rid of our monsters and make ourselves more human so due to this, we can only really see ourselves as human. Once we are asked to draw a monster, we tend to draw something that is more human like that animal like. 

I must just be more child like, but is that a good or a bad thing? Is it still good to act like a child and can we use that to our advantage through the lens of design?

Be right back, gotta find example of Helvetica around the house and watch that documentary.

✌