Weekly Inspiration: Leonie Bos

Leonie Bos is a fine artist/illustrator from the Netherlands who mainly works digitally but given her fine art background is heavily inspired by printmaking. 
What caught my eye about Leonie's work was the delicate look of the piece, with rough, textured elements printed in light feminine colours. The colour palettes in her pieces are very limited, she often only uses 3 or 4 colours but layers them in semi transparent layers in order to create new shades.

What I also love about Leonie's work is her focus on architectural shapes - which she attributes to her father being an architect. I love how she has been able to combine hard, sharp edges of buildings and structures with the playful feminine colours and delicate appearance of the print to give a different juxtaposition.

Weekly Inspiration: Bases Loaded

Bases Loaded is a project that explores Baseball visually through a series of screenprints, the prints celebrate American Culture and explore how Baseball contributes to this. 
The concept behind the prints is strong and the stories told are sometimes light hearted and sometimes deep. 

The prints themselves normally feature one simple primary illustration as the image with type to accompany it.

Some prints honour some of Baseball's best players like these 2 above, and some commemorate major events in Baseball like these 2 below. 

What I love about this series is the clear passion for Baseball the artists have that drives these prints. Also the colour scheme shouts patriotism - with the red toned down to orange, the white to cream and the blue to a dark navy so as not to be too generic.

inspiration presentations

Our chosen inspiration from the inspiration lists completed last PP session was the song Knocked Up by the Kings of Leon.

I personally love the band and hadn't heard this particular song so I was excited I got to discover a new song by an artist I love to listen to. We researched into the song and the band and found out some surprising background information.

The band members are all related, 3 brothers and a cousin all under the name of Followill. They were raised in Oklahoma and Tennessee by their father who was a Pentecostal church Minister. They travelled round in a car - often living out of it in their early lives. The bands sound is heavily influenced by U2  - in particular their guitar style is similar to the Edge (the guitarist in U2).

Knocked Up is a song about a couple who is pregnant - the couple seem to be young and living life like renegades - similar to Bonnie and Clyde. The song lyrics about women, cars and living fast and loose seem to rebel against the boys religious teachings from their youth.

Weekly Inspiration: MUTI

Muti is a creative studio based in South Africa that creates stunning work.
My favourite section on their website is their Graphic portfolio, the pieces they have created for brands and book covers etc are so intricate.

Weekly Inspiration: Malike Favre

My favourite artist this week is the French illustrator Malika Favre.
I came across one of her pieces of work on designspiration and immediately was drawn to the bright and striking colour palette. The use of these colours coupled with the flat vector illustration compliment eachother perfectly.

My personal favourite pieces of hers are travel illustrations she created for the Kuoni France 2016 brochure - a travel company.

What I love about the pieces is the way that they look very detailed but in reality are very simple, the shapes are simple, and it is the colour used that gives the pieces the detailed appearance, particularly the piece on the left. Favre paints with shadows rather than light, leaving lots of negative space in her work. This makes the work sound dark and dull however the colours counteract this.

As well as scenes like these, Malika also illustrates a lot of figures. You can clearly see her use of negative space here and her style of illustration has led to her work being described as Pop Art meets Op Art (optical illusions) because of her skill in simplifying the piece down to the bare minimum needed.

inspiration

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - Charles Caleb Colton

The only art I'll ever study is the stuff I can steal from - David Bowie. I love this quote as I feel like it is so applicable to any artist/designer/creative - I love being inspired by different things and using it to influence my own work.

Braun v Apple

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWoprlPMBnA

Apple products heavily influenced by Braun but Braun designer Dieter Rams is pleased about it.

Designers/ Studios

Supermundane

Artist

Kitty Callaghan

Painting

Sculpture

Song

Skin Deep - Dusky

Dreams - Fleetwood Mac

Help Me Lose My Mind - Disclosure

Recording artist

Ben Howard

The 1975

Fleetwood Mac

Book

The Tenth Circle, Jodi Picoult

Poem/Poet

Erin Hanson (the poetic underground)

Quote

'Never in my life have I wanted to be cool. I'm too warm for cool, I'm too in love with it all to act apathetic. I look around at sunsets and flowers and lovers and my soul is on fucking fire. I'm on fire with my passion and wonder and laughter and culture. Why the fuck would I want to cool down?'

'It is both a blessing and a curse to feel everything so deeply.'

Building

Miscellaneous

festivals, photography, travelling, music

After listing my inspirations I can clearly see that I don't have a favourite painting, sculpture or painting - so I need to expand my interests and explore more.

After this exercise we gathered everyone's inspirations under each category. I loved looking at other people's favourites as I love collecting and noting down new designers etc, I especially do this with music/songs and I would love to put this more into practice in other aspects too.

Weekly Inspiration: Jon Contino Skillshare

On Youtube I often look for free Skillshare videos as I love seeing designers actually create a piece of work, and also because youtube is free and Skillshare is not normally!
After watching the Aaron Draplin's video on logo creation I was directed to a video on a designer called Jon Contino. Originally from New York, Jon moved from Manhattan to Hudson Valley - he thinks the more relaxed life suits him better and also helps his work, as he describes himself as kind of a traditionalist.

Jon likes to do things by hand, and draw type out instead of placing it in digital software, which is something I'd like to get better at. His Skillshare video was about how to create a 'secret society' bandana for his wife's company Past Lives - which is a company that sells products which have a vintage, used vibe, perfect for his style of working - and he takes us through the process from start to finish.

Conceptualise
Jon wants to have a theme based on 'secret societies.'

Find reference material
Over the years Jon has been collecting organsiational banners or pendants and he starts dissecting them and leaning from their structure in order to create his own banner. As well as looking at the shapes and decorative edging on the banners Jon also draws from his own past designs to include in the banner piece.

Start sketching ideas
Jon advises working small, he likes working in thumbnails, which I think is a great tip as I like to start small too, and add detail in later. 
As well as this he also reminds to think of hierarchy to create a balanced design. The basic shapes get sketched out - and then he fills in the shape a piece at a time. 

Revise sketch ideas and figure out compostition
Taking the sketch into illustrator he creates shapes over the scan to bring balance to the sketch, which is a method he prefers to using tracing paper as it is more accurate and uses 10% cyan (known as non reproduction blue which can be easily taken out when scanned back in.)
Printing out the shapes Jon copies over the original sketch but much bigger so he can add in finer detail and add ink to the drawing.

Ink, scan and get ready for
scanning in the now adjusted drawing, Jon traces it and makes it ready to be printed.

From here the piece is traditionally screen printed which gives the bandana the old school feeling.

What I particularly liked about this tutorial was seeing Jon's process and how he used a mix of traditional and modern techniques, for example preferring to hand draw yet using the printer and scanner to refine his piece. I also liked how he went the extra step to ensure his work was as perfect as he could make it when hand drawing.

Visiting Professional: Radim Malinic / Brand Nu

Radim Malinic of Brand NU came in to talk to us and I love his talk, it was so great to see someone who had built their reputation for a non design background and been so successful. 

Influence - experience
inspiration - colour
information - science

Einstein - 'same process and expecting a different result is madness.'

Search - want/need
Henry Ford - if I had asked people what they wanted they would've said faster horses.

Direction - first idea/opposite.
Thinking of ideas can be hard so go with the first idea you think of and then the polar opposite of this, can lead to interesting results.

skills & knowledge - understanding graphic design is for others not you

meaning
making ideas happen - use phone on the go
miracles can happen on any size wave

Face a fear everyday. - I loved this idea as I tend to stay in my comfort zone in general I would love to push my boundaries more.

Presenting 
-explain meaning 
-think outside the box
-visual cues

Weekly Inspiration: Kitty Callaghan

I first heard of Kitty Callaghan through an i-D Vice article that was shared on Facebook. The cover photo looked really surreal and interesting, a collage of photos cleverly put together to create a scene that flowed.

The article was an interview with Kitty and it was really nice to read about her life in Australia, growing up in the country and her adult life in the city. 
What I liked particularly about the interview is that she revealed her biggest inspiration is the female body. She uses female figures in a lot of her pieces, creating fantastical worlds surrounding these figures. Nude figures are often the focus- but not in a distasteful way, giving new meaning to femininity. I also gained respect for her following her opinions on gender and why it is important to give female artists recognition. She highlights how women are still seen in a sexist light and that it is rare to hear a man referred to as a male artist, where as women can be labelled as female artists a lot - particularly in the music world. Her feminist views on life clearly come across in her work and I love how she makes the female form her focus and recurring theme, showing the beauty and strength of women.

Her actual work method was fascinating to me as collage is not something I am too familiar with or able to do. Using a combination of found imagery and photos, textures and paint, she creates nostalgic images. Her secret to this is something really original that I found really inspirational. Kitty often visits a camera shop near to her to raid the photos that have never been claimed - often finding pictures from the 70's which she uses in her work often. Her resourcefulness is something I have really taken on board, showing that found imagery can come from anywhere and all you have to do is ask to get free, useful stuff that would otherwise go to waste.

What I find most inspirational about Kitty is the way she has taken a method used often her in primary school art classes, so a skill she has honed over the years, and adapted to become a successful artist in her own right. She works with fashion brands often, for example Elle and Woolmark, due to her focus on the female body, as obviously fashion has the same focus.

Something I really want to do after finding out about Kitty is experiment more with collage as I have never really had the opportunity or felt I had the composition skills for it as I am used to digital work. I am also really inspired to take my own photos to use as this is a method Kitty uses often, using her friends to take photos and incorporate into her work.

Weekly Inspiration: Graphic Means

I came across this Graphic Means trailer on Creative Review.

The trailer gives an insight into the coming film, which focuses on the processes used in graphic design before the invention of desktop publishing.
I found this so interesting as obviously I am from the digital generation who has grown up with computers and the way I have learnt graphic design is through Adobe software, primarily during A Levels where our course was digitally based. During foundation year I started discovering more hands on techniques where at one point we experimented with Letraset.

From the looks of the trailer, the film will be a detailed insight into the hands on world from the 1950's to the 1990's - the age before digital computers. I have so much respect for designers that worked in this period, the amount of work needed to create a piece of work is astonishing, as the processes were long winded and often didn't turn out the way they were intended. In comparison to the way I create designs on Illustrator and Indesign etc, where I can quickly draw and delete designs in a matter of seconds, the original processes of typesetting and paste up design could take days to reach a final piece. The skills needed and gained through the years would be invaluable nowadays, whereas anybody with a computer can create a design now.

One part in the trailer features Malcolm Garrett, a designer and educator, who reaches for his laptop and states 'the amazing thing is that this is your studio now', meaning that everything you need is contained in a laptop. This is both amazing - showing the depth of technological advancement we have reached in such a short space of time, enabling us to work quickly and easily within our laptops - and a bit sad as most of the processes used to design in those days are in decline or dead. The old ways of design can be seen as an art form really as only a few require the skills needed to use these processes/machinery. 
This has inspired me to get out of my computer and be less of a 'mac monkey', and start looking at more analog techniques instead of relying on my computer software.

OFFSET - Steve Simpson

Steve Simpson is an Irish based illustrator and graphic designer specialising in packaging design.

Steve started off his talk at Offset on his origins - he was at first a cartoonist and started shadowing his uncle who was also a cartoonist at an early age. He continued to create cartoons for companies but soon branched out into a broader style of illustration.

His foray into packaging design became a passion of his and he created the packaging for Mic's Chilli, an Irish hot sauce brand. 

It was while creating this that he realised that he was in fact a graphic designer as well as an illustrator, something he never thought he would be. 

I even spotted it in a different country!

Steve's advice/methods
Steve always sketches to form the beginning of his ideas. He goes through multiple sketchbooks a year.
He sticks to limited colour palettes, as they help bring everything together. 
He loves hand lettering and uses it often. Similarly, patterns are a regular feature in his work. He looks back on patterns and the like from the 80's and gets inspired.

OFFSET - Shane Griffin

Personal work - the more you do the more you attract.

Shane tends to creates projects from key words. He works a lot with Nike and uses these projects as examples.

Legacy, Sculptural, Epic - Nike Sneakerball sculpture.

Speed (shown by racing car), Precision (shown by arrow), Ferocity (shown by shark jaws) - Nike x Kobe

Illuminati, Sound Reactive, Ferocity - Nike Yeezy

Rube goldberg, 6 steps, Forced perspective - 6 steps to 1 million lottery video
http://www.sundayafternoon.us/shane-griffin-national-lottery-6-steps-to-a-million

This project was my personal favourite as the video and project was so intricate, the amount of work that went into it was phenonmenal and the finished result was mind blowing. It was so creative and something I always remember and aspire to do something similar one day.

Shane's final advice was to collaborate and invest in yourself as much as you can. 

Stress management workshop (27/10/16)

anxiety

aŋˈzʌɪəti/

noun

1. 1.

   a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.

   "he felt a surge of anxiety"

Anxiety and stress are common, especially within the creative industry. The pressure from deadlines and the feeling of not being good enough can overcome you. Social media makes comparative living the norm, the ability to see other peoples lives and especially work makes you more likely to compare yourselves and your own work to theirs. This can lead to feelings of self doubt and inferiority.

Happiness is a competitive advantage. *
Happiness is a choice. the way we think about happiness is backwards.
Every time your brain has a success, we change the goalpost of what success is almost immediately. Happiness is a moving target you cant quite reach using this formula. Change stress from a threat to a challenge. Productivity rises to 31% when people move from a neutral state to a positive state. Social connection is the greatest predictor of happiness.

Negativity bias - the negative comments are the ones you remember, even if you have a majority of positive feedback, the few negative reviews/ opinions are the ones that will stick with you.

have you had a negative thought today?

I don't want to get out of bed

what scares you?

public speaking/ presenting work to others 

what stresses you out?

procrastination catching up with me

how do you destress?

sleep and netflix

What I found most interesting is that a lot of the negative thoughts section was full of people saying how bad they thought they looked today. It is not just creative work that stresses people, peoples moods can be affected by their appearance and others opinion of them.

Haiku 

A haiku is a Japanese poem, often following the structure of 5, 7, 5 syllables in the form of 3 lines. I based my haiku on an issue I really struggle with, and from the task an issue I think a lot of people struggle with, especially as young people. 

sleepy

don't want to get up

nine thirty is too early

just five more minutes

Everybody made a haiku and stuck them up on the wall. It was really interesting to see everybody's interpretation of the answers, and the way they turned them into creative writing.

My favourite haiku was this.

Working something out for others can help work it out for yourself.

I came up with a few ways I could put these haikus into use, that would help people. I wanted to help students as I think they get really stressed with the subjects mentioned in the haikus. For example university work, appearance anxiety and time management were talked about the most frequently by my class in the haiku exercise.

My ideas included an interactive book that people could use to scribble down their thoughts and complete exercises, a lot like the book 'wreck my journal'. Other thoughts were of making a calendar with a haiku for each day, perhaps with gaps for people to fill in the words they felt most relevant to their mood.

My favourite idea that I would like to develop is an app for students to create haikus and upload them to the app, so that other users can search for relevant haikus, "like" them, and also see suggestions people have responded to the haiku in order to relieve stress/ anxiety and solve the problem. Also included could be a preloaded exercise for the student to complete, e.g. a breathing exercise or small task that will help relieve stress. 

*recommended reading*

Big Magic - Elizabeth Gilbert

Deep Work - Cal Newport

The Stress Report - The DoLectures