Catriona BurnsCREATIVITY&PLAY

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I think that with this brief I began to appreciate type more because I had to think how could I express feelings thru it.When it came to express the words ‘Lost Sunday’ with an image I immediately thought of a whole Sunday spent in bed after a hard Saturday night partying. I used the ‘hotel symbol’ for the ‘staying in bed’ and I used glass marks around the image to create the ‘hung-over effect’.

At one point I decided to cut my hair a bit and after I was looking at the pile of hair on the floor I decided to write HAIRSTYLE with it. Unfortunately I couldn’t write the whole word because there wasn’t enough hair. I found out it’s pretty tricky to try and shape type out of it, as it’s going all over the place and is not ease to tame at all.

When we were asked to challenge a pencil I wanted to do something else than just make it into a culpute using some sharpening or trying to built something that would look like an Eiffel tower, so when I had to develop someone else’s idea (which was ofcourse something that looked like a tree sculpture) I first thought of trying to make a drawing of it, but that didn’t really hit the spot so I suddenly thought of ‘wood’ being the pencil’s raw material and I decided to create a sculpture which would imitate the pencil-tree’s shape and using wooden pegs I would embrace the actual pencil with it’s raw material - wood.I then took photos of it and decided to create a stencil-like image using Photoshop.

My inspiration idea - a pencil sculpure.

With the ‘Paper brief’ I engaged the most. I never really liked type so I wanted to push myself to work with it in an interesting new way which would make me understand it more.

I decided to bring it to life by making it three-dimensional, so i used Baskerville Bold typeface and anually resized it, filling the type with tubes which were stuck into small scalpel cut-out holes. All made by hand.

I enjoyed making the pinhole camera as it is such a simple thing but yet is capable of producing actual photographs.I was amazed by the small details seen in the photographs ansI quite enjoyed the work of making information graphics about how to make a pinhole camera.I scaned in pieces of the material used for the pinhole and with my scaned drawings I then made an animation graphic pinhole camera manual which I nclose on the CD at the back of the portfolio.

There happened to be a slug in our bathroom one morning after we got the ‘Time&motion’ brief, so i quickly took some shots of it moving around and created a kind of story board of the slug movement.

I always liked the effect achieved by playing around with light sources and the long exposures of the camera. Here are some outcomes.

I cut out small type saying ‘Time&Motion’ which I then placed in the ice-cube tray, pored over some water and let it to freeze. I then placed the cubes onto a white background and as it melted i took photos of approximately every 1-2minutes. Later I made anstop motion which is also on the CD enclosed at the back of the portfolio.

I missed out on the ‘Helvetica Lyno’ brief, so I decided to ‘fight’ Helvetica in another way. I made potato prints of it and wrote ‘Helvetica makes me sick’. It was interesting cutting it all out of potatoes. After I printed my letters in my sketchbook I baked the potatoes to see the outcome. I really liked it because of the roughness, which is in a total contrst to the actual Helvetica typeface.

I printed my boyfiend’s name as well as it could be made up with the same letters. Then I just played around trying to position some letters in different ways to get other shapes and letters out of them.

I chose to develop ideas around the concept ‘Vinyl VS Digital’ because I am a big fan of music, especially electronic music. As i know a lot of people working in the music industry I decided to ask them for their opinion on my subject and the easiest way of doing that was to send them out a message on Facebook. I ended up with an argumental message where each of them stood up to their opinions and it was obvious that there is no winning side as both have upsides and downsides. I wanted to use that in a way so that I could join the both, vinyl and digita, so I further researched all kinds of DJ equipment because they are big users of both media. I found this software programme which comes in a set of 2 blank vinyls which the DJ spins on his performance but all of the music is actually digital and is connected to the vinyls thru the turntables, the mixing deck and a laptop.

So my aim was to create an eye-catching advert for this product, targeting all the DJ’s. I researched all sorts of websites and magazines with are based on the electronic music topic and made a couple of example adverts in the actual advertising space of some websites and magazines.

My contrast based ideas of a logo were :

- A zebra

- Spikey lips

- A sun-like shape

- An evil bunny

- A flower planted upside-down

Pantone 199CB

As the semester rushed by there were briefs with which I engaged a lot and there were a couple where i could push myself more, but I didn’t.Ibelieve I got better with getting down ideas and developing structured concepts as well as trying to engage with my ‘target audience’ to find out more about their opinions and how that could help me with my work.I have deffinitely became more aware of graphic design that I encounter everyday and I always try to find the tricks why some designs works better than others.I am also getting good at knowing which software to use and which techniques to use to help me achieveng the wanted results once I’m done with analog processed work. Also, my photography skills are getting better as I am better informed with all the equipment our media store has to offer. I am working harder on my organisational skills because it happens to be my case that I am pretty good with planning and arranging what I should do, but when it comes to actual execution suddenlytime isn’t on my side anymore. But I am getting better.I’m still not quite sure if working as part of a team (designwise ofcourse) is really my thing, or I might just havn’t met the right people with simillar ideas to work with. I happen to be really competitive, because at last, every person in my course could be a potential thread to me in the future (fortunately some of them more than others).I love the talks that take place at the Gallery on Thursdays. I used to attend them last year as well and I do find it very helpfull to hear from the experts how it actually is out there in the real world.I started to work slightly differently in the last couple of weeks as I try to pretend that the brief I get is actually for a real client and I have to do my best in convincing her/him that my idea will work. On one side it can be slightly discouraging because I sometimes rush to an idea instead of giving it a chance to develop.I do think that throughout the semester I did become slightly more playfully creative as I try to think as a kid with the initiative : ‘‘Ooh, let’s try this’’. In the past three months I was living without my own computer which did slightly affect my work because I easily get frustrated when I’m working on computers in UNI as I feel all the work is hanging over me and has to be done right there, at that momment. So thanks to my mum’s Christmas spirit that won’t be a problem anymore.I’m really looking forward to the next semester as I seriously feel the need for my work to get better and better. It was a long summer break after all and I think the workoholic side of me has finally sought up and is ready for the next challenge.

PERSONAL EVALUATION