My Postcard Project

The following pictures show some postcard designs I thought of during a project in my first year of my degree. As part of a task I had to do for the first stage of a typography project, I had to experiment on Adobe Illustrator to produce postcard designs that express a certain emotion whilst mixing imagery with typography. Out of all of the emotions we could choose from, I thought that "Fear" was the emotion I could think of that had the most potential.

I thought about producing a series of theme with the same style, mixing a black background with cartoon-styled "scared eyes" and a "creepy" typeface I found on DaFont. This was a simple idea I had in mind with the phrase "You can see the fear in his eyes". It's a VERY simple idea, but it's quite effective.
Out of the three designs I produced, this one is my personal favourite. I stuck with the idea of the eyes as the main focal point of the design, but I quite like the unique idea of moving away from having the word "fear" on the postcard, but instead having things people are scared of, I got a random variety of suggestions but I think all of them go well on the design.

This one was an extra one I came up with as an experimentation, keeping the eyes but having them in the corner instead, and incorporating other things people are scared of, such as blood and a spider (which I really enjoyed designing! It was really simple, but I really like how it turned out.) This one isn't my personal favourite, but I'm quite proud of the really simple spider.

Give Peas a Chance

This was the last piece of work I produced for the first year of my degree, I had a lot of different ideas for the brief (I chose one to work with words and imagery to produce puns) and I've got a lot of others I might produce anyway and upload to the blog, but I liked the idea of "Give PEAS a chance", and after experimenting on Photoshop, and learning how to produce the psychedelic backgrounds thanks to an internet tutorial, I really like the effect of the peas in the peace symbol and I think the typeface looks quite effective as well. Like most of my work, it's quite simple but effective.

Pop Art Phone Piece

This is another piece I produced for a project on my National Diploma. We were each given a random object from a certain time period in the past 100 years and we had to produce a drawing (magazine/newspaper advertisement style) of said object in the style of the time it was around. I was given a classic telephone (I can't remember the exact name, but I know the type I was given was invented in the 1960s), so I went with the first style that came to mind.

I love Pop Art, I love the style of Andy Warhol, so if I had to represent the 1960s, I had to go with the style of one of the most iconic artists of the 1960s Pop Art genre. It was a simple sketch of a telephone I drew and used for the piece, but it seems to work really well, and even though I handed in the piece with type in the middle of it, looking back at the piece, I think it looks better without it. Less is more, as they say.

Darko Poster

This was a poster I produced for a project on my National Diploma in Graphic Design and Illustration. This was the first time I used Adobe Illustrator, and I had to produce a movie poster for a film selected at random, and as you can see, I drew out Donnie Darko. (Good movie!) One of the biggest inspirations for the poster (and the use of the paw print) was the poster for Black Sunday/La Maschera Del Demonio, an Italian movie released in 1960. As you can see, it may not be the most complicated of posters, but I think the simple approach (with the right typeface - Lucida Handwriting) turned out to be really effective.

My Photography

The following pictures are some of my best photos from my ND Photography project. Some are quite simple, and some are better than others, but I'm really pleased with how these all turned out.

How I Work...

If I had to describe the way I work, I'd describe myself as an artist who works primarily with digital technology, e.g. PhotoShop and Illustrator. I'm currently developing hand drawn skills, but I'd like to think I'm in the process of developing my own cartoonist style that's contemporary but stays true to some of the proven and traditional methods of the much-loved cartoon. With more practise, I'd like to believe that I could further add to a portfolio of work that has serious potential to make people laugh,

My Hard Day's Night poster

This is a piece of work I produced for my final project of my National Diploma, and it remains one of my personal favourite pieces of work to this day. The brief was to produce a piece of work in any medium that promoted the ND course for the Plymouth College of Art Summer Show, and a lot of the ideas I had were based on favourite album covers and art works, and reproducing them featuring pictures of each individual student (and tutor) involved in the 2nd year of the National Diploma to really promote the course. After looking at different album covers, I decided to work on an homage to the Beatles, one of my favourite bands, and the cover for A Hard Day's Night, one of their biggest albums.

A Hard Day's Night had a memorable cover, and I loved the simple template that the cover had and the contrast in the black and white images, and I really thought there was a lot of potential in recreating the style of the album cover to produce a poster promoting the course.

I experimented with several different layout ideas and colour schemes, and I had to make a few changes to some of the typefaces - I had to include Gill Sans Bold Italic for the college logo, and it made sense to have the name of the course in the same font to make it match - but I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and all of the individual pictures seem to stand out really well with the gradient colour scheme in the background.

This is the best work I've ever produced on Adobe Illustrator, and I'd love to produce more homages to classic album covers over the next few years.

Album Covers

The pictures above are a few examples of some of my favourite album covers.

Top row, left to right:

1) Queens of the Stone Age - "Era Vulgaris" - designed by Morning Breath Inc. (with overall art direction from Morning Breath Inc.'s Jason Noto and Doug Cunningham)

Favourite songs - "3's & 7's", "Sick, Sick, Sick", "Make It Wit Chu"

2) Blur - "Blur: The Best Of" - designed by Julian Opie

Favourite songs - "Coffee & TV", "Parklife", "Tender"

3) Big Brother & The Holding Company - "Cheap Thrills" - illustrated by Robert Crumb

Favourite song - "Piece Of My Heart"

4) AC/DC - "Highway to Hell" - photography by Jim Houghton, art direction from Bob Defrin

Favourite songs - "Highway to Hell", "Night Prowler", "Walk All Over You", but the entire album is awesome! Highway to Hell is my all-time favourite album.

Second row, left to right:

1) The Clash - "London Calling" - designed by Ray Lowry, photograph by Pennie Smith - homage to album cover of Elvis Presley's self titled debut album

Favourite song - "London Calling"

2) Sex Pistols - "Never Mind The Bollocks...Here's the Sex Pistols" - designed by Jamie Reid

Favourite songs - "Pretty Vacant", "Bodies", "Anarchy in the UK"

3) The Beatles - "Revolver" - illustrated by Klaus Voorman

Favourite songs - "Taxman", "And Your Bird Can Sing", "Yellow Submarine"

4) Pink Floyd - "The Dark Side of the Moon" - designed by George Hardie and Hipgnosis

Favourite songs - "Money", "Great Gig in the Sky"

Third row, left to right:

1) The Smashing Pumpkins - "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" - illustrated by John Craig

Favourite songs - "1979", "Zero", "Tonight, Tonight"

2) The Beatles - "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" - designed by Peter Blake

*I love the design of having all the people together, and this album cover has been parodied on many occasions. I'd love to produce something similar to this in the future.*

Favourite songs - "Within You, Without You", "When I'm Sixty-Four"

3) The Rolling Stones - "Sticky Fingers" - designed by Andy Warhol and Craig Braun, photography by Billy Name

Favourite songs - "Brown Sugar", "Can't You Hear Me Knockin'?"

4) Eagles of Death Metal - "Death By Sexy" - album cover similar to "Sticky Fingers" by the Rolling Stones, as well as "Too Fast for Love" by Motley Crue

Favourite songs - "Solid Gold", "Cherry Cola", "Don't Speak (I Came to Make a BANG!)"

Bottom row, left to right:

1) Them Crooked Vultures - "Them Crooked Vultures" - designed by Morning Breath Inc.

Favourite songs - "Dead End Friends", "Scumbag Blues", "New Fang"

2) Foo Fighters - "Wasting Light" - designed by Morning Breath Inc.

Favourite songs - "Walk", "White Limo", "Rope"

3) Queen - "A Kind of Magic" - designed by Roger Chiasson

Favourite songs - "One Vision", "A Kind of Magic"

4) Ramones - "Ramones" - photography by Roberta Bayley

Favourite songs - "Blitzkrieg Bop", "Beat On The Brat", "Judy is a Punk"

Music

One of my biggest inspirations and influences in my work and who I am is my taste in music. Without the music I listen to, I probably wouldn't be the same person I am today. I listen to a wide variety of music, thanks to my family and other people in my life, but my favourite genre has to be rock, mainly thanks to my dad, one of the most influential people in my life.

It's hard to go into details of the bands I love, and I could be here for ages listing bands, so I thought one of the best ways to show some of my favourite bands would be to take a page out of the first year of my degree.

One of the main things I picked up from my tutors when it came to thinking of ideas for projects, such as Print Processes, was to produce a moodboard of different things I could think of to do with the chosen subject, so I've done the same for this, I've thought of my favourite rock bands and I've used their logos to produce a visual moodboard.