Category: Field Year 2

End of Year Reflection

Subject

I definitely enjoyed On Display more than Persuasion, but I think a lot of that has to do with the topic and how I executed the projects in comparison with one another. I feel like the first half of subject was a bit more free in terms of what we could make, and Persuasion of course was very client based. This definitely showed me what it’s like to work for people, as it shows how good communications skills, and teamwork skills really need to happen for the team and work to thrive.

I thoroughly enjoyed On Display and have picked up a few branding jobs as freelance work since showing people that project which is amazing! It’s also the type of design I really enjoy. I don’t like hard and heavy design where negativity is used for a positive outcome (which I learnt from Constellation).

Persuasion definitely encouraged me to do something different to the outcomes I normally like to produce, but as I’ve mentioned in another post — I feel a bit underwhelmed by it in the exhibition because it’s all on a screen.

In addition to this, I just feel like there was a lot more context, both given and researched myself, to On Display. Ectodermal Dysplasia isn’t common in people, and so finding inspiration for outcomes, as well as research to help gain a greater understanding of it all was very limited. It does however mean that our outcomes are ones of very few that exist, which is a nice thought as we know we’ve made things that need to be out there in order to open up a dialogue about the condition.

I really enjoyed the chance to work in a team for Persuasion, which is something I definitely didn’t expect myself to be saying. In first year I was put in groups where people didn’t really pull their own weight — this was a completely different experience, and I’ve even made some strong friendships through this project. This definitely helped me to improve my collaboration skills, and has given me the confidence to take charge in groups where I may not have as good a team next time.

Field

Field was a bit hit and miss. The hit: Psychogeography. It was an amazing project to be able to work on. The miss: Graphic Novel of the First Person. It just didn’t feel like the brief I read on the sign up sheet for the module.

I really didn’t enjoy Field in the first term, and to say I was relieved to see the back of it is definitely an understatement. I didn’t like the way it was taught. There were a lot of talks by guest speakers, and trips to the museum and, lectures that felt so dragged out in comparison to the time we had to actually make the graphic novel itself. In addition to this it was just badly organised; timetables kept changing on the day of the activity, I was told to do one thing, and when I did it I was told it was wrong — it just left me with very mixed feelings and a lot of confusion. That’s really sad, and I wish I didn’t feel this way about it because I loved the narrative I initially had going into the module, and I was looking forward to bring it to life, but then I was told it had to be darker and deeper, and that’s definitely not always the case. I spent so much time in my A-Levels studying deep and meaningful topics in art and other classes, I want to use my time at university to come away from that — still design for a good cause, but using positivity at the heart of it.

I was a bit worried coming back in second term that I would feel very much the same way about Psychogeography. I had a little bit more faith given that half of it was taught by David. I felt a lot more comfortable working on projects when my tutor knew how I worked, what I’m like and how I feel about the subject I was designing for. Not only that but we were just encouraged to really go for it. whereas the first field felt like we were pushed to stay within the experimental stages of the design and focus less on the outcome. Psychogeography was a completely different ball game. I could make whatever I wanted so long as it met the brief — which is always nice to hear. I definitely used this time to explore the type of design I hope to specialise in, in at least some capacity, when I leave university. I learnt so much about myself as a designer in this module. I was in everyday from at least 9am to about 6pm working on the project and I think that says a lot. I put everything into that project and the results I had from it, the outcome itself and the mark, really made me proud. This module has encouraged me to think about entering ISTD in third year, and I know I’m able to put in the work for third year as this project has proved. I enjoyed being in university everyday and being a part of community.

Constellation

I have had Sarah for most of my time in Constellation since starting in first year. It’s made the whole process of preparing for my dissertation so much easier. I’ve really enjoyed talking to someone who knows my interests, and is also interested in what I’m writing about. I have been interested in the topic since first year and I’m really looking forward to exploring the topic more. Ethical design in all sense of the word has inspired me as a designer so much already, and it’s something I want to be aware of as I develop as a designer. I want to explore how ethical negativity in design is, and how a particular way of portraying people effects people’s mental health and why this is bad. I have so many ideas and so many things I want to look at. In all honesty I didn’t expect to be this excited about writing my dissertation — so I think this is a pretty good sign I’m going in the right direction

As a whole

This year has definitely left me feeling burnt out and ready for 3 months of sleeping! First and second term were really difficult for me behind the scenes, and that has definitely taken a toll as the year has gone on. I know sometimes throwing yourself into something you enjoy can lift same of the stress, but I think I went too far. I was using it as an excuse to leave the house and to distract myself from other problems I had going on. Although I made a lot of good work due to all of the extra hours I put in, it’s left me feeling very drained which definitely isn’t good.

I’m very lucky that second year was a way to test the playing field and see what I’m interested in, because now I’m a lot less worried about next year. I think this is a really good way to feel about third year because I’m ready to start now. I’m really looking forward to coming back in September and being a part of the amazing community of people in the graphics studio for one last year.

I’m definitely more content with myself this year. Last year involved a lot of homesickness and travelling, and although in comparison to the personal things that have happened this year it was a breeze, I didn’t feel as much a part of the community as I do this year. I’ve made so many more friends on the course, and for someone who misses home a lot and has trouble making new connections, this was such a big step up for me. I think something just clicked and everything fell into place after those few difficult months. I’ve been a lot more pro-active this year. I’ve been in university almost everyday, whereas last year if we didn’t have to be in I wasn’t in. This is a big step up for me because that time spent in the studio has allowed me to really explore my practice and build strong friendships with my course mates. I now know I have a strong group of people next year that I can go to for advice and to critique my work and that feels amazing.

I also joined the Creative Mornings team and that has really pushed me. I run their Instagram account alongside another member, and being a part of a community that isn’t restricted to the studio has given me a lot more confidence in my practice and that feels amazing. In addition to this, it’s also set me up with so many connections, and I know that if I keep this up the rewards from it will be invaluable.

I’m really proud of myself this year. I’m not ready to leave university — I love the community I’ve created for myself and the space I have to play and explore my practice as a designer. It’s inspired me so much and I know what I want to do next. Summer will definitely feel strange, and I’ll miss the long break from the studio — I can’t wait to come back in September.

Third Year, here we come.

Psychogeography: Presentation and Reflection of the Project PDP

Not Without You – Processes and DevelopmentDownload

I definitely believe this is my strongest project yet. I did have my doubts about the execution of my mock-up, but then when I realised it was just to give an essence of the final piece I think it did pretty well in showing that. The spine was really difficult to match up to the actual book measurements even though I used the same measurements in both files, but this has taught me to print out more mock ups to try and test before sticking everything together.

I knew it was ambitious of me to go for 62 pages (initially 54) after having not done much editorial for the best part of a year. I think the ambitious goal pushed me to try and achieve my outcome even more. I was asked if it was too ambitious, why was I doing so many pages, is it manageable, etc. and the more I heard these things the more I made sure I would complete all of the pages. I felt like having this big work load really allowed me to explore editorial layouts and really find out what I enjoy about editorial design and how I like to communicate within this pocket of design.

I know this project shows its been a real labour of love. Every letter I’ve written, or photo I’ve taken has proven that to me. Everything was considered. I knew that I had to push myself whilst I had the chance to on Explore, because it gave me the freedom to do exactly what I wanted. I love this piece of work and I have never been prouder of a project. It’s also a project I’ve been able to take to social media and not feel too immature to show. People from home have loved watching this project unfold and it’s been a nice project for me to really remember why I came to university in the first place, and just to break away from the stereotypical office jobs and retail vacancies people have back home.

I’ve proven a lot to myself this term. I know I’m capable of art direction, producing nice pieces of imagery be it photography or illustration, I can connect to an audience well… there are just so many things. Having never worked with photography before, I was so surprised by the work I managed to produce in such a short period of time. I really enjoyed how experimental this module was, and not only did it allow me to explore a place, but also my discipline and what I really want to get out of my time at Cardiff Met. It also helped me to settle in a lot more, and find my feet. Home was something that held me back massively last year, and this module just opened up so many more avenues for me and has really helped me close that chapter in a way, and get used to exploring new places and new cities with new people.

I often find that after a few weeks of working on a project, I start to get bored, or grow negative feelings towards it, but I didn’t feel like that with this project. I feel so passionate about celebrating the culture of my hometown, and the last 20 years of my life living there. I want people to know it’s a good place to be, and I want them to love it as much as I do. I felt like I owed something to Merthyr, and really wanted to celebrate the town in which I grew up in, which is so different from the everyday comments I here about Merthyr. The feedback I’ve had from other people in Merthyr is so lovely, and has helped them realise that Merthyr Tydfil isn’t a bad place to live, especially now that it’s come from someone who has moved away and still gets called back every weekend by it’s landscapes and community.

Psychogeography has been an amazing module to be a part of, and I’m hoping to carry this project on as a passion project. If I was to carry this forward, I’d like to make it into a series of places that hold a lot of sentimental value to me, so maybe Cardiff should be next on my list. This project has given me a lot of time to reflect on how I feel about Merthyr and what it means to me, and I’ve started to introduce psychogeographical thought processes to my travels around Cardiff, to find new and exciting places that I can learn more about and build more memories around. I want to make psychogeography part of my everyday life, and really value the places I visit, or plan to visit. I know I can create really strong pieces of work around this topic, and it’s a topic that has so many avenues that I could venture down. I’m going to explore more around the topic of Psychogeography in my own time and turn it into a passion project. I feel like the topic of place and meaning resonates with a lot of people, and it’s something people can make themselves a part of, whether their opinions of that place are different or not. It builds a community of people who share something in common, and shows that not all design has to be really serious and patriotic or screaming about only negative issues in towns and cities. Sometimes it’s nice to just enjoy a place, document it, and move on.

Psychogeography: Expressive Typography

Last year I used expressive typography in my work, and I loved how it brought the story together. I find the larger ‘accent’ pieces of type very beautiful, and allude to the body copy really nicely. There is expressive typography throughout my editorial to highlight key moments, feelings and thoughts in each letter, but in addition to this, it’s also on the inside of the dust cover, and it’s a stand-out piece where I’ve used Calon Lan to emphasise the honesty and purity of this editorial.

The stand-out pieces of expressive typography in this project for me are the cover and the page breaks for ‘Calon Lan’.

The only way I can describe designing the expressive type for the songs is how I hear them, so when things pick up in a song, they either get larger or help to navigate the eye around the page depending on the space. I always find welsh choirs build up to a massive finish, hence why the final chorus in Calon Lan takes up the entire spread, and the final ‘Bread and roses, Bread and roses’ is in a different colour in the dust cover.

Psychogeography: Addressing Problems and Finding Solutions – Photography/Imagery for places that feel unethical to photograph

This appeared to be a little bit of an issue as I started to try and document the places I needed for this editorial. I realised that I couldn’t just go and take photos of my old primary school, whether there were children there or not, it just didn’t feel right. I had the same problem with my nan’s house, my old house and my late gran’s house. All of these places are being lived in. My nan still lives in her house, but the other two houses are now belonging to other people, and it doesn’t take much common sense to work out it’s just not right to go and take photos of someone else’s house.

I could either illustrate these, or screenshot the places off Google Maps, but again, the photos would still be of other people’s houses, and I just don’t want to give a literal representation of anyone else’s home, I’m happy to use my own house, but it’s wrong to do it to other people, and I certainly didn’t want them to feel pressured to say yes if I asked them.

I’d already mentioned about exploring urban sketching in an earlier post, so I decided to illustrate the buildings in the end — it still gives a strong sense of place even if it’s not photographic. I like that it shows the memories are so old, that I only remember fragments of the experiences, and therefore it feels right to have them illustrated rather than realistic and photographed. This also worked well as far as self-preservation is concerned. There’s a letter in this piece of work dedicated to my late gran who passed when I was four year’s old. I haven’t needed to process the feelings surrounding her passing until this project. I think the illustration of her house softens the blow as far as emotions go. I didn’t want it to be sad, but obviously it’s a letter to someone I can no longer see, so it’s going to be upsetting.

To explain why these are different to the rest of the photographic pieces, I think I’ll use something to split them up from the photographs, just to show this is a blurred section of my life, but a valued one. In addition to this, I’ll also introduce them with a few lines, in some poetic way. This will make everything feel a little more cohesive.

Psychogeography: Addressing Problems and Finding Solutions – Type and Image

My main issues were with the ‘Dear Tram Road’ spread.

I was either losing all of the lovely detail in the leaves along the right hand-side for the sake of saving the legibility of the body copy, or I was keep the detail in the image, but losing parts of the body copy to the paler parts of the photograph.

After asking David about it, he suggested I try using a translucent box to dilute the heavily contrasting tones in the background, but this also meant the box had to have a stand alone purpose, rather than it being there just because it has to be there. My justification for the box was that it was allowed to be there, so long as it could symbolise the importance the tram road has in my life. It worked in the end; I have the text spilling out of the box to show that the events that happened on that road have spilt out into other parts of my life. It’s where my boyfriend asked me to go out with him, as cheesy as it sounds, it’s obviously changed my life as I’ve had to accommodate someone else, which alters how I would’ve gone about everyday life (in a good way of course).

I’m really happy with the final development of this page spread, I definitely learnt a lot about composition just from trying to navigate the working space in this image alone, such as focal points, angles, perceptions, and I think I’ve definitely got a stronger sense of how to guide the eye to read the page in the way I want it to.

Psychogeography: Testing Layouts

The hardest part was writing the letters. I really wanted this to be an honest and heart-felt project, and in order to do that I had to really understand why I loved areas of Merthyr so much, and think about why they are so important to me. The hard bit about this is, not all memories are good memories, and so this project is proving to be really challenging on my emotions, and having to dig up old feelings and memories again to uncover the importance of these places has definitely been an exhausting experience.

Other than having to right all the letters out for each double page, I really enjoyed working with layout. I loved looking at typefaces and deciding the perfect one. I chose Didoni, which is a hybrid of Bodoni and Didot — I found it on Adobe Typekit. It’s from URW++. I decided to partner it with a sans serif typeface for the body copy. I chose futura simply because it’s such a clean typeface so it doesn’t feel too busy next to Didoni.

This shows everything from picking out the pantone, to the print tests, and then this is how the colours look digitally but they print out to be like the second line down on the print tests.

After having done all of these layouts, I knew the type of aesthetic I was going for, so after experimenting with a few of the spreads I just decided that the remaining pages I would alter as and when things needed changing, rather than creating different variations all of the time.

Some of the experiments have ‘Dear’ in a different colour, this was based on the feedback I received from David, just talking about how the location should be made the focal point. I will go over my feedback session in another post though.

Psychogeography: Breaking Down Layouts

I spent a lot of time last year looking at editorial projects, and editorial design, so before I went any further, I looked back on these posts:

It made sense to look at last year’s work because I really want to develop my editorial design and how I work with layout.

I then looked at two travel journals/travel magazines to get inspiration for how to display photography alongside typography, and how to make powerful and impactful layouts that really celebrate the photos.

I looked at:

I realised that a lot of the spreads were either complete full bleed images, or the photography took up a good amount of space, and the negative space on the mirroring page would balance the weight of the layout.

I also took inspiration from the post I wrote last year based on page layouts, and focused on the more minimal, imagery based page set ups. At this point, I had decided each page was going to be square, and each spread would therefore be rectangular.

I chose a 9″x9″ square to work with and then set about playing around with it in InDesign. Tester post to follow.

Psychogeography: Photos for Editorial

I know what places I want to explore in my editorial project, so I’ve taken the photos already, so I can use them when it comes to playing with style and layout.

These are the photos I took (on three separate occasions, ready for the next step, which is layout development. I already know that from this, my colour palette will be made up of green/blue tones.

Psychogeography: Design Inspiration

**Elbow Grease:

Elbow Grease Magazine is my main inspiration for this project. Their gritty and raw photography was a big influence when I was fleshing out my initial idea. In edition to this, ‘perseverance and proper graft’ reminded me of the attitude of the miners during the miners strike (as portrayed in the film ‘Pride’). In edition to this, I really liked their grungy, yet minimalistic, aesthetic.

I chose Elbow Grease as my main inspiration because I really like how they play with smaller formats within the overall format itself. When trying to decide how I would give a nod to Merthyr’s history, this is the first thing that came to mind, almost like it’s in the past so the history is a small part of my story, but it isn’t necessarily a key part. For example, one of the places that means a lot to me is the tram road. I have no links to the physical tram road, but it’s there because of the mining industry.

In addition to this, I really want to explore display typography in this project, I want to use it to portray strong emotions and messages to give an essence of the body copy says. Also, I think some pages in display typeface would have a really powerful effect if done right.

I love their full bleed images with strongly contrasting typefaces, they feel really emotional and personal. I love the poetic rhythm in the lines “Now dado’s dodo, manufacturing so-so, technology’s a gogo, the hands a no-no.” The rhythm sounds playful and bouncy, but has a deeper meaning behind it.

Silky Way Mag:

I love the content in Silky Way magazine. The Cardiff issue is based on all the hidden gems around Cardiff not known to the typical tourist. The content of this is what inspired me to do a printed piece on Merthyr; this alongside the feeling that many people only know of the bad things in/about Merthyr. I wanted to shine a light on the beautiful hidden areas of Merthyr, and I definitely think Silky Way mag is a big inspiration for this.

Boom Saloon:

I love the cover of issue three of ‘boom saloon’. The colours are absolutely beautiful. This is my main inspiration for overlaying type on photography. I think the cover is absolutely beautiful! The way the trailing leaves frame the rest of the images works so well to draw the eye down into the centre of the cover to read the title. It feels really lovely and calming to look at, and completely lives up to the artworks name ‘Sanctuary’.b

The Rolling Home:

This is from issue five. There is a particular layout in this issue that I felt strongly inspired by:

I love how spacious and refreshing this spread feels. The strong contrast between the pale photography and the black varied weight, serif typeface looks beautiful. I think the black typeface picks out the black line running through the imagery really well and just links all of the pieces together. It’s simple but absolutely beautiful.

Flaneur:

Flaneur explores a street per issue, with its complexity and all it’s layers. I don’t want to do this exactly, but I would like to uncover the layers of the places that mean something to me. I want to explore my town, and write letters or poems to those places.

Cereal:

I was drawn to the minimalist aesthetic of Cereal magazine. Much like ‘The Rolling Home’ magazine; I liked a particular spread from this magazine.

I love the soft tones in this photo, and especially how the minimal typography allows the photo to breathe and speak for itself. I think full bleed images really celebrate a sense of place. I love seeing every tiny detail in photos like this, it really pulls you into the environment and allows you to live in that space for a moment or two.

I definitely want to celebrate photography in this project. It’s not something I ever really work with, but after looking at all of these editorial magazines I know I want to incorporate photography into my project in whatever capacity.

Other things I found interesting for this project:

I’m really interested in how I can use shape and block colours from my colour palette to illustrate Merthyr Tydfil. I really like how beautiful the paper cut illustrations are, and the dimension that layering the paper creates. It feels a bit more alive and dynamic in comparison to flat design and the shadows and highlights make it feel like a place that you could just place yourself in. In addition to this, it’s a little bit more imaginative than photography, and allows the viewer to imagine more about the place before they open the editorial.

The piece above is by Abigail Reynolds. I thought this would be a lovely way to show ‘then and now’ of Merthyr Tydfil. I’m really interested in seeing how this would turn out. I don’t necessarily think ‘then and now’ is a key piece of my editorial work, but it will still be a nice experiment to do, and maybe it’ll be useful in another way.

I really enjoy urban sketching in my own time; I think there is something so special about seeing the world through someone else’s eyes in their style. It adds real character, and it’s also really interesting to see what details they choose to emphasise more than others. It’s more personal than photography too, in my opinion. I think if I was to use this it would definitely be for much earlier memories, or for things where photography doesn’t quite do the place any justice.

Resources and References: