New York Box

Photos of the light box.
I intended the box to be seen in the dark, so all that is seen is the dots of light.
It looks a lot better in real life rather than a photo which is why i want to display it as an installation.

Paper stock book

I have bought the paper for my paper stock book and I have been playing around with the typography of the letters PAER (so i can spell out PAPER). The letters need to be in straight lines so they can be cut in the style I want to cut them. Each letter will be 70 x 140 mm with a 15mm gap inbetween. The kerning between each letters will be the same due to the design of each character.

Here is a drawing to scale of the design:

I worked out the dimensions of the book from the size of the letters in terms of width and height.

Width: 5 letters at 70 mm each + 4 spaces in between letters at 15mm each = 410 mm.
30 mm each side of word and 50 mm for binding space. = 110 mm
410 + 110 = 520 mm

Height: character height = 140 mm
25mm above letter and 35 mm below letter = 60 mm

140 + 60 = 200 mm

Therefore the exterior dimension is 520 x 200 mm.

5days/5projects

During what could be interpreted as a ‘week off’ uni, my housemates and I decided to each set a 24 hour brief each. As there are 5 of us doing Graphic Communication in my house, we set briefs for every working day in the week. The format for each piece of work is A3 portrait. The end result will be in the form of a book, with every housemate’s reaction to each brief.
Here are my responses to the briefs.

Brief 1:
5; Make a piece of work using the theme of the number five.

Ideas: 5 fingers, senses, tally, toes, size 5 feet, high five, five alive, 5 the band (5ive) 5 gold rings, 5 boobs, prime number, pentagram, odd number.

Brief 2:
Building; Make a piece of working to reflect the meaning of the word ‘building’.

Ideas: Building blocks, lego, kids building toys.
Building maps, contours.
Building site, cement, tools, bricks, scaffolding.

Brief 3:
Bad music; Create a positive image using the theme of bad music. No type.

Ideas: Music I don’t like: Michael Jackson, U2, Nirvana, The Enemy, White Stripes. Generally all dubstep and drum n bass. The music that Jack Maxwell listens to with the bass up loud. Oops upside your head, YMCA.

Brief 4:
Perfect Match

Brief 5:
the £2 Obsession; Using under £2, make a piece of work using the theme of obsession.

Ideas: Vicki T’s boob job cost £4200 for 365grams. Size A to DD, 4 cup sizes. £1050 per cup size.
£1050 = 100%, £2 = 0.13%. £2 will get you 0.13% of a cup size worth of boob job.
Obsessions: boobs, drugs, OCD, organising, repetitive things, ordering. Typography. Fonts. All the fonts on my Mac.

New York Box – Lighting

This weekend I managed to fit the lights inside the box. I got some help from my dad, the expert, and in the process I learned a lot. There two fluorescent tube lights, both 89cm long, inside the box. Inside there are two horizontal wood panels which are screwed to the back of the box. The lights are attached to these panels.

The lights are connected to one another and then to the external wire, which is pinned to the wood panel to stop it from going in front of the lights, and then out a hole at the bottom/back of the box. After the wire was threaded through the hole, I wired the plug ready to be put in a socket.

When I first tested the box with the lights on, there was some light that escaped from the top and the bottom of the panel. To overcome this, we attached a couple more pieces of wood to the inside of the box so the light would be blocked and would not show.

There is one problem with the box. Each bulb is 30 watts so after a while the lights accumulate a lot of heat and to make a heat vent would let out light. If i were to make the box again I would consider LED lighting for a low heat output, greater safety and ecologically sound low energy use.

New York Box

My New York light box project was put on hold for a couple of weeks as I needed some advice from my dad about the electrical side of things. That is all on the go again and I have been to B&Q with him and bought all the necessary lighting equipment (lights, fixtures, wire etc) but I’ll post another blog on that when its done. In the past week I have been painting both the box and the front panel. I did quite a bit of research on wood primer and paint. When I felt confident that i knew what to do I purchased white wood primer and black surface overcoat. I decided the best method would be to roller on the paint to get a more even surface. I was quite worried about the paint seeping through the holes and filling them in so that the light would not go through so I was prepared to clear every hole with a pin after every layer. However, I was pleasantly surprised the way the primer and the paint provided a smooth finish without filling in the holes – even the 1mm holes. I think it helped that I decided to do several thin layers of paint as opposed to less thick ones. I had to do a couple, but that was okay, i was expecting to do them all.

Whilst priming the box I had to cover all the surfaces, even the inside of the box that will not be seen, so the box will not absorb the paint on one side and bend. I coated the box in two layers of primer and two layers of black surface overcoat, sanding in between each layer. The front panel will need another coat to improve the surface texture. This has taken quite a while as the paint I chose was oil based so it takes quite a while to dry.

Here are a couple of photos of the box and front panel in between layers of primer and paint.

Illuminate

I was recently asked to do an A3 portrait piece of work on the theme of illuminate. Lydia Skinner and Josh Williams organised an exhibition in the caves underneath their house of fifteen 3rd year students at Bath School of art and design. Each image was to be screen printed on white paper using glow in the dark ink. This meant that the image could only have one layer. We had a couple of days do do the whole thing and the night was a success.

For my image I decided to take it back to science at school.

pictures of the night still to come.

New York Book

After editing which images to use with which quotes I have started experimenting around with layout. I am finding it a bit more difficult that I had initially thought. The book will not open from right to left, but from bottom to top so it has much more of a vertical feel – to reflect the feel of New York City. I have been experimenting with both the images and the typography, playing around with the size and positioning of the content of each page trying to make it work as an individual page and as part of a book. I’ve also tried to keep each page relatively constant without making it too monotonous. I’ve been working on it for two weeks now, each day printing out a mock up to see what needs to be changed.

I’d like to make a wooden front cover for the book to make it relate to my other New York project. I still really like the idea of drilling holes, perhaps of where i took each photo in the book.

Paper

Since the beginning of first year I have been filling a sketchbook by cutting out bits of paper and folding it. It has always been something that interests me – the shapes formed and the shadows cast. Recently I had the idea of incorporating typography into this project. I began experimenting with cutting out a letter on one page and slightly smaller on the next page to give it an engraved look. I really enjoyed cutting this out and I also liked the result a lot.

I wanted to use it in a project. I thought about doing it on a large scale, for example writing a sentence or a word. However, what it would say would have to be relevant, and link to it.

The main thing I like about it is that you can turn the pages to see the characters build up or down. The point of the book could be that each page could show something different, for example different paper. It would work that you would get a tiny peek at what the paper would be from the front image but would have to turn the pages to look at it properly.

I need to think about what the word will say, perhaps it could just simply say ‘paper’ as it is about different paper stocks. If the book was for a particular brand, the brand or logo would be cut out. I would quite like to use the paper stocks available in the university shop. I went to the shop today to look at the variations of paper stock and there are 20.

Musical Typography: U2

I spent this morning doing letterpress. I haven’t done letterpress since the beginning of first year and wanted to get familiar with the process again. A while ago i had designed a typographic piece as a reaction to the brief ‘bad music’. The original brief was to create an positive image using the theme of ‘bad music’. No type allowed. Unfortunately the first thing that came to me was pure typography. I went on to create an image based piece but did not want to ignore my initial idea. Bad music is all based on taste. Personally I hate the band U2. My first image was computer generated. The wording was the most important thing. I placed each word on a different line, taking up the the majority of the length of the page as I wanted it to make a big statement. The words ‘i love you too’ are a big statement without the double meaning, so, in my opinion, need to be large.

Though i still did not think this as a finished piece. I was happy with the content, but not the aesthetics. I decided to refresh my letterpress knowledge and make this piece into a print.

I decided to change the typeface and the colour. The typeface relates more to the four words written. I chose a serif font as opposed to a sans serif as I felt reflected what was written better. The red relates to the theme of love, and also to U2′s album vertigo, which is a particular hate of mine.

Hans Dieter Reichert Masterclass

Brief

Theme: ‘Structure’
Mind set: Easy – enjoy yourself and create
Colour: Black and white and grey (halftone of black)
Format: A4 (final size A6 landscape)

Observe, explore and visualise the subject of structure in our environments. The subject structure can be close to you and your graphic interest such as ‘typographic’ structures but as wide reaching as structure(s) in computers, nature, architecture, the studio room etc. The emphasis is on observing, exploring, visualising and final production.

Generate some text (50-100 words)
Try to find images (copying, scanning, drawings, printing)

Production: Collect your findings and produce a section signature (8pp) design layout with your text and image. Finally combine all layouts to a final bound production.

First of all I started to research into architectural structure to co-inside with my interest in New York City. However, after a while I realised that it was not working like I had hoped so decided to change the subject of the book. In recent crits I have been advised to make some work which is more personal. I also wanted to continue working with typography so I decided to concentrate on the letter Z. Although it is not really personal work, the letter Z is my first initial and I find its structural form very interesting.

I started looking into the history of the letter Z

The letter was based on the Greek ‘zeta’ and was written as so: I
The reason for the structural change is probably due to the fact that is is quicker and easier to write Z.

The letter came seventh in the Greek and Latin Alphabet, but the Romans eventually dropped the letter Z from the Latin alphabet as the sound was never used. It would have been dropped from the alphabet we use today if it weren’t for the fact that when Romans conquered the Greeks, a couple of Greek words containing the letter Z were incorporated into the Latin language. Z was then put back into the Latin alphabet but was put at the end of the alphabet as it was the least used letter.

The Romans adopted the zeta into their alphabet, but since the sound was not used in the Latin language the letter was eventually dropped, and the position of the seventh letter was given to the G. In fact, the Z might never have made it into our present-day alphabet, if not for a few stray Greek words that were incorporated into the Roman language after the Romans conquered the Greeks. In order to write these words a Z was required, and so, several centuries after it was first banished from the Roman alphabet, the Z was allowed to return. However, because the letter was not a part of the traditional Roman language, the Z was relegated to the last spot in the alphabetical hierarchy.

After the masterclass, the group decided to print a copy of our book for each person and bind them all together. Here is the result.