There are 4 posts filed in Graphic Form (this is page 1 of 1).
My assigned area was Alexandra. I choose to focus mainly on the predominantly nature-filled areas of Mt Faber, Southern Ridges and HortPark.
Idea 1: Zen in concrete city
Idea 2: Poetic Justice
References for idea 2
Idea 3: Reflections
References for idea 3
See locale research presentation here.
My initial trip down from Mt Faber to the Southern Ridges was pretty enjoyable. I felt really blessed to be surrounded by such an abundance of greenery and natural beauty. It had been quite some time since I last immersed myself in the great outdoors. Going through my photoset, the recurring theme of doing something related to cultivation, contemplation and zen kept going through my mind.
Thus , the three ideas that I have generated all share common threads, each with its own focus and graphic ideas. Although I had a rough idea of the kind of imagery I intended to present, I combed through Pinterest to form a mood board to base my ideas in more concrete forms. It also helps to somewhat communicate my ideas if required.
A plethora of imagery
I then started coining some phrases to loosely create a narrative to adequately convey my ideas. Selecting suitably similar photos also helps develop the ideas further. And this brings us to a mood board with some initial wordings…
MoodBoard pg1
MoodBoard pg2
MoodBoard pg3
To gain more inspiration and widen my choices of base imagery, I decided to pay HortPark a visit as well. The field trip resulted in the following photoset:
I am now ready to begin making some pictures! My initial set of 8 pages came out as shown.
Rough draft
These are mostly placeholders, I will be compositing stuff onto them. On a side note, most of these images came from another visit back to Mt Faber and Southern Ridges. And through the magic of RAW images I was able to create pretty compelling base images to work on.
Cover Page
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Back Cover
Because of serious time constraints, I have to think of effective and simple ideas to convey the messages. Dedicated photoshoots with subjects and props were avoided as much as possible. For some of the pieces I try to use existing photos that I have on file of family outings. For the Self-Belief piece I was able to make use of a recent paper sculpture that I have completed. I added a couple of folded paper strips to suggest as flora.
Due to restrictions in material acquisition, I rely heavily on other design elements to help create viewer interest. For the Declutter piece, I played around with sense of scale. The mum with child is intentionally made so small that they can hardly be made out. In the back cover, the figure-spatial relationship is reversed as I portray myself peeking into the coastal landscape. For the Anger and Acceptance piece, I relied mostly on light and dark contrasts to create an provocative sense of mood.
For all pieces, I also tried to maximise the play with words and the image. I try to have both interact whenever feasible, as seen in the pieces Feeling frustrated, Declutter and Surrender yourself.
In terms of general artistic considerations, I really try to push the latitude of color range from the compositions. I wanted the images to look as rich as they possibly can, even if at some point they can start to look “hyperreal”. Innately, our brains are hardwired to detect inconsistencies in what we see and what is real-life.
All in all, I enjoyed the process of compositing and integrating the disparate elements together to form a short narrative that hopefully can inspire its reader!
Using clips to align all pages before poking holes with needle
Will attempt to trim to align the right edges…
Doesn’t look too bad, but could have been better…
A few lessons learnt here… I think I was to greedy and printed on paper stock that was too thick.. When folded, the pages were misaligned by quite a bit because of the substantial paper thickness. Therefore I tried to trim the edges. The right edge trimming went pretty smoothly, but when I tried to trim the top edge, it DID NOT went well at all 🙁 So I didn’t trim the bottom edges. Lesson learnt..
I shall start off with one of my favourite comments from a fellow classmate,
“The zine showers me with images of nature/landscape and on pages w/o human elements, I feel peaceful and can even ‘hear’ the sounds of crickets. I feel that the zine has bring me to another place and am fascinated by the landscape. The paper is thick and reminds me of a photobook.”
The thickness of the paper made viewers treat it as a photobook, which honestly wasn’t necessarily an important aspect of what I was going for, but I guess it was also a happy accident in a way.
On another note, some comments were regarding the readability of the words, which I totally agree. Also, Mimi commented that the compositions could have been a bit more adventurous, and I feel that I might have been too caught up with the technical aspect of piecing everything together and missed an opportunity to push further design-wise.
There is so much stuff on Pinterest that really opened my eyes to the possibilities. Naturally I made a board and saved everything that resonated with me. Most of them I try to derive textural and technical qualities. From there I have to weave in an additional layer of context to whatever profession I chose to portray.
We were tasked to complete an in-class assignment. The parameters were loosely defined, revolving around the concept of cubism. I tried my best to combine the shapes from the pictures, and develop a line drawing. Then I painted in photoshop using light and dark shapes, trying to mimic a cubist approach at the same time, intent on portraying multiple viewpoints at the same time. It was pretty experimental, but definitely made me loosen up a little.
In-class assignment, exploration of cubism
I am not really a paper and sketch kind of guy, so I try to jump in straight and start making simple prototypes whenever I can to just test out ideas.
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I tried to come up with a highly ‘conceptual’ idea, one that is less literal and more ‘poetic’. I started with the idea of scanned images of objects. I loved the visceral quality of these grayscale images. Looking at some of these objects, I thought of how some of these objects are intellectual properties in their own right. Then I connected the dots and somehow came up with the highly abstract idea of portraying the copyright lawyer with these images. The result is shown below, but upon consultation it was deemed too gimmicky and a little cheesy. I agree. Moving on…
Ingredients
Copy-right-Lawyer?
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I love my tools and hardware. I also love these images where people layout all kinds of items systematically to form text. It’s really neat. But conceptually I am not very sure if there is anything to offer other than being eye-candy. I did a mockup, and decided maybe I won’t pursue it after-all.
Found Object Letters @ DIY Home Design
by Joseph Alessio
My crappy mockup
Attempt at making something
At this point, I thought of doing something with food instead. So I went to the supermarket, looked around and grabbed some corn, capsicum, mushrooms, tomatoes and some other stuff. Then I whipped up something for dinner since I was all alone at home. Yes, I know I am a messy cook.
Ingredients prep
Messy cook
Not exactly appetising, but it gets the job done..
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Ok, I am back at trying to be more poetic in my concepts, and this time, I try to ‘weave’ the idea of spider web and electronics together to depict a webmaster. Yes, I know… Did a small patch of mockup, it was pretty, but decided to leave it at that.
by Stephencdickson
Looks like spiderman’s
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Moving on to become more literal and less poetic, I next came up with the idea of a mastermind. I was first inspired by the “Hypno” font, courtesy of Martin. This idea of a maze and organised straight lines really resounded with me, thus mastermind was born. I made it in the shape of a brain, for obvious reasons. After several tortuous hours of drawing maze lines, I ended up with a plain-looking set of lines in illustrator. Very disheartening. But photoshop came to the rescue, and a bit of layering magic, masking and effects fiesta sealed the deal.
by Onss Mhirsi
“Hypno” Font by Martin Malacek
Creating the maze in Illustrator
Highly uninspiring …
Thank you photoshop !
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I love coding, so this one was on my plate right from the start! I thought the idea lent itself pretty well, code does look like something with all the indentations going on. I try to put in as realistic a code as possible, and only ‘cheat’ a little to construct the letters. The highlighting of keywords in the code editor also adds a nice touch of visual interest. My second attempt, upon consult, wasn’t very clear, so I tried my best to make the letters come out better in the final iteration. Fingers crossed..
First attempt
Second attempt
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This idea was born from seeing an image in google image search…
I have 2 of these at home !
Yes, Ikea furniture. And their world famous manuals. That is how I came to realise that I have to make a piece of furniture that literally spells my name. A chair would be nice, with assembly instructions included.
The parts are modelled in CAD, so that I don’t have to do isometric drawings in Illustrator. And I might decide to go into business some day, so… As a bonus, I think the design could actually work for real …
The Classic Ikea manual
More Ikea manual details
Creating the models in CAD
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Overall, I am quite satisfied with the end results. I managed to try a mix of analog and digital processes. I think the end product is a little rough on the edges, but I kinda like that aspect of it.
Very humbled by the overall positive response for the peer critiques 🙂 Very glad everyone loved the Yikea one… My personal favourite as well, Cheers!
Throughout the duration of this project, I feel that I have gained more appreciation for the difficulty of embedding concepts with symbols/shapes/lines, etc.
I find it illuminating that even though this assignment has a rather rigid set of rules, they provide an opportunity for practising how to develop an idea with clarity, and relevance, in relation to the job title. And as seen from above, trying to weave additional layers of context or meaning to the pieces is a formidable task in itself :p
One of the main hurdles for me is trying to not be too straightforward or obvious ; I try to make the results not appear overly staged, as well as possess a certain amount of charm(rawness?).
Of all the works that were presented by my fellow classmates, the ones that really resonated with me were those that had an element of interactivity to them. I think through interaction we can derive a deeper sense of meaning to perhaps promote a certain idea/message. Case-in-point would be the brilliant observation made by Brian, 🙂 , regarding the photographer piece by Carol. Shariffah’s optical illusion piece elicits joy, and Wende’s invisible ink mechanics really impressed me, in part due to its underlying simple mechanics. Doing interesting things with simple ideas are really hard to do.
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