Berlin

I have just spent a few days in Berlin. I really enjoyed myself. Heres a couple of compulsory tourist photos:

The Brandenburg Gates

The Reichstags

We timed the trip so that it was at the same time as the Pictoplasma Animation Festival (check out the Pictoplasma website). This was quite good timing as we are about to start an Flash animation brief. A lot of the animations were really amazing. Some worked because they were so simple, whereas others worked because of how complex the animation was.


This one is by Ginny Robertson and Garth Jones, and was an entrant for the E4 sting competition. I like it because it it so simple. Go to Ginny Robertson's website for more info.

We also attended a lecture with 2 directors from Studio Soi, a German animation studio. Although I don't intend to try for a career in animation, it was still very interesting. The thing that i found most interesting and inspiring is that all of the founding members were a group of friends that went to art college together. Setting up a business with friends is something that i would really like to do. Check out Studio Soi's website.

Berlin was really interesting in general. There was graffiti every where. We found a few really interesting shops and galleries that were basically in run down buildings and squats.

This was the entrance to a really cool little book shop that sold lots of german art books as well as homemade books and zines.

This was a building that had various different artists' shops and exhibitions.


We spent a full day at the zoo, which was amazing, except all the animals were really angry and trying to escape.

Heres a few photos from the zoo:







I took more photos at the zoo, to see the rest click here.

I didn't eat a meal for the first 2 days i was there, but we managed to find a really good vegie restaurant on the last day. Everyone went out for a meal there, which i thought was really nice of them.

The Simple Food Company

I have finished the Design4Print brief. Unfortunately I cant put photos up yet as it is being marked, but ill put some photos up as soon as i get it back.

I made 3 pieces of packaging that would be part of a much larger range. Everything would be made (if it were to be mass produced) with 100% recycled stock from Paperback (www.paperback.coop) and would be printed using vegetable oil based inks as they are better for the environment and the printers health.

Here are some of my final designs. Please bear in mind that the crisp and olive labels would be printed on slightly off-white and quite rough stock, and the biscuits are on quite a brown stock, so the 'feel' of them is completely different.

The front of the biscuit packaging.





And the back.
The box would be fairly normal looking, except the front would be slightly convex and the back would be (equally) slightly concave. This means that the box is a bit different, yet is still constructed from a relatively simple net and is still easily stackable on a shelf.

The label for the jar of olives. It would reach about 3/4 of the way around the jar.






And a close up of the front.



The crisps.



A close up of the front.



Originally, I was going to make normal crisp packets, however I decided to make a round tub instead, as crisp packets aren't recyclable.

If your interested you can view my Rational for this brief, and my final Evaluation of the whole module (from summer until now).

update

I finished the post card project. Here are my final full colour resolutions.






some close ups of individual letters from the vector image



Quite pleased with them. The vector one took literally hours and hours. I think maybe the photograph looks better though.

I have just finished reading week. I had friends over from the isle of man all week and as a result did no work, which is a bit dissapointing. Did a bit of filming though and have started putting together another LS6 BMX video. Hopefully i will make an LS6 website soon, but who knows?

Work that I'm doing at the minute involves reading Marx, as i have to make a presentation in 3 weeks. Reading about him is really interesting, especially so many years after his time. A lot of his predictions make sense in theory, but history has shown that in practice he was mistaken about a lot of things. Reading about Marx is interesting, but reading Marx doesn't make much sense.

My presentation will be based primarily on what Marx has to say about the fetish of commodities in Capital. However, I also want to talk briefly about Kant, as he helped inspire Marx's ideas, and Jean Baudrillard as he takes inspiration from Marx. As well as this I also want to discus Marxist theory in relation to modern capitalism.

I have also just started work on our 'design 4 print' brief, in which we have to, um...design something for print. I am going to design food packaging for a fictional small company (that i've called 'the simple food company')that makes vegan friendly organic food. Because companies like this tend to be small I am going to design the packaging using only 2 colours. I also want to consider using recycled or partly recycled, maybe unbleached stock and look at using water soluble inks.

This is the logo I have come up with so far. It may change though.




Sorry if this didn't make much sense. I'm half asleep. I think I'm getting a cold. I made the mistake of drinking some squash that had been sitting on my bed side table for a week or so. I woke up a couple of hours later with a sore throat and a blocked nose.

x

Back in leeds.

Yup. Full time work was crap and I'm a student again.

Over the summer we had to research various things and make 4 A6 pieces either informing people of things that we had learned about, or promoting our opinions/ideas about certain issues.

As I was working full time in a supermarket I decided to look into the food industry. I looked mainly at the treatment of animals for food (as well as animal testing). The things I found from my research were appalling, and as such have decided to become vegan.

If you want to find out more look at:

Go Veg
Vegetarian Society
Vegan Society
Compassion in World Farming
PETA UK

I realise that most people will not be willing to become vegan. I decided to promote the use of organic milk, pork, egg and chicken, as organic farming systems are much more ethical than more intensive systems such as battery farms.

I created a fictional organisation - 'For The Love Of Food', to promote organic food through. The message being that if you love your food, you will want to know it is ethically produced.

Here they are. Each one has a short piece of copy saying why you should buy organic milk/eggs/pork/chicken.










We then had to redesign them so that one would work with continuous tone/monotone, and one would work with just solid black and white. I decided to change the imagery a bit, as I felt the photographs relied on colour too much. This is the first time that I've done anything other than layouts/very simple vector images using illustrator. This was as much an excuse for me to use illustrator (now i've got it on my mac) as anything.





The next week we had to redesign them so that they would work in 2 colour. One in duotone, and one using spot colours. Again, I used the spot colour design as an excuse to use illustrator again. its quite surprising the depth that can be created using just 2 solid colours.





I also got this photo of Ricky at the law courts in town. I'm quite pleased with it. I like the way its abstracted by the position of the flat bank. I feel that the scally in the corner really makes this picture work well.




I went to the art gallery on saturday to see the Cult Fiction exhibition. I thought it was really good. I even bought the book.

It was an exhibition of comic art, illustration and graphic novels.


Travis Millard - 'Sally'


Layla Ali.

I really liked some of the illustrations. The detail in alot of them was amazing. My favorite piece was 'Who I am and what I want' by David Shrigley and Chris Shepherd. I have been wanting to see this for a little while.


Sorry I could only find a low quality version. The 'animate' intro thing isn't part of the video.

Day in, day out

So I've been at home for a month now. Getting in the routine, go to work, eat, go out on my bike, sleep, go to work, eat, go out on my bike, sleep...and so on. Ive not really done as much as i should have done with my college work. I'll hopefully do some more research today.

My parents got a new car a couple of weeks ago and i got insured on it. So I'm a driver again after a year of being but a pedestrian.

Cat come over last week and left yesterday. Time went far too fast. We did all the tacky tourist stuff: pedal boats, electric tram, beaches, ice creams and the wild life park.

At the wild life park i took some photos of the the animals (finally).



























I been ridin quite alot lately. Untill i wrecked my knee again. More photos, look!


















thats your lot for now. cya round like a circle

As sure as eggs is eggs

Right.

I've not posted here for ages. My computer has decided that it doesnt want to be a computer anymore, and so has stopped being a computer.

Since my last post a have sat watching the rain, I've visited Norwich, I've come back to the Isle of Man, and I've become accostomed to 12 hours sleep. I started work to day. I love it. Thats a lie. Its not too bad though.

I have decided to start looking more closely at what I eat. Not for health reasons (im not gay...). I've just started to realise that alot of what you eat causes unnessesery (spelling...?) suffering. I have also decided that the majority of the consumer industry is f*cked up. I have decided to base my summer project on this.

I want to look at different part of the consumer industry (mainly food) such as eggs, meat, fair trade, organic, gm, alcohol. I want to find out where exactly your money goes, what it funds, and the process involved in producing it.

Ill use free range eggs for example. there are two types of free range (so it seems): theres free range, and there is traditional free range. Traditional free range is what most people think of when they think of free range hens, ie happy hens roaming round a farm and laying eggs in a hutch at night, which are collected by a jolly (probably whistling) farmer. Most free range farms are nothing like this. Standards which chickens can be kept and still be called free range are extremely low (there are, however, independant bodies, such as the Soil Association that have higher standards); birds beaks are allowed to be cut off without aneasthetic (spelling?) and dye put in the feed to make the egg yolks brighter and more 'free range looking'.

Hens normally live in social groups and form relationships with one another, as well as hierarchies. Cramming thousands of birds together like they do on alot of 'free range' farms is mentally distressing for creatures that need to live within a tight social group. Many birds are crushed to death or injured because of the large groups that they are kept in, as well as this many birds never actually see outside because only the dominant birds can make it through the doors of the barn. Its like comparing a small group of friends happily watching a football match in a pub to thousands of football fans rioting.

Because only the females lay eggs (duh), any males that are born are killed and because of the stressfull condotions that the hens are kept in they can only lay eggs for about two years, after which they may get sent to the abatoir (spelling, again) to be killed.

Its worrying to think that Free Range is one of the more moral ways of keeping animals.

Its been a while...

I've not posted on here for a couple of weeks, I've been busy with gettin my website working and the like.

So yeah. Had my final deadline on tuesday, and my end of year tuturial yesterday. I dont know what to do with myself now I got nothing to do.

Heres a series of post cards I made for my final brief. Enjoy.

And here is the back of the post card

Cheers to Andy, Kyle, Sally, Chloe, Sreet Dave and the beautiful Cat.

Q. But else have you been upto?

A. Can't Remember.

Let's think...

Erm, i managed to get a copy of the photo by Ricky Adam thats going to make me famous (I mentioned it a few posts ago).

I'm the one sitting down. Fit, aren't I?

Oh, yer. I almost forgot, I spent the weekend in Stamford with Cat, met her parents for the first time. I even had a shave before hand.

Her dad gave us a lift there. I think he asked me if I wanted a work placement at the design agency that he's the head honcho of. They do the interiors for Mini, Jaguar, Rolls Royce, Toyoto, etc. Anyways, I was sitting in the back seat, and didn't hear know what he was talking about.

This is what I heard:

"theidk theidkjenecei hglnbmfp kjdnbvovp nbdoioij....I'll make a few phone calls if you want?"

I didn't know what to say and so said nothing.

Were trying to design a new logo for LS6 BMX. This is the old one.

The main reason we want to change it is because it looks just like the logo from the Fit video.

I was thinking maybe Andy could do something with pixel art. Not too sure what though.

Also we're thinking of starting a zine this summer called Hate Zine. The idea being that people contribute stories of things that annoy them, or talk about what they don't like. The aim is to making it half serious and half funny, and trying to create something possitive from things that are negative.

It might work, or it might not.

What was that program called on TV one Christmas, was it Grumpy Old Men or something?

Anyways, if you hate stuff then tell me about it.

xXx