FINAL

I have successfully submitted my project into the hand in to be marked, this includes  the written summary, a blog link to this WordPress website and my presentation which was presented last week!

UPDATE

Just an update to show that I’m still focusing on my blog by writing my summary for Visual literacy.

To add into summary:
A one off lecture hosted by another lecturer about the history of illustration and how it has evolved over the years whether it being motion or graphic. The lecture started from the start at the 1960’s and described the images which were produced at that time. She viewed and spoke about a few images through each decade, talked about how they created the illustrations, what they meant and what reaction occurred when the piece was released. The artist which stuck out to me the most was Jan Švankmajer who has been producing in the art and film industry since 1970’s. His work is so creative and slightly gruesome, how he formed art by drawing animal parts and skeletons to form hybrids. [add image]

Here are the 3 posters which we have successfully completed, the forth one is still being designed however needs to be created by the presentations.

COLLABORATION

I struggled with the typography included in my design so I asked Paige who is also in my group to try and add my tagline into the background. The image below is the final outcome for the 4 set theme posters. I like how it is has all turned out 🙂

FIRST PART OF WRITTEN SUMMARY

1500 words reflecting your thoughts on the theories behind Visual Literacy, what you have learned from the main lectures and topics covered in these sessions. Mention how you have implemented what you have learned in your individual work. And what you have discovered about yourself whilst working in a group.

This is the written summary of what has been taught throughout the second semester; each week consisted of three parts – the lecture, individual tasks and a group session. Each part being approximately 90 minutes long.

The lecture helped the concept of visual literacy, the first lectures were mainly about the introduction of the topic and the key histories which occurred. Some of the key histories that were taught which wa fod most interesting was the different cultured within the art history. How they were  We were taught how to view and look further into images to gather more information on what is going on. This comes to the terms ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’, these terms are found frequently within visual literacy. Denotation being the literal or primary meaning of a word. “Graphic designers need to be aware of the uses of particular visual signs and symbols, and their common meanings, within a target group.” Ian Noble/Russsell Bestley, 2005. Connotation being an idea or feeling which a word invokes for a person “The meaning of the image and how we ‘read’ it is not fixed by it’s creator or author but is equally determined by the reader.” Ian Noble/Russsell Bestley, 2005.

 

Another part of visual literacy is the perspective of images and the vanishing point within the image shown, we were taught the history of perspective and how it has evolved throughout the years. Images shown like the St. John created by Giovanni Di Paolo in 1454, the first ever attempted picture of 3D art. [insert image and referencing] In addition to this, the different types of perspective were discussed and shown how they were diverse from each other. The types being: linear, Atmospheric, Colour and Planar. I was able to research more into this and find clear definitions for each sort, linear brings depth by reducing the relative size of objects as they regress into space, atmospheric creates the illusion of depth by increasingly blurring the lines and details of objects or figures as the image regresses into the distance, colour causes depth by adjusting the saturation and hue of colours as space regresses and lastly, planar is the division of a composition in a series of layered planes to create a sense of depth. Seattlepi. (2016)

A small amount information relating to visual literacy revolved around the term ‘gestalt’, the terminology frequently well known in the other module Principles of Design.  There are two meanings when it comes to gestalt but the one which was focused on in the seminars was the art form. The definition according to  Art 104: Design and Composition is that it is a “theory is involved with visual perception and the psychology of art among other things. It is concerned with the relationship between the parts and the whole of a composition.” Gestalt includes five main principles: figure ground, closure, similarity, symmetry and anomaly. Each categories were similar to one another but they had their own definition when it came to choosing what a piece of art was. Figure ground is split into parts, the positive and the negative, which is always known as the spaces. The two balance off each other creating an image from the negative space. Figure ground is commonly found in logos because of the simple, interesting layout which grabs attention. [add logos] The best definition for the principle closure is “when parts of a whole picture are missing, our perception fills in the visual gap.” Wikipedia (2016) Symmetry is a very well known term in maths when it comes to letters and shapes, you are able to find whether the shape has symmetry by placing a mirror in the middle and checking if it’s identical. Similarity is a principle which include using identical shapes to form a larger shape and proximity being when shapes are close together i.e. circles to form a bigger image.

Referencing
Ian Noble/Russsell Bestley, 2005, Visual Research, page 68. [from lecture presentation]
Seattlepi. (2016) Four types of perspective. Available from: http://education.seattlepi.com/four-types-perspective-renaissance-art-1418.html
2D Design Notes: Gestalt ( 2000) available at:  www.daphne.palomar.edu/design/gestalt
Wikipedia (2016) Gestalt psychology. available at:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology

 

 

EXPERIMENTING IN THE GROUP

In the group we decided to see what would look best, since our colour scheme is red, blue, green and grey we thought of using all the colours to be the background. We found that it looked too much underneath the design and decided to just pick one colour to be placed behind the design.

SELF PROMOTION

Pulling together Paul Rands ‘vocabulary of aesthetics’, colour theory, expressive type and poster design create an A4 self promotional piece of work that promotes your blog.
You must include;
• Your blog address
You may include;
• The use of colour (which colours reflect your
personality?)
• An image (possible self portrait?)
• Typographic or textured background
(remember the work of Herb Lubalin)
• The three expressive type words that describe your
personality

I went to my idea on the logo which I created for myself which was a silhouette of my hair and colour that it was dyed. 

I decided to add the WordPress logo in my promotion so that people know what type of website it is.

Logo source: https://image.freepik.com/free-icon/wordpress-logo-of-a-letter-in-a-circle_318-49857.png

These are screenshots from the forum that Lindsey has posted since she is doing the journal while the rest designs the posters, the images show the progress which we have started the journal and how we are laying it out. We chose these colours so that we could follow the scheme throughout, I decided to re-colour my main design which they all liked to match a colour.

EXPRESSING TEXT

For this task, we had to think and pick three words to describe myself. I chose sarcastic, weird and blunt because I believe I am them adjectives in my opinion. We had to then swap with someone across the room so that we could  use their words to express text. The words I got from I had to express the text were honest, weird and loud.

This is my paper which the person has expressed my words:

We then had to transfer the text onto Illustrator and created them as similar as I could.

EXPERIMENTING FOR EXHIBITION POSTER

This is the image by Humphrey  Spender, I needed an image which included a factory of some sort because of my original ideas which is shown below. [Copyright Bolton Council Image ref. 1993.83.01.20 Page author: Bolton Museums]

 

These are my experiments with free online brushes and effects within Photoshop and Illustrator, I focused on the same image but changing the different effects to see which looked the best. I wanted to find a brush which made the image look dirty and messy but not cover the image too much. The best brush I used was a template of ‘scratches and dirt’ which I added to the image. I liked it because it showed that it was an area of bolton but looked very old at the same time. I added a brush named graffiti to add an affect that it’s about a town who that tends to have graffiti there in the present. I added my logo which can be found on the app, this will now be the branding of the whole project however I need to add information about the exhibition which will be supplied by the tutor.

Bigger image of my best image