E-motional Type - British Library panel discussion

I didn't think I would get to see this, being on a Monday evening, short notice and being sold out, until I saw it was a live webcast too!

The panel consisted of Neville Brody, Jon Wozencroft, Jonathan Barnbrook (I'm mentioning him again), Teal Triggs and was compered by Adrian Shaughnessy.

Each gave a short presentation on the role of type and visual language. 

Notes below.

What was interesting about the whole lecture was the idea that type has become "conservative", "safe" and "colonised by the corporate world". The typography that people encounter day to day is quite plain. This wonderfully comes into my project for Visual Austerity!

Interesting ideas that can feed into my work.

Jonathan Barnbrook "The tension of legibility, recognisable letterforms, religion and politics"

Neville Brody "Experimental typefaces, illegibility, freedom from constraints"

Jon Wozencroft "Poetry of form, romanticism, colouring a message, break out of digital"

Adrian Shaughnessy (on Herb Loobalin) "Amplify the message"

I shall post videos as soon as I have found them.

The Visuals of Austerity Brief

The World is currently in a spot of economic bother, whole countries in debt and financial strain on their population. This isn’t the first time times have been hard there are many different periods when people have had to make do on very little. From the Depression in the 30’s to our recent predicament.

The Guardian article “From Hockney to Downton Abbey: have our cultural tastes gone conservative?” by Jonathan Jones (The Guardian 2012) asks whether British culture has gone conservative, with period dramas, cookery and craft programmes and David Hockney’s traditional landscapes enjoying a resurgence in popularity, while Eye Magazine was hailing a “golden age of type”, with many Foundries revisiting their classic fonts in the blog post “Type Tuesday: Quirky ligatures and swash characters: serifs are the new sans.” by Catherin Dixon (Eye Magazine Blog 2012). Both of these articles cite a looking back, possibly to times of comfort during times of austerity. Has this always been the case? What is it that we do exactly in times of austerity, is it as simple as looking back to “the good old days” or is there something more? Is there a certain visual language for what we do?

To get an accurate picture of what the visuals of austerity may be will involve looking across an extremely broad timescale. This should make any patterns more apparent.




Audience




Desired Response




Jonathan Jones The Guardian (2012) From Hockney to Downton Abbey: have our cultural tastes gone conservative?[Online]. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2012/jan/23/hockney-downton-abbey-culture-conservative [Accessed: 23 January 2012]


Catherin Dixon Eye Magazine Blog(2012). Type Tuesday: Quirky ligatures and swash characters: serifs are the new sans. [Online] January 23rd 2012. Available from: blog.eyemagazine.com
http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=4072 [Accessed: 23rd January 2012].

Tamworth Live Music

I have recently been invited to be a member of the Tamworth Live Music Committee. Many moons ago we used to have a free festival, with local bands who had gotten to the final of the local Battle of the Bands. It was all very good and then, for some reason it stopped. Most people who went to Freefest will tell you with great pride about bands such as Spiral Eye, Wolfsbane (who did quite well), Blaze Bailey (who did even better, singing with Iron Maiden for a bit) and Julian Cope, member of The Teardrop Explodes and apparently quite the expert on Britain's stone circles.

Anyway, the committee aims to bring back our free festival, promote local gigs or local bands in gigs elsewhere.

I, along with a few other people, have volunteered to produce artwork for the logo.

The rough brief for this was something that will have cross genre appeal, was modern, but had a link with Tamworth's past (both musically and historically). I chose a font designed by Jonathan Barnbrook (I may have mentioned him, once or twice) which was a modern Sans Serif, but incorporating Blackletter elements linking with both the Medieval past historically and the Metal music of Tamworth's musical past.

Tamworth Live logotype - font used Mason Sans Alternative Bold

This is then coupled with a colour scheme generated from a Teardrop Explodes album cover "Wilder".

This then produces a mixture of colours that can be used singularly or in pairs depending on the artwork requirements.

Shading is added using a woodblock style line effect and a companion colour.

As well as the logotype I have been working on a website where we can promote and manage events. This uses a wordpress template and plug ins to make it as easy as possibly for me to develop and for the Committee to use.

The test site can be seen at http://www.thombaker.co/TLMC/ 

Objectives for next 2 weeks

• Identify 3 periods of austerity and 2 typefaces associated with each
  
• Analysis and comparisons of the typefaces
• Research commentary on visual styles on those periods.
• Comparative sketches of design features associated with typefaces
• Identify recurring elements within typefaces chosen if any

100 Days of Design Entrepeneurship

Kern And Burn - 100 Days of Design Entrepeneurship


"Challenging designers to follow their passions and choose their own paths. One day at a time."

"Each day, for the next 100 days we will post a bit of inspiration about design entrepreneurs and their projects. Follow along with us as we dream, discover, and get inspired by designers who find a way to turn personal passions into fulfilling careers. It’s an exciting time to be designers, and we are excited to be alive."

There is some really wonderful stuff here, it's quite short so ideal for a quick break from work to read something inspiring/interesting.

(Currently on Day 55)

Never meet your heroes...

This is nonsense. Of course you should meet your heroes. I have mentioned before my admiration for Jonathan Barnbrook, every so often we have a brief exchange on Twitter, and each time I learn something.

Previously it has been about copywriting digital work (a company he sold fonts through offered refunds...on digital items that had already been downloaded) and more recently the software he uses, I also asked Erik Spiekerman. Both replied with pretty much the same software that hopefully I shall be using for my project.

These exchanges are only brief with the 140 characters Twitter offers but, thats all you really need.

I have also had the pleasure of talking to David Pearson, Tim Quinn, Curtis Jobling and Kim Hiorthoy, all were incredibly inspirational.

Always meet and Tweet your heroes.

Keep me busy!

The other week we did a fantastic exercise to spark our creativity. We were given a short amount of time to generate as many ideas as possible around a given theme such as "Anti Royalist souvenirs for the Diamond Jubilee" and "uses for old tin cans".

The main aim for this exercise was not necessarily to produce good ideas, simply to loosen the ability to generate them. Below are some of the ideas generated and their topics.

Alternative uses for tin cans

Alternative souvenirs for anti Royalists

 

I found this exercise extremely useful, I all to often get caught up in wondering if an idea is good enough rather than getting on with having ideas.

I think it is important just to keep doing stuff, there are times when work can dry up slightly and motivation can be lost. I find keeping momentum when there is less work a real struggle. I have decided to start an ongoing project/exercise that I can do to maintain this momentum and keep the flow of ideas.

There is a wonderful project by Johnny Selman www.bbcx365.com where he is interpreting news events as posters for a year, aiming to make the American public more aware of world events.

I would like to do a similar project, taking headlines and generating ideas from them. No set rules of how I can interpret them, the aim would not be to build up pieces of work, simply to generate ideas like the exercise I have mentioned. Some of these ideas or articles may then lead onto other thing as a way of exercising my creativity and ideas generation.

I am a really big fan of A List Apart. There are some brilliant articles on there that, although mostly on web design can be applicable to most creative practices. Two articles that really stand out, in terms of these exercises are, "Staying Motivated" and "Reigniting Your Creative Spark".