Ephemeral Show Snaps

Our London Show took place last week. The show title was “Ephemeral” and it was held in Blackall Studios in Shoreditch. Overall I think it went really well, the private view was a good night and lots of people showed up, considering we did not get much through traffic due to the location. Here are a couple of snaps of the show (off my iPhone so not great quality) but there should be more to come after.

D&AD

After our degree show, certain projects were picked to be displayed at our stand at D&AD New Blood. If your work was picked, you got a little post-it note next to it. And guess what?!

I really enjoyed New Blood, it was good to have a look at what other course have done this year. My favourite was Nottingham Trent, I liked the viral video promoting their degree show which you can see here.

Bath Spa University won an award for one of the best stands, which is exciting and Jasper Dunk from my course was one of the New Blood winners. You can have a look at his stuff here, its pretty good.

New York, New York

I have been working on this New York Book for a really long time. I visited the city back in February and now it is May. I worked solidly on it for a couple of weeks but did not enjoy it. Recently, after going back to it, I made a decision to just finish it and get it printed, ready for hand in. I did not like the project at all as I had spent too much time on it but when it came to printing it, I began to like it again.

The main thing I like about it is the scale when the pages fold out. These pages are 420 x 500 mm, which is quite large for a book which is 250 x210 when it is closed. I think it reflects the subject of the book. I bound the book with a black, hard cover, and embossed the title, “NEW YORK NEW YORK” in gold. The gold on black represents New York at night and all the lights, which ties in with the New York Lights project.

Here are some photos of the final book:

Paper Stock Photos

I have finally finished cutting Paper Stock book! It took two evenings and two solid days to cut, which i actually really enjoyed. I think the book has been successful and I am pleased with the outcome, especially since it was done my hand.

I managed to (with the help of Kelly, our photography tutor) take some photos, some using a macro lense.

Ellis Island Etching

For the last four weeks I have been attending photo etching classes. I did some etchings last year, which was really exciting and I love the nature of hand made prints. Penny, the etching technician asked us to bring photos of natural forms. These are the photos I considered using. They are put in grey scale, as this is how they would have been printed.

However, I didn’t want to make a photo etching for the sake of it, I wanted to make something that tied in with one of my existing projects. I remembered this photo I took on my recent trip to New York. I thought that it would work as a photo etching as there are so many different textures within the photo.

I thought that I would tie this photo etching into my New York New York project, which puts existing quotes with images that I have taken. Although I had already researched this subject, I had no quotes suitable for this image. I wanted to find a quote that told someone’s story about immigrating to America that glorifies Ellis Island. I found this web page that contains several quotes of what I was looking for. One quote on here was perfect. I think it is a beautiful quote and exactly what I was looking for.

“I remember my grandfather always telling me how he knew he could be rich in America because he saw riches in the architecture of Ellis Island. He felt that if they let the poor in such a gorgeous hall then life in this country was just.”
– Rosanne Welch, granddaughter of Giuseppe Italiano, and Italian immigrant in 1904

Here I needed to make a decision of whether I wanted to keep the style constant to the New York New York book or to change the style to make it suit the medium it is printed in. To keep it the same format I would need to make the image a full bleed, with the text in white on the bottom of the page. This would not look good. I decided to go make the content of reflect the nature of the photo etching and the time the quote was said in.

The main aspect that I need to consider is the typography. I chose a serif typeface to reflect the time period the quote talks of. I chose Bodini.

Light Box Photos

I had a photo session in the studio with a photography tutor to get some proper photos of my New York Lights project. I wanted to photograph the box with the lights on, but still show that it is a box. I wanted to try and capture how the box looks in real life.

To do this we lit the box from the side/behind so that the light is capture on the edge of the box. We played around with the aperture so that the lights are bright.

Barnaby Barford

Barnaby Barford is a London based ceramicist who works with traditional porcelain figures and alters them to make a reflection of modern day life. He came to give us a lecture, which was very interesting. Before the lecture, Georgia Craib and I decided to make a lecture poster to advertise the event. However, we wanted to do something different, something more special than a poster. We decided to make a film. Barnaby Barford has made one animation with the support of the channel 4 arts council, which can be seen here. The film is incredible, he has animated porcelain figures so smoothly. It is set in an antique shop and tells a traditional love story.

There is something eerie about an antique shop and Barnaby Barford’s film could be interpreted as what goes on when humans aren’t around. This is an aspect that we decided to highlight in the film.

The film we made consists of two layers overlapped. The opaque layer is the outside of an antique shop. We chose this shop because it looks so characterfull and the blue and red exterior of the shop is truly beautiful. It is quirky and you can see the contents of the shop, making it obvious it is an antique shop.

The translucent layer is people walking, which was filmed down in Bath town centre. After testing out lots of different places we finally found a spot against a wall so that the background was flat. We edited this layer so that the figures walking past seem ghostly and pale. We wanted the outlines of the figures to be recognisable but we aimed to loose a lot of the detail.

We set roughly a 40 second limit the the film but actually captured three hours of footage. We filmed the antique shop in its transition from night to day. We got up at 3.30 AM and started filming 4, and finished filming at 6.20 so we captured the shop in the sunrise. We chose the sunrise instead of sunset so we would get less people walking past. Unfortunately the sunlight did not shine on the shop and a light was left on inside the shop which brightened up the shop but but the dark to light transition is still obvious when it has been sped up.

With both recordings we picked up fantastic sound. Whilst filming the people we managed to record a man playing violin (who was actually balancing on a rope suspended by two stands) which we thought would be appropriate for an antique shop, particularly with the murmur of the high street voices. Whilst filming the antique shop we recorded the dawn chorus, which had some eerie sounds which are repeated and are actually quite creepy. We decided to go for the dawn chorus as it fits with the dark to light transition, but some of the bird calls were quite strange, to go with the oddness of the shop itself.

Cutting Paper Stock Book

I am in the process of cutting into my paper stock book. I was actually very nervous about starting it as I was scared that I would mess it all up. I have nearly finished it, and so far I am pleased with the way it turned out. I have been extra careful so as not to ruin it. I am doing it bit by bit, a couple of hours at a time, changing the blade on my craft knife often and having absolutely no drinks anywhere near it. I take my watch off and roll my sleeves up just to make sure they don’t catch on it. I like the way it is looking at the moment and I have also really enjoyed doing it.

Binding Paperstock

During the week I bound my paperstock book. It was really difficult, especially since the book-binding technician at uni had only just left and they hadn’t got anyone to replace her. I haven’t done loads of book binding before, so at the beginning of the day I was really stuck. I had a clear idea of what I wanted, I just wasn’t sure how to execute it. However, I bought extra of the materials I needed just incase I needed to test out and learn via trial and improvement and I was determined to get it done that day. Luckily, some friends on my course were able to help me out and by asking around, I managed to bind the book exactly how I had planned. The book is held together by screw binding, with a 50mm wide calico covered board to protect the paper from the screws. I chose calico as it is a natural looking material with a neutral cream colour. I wanted it to look almost unnoticeable so the eyes are drawn to the paper and not the way the book was bound. Here are some photographs of the bound book, before I started cutting into it.

Paperstock – letterpress

I have spent the last two days in the letterpress workshop at uni, printing for my paperstock book.
I have letterpressed each page with the information about that particular paper. I chose to limit the information to the name and gsm of each paper. I considered price and size, but many come in several sizes, which means several prices and I did not want to overcrowd it. I also considered printing whereabouts in uni the paper could be bought, for example, the shop, or etching but I wanted to keep it as simple as possible.
The format of the words needed to be kept pretty simple. I decided not to include punctuation as it would look messy and it was a label, rather than a sentence. Also for this reason, it was printed in all lowercase. I could chose between Gill Sans and Univers. I chose Gill sans as there was more of a variety within out letterpress workshop.
After a couple of tests, I decided 18 point light was the appropriate size and weighting for what I wanted to do.

Here are some photos of the letterpressed paperstocks.