Friday 30 October 2009

A day in the charming city of Manchester. Last friday we went to view the Home Grown exhibit based on the culture and background of hip-hop, with our very own guide and critical studies tutor, Richard Miles. It was a lovely day out and we managed to visit a fantastic print shop on the way home and the inspiring craft centre which gave me some inspiration as to a lifestyle of the Arts & Crafts sector of Graphic Design. As of then though, it was the beginning of half term and had been looking forward to some well earned rest to re-cooperate.

Monday 19 October 2009

Carboot sales are amazing. I've never had a typewriter before so I picked this number up at the local carboot in Dewsbury, it was in full working order, came with an ink ribbon (which had two colours) for a mere... £2.50. Bargain.

Saturday 17 October 2009

How do you create something original?
Easy, the 3 approaches to thinking; systematic, stimulated and intuitive. My design for the latest Don't Panic theme, 'Original' uses the ideas on thinking in Werner Gaede's book Vom Wort Zum Bild. Just something I knocked up on a saturday afternoon, I think i'll go for a curry now.
Final design above and how I got there below.

Leeds' Light Night was lovely. Having the opportunity to see the sights of leeds without having a few too many was really nice. I started off at the lower end of leeds in which I briefly stopped off at the Trinity church to grab a leaflet. The visuals of the leaflet were really nice and a fantastic use of print, as you may have seen the leaflet before through the link, I didn't actually know that the print came in a scrumptious turquoise blue. From there I moved up the town towards Millennium square, there was a small fine art exhibition in Victoria Quarter on the way and there was even a fine art exhibit by some of our own at the Leeds College of Art at the Nation of Shopkeepers.
Millenium Square in Leeds is not often the most crowded place except of course about 12-ish when the business men come out for there dinners and sit the the Wetherspoons. It was really crowded, for start there was a interactive video was on the big screen on which when you drew things on a partner screen were exhibited there. It was really cool as they became animated.
There was also an exhibition from the travelling gallery whom exhibited several pieces, there were some challenging stacking blocks, a talking robot which gave information about Leeds' history, a huge ensembled sculpture mode for recycled plastic cups, a giant white chocolate covered cereal cube (which was incredible) and a communication exhibition which featured lots of cups connected by string looking at the lost art of conversation.
Oh, and there was a tent in which you could learn to dance.
As I started making my way over to the town hall and the Henry Moore institute there was a video playing against Civic Hall, it was quite hard to make out what it actually was though. Against Leeds Art Museum found some little detail which were amazing, the owls on the fencing aside the building were coated with knitwear items to keep them warm, I loved these scarves, hats and even cardigans. Inside the museum there was a trio whom told stories and pranced around the building whilst outside there were even sleeping lions and an exercise tuition.
Outside the Henry Moore Institute there was a fine art performance. Basically i've never been a good interpretor of fine art but it involved dancing around a chair to some music in formal attire without the trousers and doing lots of random flailing arm movements and groin and bum thrusting. Its was entertaining to say the least and things really heated up when a bunch of chavs kicked off and took one of the performers chairs to hit someone. I felt slightly embarrased as they were obviously leeds locals but it was entertaining.
As i made my way to the upper side of town it was now getting late, there were video exhibitions against the Leeds College of Technology and the Leeds Met, the one with the robot was quite cool displaying human characteristics and the one against the leeds Met building looked quite eery with an eye looking over the town, it did actually remind me a bit of Lord of the Ring's 'Sauron'. From there I went up to the broadcasting place to which I have never been to but pass its dominating rusting tower each day to college. Inside there were two small exhibitions, some hand built robots (which comprised mostly of amazing lego) which produced sounds and interacted with their surrounding environment and there was a software program built which mimics a solar system to which you could add planets to and see how your system evolved over time.
And finally I made my way back through the town, observing the projections on the the Rose Bowl building of the leeds Met and the sleeping lions once again which yet in-spite of being 'sleeping' lions seemed rather awake and wandered around town in a pack.
To finish off the evening I visited a bar at the lower end of town in which you could view the lower side of leeds from, how more of a perfect end could that be, than just sitting in a cosy bar with a gin and tonic in your hand watching the world go by below.

Friday 16 October 2009


Something to pass the time... its really hard tho. The Rather Difficult Font Game found via Shinyblog, and i know it should be called typeface.

Saturday 10 October 2009

If you're ever stuck for motivation I thought this video might get the ball rolling. I love the pretentious voices, reminds me of something Fred would show us in a briefing on a monday morning, following the weekend of course to which most of us either got wasted or didn't actually do any work. By Joseph Pelling via ShinyBlog.

Monday 5 October 2009

When I took my trip to the car-boot last week and looked for uses of print (Click), I also bought a camera for myself, not knowing it was any good I previously had a manual camera which doesn't work anymore so I bought a new one, a Practica MLT 5B for £12. And here are the photos, not too bad really from what I was expecting. I love the first one, and I'm really impressed by the focus. The camera also had a timer function which lasts about eight seconds which I thought is pretty nifty, hence the image of myself looking rather confused as I thought the timer had already gone off.