Synopsis & Final Video

Exploratory Design Practise                                                                                                                   Andrew Smith

Synopsis of work completed & projected outcome.

I started off by looking at thing which I have an interest in like hill walking and badminton. I also looked at things which are important to me like, family past and present & friends.

Topics being thought about at the start.

Conversations with the dead! (Came from watching a programme about old people entitled “THE HOME” RTE1). 

 A road divided! (Thinking about community/ family divides)

Behind doors! (A camera angle showing the outside of front doors, but what happens inside them)

Started looking at Photographers such as Bert Hardy, I came across a couple of his photographs of the city in the central library. 

Imogen Cunningham, Bruce Davidson, Walter Chappell and Sharon Lockhart

Looking at album covers, advertisements and print material which interests me.

I took photos when I was out walking and an old ancestral house nearby, trying to generate ideas and thoughts.

The conversations with the dead came back again when I decided to take photographs of headstones particularly the type. I also took rubbings of the stones. I decided to take pictures of a family grave. This in turn led me to an ancestral house where I recorded a few videos. From the photographs I came across the reflections of the graveyard on the stone. This made me reflect and think on the people within the grave although I didn’t know them personally. Recorded some more images and took more photographs, came across letters written by a relative. I decided to combine the letters with photos. Combined the letters with photographs which I took picking out sentences that stood out. Was also looking at christograms and catacombs as influences.

I hope to put together a short video using final cut pro and a series of postcards/posters combining type and graphics.

Final Video

I used Final Cut Pro to combine video clips take. The Video is Called letters, blood & graveyards.

 

Idea generation behind video

Think bubble

Different idea generation and exploration of ideas and linkage of project.

Postcards



Postcards

FRONT

From the poster I took sections to be used for postcard designs.

BACK

The postage stamp mark dates from the 1960's.

Posters

Posters  I created using Photoshop with a combination of photography and type.

The posters represent reflection

Kinetic Typography

Kinetic type, like this idea and design.




Wall Street Riots - Dr King - Typography Motion Graphics Music Video





Nick the Greek





Typography: Thank You For Smoking




Could use this technique with the letters etc like opening credits.

Travels

Interesting!

On my travels I came across what I was told to be the “smallest church in Ireland”, the Moravian Church. I hadn’t heard of this type of reformed Christian faith before although I did find it interesting to read about.

What interested me even more were the actual size and the shape of the building. The door was located on the corner of the building with what appeared to be a chimney with a bell.

It was a pitty the church wasn't open that day, it would have been nice to see the interior.

I don't know what this means.

The seal of the

Moravian Church

The Moravian Church was founded in 1457 in Bohemia - the name Moravian derives from the refugees from Moravia who settled on lands of Count Zinzendorf in the 18th century, thus founding the renewed church.

More information can be found at http://www.moravian.org.uk  

The architecture of this house in Co Antrim was inspired by the Giants Causeway. Some very interesting shapes and layout of windows.

It blends in well with the landscape, but it puts me in mind of Mondrain's work minus the colours.

Experimental

I have tried printing type on to slate using a template and paint, going with the idea of the headstone inscriptions. I have used words that can be associated with my project.

Memories lost and remembered

Questions unanswered   

Possible methods for postcard designs.  

Perhaps this might help me with my postcards.

I decided I would try and carve out a quote from the letters onto slate. Wasn’t very fruitful but it was worth and go!

Friends past & present

Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard J. Muybridge

Born 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904) was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.[1]

Muybridge was born Edward James Muggeridge at Kingston upon Thames, London, England on April 9, 1830. He is believed to have changed his first name to match that of King Eadweard as shown on the plinth of the Kingston coronation stone, which was re-erected in Kingston in 1850. Although he did not change his first name until the 1870s, he changed his surname to Muygridge early in his San Francisco career and then changed it again to Muybridge at the launch of his photographic career or during the years between.

In 1855 Muybridge arrived in San Francisco, starting his career as a publisher's agent and bookseller. He left San Francisco at the end of that decade, and after a stagecoach accident in which he received severe head injuries returned to England for a few years. While recuperating back in England, he seriously took up photography sometime between 1861 and 1866, where he learned the wet-collodion process.[2][3] He reappeared in San Francisco in 1866 with the name Muybridge and rapidly became successful in photography, focusing principally on landscape and architectural subjects, although his business cards also advertised his services for portraiture.[4] His photographs were sold by various photographic entrepreneurs on Montgomery Street (most notably the firm of Bradley & Rulofson), San Francisco's main commercial street, during those years....

Photographing the West

Muybridge began to build his reputation in 1867 with photos of Yosemite and San Francisco (many of the Yosemite photographs reproduced the same scenes taken by Carleton Watkins). Muybridge quickly gained notice for his landscape photographs, which showed the grandeur and expansiveness of the West. The images were published under the pseudonym “Helios.” In the summer of 1868 Muybridge was commissioned to photograph one of the U.S. Army's expeditions.

Tv programme that first drew my attention to this photographer.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00wdlkz/Imagine_Winter_2010_The_Weird_Adventures_of_Eadweard_Muybridge/

Designers

Alan Fletcher

Alan Gerard Fletcher (27 September 1931 – 21 September 2006) was a British graphic designer.

He founded the design firm Fletcher/Forbes/Gill with Colin Forbes and Bob Gill in 1962. An early product was their 1963 book Graphic Design: A Visual Comparison.

Clients included Pirelli, Cunard, Penguin Books and Olivetti. Gill left the partnership in 1965 and was replaced by Theo Crosby, so the firm became Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes. Two new partners joined, and the partnership evolved into Pentagram in 1972, with Forbes, Crosby, Kenneth Grange and Mervyn Kurlansky, with clients including Lloyd's of London and Daimler Benz. Much of his work is still in use: a logo for Reuters made up of 84 dots, which he created in 1965, was retired in 1992, but his 1989 "V&A" logo for Victoria and Albert Museum, and his "IoD" logo for the Institute of Directors remain in use. In last years he designed the logo for the Italian School of Architecture "Facolta` di Architettura di Alghero", (University of Sassari).

He created iconic brand identities for clients such as Pirelli and the V&A and transformed book design in his role as consultant art editor to Phaidon Press with his spirited, witty and very personal style.

Examples of his work

More information can be found at  http://www.designmuseum.org/



Theo van Doesburg

1883-1939

European Artist

Theo van Doesburg, was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on August 30, 1883. His first exhibition of paintings was held in 1908 in the Hague. In the early 1910s he wrote poetry and established himself as an art critic. From 1914 to 1916 van Doesburg served in the Dutch army, after which time he settled in Leiden and began his collaboration with the architects J. J. P. Oud and Jan Wils. In 1917 they founded the group De Stijl [more] and the periodical of the same name; other original members were Vilmos Huszár, Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck, and Georges Vantongerloo. Van Doesburg executed decorations for Oud?s De Vonk project in Noordwijkerhout in 1917.The Landesmuseum of Weimar presented a solo show of van Doesburg?s work in 1924. That same year he lectured on modern literature in Prague, Vienna, and Hannover, and the Bauhaus published his Grundbegriffe der neuen gestaltenden Kunst (Principles of Neo-Plastic Art). A new phase of De Stijl was declared by van Doesburg in his manifesto of Elementarism, published in 1926. Van Doesburg returned to Paris in 1929 and began working on a house at Meudon-Val-Fleury with van Eesteren. Also in that year he published the first issue of Art concret, the organ of the Paris-based group of the same name. Van Doesburg was the moving force behind the formation of the group Abstraction-Création in Paris. The artist died on March 7, 1931, in Davos, Switzerland.

Theo van Doesburg

1883-1939

European Artist

Theo van Doesburg, was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on August 30, 1883. His first exhibition of paintings was held in 1908 in the Hague. In the early 1910s he wrote poetry and established himself as an art critic. From 1914 to 1916 van Doesburg served in the Dutch army, after which time he settled in Leiden and began his collaboration with the architects J. J. P. Oud and Jan Wils. In 1917 they founded the group De Stijl [more] and the periodical of the same name; other original members were Vilmos Huszár, Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck, and Georges Vantongerloo. Van Doesburg executed decorations for Oud?s De Vonk project in Noordwijkerhout in 1917.The Landesmuseum of Weimar presented a solo show of van Doesburg?s work in 1924. That same year he lectured on modern literature in Prague, Vienna, and Hannover, and the Bauhaus published his Grundbegriffe der neuen gestaltenden Kunst (Principles of Neo-Plastic Art). A new phase of De Stijl was declared by van Doesburg in his manifesto of Elementarism, published in 1926. Van Doesburg returned to Paris in 1929 and began working on a house at Meudon-Val-Fleury with van Eesteren. Also in that year he published the first issue of Art concret, the organ of the Paris-based group of the same name. Van Doesburg was the moving force behind the formation of the group Abstraction-Création in Paris. The artist died on March 7, 1931, in Davos, Switzerland.

Examples of his work

Creative Review Video.

In the second of our studio visit films (made in collaboration with Order), we spent some time at the South London studio of independent letterpress printer, Kelvyn Smith, as he prepared for the Reverting To Type letterpress exhibition taking place in London's Standpoint Gallery in December...

Mr Smiths letterpress (not me!)



Very interesting video regarding letterpress typography. It ties in with the type inscripted on the headstones which I took.

Would be an interesting experiment to try.

Catacombs

Catacombs are ancient, human-made subterranean passageways for burial or protection. Any chamber used as a burial place can be described as a catacomb, although the word is most commonly associated with the Roman empire. Many are under cities and have been popularised by stories of their use as war refuges, smugglers' hideouts, or meeting places for cults.

Video's

A reflective video. The keys dropping looks as if the camera angel is looking up.

Final Cut Pro tutorials

Some final cut pro turtorials.


Opening credits idea




Doing my video in Final Cut Pro so these might prove helpful.

Tutorials!

Some tutorials that might come in handy.

Photoshop



Make a Shattered Dagger Poster: Photoshop Tutorial

Experimental Videos

A few experimental video's. Trying to stay within the theme of  family and a generation.

#

 

Cinegraph

Nosferatu - Idioteque.

An interesting piece of film from the 1920's

Nosferatu the Vampyre is a 1979 West German vampire horror film written and directed by Werner Herzog. Its original German title is Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht ("Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night"). The film is set primarily in 19th century Wismar, Germany and Transylvania, Romania, and was conceived as a stylistic remake of the 1922 German Dracula adaptation, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens. It stars Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula, Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Harker, Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Harker and French artist-writer Roland Topor as Renfield.

For me it displays an excellent use of light and camera angles. The music in this particular one gives the film more meaning and sets the setting of the scary atmosphere. You could also say that the sound track takes away from the original silent film. 

Dracula (1931) Trailer

Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, featuring as its primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula. It was first published as a hardcover in 1897 by Archibald Constable and Co

It is called Bran Castle,and it used to be one of Prince Vlad Tepes'temporary residences.

Bran Castle

I have been to Bran Castle in Romania and it wasn't that exciting!

Opening credits of ''The Pacific''

Band of Brothers

German Expressionism

I came across the album cover for Sunshine Underground, Nobody’s coming to save you. It put me in mind of the Metropolis film release poster. It was interesting more because of the strong use of vertical and horizontal lines that leads the eye upwards.

Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism.

 Metrotpolis Video

 

German expressionism

I came across the album cover for Sunshine Underground, Nobody’s coming to save you. It put me in mind of the Metropolis film release poster. It was interesting more because of the strong use of vertical and horizontal lines that leads the eye upwards.

Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism.

Album Covers

A few interesting album covers.

Very much of a German Expressionism design. It's like the theatrical release poster for the Metropolis film.

 like the use of colour

The posiac like face and mixture of colours adds a create element more so than a photograph.

Like the use of glass see through idea

Advertisements

Mary the Cow! Official Müller Corner Ad

The idea of taking something out of an environment e.g. the cow and putting it in an environment (the beach) which you won't normally associate with cows was very gook. It made the advert stand out and the sound track " cant stop this feeeling" just intensifies the whole advert.



Mary gives us natural dairy goodness. So we made her dream come true and gave her a beach to gallop on. Go on girl, gallop.

St John Ambulance

BBH commissioned Nadav Kander to create the photographs for this new campaign for St John Ambulance, the charity's first major campaign for 15 years.

I came across these interesting images used for St John Ambulance campaign in The Creative Review Photography Annual 2010. The portraits really stand out because you would think that the faces are sleeping when actually the text explains that they are dead.

The campaign emphasises the importance of everyone attaining basic first aid skills, by citing examples where they could save a life.

As part of the campaign, St John Ambulance has created an iPhone App that gives potentially life-saving advice. A free pocket-sized guide featuring first aid skills can also be downloaded from sja.org.uk.

HP Printer commercial

Amnesty's guerrila campaign makes the invisible visible

No, you're not hallucinating. This eerie glowing face peering out from street railings in central London is, in fact, a new Amnesty International campaign entitled, Making The Invisible Visible....

The campaign is the fruit of a collaboration between London agency Brothers and Sisters' creative team Lisa Jelliffe and Kirsten Rutherford (the duo behind the StreetMuseum iPhone app for The Museum of London) and Berlin-based street art collective, Mentalgassi.
The point of the campaign is to raise awareness of Amnesty's work seeking justice for unfairly treated or imprisoned people around the world, and in particular, of the plight of Troy Anthony Davis (it's his face peering out from the installations), a 42 year old man who has spent the last 19 years on death row in the US state of Georgia for a murder he has always said he did not commit. Amnesty International maintain that no physical evidence links Davis to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses on whose evidence he was convicted in 1991 have since changed or retracted their testimony, some citing police coercion. Despite the doubts surrounding his guilt, he still faces execution.

The image is, of course, made up of strips stuck to the side face of square tube railings - meaning the image isn't visible when you look at the railings head on, but only when you see the railings from a side view - as you're walking towards them.
"The surprising use of faces on fence railings reminded us of prison bars which seemed like a unique way to highlight Amnesty's work," says Jelliffe of the campaign.
For those in London wanting to check out the installations in the flesh, there are two on railings along Great Pulteney Street in Soho, and another outside 5 Berners Street, just north of bustling Oxford Street.

A plaque on each site alerts passers-by to an Amnesty website – amnesty.org.uk/fence – where they can sign a petition calling for justice for Davis.



Troy Davis: Making the invisible visible from Amnesty International on Vimeo.