OUGD502 ALEC EXERCISE

Alec Dudson the creative director for Intern spoke to us today about his work place but most importantly conducted an exercise with us. This workshop would help us define what it is we are worried about within the creative industry for instance jobs or approval of work and how to address these issues.

In our group we decided a pretty important issue we would come across is being able to use facilities such as printers, laser cutters, screen printing and such outside of university once we've graduated. We worked hard on an idea of some kind of median that would be able to aid people like us outside of university to easily access these things. We thought some of the main issues were locating these facilities and also being able to afford to use them. We put other cons within a chart to narrow down a solution for this problem.

Our final pitch was to create an app that lists all of the location of these facilities in any major city in the UK and also the prices of each one. Downloading the app would give you a chance to talk to others within that creative community for perhaps feedback on your work given the fact that out of university, you wouldn't be surrounded by other creatives. Critical feedback like this is incredibly valuable therefore it should be apart of the app. A final part of the app is that downloading it and becoming a part of this community will grant you some sort of graduate discount for two years after graduation. This would hopefully give young creatives a better chance in the world for say freelance work.

OUGD502 BRIEF 1, DESIGN DATING

Today I was given my first brief for PPP and to summarise it I basically have to interview a working professional in some manner. I could either contact a freelance designer, a large or small scale studio or company of my choice. Whence I interviewed them I could document this in a form of my choice. This could be a physical publication, podcast interview, video or something never done before.

For a simple exercise we did a task called design speed dating. We would meet someone we weren't too familiar with in the class and ask questions from a sheet themed around design and their experiences. It was a good exercise to briefly practice interviewing and also sharing what inspires us. I shared a few designers that I follow and also discovered some new ones from this task which is great.

To begin the actual project I decided to put a few names together that Id possibly like to get in touch with. These are all designers, artists and studios that inspire me and my work.

Jackson Green - Mad Decent

Gucci Maze

Felipe Pantone

Meanwhile Press

Kooollektoor - Kristine Kawakubo

Jay Howell

Angelea Owens

People of Print - PosterZine

OUGD502 MANCHESTER TRIP

I visited Manchester for the beginning of my PPP project and attended two exhibitions. The first one was a transient space exhibition and used projection mapping to show the content produced. I thought that the graphics and images being shown looked really great however they flicked through so fast you couldn't spend time looking at them. I guess this was the point of the exhibition though and perhaps should have thought of it in a different way. I thought that it was really distracting the fact that it was exhibited in the entrance hall of the university also. This made it harder to appreciate and also see as it was so high up and far away. I reckon this kind of design belongs on a social media platform or a more personal platform.

The second exhibition was at the Whitworth and was more of a collection of work per say. The exhibition that I gave most of my attention too was one by Alice Kettle. She had three massive canvases all with hand stitched illustrations. I really appreciated the attention to detail and the whole fact of every time you look at it you see something new. Behind the canvas, you could see all the small individual details like little houses and people that kind of blend in on the front side. 

One thing that I thought was really interesting in the Whitworth was the organisation of all the work there. I don't if this was on purpose or not. What I noticed was how random the organisation of the work was. One minute you'd be looking at a really modern piece of projection mapping and then right next to that would be an old renaissance painting. In that case it seemed very random and it also but your mind in a really weird place trying to take apart the concept of both at the same time. In some cases it seemed intentional as there was a room with illustrations of lots of different people in a similar style but by completely different artists in different time periods. They were all placed upon similar dimensions also which I found interesting and perhaps another link to how the layout could be linked to the work.