Don't play with your food

Seems I have not put anything up for a while. Have been trying to finish off the visuals for the presentation to Bath City Council re the wayfinding project. Should have something up here very soon for comments please.

In the mean time, whilst making a loverly winter soup, I started to play with the food, and so here is my Christmas card to you all (sustainable and edible). Hope you have a great break and 2011 is simply fantastic.

Merry Christmas from CreativeAdventures

So that's what you think of me!

So, this is what I look like to the students of Hereford College of Art. As part of an Idea Generation lecture yesterday, the students had to draw me in about a minute. The exercise was borrowed from Bob McKim, but with the twist of drawing me rather than each other. The same outcome though, apologies and embarrassment. 

Ok, if any of you check out the blog I would just repeat my comments of yesterday. Do not be affraid to go for it, having looked at them all, too many did small drawings in the top left hand corner when you had the whole page to use. Be bold, be confident, be proud. Try not to get caught up in the detail at the beginning. Practice it occasionally by doing the same exercise, and choosing anything to draw. Even use an A3 sheet of paper, oooh!

Seriously though, it was a good day. Hope you found it helpful. See you next week.

Well, why do we bother?

A Great Resource for Graphic Design Ideas & Inspiration.

So, while preparing a lecture on idea generation, I came across this. Now design is a board game. Giving you, the designer, hundreds of original ideas to solve your clients every problem. I suppose you only go to this when you have a block, the bowel kind, and use the heavy duty card in what ever way you can to ease the problem. Is this a cynical way to undermine the already often underated profession of design or just the only way a failed designer could see to make any money. Is he or she an ex employee of one of those fast print shops that have their "designers" in the back room working under the photocopy machine?

If I believed in god, I may ask him for help.

mindgames

Jay Walker's library of human imagination | Video on TED.com

Jay Walker's library of human imagination | Video on TED.com
Now this looks more like it Snr Borges. The clutter and confusion of imagination. Not too much regularity here, just shear wonderment.

No title, I just like the message.

Playing with language

My tongue in cheek look at how the "fight them on the beaches" speech may have been written in 2010, with the additions felt necessary by the likes of my 14 year old son and his peers.
Basically, it still works like, but maybe does not have the same gravitas.

Perception and Meaning

Following on from my previous musing on how we form a picture, I began thinking about how we create meaning from the things we see around us. Can we take what is there and distort or manipulate it to change its meaning? Is our perception of the things we see based just on what is in front of us…and how does what we already know affect our thought process? Just as situations can be misinterpreted or misread, people can view the same thing and see something totally different. Hayley Branston  http://wayfindinguk.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/musing-006/

Playing with Wayfinding

Playing with pattern

Having been given a word, chosen by another student, we had to produce a collage. My word was Alchemist. Taking this one step further, because I had the word change in my head, I thought about how the collage could continue to change into something else, maybe material, hence the move towards weaving. Using the contrast of type and image I seem to achieve a piece of misinformation. Interesting, but will continue to look at the musical piece, but now with the twist of the Cymatics possibly turning it back into a graphic.

Evan Grant: Making sound visible through cymatics

Video on TED.com

SubtleMob

http://subtlemob.com/?p=3

Duncan Speakman

Wearing headphones, you begin to travel across the city, the soundtrack in your ears turning the world around into your personal cinema. Suddenly a stranger stops you and puts a hand on your shoulder. Their lips don’t move but in your ears you can somehow hear their voice. It feels like telepathy as they begin to speak the words to the song that’s playing in their head…
You continue to move across the city, sometimes guided, sometimes alone; as events unfold in front of you it becomes harder to tell which are staged and which are real.

Masters of paper art and paper sculptures

To most people, making a paper plane could be one of the simplest thing to do. It’s the simplest and easiest form of paper art, for this case a flying art. However, there’s a special minority who takes thing to the next level. They can turn the basic form of origami – which is folding a paper in half – together with a little cutting, folding, bending, shaping, and more paper folding, into an utmost creative artwork you have ever seen

Read more: Masters of Paper Art and Paper Sculptures http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/masters-of-paper-art-and-paper-sculptures/#ixzz12Q47LO74

http://www.susancutts.com/

Big type

Not sure why, but quite like the type with completely incorrect leading. It seems to make you want to try and work out what it is about even more, just adding to the confusion of the piece of text. I see this as possibly being carved out of wood.

Playing with paper 2

A little more playing. This has the whole short story 'Babels Library' on it. Now I will look at the two surfaces when viewed from head on and from above, again using type, but on a different scale.

Playing with paper

Have skipped forward a bit here. I talked last night at uni about continuing the collage work we had done in the afternoon,  into some weaving or similar. Researching this I came across this paper sculpture work and saw a use for the steps (from the library). I will now look into putting either type or the montage imagery onto the steps. I am interested by the way the light is falling onto the steps and also how they look when light comes from behind.

Infographic of the Day: City Maps for Type Nerds (and Lost Tourists)

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662468/infographic-of-the-day-city-maps-for-type-nerds-and-lost-tourists

A moving version (1)

So I am desperately trying to learn Final Cut to turn this braille text into a piece of music. My idea is to use only three notes, as there are only three lines in Braille. then as each dot passes through the line on screen that note would be played. Obviously, I have no idea what this will sound like, but it will represent the piece of text in audio form.
Below is an early version to give an idea, note music does not match up to visual, bit to learn on software yet.

Stage 2 thoughts on Babel

So, I move on with my thoughts on the piece of text. I started to think about my house as the library and therefore how I may have to catagorize everything. Maybe I could do this on the small telephone directory cards that are kept in a box? this all seemed a bit overwhelming, a bit like the feeling I had when I first went into a library when I started this MA. I had not been in one for many years, and felt a little out of touch to say the least. How was I to take all this in, where was I to start?This led to me thinking about the overwhelming size of the Library of Babel, every book ever published, even those that have not been yet. All looking the same in size and content. The shear size seemed to make it inaccessible. I then moved towards the inaccessibility idea, and began to think about how I could make all that information even more inaccessible. If you where blind! So the only way to read anything then  would be if all was written in Braille. Next step seemed to be to then print the dots rather than have them raised. This would then make them inaccessible to the blind, even though the information is still there in full.

For the first stage of this area of thought I have kept to the book publishing theme and researched information regarding the an mount of books published by 91 countries. the figures are from the last time the surveys where done in each country. Most are fairly recent but one does go back to 1990. So this information gathered, the country, the year, and the amount of books published by that country, I produced a pice of information graphics in the form of a poster. This information I then changed into Braille, and as mentioned above, because it is printed or on screen, it is inaccessible to the blind as well. To further cut down the people able to access the information, I think I will look at it in red/green, thus causing problems for colour blind people that may be able to read Braille.

Why not just a blank sheet you may ask? well this poster contains a lot of interesting information that is very difficult to access, not really what our job is about.

I will now move this to the next stage, firstly the cards and then music. yes lets see if that one works!

David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization | Video on TED.com

David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization | Video on TED.com

Dot. The world's smallest stop-motion animation character shot on a Noki...

This is the first attempt at the short video I see as my view of the Borges piece of work.
It will be interesting what reaction I get tomorrow.

Second year of my MA

 The Library of Me

So here we go, the second year of my MA. Analizing Practice.

Our first brief is to read "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Louis Borges and interpret in any way we see fit. Having read it I am glad it is open, as I am not sure I understand.

I am thinking that the library is his universe and in it is contained everything needed for survival, but there is still something missing. The constant need for humans to search for something else, never satisfied with what they have.
Or is it a good thing that we are always looking for the "Man of the Book"

I think I will interpret this writing as a series of photos (books) taken of me, and by me, over the period of a few days. I will use my house as "The Universe" and the rooms of the house as the different rooms of the Library. Some photos will show clearly what I am doing, (easy to read/understand), and others will be more difficult to work out, those more difficult to read or even impossible, totally meaningless.

The house contains reference, somewhere, to my universe past and present through memorabilia and photos etc. and even the future through my work, study and children.

I am not sure yet if the pics should be in chronological order random to make the journey around the Universe more interesting.

I see these pics being placed, one after another around my house on every wall in every room, so that as you follow and read each picture, book, you are taken on the journey through my universe.

Due to cost and technical issues, I may just produce a continuous slide show of the pics. Lets see what happens.

A real sense of achievement

http://vimeo.com/9928781

Tim Brown on creativity and play | Video on TED.com

Tim Brown on creativity and play | Video on TED.com

The Science Project Sustainable 
information design

Not long ago, Alice tweeted about a couple of new artistic re-conceptions of the famous London tube map. The map itself has been subject to countless interpr...

My quest for information

Here is the electronic version of the piece I had in the local paper asking for information about areas of Bath little known to visitors and locals alike. Will report back with response after the weekend. The outcome will hopefully give me an idea of how I can tailor my brief for the wayfinding work.

Maps for the V&A

Nice looking maps. Practical, appropriate,   or not?

http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/thoughtfortheweek/index.php?thoughtid=601

Signage and environmental graphics | About design | Design Council

Signage and environmental graphics | About design | Design Council

Stylist after stylist.

I have just spent an hour on the "Creative Bath" website looking through what it has to offer by way of Graphic Design. A little underwhelmed, all I see is stylist after stylist. Each company using very grand sounding words, obviously written by their copywriters or copied from some other site. The word creative is over used, and when much of the work is seen, I do feel maybe this word too was cut and pasted, as I see very little evidence of creativity. I think a lot of design, or designers, have got stuck in some time warp and are wearing design blinkers.
Now I am not saying I am any better, (although I do think I understand the word creative a little more than most) but it was a great disappointment to go looking for inspiration under the heading "Creative Bath", and to find such mediocrity.
Come on Bath, look over the hill, stop thinking you are something you are not, push the brief/client a little. Design is changing, and I do not mean simply green washing, you may be keeping the client happy, but you are letting your art college down.
Lets be creative.

Beau Lotto: Optical illusions show how we see | Video on TED.com

Beau Lotto: Optical illusions show how we see | Video on TED.com

Tim Brown urges designers to think big | Video on TED.com

Tim Brown urges designers to think big | Video on TED.com

Oleifera | Design case studies | Design Council

Oleifera | Design case studies | Design Council

http://maschmeyer.blogspot.com/

Take a look at these, and maybe let it help when designing.
Taken from the above blog.

Ross Lovegrove.

Take a look at this talk. I like the way he looks at things and starts the thought process, wow. He pushes an idea to its limits, sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected, but that is the way it goes. I always say, the client does not always know best, or even what they want, if you are prepared to be simply a stylist, then accept what they say, if not, then push them and yourself to the limit.

Ross Lovegrove shares organic designs | Video on TED.com

New UK passport

Well, comments please. Our new passport has been unveiled. What do we think of the design? I have added a few comments that have been made so far.

Firstly the article in the Mail online - It began as a handwritten note from the King himself and has remained a reassuringly imposing booklet ever since.

But passport holders will soon find themselves handing over a document with a little less pomp - and a few more quaint depictions of rural scenes.

The UK passport has been redesigned in the style of a picture book to include scenic images of country life and national landmarks that make it harder to forge.

Its inside page features a row of cottages and some oak leaves alongside the familiar royal request for safe passage.

Another double page bears a depiction of one landscape from each nation of the UK: the White Cliffs of Dover, Ben Nevis, the Giant's Causeway and the Gower Peninsula.

Tourists happily sunning themselves abroad will find a reminder of the dank and dreary weather they left behind - with a hologram of a weather forecast symbol on every page.

Sarah Rapson, chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service, said: 'What we're not trying to do is represent every single aspect of Britain today.

'We've deliberately chosen scenic Britain, the images you're seeing are representative of that aspect of Britain.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1306018/New-UK-passport-design-unveiled-Sundials-narrow-boats-windmills.html#ixzz0xhdSAV16

its looks rubbish, take alook at a american passport , its a work of art, and you would feel proud to have one with its words from american greats ...

Oh dear. They look terrible. - Mark, Melbourne, 25/8/2010 22:03

It looks rubbish.
I want Britannia on my passport -
- George Brown, Romford, Essex, 25/8/2010 16:48

That new picture is not representative of the UK. Instead it should be a block of depressing council flats with a knife wielding thug hiding in the shadows.

So not surprising, bad comments immediately, do we have any good ones from you designers?

Everyone is a Designer: Manifest for the Design Economy

The growth of design schools seems unstoppable.
Designers born after 1980 have a totally different view of visual culture, aesthetic products, creative vision, and history from that of their predecessors.
Communication aesthetics are in an ever-temporary state; design has become a dynamic and unstable area.
All these developments pose new questions to the status of the designer and the trade.
With visual contributions, quotations, and short essays from dozens of international designers, thinkers, critics, and strategists, this book presents a new manifesto for the design economy of 2010 and beyond.


www.astore.amazon.com/dexigner-20/detail/9063692277

Sustainable Design Week 2010

SDW: Sustainable Design Week 2010

Starting during the opening week of the Venice Biennale of Architecture, and arriving in Verona for the 25th anniversary of the International Design Trade Show "Abitare il Tempo", the sustainable design and its protagonists will meet and present themselves through exhibits, conferences, events and cultural interaction.

The Sustainable Design Week is a cultural and communication project, promoted by Amplificatore Culturale and Brandit, whose main objective is to promote and disseminate sustainable design.

A macro-event comprising of a series of initiatives that involve and educate consumers and professionals in sustainable design

www.sustainabledesignweek.com

The beginning.

Ok, this hopefully will act as a staging post for design comment and the sharing of ideas. I will be posting my work on here, both finished and, if the client allows, the design process. I will also put up information that my students may find helpful from exhibitions to competitions to placement opportunities.
So lets see how it goes, hopefully some lively debate and sharing of information.

I have put some of my work here to start things off.

Yes, this is a bit image heavy, but as it is the first one, it gives an idea of the kind of work I do.
For further information about the jobs shown, please go to
www.finalcrit.com/design/creativeand