MA Print Design Exhibition

One of the MA students' work within the NAD building caught my eye; Gemma May Latham used point papers normally used to code for patterns to be made into weave with a jaquard loom to show people's enjoyment of an interactive hole punching workshop at the Whitworth. She combined original code with their responses to create an installation.

holes form a linear pattern

close up of punched paper

This alternative notation is visually pleasing and delicate, mixing old and new processes and ideas to create something unique. It is a record of an event and so has added meaning. I could record the melodies of daft punk in a similar way; instead of punching holes in paper I could print on fabric, and the placement of shapes would be determined by the musical line or rhythm.

Alternative Notation

I had a look at Cornelius Cardew's scores last week and parts of them were interesting but I didn't feel inspired, so I found similar works that I preferred visually that each have a different feel to them.

Music to Airports score by Brian Eno

This one has a robotic sense to it, resembling circuitry and the repetition is clear.

Score to Digital Sensation No 1 by Scott Wollschleger, 2007

These marks could be random mistakes; spills or slips, but here they have a function.

Tom Johnson 'Syncopated texture' from musicalpointers.co.uk

I like the overly ordered form of this 'score' and the fact that it uses traditional notes in a new way.

As well as looking at music notation I thought it would be appropriate to look at knitting and crochet instructions, as these can be used to make lace and fabric in old fashioned or new ways. These examples are taken from the following books: The Knitter's Bible by Claire Crompton and The Crochet Bible by Sue Whiting. I could use knitting and crochet notation to document part of Daft Punk's track, and use it to make images for print.

These Shell stitches are used to form lace. The notation itself is visually attractive and clearly shows the shape produced.

The shape of these undulating patterns remind of the softer base melodies from Daft Punk 

The shells are arranged in a set pattern, are large and imposing compared to the rest of the delicate structure, like the loud booming sounds used in 'The Game has Changed'

Group Tutorial Monday 7th October

As I was confused about the differences between high end and high street, I asked Alex and he cited 3 main ones:

materials used - (expensive or cheap)

selling price or cost - (hand stitched is ore expensive than machine, digital print is more expensive than hand)

design - quality of finish, more unusual designs and original designs for high end; high street designers tend to adapt others' designs or produce a version of them

This clarified my thoughts, though it is still difficult to categorise my work. At the moment I use cheaper materials and prefer screen printing, but I like the freedom to make my own designs. Moving forward I could try more expensive materials to see how they perform and continue to learn photoshop and produce some digital designs.

Showing my direct and shadow drawing of lace that I had done in B&W for screen purposes, Alex said that we still have time to play around with drawing and image making so don't need to focus in so soon. As a result I can experiment, retaining the spooky quality of the shadow drawings in my use of colour (Tron is dark and menacing and so this should be reflected in my work). Also I need to use an OHP to up the scale of the shadows, take photos and maybe draw from them directly.

Having used Timorous Beasties as an example of the mix of old and new subject matter and techniques, Alex wondered if I was going to introduce any subjects into my drawing; I am happy to use more abstract shapes as music is nebulous, and TRON to me is about colour and atmosphere as a whole rather than one particular image. I hadn't really focussed on the fact that Timorous Beasties change the meaning of specific images of people and animals, so perhaps I could find a better example of someone who uses old and new in a more abstract way. 

Deaf Institute actually has Timorous Beasties wallpaper which I will look at; also I plan to watch the original TRON film from the 80s which Alex had said contains accent colours and could be a good way to incorporate colour into an otherwise dark design. There is a programme called Audacity which can be used to visually observe each level of sound within a music track; the sound waves might provide interesting shapes for colour accents.

Plan for this week:

Use OHP to make larger scale shadow drawings

Start manipulating scanned lace and drawings in Photoshop

Watch TRON

See wallpaper in Deaf Institute

Use Audacity

Do a traditional drawing of the lace

Add colour to drawings

Scanned lace

In order to produce a defined, exact image of the collected lace I scanned it. This means I can manipulate the image later on photoshop, or deconstruct it without worrying about losing the original shapes and lines that are the basis of my drawings. The dark lace looks flat, whereas the other samples cast more shadows and still appear 3D. Both effects are interesting and maintaining the 3D effect could be achieved by using texiflock or aquaspand.

Drawing lace

To get more images to use for print I started drawing from lace that I have collected, in black and white so they could potentially be used for screen printing. This is a selection of the drawings, which were done with fine liner pens. 

drawing through lace ribbon looks like cross stitch

drawing part of the lace, repetitive shapes

drawing the negative space in the lace, it resembles rocks, scales or tortoise shell

Using a small craft lamp I cast shadows from the lace which I then traced to produce these spooky, strange shapes. Ominous dark shapes capture the mood of TRON and Daft Punk's music; making the shadows larger and more diffuse using an OHP will result in even more nebulous, unrecognisable shapes and add to this effect.

distorted flower shapes

lace held close to paper, shadow becomes huge

two lights used to cast multiple shadows

Putting my work into context

I am finding it difficult to figure out where my work fits in the world of design. So far, I know that I am a print designer who often uses 3D or mark-making methods to start a project before drawing and beginning to print. I enjoy paper work and a bit of digital design, but think I am predominantly a 'wet' printer as I enjoy the screen-printing process. I produce work made up from lots of small pieces rather than one large image.

The task this year is to work out: am I designing for high-end or high-street? Who would buy my work?

My problem is that I find it hard to discern the exact difference between the two. Take Vivienne Westwood; she is a high-end designer, now, but her roots were in punk. If you look at her designs they are still punk and individual. I would say the difference is that they are now more polished, mass produced and using more expensive materials, with an even higher mark-up. The essence, look and philosophy of design is the same. 

So is the difference money and finish rather than design? Or is it how work is presented that gives it 'high end' status? Obviously using more expensive fabric drives up the cost of your product but that doesn't explain the huge prices demanded by designers. So is the question 'do I see myself being self-employed, famous and renowned' or 'do I want to work for someone else'? But that can't be it; I could work for Missoni or I could work for Next. Since companies constantly tailor their products towards what they think people will want and what the rest of the market is going to be doing, the idea that design is the difference doesn't seem feasible; maybe it's timing, who comes up with a trend first or most successfully captures the zeitgeist. But high-end fashion breaks rules, and few people actually buy expensive high-end work. Maybe then the question is do I want to follow a trend or set it?

I tend to use found or cheap materials, although that could change, and don't tend to like high end fashion for everyday wear, but I do like the work of Designers Guild, Liberty, Timorous Beasties and Missoni Home alongside Paperchase, Accessorize, and other high street design when it comes to textiles. 

Perhaps I am a mix, a middle ground. There is no one designer who inspires me all of the time, and no single part of the industry that does. We are encouraged to be versatile and flexible and told that as designers we should constantly be learning, each project can go off in its own direction and you don't know where it will lead, so categorising my work in general feels like trying to name multiple products that haven't been designed yet (the plot of Scott Adams' first televised Dilbert episode called 'The Name' illustrates this dilemma well). 

Contextualising Practice Introduction

For the CP unit I chose Contexts and Contents - Space, Architecture and Design. Analysing products and spaces seemed interesting; I watched a Phillippe Starck documentary a while ago that showed his philosophy of design as well as the objects he made; it was fascinating to see one man's individual thoughts played out, and assumptions made by him and other designers. Hopefully this course will challenge assumptions I make about ideas, objects, texts and spaces by encouraging me to look at them in a new way.

In our lecture by Michael Coates, architecture featured strongly, and was referred to as 'mother of the arts'. It does seem to be a recurring theme with my work; I use nature or mark making but end up forming grids and clear edges, and actively study buildings from time to time. It combines perspective with form, colour and purpose and as mentioned, defines our environment. 

When it comes to talking about contents, the example of a1950s fitted kitchen was given, as something innovative that encouraged aspiration when it came to the home, and you could just look at the physical furniture or delve deeper to analyse the ideas behind it, and the impact it had at the time.

Buildings can be treated as symbols; The Empire State Building in New York, for example was a beacon of power that literally dwarfed everything around it. Contrast this with 1970s council estates in Britain; architecturally duller perhaps, but their impact has been far-reaching, as this week's assignment showed. The mis-match between designers' intentions and residents' realities was brought to the fore when it was pointed out that although designed with large windows, each flat had put up net curtains for privacy, so light wouldn't reach the rooms inside, and the allocated front gardens were empty except for a solitary rose bush. You could assume that the people living there don't care about gardening or just want privacy, but if they cared about the building and saw it as a home they would invest more time and energy in their surroundings. In other words, the estates failed the people they were there to provide for, by giving them a cheap, over-designed roof over their heads instead of a home to be proud of in the middle of a community.

Although not discussed at the first meeting, the reading task, an excerpt form Hanley L. Estates: An Intimate History, was interesting enough for me to finish. It didn't really add much to my overall thoughts about government housing; the idea that council estates were originally meant as a saviour for poor, slum-dwelling people, but lacked a sense of community and were just plonked down, away from the rest of society with no transport, facilities or greenery isn't new. The author wonders why there was no community feel and it wasn't like a town, when she also mentions the speed of development; the two are related, as there was no time or money allowed for a natural evolution of buildings, or adaptations along the way. The residents would have little or no say in design and no incentive to build ties to each other if they didn't want to be there and had no control over the future of the estate. She says that growing up this environment sticks with you throughout your life, but this would apply wherever you grew up, whether in an estate or a gated mansion. Each I imagine have their challenges or limits and could be looked back on with a different perspective if you moved away. Her individual experiences were worth hearing but just looking back without looking towards the future left me underwhelmed and waiting to be challenged.