Tuesday 26 January 2010

A Collection of Typography


Click the picture above to see the posters.
Bespoke poster design by Palax on Deviant Art


Speaking of amazing typography, wow.

A brief history

There are 2 videos I would like to show you.



The first is a music video made for Bjork's "All is full of love" by Chris Cunningham. The reason? The video's mood is strangely sublime and tranquil, despite the detail of what's going on. I think that this relates strongly to the theory that posters should be kept simple enough to be understood, but complex on closer inspection - there is so much to look at, that the video is not too slowly paced. The video is based on the love affair between two robots, and while it could easily slip into the cliche look and feel of science fiction videos, it doesn't.



The second is called "History of gaming" by Johnny Hardstaff. Its a motion graphics video with bucket loads of nostalgia for any gamer thats played any game over the last 30 years. Its very well put together, with all the different elements gelling into a single moving timeline. Definitely worth a watch.

Saturday 16 January 2010

Typography treatments

A piece I just finished on letter treatments, in preparation for a current project, "Wordplay".




Lettering taken from this piece by Alex Trochut, featured in a previous post:

Friday 15 January 2010

Logo design project

Brief:
Design a logo for the word 'Interaction'. Output will be black and white, and easily produceable and legible in both a small and a large scale. You should also create a mock up of the logo in use, on the billboard image provided.

Brainstorming:












Final Logo:

Billboard Example:

Monday 11 January 2010

Word play research part 1

Brief:
You will be given a word. You are asked you produce an A2 poster using illustration and typography to communicate a complex narrative about the word in 2 dimensions. Your initial task is to broadly research the word with an open mind in order to fully explore its meanings in a range of contexts.

Complexity Research:

Powers of 10 Video


Airfix Blueprint

Airfix Kit Exploded
Further Research: Haines manuals, plug socket diagrams, artist book of diagrams, electrical diagrams in particular.

Eduardo Paolozzi's Artwork at Tottenham Court Station


Further Research: Further works by E.P., Pixelation, blurring, police identity protection.

Toothpick Art


Further Research: Various styles of painting including impressionism, emphasis on heavy and defined brush strokes.

Persian Rugs


Further Research: Tapestries such as the "Bayeux Tapestry", the National Portrait Gallery - see artist who worked on the famous portrait of Richard Branson.

Typography Research:





















Links:
eBoy's Blog - http://hello.eboy.com/eboy/
Abduzeedo - http://www.abduzeedo.com
Non-format showcase - www.non-format.com
Tony Ariawan - Behance Network
Si Scott - http://www.siscottstudio.com/

Jenga

Firstly a dynamics experiment in Cinema 4D using the Mograph2 engine, which was then colour edited in Abode After Effects. It was really a stepping stone for me to get used to how the dynamics tags work in C4D and it was actually my first ever use of after effects. I have another piece planned out already so check back soon for some results!

Largely inspired by a post on Joe Myers' blog, which you can see here.

50 free graphic design lessons

The 50 lessons below were compiled on a site called PSD Tuts Plus, but are from all over the internet. The site specialises in providing high quality photoshop tutorials and graphic design articles for designers from skill levels of 'just starting out' to professional.

The lessons cover every aspect of design including many on the subject of typography, specifically the difference between typefaces and anatomy, rather than bespoke typography. Some of these are sightly obscure, not exactly need-to-know, for example colour psychology and impacts on moods. While you might not need all of these, I would say it's probably worth a skim through.




In particular, lesson 3 is covered by one of my favourite designers, David Airey, covering many different typography resources you can look into. The lessons are definitely worth a read, if you're not pressed for time.

Sunday 10 January 2010

Goodbye London

A great video featuring the drawings of a recent graduate of the BA Illustration course over at Camberwell College of Arts, Joe Baglow. Screened as part of this year’s onedotzero ‘Adventures in Motion’ festival this video for ‘Goodbye London’ by Luke Jackson was directed by animator Murray John.

Check out more of Joe's work at www.joebaglow.com or at www.fftstudio.co.uk.


Luke Jackson "Goodbye London" from Murray John on Vimeo.

Thursday 7 January 2010

Snow Man

The brief was to make a piece of typography in the snow. This was just a fun side project to get us warmed up before the start of the term. My idea was to make "MAN" in huge 3d letters, rising from the floor, and hence a snowman. Terrible pun right. The problem was that the snow was crumbly snow; it didn't hold together at all. I settled for writing it with a broom instead.


Tuesday 5 January 2010

220 skateboard designs

Courtesy of Spoon Graphics:


Monday 4 January 2010

Inspiration from Touchey part 1

Touchey is a fantastic design blog full of artists' and designers' work. Taken from the site itself:

"Touchey is a design blog with main purpose to expose design students and professionals to worldwide design trends and to facilitate the research process. Touchey brings to you the best of design from around the world; from Graphic identities & Illustrations to industrial design , Interior design, Architecture, Photography, Website design and Interface design."

Fair enough. Lets see what it has to offer. Its updated weekly with posts ranging from products, typographic design, post production, design studios and design concepts.


The first of all, a post showing work by Brazillian design studio Platinum FMD. A collection of 20+ images focusing on amazing post production, mainly matching image lighting and perspectives in my opinion. Click the picture above to see the full post.








You'd have thought from the post that they specialise in photo manipulation but after looking through their website portfolio, it seems they don't have a specialism - all of their work looks fantastic. Though their website is a little tacky even for me, go check it out, it's worth it.