On Wednesday I had a tutorial for Visual Equations which was conducted within a small group. I found the tutorial quite helpful, however it seemed as though some of us had missunderstood the brief as the feedback given in this tutorial differed from that in the last one. We felt that we were able to take the brief in different directions and be more open with it but this wasn't quite the case. However I was able to find out which style of designs were most suited for final pieces and how to take the ideas further, whilst still working towards to specifications of the brief.

Yesterday I started the day with a PAL session, in which we went through pieces of our Text and Image work with our PAL leaders to show them how we were getting on with the unit. We were intended to show our Quark work but unfortunately Quark was not loaded onto the macs in the room we were in. Instead we went through different areas of the unit and discussed the processes we went through and how we felt about our own progress.

Later in the day we then had a Visual Context session which was based around Politics of Representation, focussing on race, ethnicity and the media. We watched the first part of a film entitled "In the heat of the night" which made use of this. I made notes on what aspects stuck out in the film, including the stereotypical view of a corrupt police officer and also the lazy police chief. I also made note of how the blame of a crime was placed onto someone because of their race and through prejudice. We went through aspects of the film together, talking about how the music affected the narrative style and how juxtapositions were created.

Today I had my Promo Print Crit which was carried out in groups, with one doing the crit and the other one doing self directed study. We worked in mini groups, with each one analysing different areas of design. I found the session very helpful as it allowed me to see everyone elses work and give feedback of my own. I was also able to gain feedback for my own work which was both from other students and tutors.

Right...really shouldn't have left this til friday. But am going to attempt to recap back on what I did from tuesday. Here goes...

On Tuesday we were split into our two groups, with one doing presentation skills and the other doing Quark Express introductions. The group I was in were doing the second part of the Quark Intro. We moved on to the actual presentation of our work and text into our booklet design, going through how to implement text boxes, boxes of colour and image boxes. We also went over the shortcuts we had learnt previously and some new ones as well. There was also further knowledge gained for text, including how to change the leading, letter spacing, removing hyphons, and basicly how to change the general formatting of text. I felt the session was very helpful but felt I had to work quickly when arranging my images and text. However working quickly is often needed as a designer.

For Wednesdays lesson I had the tutorials for the Visual Equations project. I felt it was a very rewarding session as I was not to sure where to take the project. I had a starting point idea for the combination of urban and countryside, however I wasn't sure if it was a decent starting point. The tutorial was quite helpful and I managed to gain some great, possitive feedback on my idea, and possible places to go with it. Felt alot beter about Visual Equations after this!

After the tutorials we were then split into groups again, with my group doing presentation skills. We began looking though other students skecthbooks from previous first years, and going through the different ways in which they had chosen to assemble and display their work. We also looked upon various final outcome displays, and also the presnetation styles for more writen based work. The whole session was great as it showed us what we would need to be aiming for in our work. Was slightly scary though when seeing the quality of work...eek

And yesterday (Thursday) had the London trip which was pretty much amazing stuff. Walked through Oxford Street,trecked around Camden, bought a few sketch books from the London Graphic Centre and finished off with the Paula Scher talk. Brilliant!

The Paula Scher talk was very interesting and well presented, showing how her career in design began and what challenges and decissions she had to make throughout. Overall the talk was very successful at allowing me to gain a greater understanding of an existing designer and see exactly how she was thinking and what she was intending to produce when viewing her work.

Started off the day with the PAL session, going through some aspects of reading images. We talked about the 2000 word essay which we would have to produce for Visual Context and how the first part of the essay went, in which we had to write 800 words. Our PAL leaders showed us some of their images that they analyzed and the essays that went with it, allowing us to have an inside look at what we would need to produce. The session was pretty good and helped to give me some further knowledge for constructing my essay.

I'm now sat upstairs in the studio and have just been typing up some research for letterpress which I felt would be helpful to include. Have got the Visual Context seminar next and will be going over the visual piece I had to create in response to the dada poem...

Had the seminar for the visual piece and was able to gain some great feedback. We were also able to see where other people had taken their ideas for the task. It was quite good to see that everyone else had done something different and thought outside the box.

Today I had a further session on letter press in order to create some differet designs and experiment with different techniques. One of the main things I wanted to carry out was the use of embossing, which I felt went very well, allowing me to create some textured designs. I also experimented with mixing colour which I felt was greatly inspired by the work of Alan Kitching.

Alan Kitchen:

My work:

Today I began with a session on Visual equations and the briefing for our sixth and final project of Text and Image. We went through some key terms for different design techniques and their meanings, going through how they could be used within our final project as well. We then finished by going through the brief and discussing what we would need to consider when carrying out the project, thinking about the different approaches and the different types of visual recording we could use.

For the next part of the day I had my group crit on the final glyph designs which I felt helped me gain relevant feedback. The overall approach of my designs was successful, however... the leg on the pigeon glyph design was slightly curved! So I would need to go back and smooth out the lines. So overall a very successful crit!

I then finished off the day by doing some more book binding, working to make a book which I could use for my text and image progect.

Yesterday I had a group session on Quark X Press, introducing us to the basic concepts of the program. We started by firstly going over what we had previously learnt in our grids and layouts session and then began creating a series of different grid designs that would be used for our book in the promo print project. We then selected the best design which would be used for our book and began working with Quark to create it. We opened up new documents and began going through how to create the grid lines for our designs, learning key parts of Quark including how to set the grids on the page, how to set the columns and also how to include text boxes in the document. I found the session very informative and something new which I haven't worked with before.

After working with Quark I then had a letterpress crit which went very well and allowed me gain some helpful feedback on my work. My work was seen as very expressive and a great representation of the text used.


On Monday I started the day with a session on CV writing which I felt gave me a greater insight in how to develop a stronger CV. It helped me to gain knowledge of how to target it for the specific job that I would be looking for, going through presentation skills, the information required, the order to place it in and the writing style.

I then had a session on Meaning and resistance in Art and Typography, going through further terminoilogy and reading of images. We looked at an historical overview of 20th and 21st century practices as well as moving into narrative theory and narrative construction in relation to visual design. There was also a small clip shown from a Wallace and Gromit film, entitled Curse of the Were-Rabit, showhing footage of how some aspects of horror had been influenced from previous events in other media, therefore showing a use of cultrual meanings and social identities through some of the techniques used in the film. We also watched the first 20-30 minutes of another film entitled Corpse Bride which was quite a result! It to also showed the same aspects as the previous clip.

I also handed in my 800 word analysis which was on an advertisement for Office clothing company.