Shops.

We used a template photo of a shop that was a phtoshop file. The windows had been removed and replaced with white areas, ready for us to use. I cut the white areas out using the rectangle tool and the delete key. After I got rid of the white areas I had to choose a picture to go in the windows, and something to go above the shop. I used images from our trip to Astor Park I scaled them to size and put them in a layer behind the shop, and used the free transform tool to make them fit. I also used the smudge tool to cover over any small white gaps.I chose pictures I thought would fit fill - see below.

My personal favourites are the first two, the ones with the teeth and eyes. I like the top two as they have a theme to them, especially the second one with all the gaps filled with graffiti eyes. The bottom shop doesn't have much of a theme, and I had to stretch the image above the door, and shrink the image. This has distorted bot of the source photos I used.

3D Max

Today we were learning the basics of 3D Max. First, we started with making cubes, then we added segments so we could use the extrude tool to pull parts out. Then we right-clicked the objects we'd made, selected the polygon tab and then used the turbo-smooth option to smooth the shapes out. We were also shown the select and rotate, select and move, and select and uniform scale buttons. The uniform scale button is used to increase or decrease the size of the whole object.

Next, I had to add 3D letters using the shapes tool, then I chose text from the task box and typed in the word I wanted to the dialogue box. I then stretched them on the y axis to the height I wanted, and changed their colour., and saved to desktop. I them opened the text using photoshop and places it in a layer above an image I had chosen.

Here are pictures of my first trials with 3D Max.

Finally, we experimented with adding texture and lighting effects. This was done by clicking rendering, then material editor. I first found the texture I wanted to use, saved it to desktop and opened it in 3D Max. There was a selection of spheres. I clicked one to choose it and then clicked the small square next to the diffuse button, then I could click and drag the texture from the sphere onto the object. If the texture didn't appear on the object I clicked the box with a chequer board pattern, called show standard map.

For the lighting effects I clicked the lights button, then target spot. I had to drag the lighting cone out from the point of origin and expand and position it until my text was lit the way I wanted it to be. Here is the final result of the text in photoshop -

Tee-shirts.

This afternoon we were putting our pieces from previous capture sessions and put them onto images of tee-shirts.

This tee-shirt design uses a poster I made of Astor Park.

This design is from an I.D. picture I made.

This is me experimenting with typography and paths.

And this one is another typography related poster in which I used letters to form my face.

Here are some screen prints of my progress.

Here I experimented with hue and saturation to change the tee-shirt's colour.

Audio capture

Today we had an induction for a Marantz audio recorder. We were shown how to set it up to record in mp3, in mono. We were shown how to connect a uni-directional 'gun' mic, and an omni-directional mic. We were also shown how to set the recording levels and how to set up a pre-set. The health and safety issues discussed were; don't turn the headphone volume up to high, avoid getting the unit wet (electricity), and trip hazards from the trailing cables. This information is available on Moodle.

Graffiti

On Tuesday we were looking at graffiti artists and their work. We were given the task of preparing a short presentation about the history of graffiti and the different styles, like 'blockbuster',  'throw-up' and 'bombing'. The first form of graffiti arose in the stone age in the form of cave paintings. It could be argued that the Egyptian tombs, stained-glass windows and the Sistine chapel are forms of graffiti. It became commonly known in the early '80s, when youth used to spray subway carriages, tunnels and the streets around them.

Later that day a graffiti artist called Roy told us about his personal experience of graffiti. We looked at a film called 'Style Wars' which was about graffiti in New York during the early '80s, the people who created it, and the reasons for why they did it. Some of the reasons were race relations, poverty and deprivation, and the prevalence of drugs in society. Hip-hop culture also contributed to this movement for social change. Afterwards we had a go at graffiti ourselves, lettering the word 'capture' on sheets of paper, investigating shape and form.

My ID

In photoshop we had to make a ID of ourselves involving: A photo of ourselves, our name, date of birth and our personality using text and effects.

First a photo was taken of me, I cropped it and then I used image>greyscale to convert it to monochrome. Next I used the horizontal text tool and I used the warp-text tool to stretch and squeeze the letters. I also used the vertical text tool. For the bendy text I used the pen tool to draw a path and then I used the text tool to write along the curves.

Here is the final result.

What I don't like about this image is that I coudn't think of too many ways to describe myself, but I do like that I used the paths, I like the way the word 'musical' dips up and down. I like how 'imaginative' curves around my head.

Street art.

Today we were looking at a documentary about street art and the artists who create it, called 'Exit Through the Gift-shop'. Some artists used techniques such as stencils, stickers, posters, paint and marker pen. Street art is not just restricted to mark making, sculpture and 3D also form a part of the artists' tool box. Some people say that art on buildings is vandalism, but these artists face risks such as arrest and personal injury, sometimes even death, ie, when scaling buildings or spraying moving trains.

Some of the artists in the film were shown to prepare their work well in advance, by sketches and stencils, and in  one case Banksy showed £1,000,000 worth of £10 notes he'd forged with Princess Diana's face on them instead of the queen. He didn't use the notes , mainly for the fact that he did such a good job that they looked so genuine people were spending them. Just before the anniversary of September the eleventh, Banksy and his friend 'Mr brainwash', also known as Thierry, set up an inflatable inmate of Guantanimo Bay  and placed it right behind where a ride took a bend and a sign recommending people took photos at Disney World. After a number of times of the ride going around the staff noticed and shut down several rides.

After this, Mr Brainwash decided to make his own art and set up a show. A lot of his work was similar to Andy Warhol, it was almost a parody of Andy Warhol's work. For example, he made images of celebrities based on the Marilyn Monroe screenprints and a giant spray can with 'tomato soup' written on it. His show went on longer than he expected, by two months. Most street artists were surprised that he'd used their styles and sold them as his own. This is why the film was called 'Exit Through the Giftshop'.

My face.

For this poster I used a photo of myself. I cropped it to include my face, and used a filter to convert it to black and white to show the differences between light and dark better. Then I used the magic wand tool to highlight areas of my face, and then I used the text tool to add the writing. I used the same process for the other side of my face but changed the colour of the text so it could be distinguished from the photograph.

Here is the original photo I started with.

Astor Park poster.

For this poster I used photos from our group's excursion to Astor Park. The lettering saying 'Astor Park' was from a photograph I took of a sign in the park. I removed the white areas using magic wand in photoshop, and then I highlighted the original steel coloured area and used the paintbrush to paint it black, filling in the letters are photographs of graffiti. I especially like the teeth chasing the toothbrush, and how the pink and black 'A' fills the 'A' of the sign perfectly.

David Carson Research

Today I've been researching David Carson. He is an American graphic designer who uses typography in all his work.

Carson started working for 'Ray Gun Magazine'a music and lifestyle magazine. The magazine got a lot of attention because of Carson's style.

During the period of 1982–1987, Carson worked as a teacher in Torrey Pines High School in San Diego, California. In 1983, Carson started to experiment with graphic design and found himself immersed in the artistic and bohemian culture of Southern California. By the late eighties he had developed his signature style, using "dirty" type and non-mainstream photographic techniques. He would later be dubbed the "father of grunge."

Carson went on to become the art director of Transworld Skateboarding magazine. Among other things, he was also a professional surfer, and in 1989 Carson was qualified as the 9th best surfer in the world.^[2] Steve and Debbee Pezman, publishers of Surfer magazine (and later Surfers Journal) tapped Carson to design Beach Culture, which evolved out of a to-the-trade annual supplement; the new, quarterly publication was called Beach Culture. Though only six quarterly issues were produced, the tabloid-size venue—edited by author Neil Fineman—allowed Carson to make his first significant impact on the world of graphic design and typography—with ideas that were called innovative even by those that were not fond of his work, in which legibility often relied on readers' strict attention (for one feature on a blind surfer, Carson opened with a two-page spread covered in black). A stint at How magazine (a trade magazine aimed at designers) followed, and soon Carson was hired by publisher Marvin Scott Jarrett to design Ray Gun, a magazine of international standards which had music and lifestyle as its subject. Not afraid to break convention, in one issue he usedDingbat as the font for what he considered a rather dull interview with Bryan Ferry.^[3] (However, the whole text was published in a legible font at the back of the same issue of RayGun, complete with a repeat of the asterisk motif). Ray Gun made Carson very well-known and attracted new admirers to his work. In this period, publications such as the New York Times (May 1994) and Newsweek (1996) featured Carson and increased his publicity greatly. In 1995, Carson founded his own studio, David Carson Design, in New York City, and started to attract major clients from all over the United States. During the next three years (1995–1998), Carson was doing work for Pepsi Cola, Ray Ban (orbs project), Nike, Microsoft, Budweiser, Giorgio Armani, NBC, American Airlines and Levi Strauss Jeans, and later worked for a variety of new clients, including AT&T, British Airways, Kodak,Lycra, Packard Bell, Sony, Suzuki, Toyota, Warner Bros., CNN, Cuervo Gold, Johnson AIDS Foundation, MTV Global, Princo, Lotus Software, Fox TV, Nissan, quiksilver, Intel, Mercedes-Benz, MGM Studios and Nine Inch Nails. He designed the "crowfitti" typeface used in the film The Crow: City of Angels. He acted as the original design consultant for the tourism magazine Blue in 1997. Christa Skinner art directed and designed the magazine.

In 2000, Carson opened a new personal studio in Charleston, South Carolina. In 2004, Carson became the Creative Director of Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston and designed the special “Exploration” edition of Surfing Magazine and directed a television commercial for UMPQUA Bank in Seattle, Washington.

Carson became interested in a new school of typography that was being seen in the pages of Emigre magazine, California Institute of the Arts, and Cranbrook Academy of the Arts starting in the mid and late 1980s. His interests included photography-based graphic design similar to that which was seen in 8vo in England. Carson is credited for popularizing the style. It is debated if he inspired many young designers of the 1990s...or stole from them. Many young designers fresh out of Cal Arts worked for him during this time period with little or no credit sited.

Carson claims he is emotionally attached to his creations. Carson's work is considered explorative of thoughts and ideas that become "lost" in the subconscious.

Carson's work is familiar among the generation that grew up with Ray Gun Magazine and its progeny such as huH and xceler8, and in general, the visually savvy MTV generation. He took photography and type and manipulated and twisted them together and on some level confusing the message but in reality he was drawing the eyes of the viewer deeper within the composition itself.

Carson lectures extensively throughout the world, as well as at colleges throughout the U.S., including Cranbrook, Art Center College of Design, University of Notre Dame, RISD and CalArts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carson_(graphic_designer)

In his work I like the way that all the letters are jumbled together and often hard to read. This makes you really look at the text, which gives you more of a sense of what's been written.

http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/

Capture Methods

There are many methods of capturing: for example, sound, film, writing, mark-making and memory. Capture is important for many reasons including inspiration, evidence and research. Another method of capture is the computer scanner. For example, I could have found an interesting leaf at Astor Park that I wanted to work with. I could have brought it back to the classroom and scanned it in, getting a digital image of the leaf in the process.

Mindmap