18/02/11 - Val’s crit yesterday
Had our final crit with Val yesterday and, for once, I wasn’t up half the night frantically finishing work to show! As I’d planned to have my magazine spreads ready to print the day before (at City Binders, who I was really pleased with), I managed to finish a day early. I really enjoyed the project in the end too, and it feels as though that shows through in the work itself.
It was well-received, and the only criticism was a typographic detail of one paragraph being slightly too wide. Val said that I’d picked up the feel of the film well and that, although she’d seen ripped paper being done badly before, I’d gotten away with it. I put this down to actually ripping real pieces of paper and not trying to fake it in Photoshop. According to the feedback, the imagery I’d chosen to contrast worked well too.
I’d gone along with a couple of self-criticisms — the first being that I felt the paper stock could have been less glossy so it would absorb the ink more for a low-quality look, and the second being that I could have been more adventurous with a different print process for the fantasy parts to the reality parts. However, the general opinion of the class/Val was that these things worked as they were.
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The thing that I think really helped with this project was ignoring the doubts that crop up a lot when I start actually producing a piece of work. Because my idea involved getting out there and physically taking photos, then physically ripping and compiling them, I gained momentum enough to stop being so critical of my concept. Then, when I had material enough to work with, I altered the layout, colours, type and other details according to what I felt worked best in the moment. For the first time in a while, design felt as natural as it used to, and I started to enjoy it again.
I’ve always had a bit of a problem with how I see ‘experimentation’ and way others interpret it, but I think that’s where I’ve been going a bit wrong recently. For me, experimentation works best without being conscious of it — when you have the aim of reaching a final iteration of a thing, and not when you have the aim of ‘experimenting’ for its own sake. Perhaps if I aimed to produce the final version during the first few days of a project, I’d more naturally experiment as a result of not getting it right the first/second/third/fourth time. I’ve gradually gotten into the habit of waiting til the last day of a project to start producing (because of worrying about/trying to perfect the concept without making anything), and that’s so wrong because the later iterations can’t happen. It’s why I’ve not been proud of very much at all.
So here’s hoping that I can improve my process knowing what I’ve been doing wrong. Timetabling my days helped too as I mentioned before, so if I keep that up I’ll be able to know when to switch off my never-ending attempt to come up with a better idea, and start producing. I’m thinking that I should give myself the first couple of days of a two-week project for ideas and research and then decide on a direction after then (with this direction still evolving and meandering as the physical side develops).
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13/02/11 - Nude Magazine Briefing and interim
The task: To design a single-article minimag insert for Nude magazine, using Ken Hollings’ review of the Primitive London (1965) soundtrack.
The possibility of being involved in a team to produce real work later this year for Nude magazine played a big part in my choosing of this brief. What appealed to me most, however, was how realistic the task was. I’ve become quite indecisive when I design and have started to leave production until the last minute (because of focusing on/worrying about ideas for too long with more conceptual briefs), and so wanted to work on a project that’d be hands-on.
Watching Primitive London at the BFI the day after the briefing, I made notes on certain themes or points that stood out to me. The film covers a range of obscure topics, and attempts to uncover the gritty underbelly of London (particularly Soho). A couple of sections that caught my attention involved shots that contrasted a stripper’s routine with her walk to work in the rain, for example, as well as a part that compares the fantasy of buying a neatly tied chicken in the supermarket to the real process that goes on in chicken factories. Throughout both of these, Basil Kirchin’s soundtrack plays an integral part in terms of highlighting the primitive nature of the realities behind many of the fantasies that seemed to be part of people’s lives (and of course still are). The tune, which gradually gets more drawn out and sultry as the film goes on, seemed to me a parody of exciting fantasy-led music of the mainstream (like showtunes and soundtracks from B-movies, which the film poster and intro title borrow a lot from too) — which really brings out the rawness of the visuals.
The thread that I then decided to take forward was this contrast between fantasy and reality.
I started off by having a walk around Soho, getting a feel for the place though I knew it’d changed a lot since the 60’s. I then took a huge number of photos of decaying surfaces, cracks and mould down the road from where I’m living in Haringey. Walking around and taking photos is something I haven’t done for a while, and I was amazed at how much more aware it made me of shapes and colour combinations that I’d usually ignore through naturally closing myself off when I’ve got other things to think about.
I had this idea at first of juxtaposing this decay with bright neon signs; a simple analogy for fantasy and reality…
A couple of things I tried out in my sketchbook from these…
A few initial mess-abouts in Photoshop:
I’d been looking at examples of a few illustrators’/designers’ work too, like Kate Gibb’s screenprints:
and Intro:
I didn’t give myself time to take inspiration from these sources though, because a Beastie Boys album cover caught my eye:
(front)
(back)
I really liked how the front cover tells one story and the back adds another layer that completely changes it. It seemed quite similar to a technique employed in Primitive London, I felt, where we’ve been lured in by the striptease dancer’s show for her then to reveal some uncomfortable truths about being on her feet all day…
My instant response was to bounce off the LP cover’s technique to produce a print equivalent for the shock of the dancer’s feet — with a format similar to the following mock-up, where we’re interested by the dancer’s legs, but then find her ugly feet at the end…
Milton Glaser’s nudes came to mind for this…
Following on from this idea (and not developing it any further unfortunately) I wondered if I could show a contrast between the outside of a building and the inside — though I now see this as overcomplicating the concept, and taking it far more literally. Nevertheless, I thought about how a neon sign could be in front of an apartment window, where the building is fairly clean and bright. When turning the page (with the same folding format as the leg mock-up above) we’re then presented with the grubby, sordid or obscene interior (viewing the window from inside this time, with the neon sign showing through). I had a quick go at visualising the front page:
To unintentionally over-complicate things further, I then came up with a variation where we’d be able to see a girl from the outside of the apartment, where it looks like she’s stripping:
On the inside, we’d be presented with the reality, where we see the ill occupant in bed dropping a tissue in the bin…
For these, I was imagining the visuals to take something from 60’s illustrators like Kate Coolahan — matching the sophistication/dreaminess that I felt should be on the fantasy of the front page, but also to be used used for the ugly reality part to act as a parody (in a way similar to Basil Kirchin’s music for the film).
I was having trouble starting these (I think because I’ve lost my confidence with and forgotten how to get stuck into the production of a piece of work), which I think put me off the ideas I’d so far had. As a result, I tried to take a step back and ask ‘What is the simplest way to demonstrate fantasy clashing with reality?’… And the answer I came up with was a happy Disney character frolicking about, in front of some sort of obscenity or morbid scene. The following was a demonstration of this (though maybe meat wasn’t a shocking enough choice)…
I found the following book by Pop Ink in the library, which I felt epitomised the extreme cute that I was looking for…
The parody in the cuteness was intended to mirror that of the soundtrack against such gritty visuals.
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The interim crit
Perhaps because of my uncertainty and confusion during the past week, I wasn’t particularly proud of much of what I had to show. I tried to do the concepts justice in my presentation however, and the first reaction (mainly from Val) was that I desperately needed to just decide on a direction and stick with it. Looking back I then realised that I’d flitted from one idea to the next for my experiments rather than producing variations all in one direction. I think this uncertainty of ideas could have been a result of how little editorial design I’ve done recently, and also because of the aforementioned unease with making a physical start on work.
I was told that my initial neon/dirt attempts and my disney/meat experiments showed a bit of promise, but I felt as though my visuals weren’t nearly developed enough to be judged — other than as demonstrations of an abstract idea. In addition, the feeling of my computer visuals didn’t come across as human enough for the rawness of the film/soundtrack it was about. Henry’s work had a real energy about it that I think stood out, because it did have this human quality. Val had brought in a book of old fanzines which she thought would be a good point of reference for us all (I think because they seem more human), but from the start I’d felt as though it was the wrong sort of direction for the article. I stick by that thought, but can now see what she saw in the fanzines as a source of inspiration.
A point that Val brought up about most people’s work (including mine) was that the text shouldn’t be neglected during the design process. It seemed that a lot of us had just focused on illustrations or photos and ignored the text (titles and body copy) til the last minute. There were numerous debates over this same subject as we went around the table, and I found Val’s insistence interesting. I’d say it demonstrated the hesitance that a number of us have to actually get stuck in and make stuff. I’d really like to develop my design process in that way — something that I remember talking to/interviewing Douglas about last year… designing with your hands first rather than your head. Maybe it’s just a natural tendency we have to do one or the other, but I’m sure we’re able to influence this balance somehow.
As a result of the above Val recommended that we all look a lot more at magazines too, to get into the right frame of mind; to have a practical, down-to-Earth way of solving the challenge.
As with my interim crit with Paulus a couple of weeks before, I felt relieved to have my uncertainty lifted about my work. Being told what was wrong with it (regardless of whether the advice should be followed or not in my eyes) seemed to help in some way.
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Update
Since the interim crit, I’ve now bought the film for reference when I need. Watching again, I’ve decided on a new variation of fantasy and reality that I think is much simpler and true to the atmosphere of the film, and more relevant to its soundtrack. Now: reality is simply screenshots of ‘primitive’ parts of the film, and fantasy is commercial advertising from around the same era. I’m intending for a paper layer of reality to be underneath a paper layer of fantasy, and for the top layer to appear to have been violently (and primitively) ripped through to the strange imagery below. I’m hoping it’ll be apparent that the nicey-nicey adverts come across as representing the fantasy element that Kirchin’s soundtrack contributes to. Maybe the title of the article could aid this link…
The rips through metal from the logo for Jurassic Park III was what came to mind straight away…
But of course billboards in the tube are also relevant visual reference…
On saturday I went to the college library and took loads of photos of ads from LIFE magazine from the mid-60’s — concentrating a lot on the half-tone printing patterns when close up…
And here are a few process photos so far…
I’m really hoping to play the fantasy and reality parts off each other — getting them to interact where the theme might be similar (ie. Food, or femininity).
I’m also mindful of rhythm, and want to build up the level of intensity as the reader progresses.
I think I’ll be developing the text alongside the imagery (especially after Val’s insistence!), and I’m thinking it’d look interesting if columns of copy followed the irregular shapes of rips too. I might be able to make the text look like the copy on the posters, but this is something I’ll have to explore in the next few days — before Thursday’s final crit!