Week 6: Absurd Museum

I remember seeing in a book of stupid signs once a sign on an otherwise blank wall proclaiming "this sign is only temporary".  Obviously this sign would have no function other than to warn people that at some point they sign would be taken down, but that is of course its only purpose making it s kind of paradox.  However looking back through the book from where I saw this, i couldn't find it... I wonder if I made it up? Either way I made one on Photoshop as my exhibit into the museum of the truly absurd...


Distractology!

Project 6: Ology Orgy

This week we were given the challenge to invent a new ology - the study of something. The idea was that we were all competing for our ology to become an official ology. We started out looking at 'Stareology', the study of staring, but after a day and a half of research our work was literally torn to shreds, and deemed too boring an ology to have a chance at winning. However we pushed slowly and begrudgingly forward from one idea to the next, with no real confidence in our ideas. At the end of the 3rd day we landed on distractions due to Lottie's observation of how easily us as a group got distracted by things.  With just one more day left we cycled through as many ideas as we could, trying not to be distracted by how well other groups appeared to be doing... 
On the evening of the last day we drastically changed our idea, stripping away almost everything we had planned to present, and decided... as Distractologists, that our goal was to eliminate distractions from the workplace.  In a sense our aim was to get people to focus more and concentrate despite distractions. So using an idea Scott had, we effectively designed a pair of blinkers for humans.  We called them state of the art Concentration Goggles... High tech equipment made from tubes of paper stuck together at a particular angle, designed to channel your vision into one small, circular area.

We asked people to wear these at all times throughout our crit, for experimental reasons, and at no time were you allowed to take them off. We designed some carefully planned distractions throughout our crit in order to see if there was an improvement in concentration levels despite the distractions. The results were positive as everyone missed Alice and I swapping clothes... There will be a video to follow shortly...


We made nice pairs for the tutors...
...and 50 'shitty' ones for the class
Our presentation was pretty minimal...
We also achieved full accreditation for our ology based on our presentation alone... yay!

Week 5: Food

This is a somewhat gross idea but it was one of the first things I thought of... I dunno what that says about me but I doubt its very healthy. I like to think the idea stemmed from a Futurama into I saw a while back. Imagine this guys voice narrating it... this guy.


Reed, Dick & Ink

Project 5: Visual Thinking

For this weeks project each group was given a different writing implement. We were given a Reed pen and a pot of Indian ink, with a whole week to research as much as we can into our chosen medium and come up with an idea for a minute long video that would show off our tool in its most rudimentary form.  In short we realised that the beauty of the Reed pen is that it hasn't changed in over 5000 years. It is itself its simplest form and could not be improved in design.  The other observation we made was; give 4 boys some pens and paper, no matter how fancy, and they'll end up drawing dicks and other profanities all over the page... Something that apparently we have in common with our 5000 year old ancestors... fancy that...


Week 4: Packaging

This week our idea was on packaging. My first thought was about packaging packaging. Despite thinking it was really obvious I thought more about it and applied it to a situation it which it may not be just a stupid comment.  So imagine your a 5 year old growing up in the 90's. Star Wars is still ever much the rage and all you want is some of the action figures to play with so you can make new movies in your mind while climbing and flying around the house. So when you get them of course you rip the packaging to shreds to free Han Solo from the plastic 'carbonite' that surrounds him... If I hadn't experienced the priceless memories of playing with these figures then I probably wouldn't be the man I am today... but I could be a lot richer had I kept the original packaging and sold the many copies I had of curtain figures to old fat men that get off on unopened packaging....


Typography 101

Project 3: The Rulebook
(Group Project: Anastasija Voitova, Ben Pender, Luke Evans, Rhosalyn Green)

Having not really done much typography of my own, I felt quite out of my depth with this project. We were given a rather complicated project in which we had to produce two final pieces under the same constraints;  B&W on A4 paper, with Georgia as our only usable typeface... Using this as our medium we were asked to describe the term 'X-height'. For all of you at home, 'X-height' is the height of a lowercase 'x' within any given font. It is used by typeface designers as a reference point to gauge the height of a letter from the baseline and the mean line. This needs to be considered when deciding the use for the typeface as it affects the readability and legibility at varying sizes... I hope that makes sense.  Anyway, the first resolution had to be a flawless example of purist typography, while the other was meant as a more creative use of the constraints provided.
 1.
For the first we decided to alter the 'x-height' of Georgia into the calculated 'x-height' of two other typefaces, Helvetica and Bernhard BT. By doing so we are showing that when the 'x-height' is not considered, small text becomes harder to read.  The right-hand text body is the height of the 'x' to the left to visually represent 'x-height' and the text sitting above and below the text body shows its relation to the cap height and descender height.
 2.
As for the second piece... we felt that we had thoroughly explained 'x-height' in the first part we decided to merely demonstrate it in a contextual situation. It extends directly to the body text of the first piece, where the top image shows Georgia with a traditionally perfect 'x-height', Helvetica with a beautifully simplistic style but an 'x-height' that favours style over function and Bernhard BT with a stupidly considered 'x-height'... nuf said.







Week 3: Unemployed

If you were metaphorically given a workforce of the 2.51 million unemployed people in the UK to put to good use what would you do?  I decided that it was good idea to try and create a band you could see from outta space.  Unfortunately sound cannot travel in space so the idea is impossible.  However the rest Europe might have to start wearing earplugs or alternatively pay good money for the experience.


Manipulation of Space

Project 2: Space
(4 day photographic project based on a personal view of space)

This week I looked into the manipulation of space. Space is usually within a given boundary or area with limitations. However these physical spaces can be altered depending on the individual perspectives of different people.
Through photography a particular perspective can be forced upon the viewer.  Removing references and considering obscure viewpoints on a particular space will hopefully provide an abstract view on space, which will not only be unique as an image but also to the individual.





So i did some modeling...

Yeah so I was asked to do some modeling for an MA Fashion student at Kingston.  Never done anything like it before. It was pretty jokes.  I dunno if I should do it again, but she asked me to do it again... for money... so I probably will...


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