- vr painting
I decided to Instagram message Manards, a fictional designer combining his background in graffiti, classical fine arts, and graphic design in his unique portfolio. I came across his work on Behance and was instantly mesmerised. I couldn’t find a lot of information about his processes and his workflow so decided to message him on instagram. He provided me a lot of useful information and I will continue to use this research to delve into the world of messy interface further. The main link between his work and our brief is that he creates his futuristic three dimensional design from a reconfiguration he creates of famous “grandmaster” paintings in the idea of them centuries ago actually being exposed to computer softwares and programmes. This is a real life example of juxtapositioning analogue and digital works. The original painting therefore being analogue and Manards design being digital. A messy interface.
To the right is a colour palette I have created colour dropping colours from of his pieces and editing them on nomad sculpt.
Brief originally -
- with focus on the mill and its industrial background and repurpose, but with heavy focus on human experience and blending the two - industrial material and human. ( brief rewritten later in the project )
I decided to write my own brief for this project as I wanted more leniency with the project outcome and how this will work within my portfolio for industry. As I have a huge driving force towards the music industry, and design for events I felt this was the direction I wanted to take. I have a huge interest of moving image, projection, sound design and digitised Image making such as three dimensional softwares such as blender and nomad. So creating visuals in response to music felt very fitting. I however appreciate the importance of the design work over the event itself, so my continued effort will lie on this first and if within the timeframe of the brief allows me to showcase my visuals at a live event this would be incredible. If not, I will create this afterwards.
The second this idea started to develop I contacted a friend who owns collaboratively a beautiful industrial warehouse space that they use to hold live music events and work on developing their skills in music and music production. This space has always hugely inspired and captivated me ever since I first stepped into it. Very interesting ' never ending ' corridors, and industrial exposed pipework and metal throughout. This inspired the concept of merging human and industrial materials such as metal and texture. As music has such a strong motivation of combining people and the diffusion of all differences between one another. The combination of the physical building itself and the human felt very interesting to me.
Above is my initial research on Padlet. I took into inspiration on behance, instagram etc. I really love the combination of image and blender by Julianne Grillz. This creates an element of questioning and interest within the image itself. Funnily the metal is actually real after further research, they are grills she creates. I think this concept could be really interesting to combine both film and three dimensional design together with images of the location. Other studios and artists I find really inspiring are Studio Blup with there use of AI, moving image element, 3D, print combination design work within there studio. They have also worked on many events and advertisements, so these could be good people to contact to run ideas over.
Speaking at Design Indaba in Cape Town earlier this year, graphic artist Patrick Thomas described the importance of making people collaborate – not encouraging or inspiring, but making them. This act of throwing together two individuals to create something is one the artist believes, in its difficulty or awkwardness, always leads to interesting results. Noticing a resistance to the idea of collaboration, particularly amongst students, “I am always trying to break that, to make them realise that when they finally graduate they will invariably have to embrace it, so they had better get used to it,”
What the pair have developed Open Collab, an online tool which randomly combines creative submissions generating endless permutations of collaborative works. A user will upload their designs which will then be paired with another creative's submission, creating a hybrid graphic artwork through randomised collaboration. Those who take part in Open Collab should do so with an open mind, with Patrick pointing out how even “sceptics seem to be quickly converted when they start to interact with the project.” Part of the joy of submitting your work is forgoing any element of control of what it may turn into, a rare opportunity for many creatives taking part.
“Ultimately, it would be nice when it’s no longer just ours, when it develops into its own thing and is just something that’s out there alive and morphing,”
- inspiration to how I could use collaborative elements in my work.
Michael Beirut for Pentagram
The MIT Media Lab has an ingenious but simple new identity created by Pentagram partner Michael Bierut. It employs the 7x7 grid of its successor, which houses the organisation’s initials in pixel form.
He took his inspiration from the logo of MIT’s publishing arm, MIT Press, designed by Muriel Cooper way back in 1962. It comprises a series of strong black vertical lines. “There was something about Cooper’s logo for MIT Press that contained much of the simplicity and irreducibility that had eluded the Media Lab in its quest for an identity over the years,” Bierut says.
Borrowing from this graphic, he configured a pixel-style typeface that would be legible, so that each off-shoot could be represented by its initials.
again a really cool collaborative design where they create the touchpoint ( i.e the website, typeface variations, point and space sizing as a scaling option, and colour scheme ) then allows for user interference to mess around and place background imagery. Then download the font accordingly. This is such an interesting concept and allows for many creative outcomes.
With Phase, Elias Hanzer contributes an interactive tool and provides countless variations for anyone who prefers an experimental approach to type and typography. Phase derives from a generative concept that lets you systematically modify a neo-grotesque archetype through variable-font technology, using modular components based on a set of rules and stylistic alternates.
