Where You Can

Where You Can is a platform to encourage, facilitate and celebrate doing things. All too often creative projects are postponed, unfinished or hidden on hard drives. WYC is here to help, so now you’ve got one less excuse.

[whereyoucanxyz]

Disposable Outcome 2 – Sarah Trounce

In an attempt to demystify adult life, each month WYC gives a disposable camera to somebody leading one. No rules, no expectations, just 27 exposures.

Sarah Trounce is an account director at dn&co. Raised in Peterborough, she studied English at the University of Birmingham, before moving to London to pursue a career in the arts.

"March is an important month for me, because my birthday’s on the 12th."

Trounce recorded her March 2018, which included a week with her sister in San Francisco, a linocut workshop, seeing Studio Wayne McGregor at the Royal Opera House, and an Easter weekend back home.

"There are so many cities, San Francisco being the latest, where I've felt an attachment to the point where I see my life as it would be there."

"I love galleries and museums, but I’d say I’m probably happiest just wandering."

"The whole city was bursting with greenery."

"I don’t feel like a stranger when I’m in strange places. I can always find the bits that feel like me."

"I wouldn’t say I’m a materialistic person, but objects do have a lot of meaning for me. I’m a total hoarder when it comes to books and magazines though — my entire bedroom is covered in stacks of things that I’m reading."

"I take pleasure in using the same things every day."

"I'm quite a morning person. If it’s sunny, I’ll get up and take pictures of anything. It’s the most positive part of the day. Everything seems possible."

"I never fail to wake up feeling better about things."

"A place I know incredibly well, five minutes walk from my parent’s house where I grew up. I have such an attachment to it, there’s a very strange beauty there for me."

[whereyoucanxyz]

ABC Design – B is for Bass, Bayer & Bill

Should you wish to plot your own course, this alphabetical design directory (whilst by no means exhaustive) should serve as a true north to align your aesthetic compass. Bon voyage!

Saul Bass was (1920–1996) an American graphic designer and film-maker.

Bass brought art into film credits which, before his adventurous graphics, had been nothing more than banal, processional lists. In fact, he made the credits into animated or live-action features in their own right.

Anatomy of a Murder, 1959

“Symbolise and summarise.”

Herbert Bayer was (1900–1985) an Austrian graphic designer.

His first jobs were as an architectural assistant, but in 1912 he went to the Bauhaus where he studied under Russian abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky. He later taught typography there, but by 1938 was in the United States, where he has done much to propgate Bauhaus principles.

Composition Around Green Dot, 1974

Olivetti, 1959

Max Bill was (1908–1994) a Swiss architect.

His work is often identified with the austere minimalism of the Swiss Style, although his first influences came from the Bauhaus, where he was a student. His contribution to modern design has been less through his own creativity than through his continuing international presence as a supporter of Bauhaus principles.

Ulm School of Design, 1955

"We call those works of art concrete that came into being on the basis of their inherent resources and rules."

White Center, 1972

Bibliography credits: The Conran Directory of Design, 1985

[whereyoucanxyz]

ABC Design – A is for Aalto, Aicher & Asplund

Should you wish to plot your own course, this alphabetical design directory (whilst by no means exhaustive) should serve as a true north to align your aesthetic compass. Bon voyage!

Alvar Aalto was (1898–1976) a Finnish architect and designer.

In the years after 1917, when Finland gained its independence from Russia, its designers were trying to find an expression for their national identity. Aalto was an important part of this movement. His architecture mediated between modern forms and traditional materials, and his furniture followed the same path.

60 Stool, 1932

"We should work for simple, good, undecorated things."

Otl Aicher was (1922–1991) a German graphic designer and typographer.

At Ulm School of Design, Aicher helped develop a highly rational approach, which was to characterise the institution. His professional objective was always to devise clear graphics, integrating imagery with typography. For the Munich Olympic Games of 1972 he designed a system of pictograms which was effective but not intrusive. Aicher's graphics are a monument to clarity.

“Good art inspires. Good design motivates.”

Gunnar Asplund was (1885–1940) a Swedish architect.

Though responsible for helping publicise the international Modern Movement to an entire generation, and often identified with the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930, Asplund was no radical.

Gothenburg city hall, 1936

The high priest of functionalism.

Bibliography credits: The Conran Directory of Design, 1985

[whereyoucanxyz]

Disposable Outcome 1 – Chris Rayner

In an attempt to demystify adult life, each month WYC gives a disposable camera to somebody leading one. No rules, no expectations, just 27 exposures.

Chris Rayner is a PhD researcher at King's College London. Born in Blackpool, Rayner moved to south London at the age of 24 to continue his studies in psychiatric genetics. He's also my flatmate.

Chris completed his photo series in February 2018, during which he attended conferences at the Barbican Centre, took a trip home, saw Phantom Thread, a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard gig, and endured the sudden snowfall.

"I’ve got a five minute walk to work and then I climb three flights of stairs; I try and run up them."

"I’ve been working on a project for a year now, which I’m just finishing up – a study trying to use genetics to predict response to psychological therapy for people with anxiety disorders."

"We usually have lunch together, the four of us."

"After lunch, we have another cafetiere of coffee."

"If you spend a whole day on a script that doesn’t seem to be working the way you want it to, it just turns into data and code, rather than biological meaning. You have to take a step back."

"When I’m at home, I go walking along the coast. There’s a walk that I used to do with my dad: down the sea wall, past my old primary school, back along the beach, down the promenade, onto another beach, round the outskirts of a golf course and back through the woods. On a clear day you can see the hills in the Lake District, Lancaster University, and Heysham power station."

"It was quite difficult to resist the temptation to just take pictures out of the window."

"Sally got me King Gizzard tickets for Christmas. She didn’t know who they were, she just knew I was a fan. It was quite entertaining watching her face as she realised it was psychedelic rock. A few years ago, it might’ve been me headbanging but I can’t afford to lose braincells anymore."

"There’s a few things I missed, I should’ve definitely had a picture of a pizza."