Goodbye Blogger,

I have moved all my work in progress and design related ramblings to http://designgrace.tumblr.com/

I went to Roath Park yesterday for a good long walk around. I really need to get myself a better camera for days like that. It was pretty grey and windy, but inside the conservatory - whoah! totally tropical! my glasses steamed up it was that warm! I wish I'd known about this when I was designing floral patterns last year, as I could have got some amazing photographs and inspiration. Especially as when I was designing them it was the middle of winter, snowing and there were no flowers to be seen anywhere. Still, better late than never. I got a few photos on my camera phone, but I don't think they have really captured the intensity of the colour.

View from the office, Snow Day 2

I should have bought my camera the day before when it was like Narnia, but this was the mountain this morning. To be honest, yesterday I never thought I'd make it in, but today this was worth getting out in the cold for.

Anyone with an "average brain" can do it...

Times Article on Graphic Design : NHS 60

Reading this made me so angry today! Emily Gosden's point seems to be that this work should not be outsourced, but completed in-house by the designers already employed by the public sector. However, the complete lack of balance in her article just makes this into a rant about a subject I doubt she has done much research on or understands anything about what goes into working on branding and logo design. How much was the branding as a percentage of the budget, rather than as a total sum? And how do those amounts compare with other spending? I bet if we were given those figures then it would paint a very different picture. But I suppose that wouldn't be as headline grabbing.This combined with the total lack of a detailed break down on what exactly the branding work consisted of just makes the sums of money paid meaningless because they are without context. Sure, £12,000 is a lot, but how many revisions, meetings and hours of work go into producing something like this? The NHS is a massive organisation and I bet that the design had to be approved by a lot of people. But you know what, it's so much easier to just write an article knocking a profession without trying to understand it. And on this evidence, owning a copy of MS Word is enough to qualify you to be journalist at The Times.

And as for MP Greg Hands?

“Surely adding two digits doesn’t need to be outsourced at all. Civil servants can do this themselves. Modern graphic design packages surely allow anyone with an average brain to design something as good as, or better than, what we see in front of us here.”

Well, I have an "average brain" and a toolbox, do you want me to fix your car for you Mr Hands? It'll probably be cheaper than a trained mechanic and those brakes will be good as new when I'm done... But seriously now, I think this comment is a very cheap shot. Just because I have access to tools does not automatically mean I know how to use them in a skilled manner. That's why we all have different jobs, and go to different people to get things done. Sometimes I get so fed up with non-designers thinking that the computer does it all.
I read another article recently (now in the bin where it belongs) where the writer was moaning about artsists/designers not being able to draw any more based on his observation that there were so many computer-generated graphics in films now. Er, who do you think draws them out in the first place? When I go into work every day, there is not a button at the bottom of my keyboard marked "Design" that I press and ta-daa! everything is done for me. I need to think about what I've been asked for, what is actually needed, and then draw it all out by hand, on paper or on the computer. Being able to draw and think creatively is pretty essential for the process of designing anything. It's pretty annoying when someone who is an MP dismisses whole industries like this. The creative sector in Britain is one of its real strengths, and comments like this just undermine the whole profession.

SNOW

I watched this over the Christmas holidays. This song sums up Cardiff today!

Snow Day!

Made it into work to get sent back home. Here are some snowy pics of us outside. Check out the leopardprint wellies!

Swansea Print Workshop

In a break from my day-to-day work now as a Multimedia Designer, I spent a weekend in December down at the Swansea Print Workshop re-learning how to screenprint. The screen print workshop is like the tardis, it looks like a tiny house on a terraced street from the outside but once you are through that door it is huuuuuuuge! Thankyou to Kara for being patient and in showing me some great things. The place has a lovely atmosphere, with people dropping in and working quietly away on some amazing stuff. It was very inspiring to see so many prints done in so many ways of so many things, and there are some very talented children out there, as I couldn't believe how good some of the work on the walls was.

I haven't got my prints back yet as they were still drying on the Sunday when I left, but I'm hoping to get them back soon and am looking forward to seeing them again.

Swansea Print Workshop website: http://www.swanseaprintworkshop.org.uk/

Stonehenge

Summer Solstice. Stonehenge. New year. New start.

Swnfest Tequila Radio

Tequila Radio

Broadcasting tonight between 7 and 9, the blonder and younger Capper with a Swnfest Special. Expect updates and news from Swn over the next week or so on this blog aswell.

Cardiff Design Festival

I went and visited a few exhibitions around Cardiff as part of the Cardiff Design Festival. First up was the UWIC gallery in Capitol shopping centre. It's a fairly small gallery, and when I visited was showing the work of Austrian designers and students. For a small space, there was a lot of work shown, and it was nice to see international work as well as Welsh work being shown in the design festival.

The next stop on my quick tour was Bay Art where there was an exhibition of work by Tim Freeman, Liam O'Connor and Christopher Holloway. I didn't enjoy Chris Holloway's paintings as much as the other work in this show. I could see what the artist was aiming for with his paintings of distorted suburbia, but I felt that the computer manipulation they had undergone before being painted was too obvious and the use of fluorescent pink was overdone. The choice of images was interesting though and they all had a feeling of eerieness and waiting for the next scene about them. Tim Freeman's work was much more calm and muted, and left me puzzling over how he created it. Liam O'Connor's contribution to the show was his paintings of friends and family and of these I particularly liked the ones of people singing as there was a lot of motion to them and I liked the style of painting.

Chris Holloway

Tim Freeman

Liam O'Connor

After that I got down to the Wales Millenium Centre for the show of work by design agencies in and around Cardiff. I was very impressed by a lot of the work and overall there seemed to be a lot of green and eco designs. It was interesting for me to see the work of designers in Cardiff, to gain inspiration and also to get an idea of places that my work would suit and that I could apply for placements in.

Related Links:

http://www.cardiffdesignfestival.org
http://www.bayart.org.uk
http://www.wmc.org.uk
http://www.liammarcoconnor.com
http://www.uwic.ac.uk

Afterwards

I have now finished university. The last few weeks of putting together the final show and handing in all my work all went very quickly.

Anyways, I have been packing up my room and my things, ready for heading back to Cardiff. So expect a more Welsh flavour to my blogging from now on. Whilst sorting through my mountains of stuff gathered over the last year, I found so many things to post about on here. These alphabets are from a book called Decorative Alphabets through the Ages by Pat Russell. I really like them, and I would really like to do something inspired by them over the summer to keep my creative ways going. I've already made a "G" badge for myself out of one of them!

^ Fourteenth century letters taken from an embroidered altar cloth in the Church of St Mary at Soest in Westphalia.

^ Probably designed in Venice in the late sixteenth century.

^ This alphabet is called Lapidaire Monstre and is by the French type designer J.Midolle. The bottom third contains the surnames of famous men which correspond to each letter.

^ This work by John Smith is entitled Alphascape.

Light Typography

Again, a video using environmental type. I'm not a particular fan of the typeface, but it's worth watching for the moment at the end when the candles get lighted. It looks amazing. There are a few videos like this on youtube from students at Estudamos Design Gráfico no IPCA, Barcelos, Portugal. I think it is is response to a brief set there. I liked some of the other films, but wonder if they were restricted in their choice of fonts, because some seem to fit the words and some don't. For example, in the film on the theme of "Work", the word is spelled out on a concrete floor, with nails, but in the same font as "Luz". I would have chosen that one as my favourite if maybe they had used a really heavy slab serif, or a heavy weight of something like Univers, but the font just doesn't fit the thought of "Work". Still, they are all pretty inspirational videos.

Summertime Typography

Inspirational video right here.

At the moment I am working on my last project of the year (aw!) which is a film using environmental typography. I am still storyboarding it at the moment but have started experimenting a little with recording things aswell. Anyways, if mine is ever a fraction as good as this then I will be very happy indeed. There is more information on this project here

What I need

Today in uni,  someone had very kindly made a poster giving away "more time". Here is my little bit of more time to share with you all. I'm not sure how much more time it offers, or when the extra time takes place, but right now I feel like I need it. 

Book cover design: What did I do last night? by Tom Sykes.

This is a book that I picked up about a year ago in a charity shop. On the shelves there amongst the Catherine Cookson's and the Mills&Boon, this jumped out at me. It promised an dark, dangerous and exciting read about drinking, getting into trouble and eventually sobering up. Expressive text on the cover lured me in, and I could almost feel the hangover pounding between the intense colours. 

Oh, I'm talking about the cover on the right, published by Random House in 2007. It's a really great read; funny, sad, troubled, but told without too much self pity. I've recommended it to a few people, and generally it has gone down well. I really like the cover, it has a clear spot varnish over the bottle which you can't see on screen, but slightly off. The whole thing to me just captures the mood of the book and I love the expressive, haphazard, inky writing. Recently I entered the Penguin book design competition to design the cover of On the Road, and the type on this book definitely inspired me with my design. So, pretty high praise for this version.

Now, the cover on the left is also Random House but the 2008 version. I found this yesterday while browsing in HMV. This is a very different environment to the charity shop shelf as it has to compete with CD covers and big glossy books full of photos. But I nearly walked past it without noticing. I get that the swirling type on the cover is meant to convey some kind of drunkenness, but for me it's a bit too calculated and dare I say.....chick lit? The 'nice' colours, the extra leg on the 'K' of Sykes, those swirling tendrils; to me this is saying that this book is about lashings of lambrini and a romantic disaster that turns out alright in the end. Centering all the text loses the tension of the asymmetric first cover, and it becomes a lot more predictable to the eye. A couple of swirls isn't going to rescue a dull design. It's easier to design something like the 2008 cover and less risky, and perhaps the publishers felt that the book needed to look more friendly in order to sell. Whatever; I'll be keeping my rough around the edges, rolling, roaring and drunken original in favour of  the simpering, hiccuping and tipsy new version.

*****Latest news: According to my poll, I am correct in analysis of these covers. Thankyou to the one person who voted!

As part of my course, we get talks and seminars we can attend hosted by tutors or visiting designers. Last week I was able to attend a session run by Rolf Pilarsky that focussed on ecological issues. Greenwashing was a major theme of our discussions, and we talked about companies who may have very un-environmental working practices but who get artists and designers to gloss over this and present them in a much better way. 

Rolf is from Berlin, and commutes by plane to Bath every week. You could argue that he is in a pretty bad position to be arguing for ecological awareness because plane journeys are known as being bad for carbon emissions. However, I am glad that he does commute as it gave me the chance to see some work he has been doing on the theme of environment, and he also showed us work by other artists, mainly photographers, who did work that was inspired by activism and social conscience.

After he showed us his work, one of the major points that came across was that it is still important to draw awareness to these issues, even if doing so consumes lots of energy and resources itself. Otherwise we might as well just do nothing and sit with the lights off. Even making a small change is important because that is how the big changes come about. Although there were a lot of well argued and conflicting points of view in the discussion, I still believe that with change you have to start somewhere and not just opt out. 

Anyway, here is some of the photography that he showed us, and if you follow the link to Rolf's website, there is more on his video there.

www.edwardburtynsky.com

Shipbreaking. Parts of old tankers are left to be broken up in poorer countries, sometimes containing toxic substances.

Robert Polidari. Photographs from Chernobyl and the town of Pripyat. These photos have a very eerie abandonment to them, more so when you know the context.

George Osodi. The fire in the background burned for 45 days. This photo was taken in Nigeria. There is more on this story here.

Alan Sekula. Shipwreck.

Bryn and Nessa do "Islands in the Stream"

I could watch this clip all day long. The choice of song is inspired, and the accents with those rolling rrrrrr's just get me. As a Cardiff girl myself, it reminds me of a few karaoke nights out on the town that have been very similar to this! I appreciate seeing good Welsh comedy going on, and this series is just getting better and better. If you havn't seen it yet, head over to the bbc/iplayer and find out what's occuring, alright?!

Go

Okay, all systems go. I feel like I should begin with a picture, but annoyingly I have left most of my good pictures on my hard drive which is not with me. So we get off to a wobbly start already.

I aim to document things I see, hear, find etc that are of interest to me. Hopefully some pattern will emerge of what I like. I may even write a little about these vague things aswell. But right now it is the middle of the night, and I don't know where to begin. But I imagine it will get easier.