Week 9 Text and Image

Our final ITAP lecture consists of only one single principle – the lecture itself, on the use of text and image. Knowledge of this topic is essential for visual communicators, particularly graphic designers and illustrators. Text gives images a context if they don’t have one, or a new one if they do. Consider the image below:

There is little that we can gather from this. Maybe the artist likes fields, but that’s just wild guessing. The point is, on it’s own, the image means nothing. If it were alongside other photos, we might gather a little more. If it were in a police station, we could assume that it is a crime scene. Images need some form of context to be meaningful. That’s not to say that a caption or a second image is needed, necessarily, the context can be easily integrated, but it must be there.

Something else to consider though is that context can be misleading. It is only in our minds that two things next to each other are connected – there is no logical reason for this to be the case. The fact that we associate two things next to each other is used by us subconsciously all the time. When you caption an image, you do not feel the need to tell the viewer that you are captioning that image and not just writing there, as it is accepted in our minds that the things are related. But this concept can also be exploited, and often is. Tabloids often use it to shock, putting headlines that alone are acceptable (or at least not as shocking as with a picture) next to unrelated and similarly innocuous images that together mislead the viewer and create something very provoking.

Related to this, is that even when captions are deliberately attached, they are not always truthful. The photo below I took at the student protests in London over the rising tuition fees. By changing the caption, the meaning of the image completely changes:

The bonfire party was a huge success.

Mob of youths kidnap South London woman and burn her alive during horrific
spree of gang violence.

Another artist that uses changes of context is John Hilliard, a conceptual artist who uses photography to show its uncertainty as a documentary tool. Of particular note is Cause of Death (below), which depicts the same staged murder scene framed and captioned in 4 different ways, leading the viewer to a different conclusion for each one. At the time it was made, it was revolutionary, as black and white photography was heavily associated with documentary photography, and therefore truth.

Clockwise from top left, words read: Crushed, Drowned, Burned, Fell

Week 8 Production for Visual Communicators

I found this ITAP a bit more difficult to complete than usual, as the overall theme was extremely similar to earlier lectures that I’ve already written about, and the 5 principles weren’t really the same type of principle as the other 7 sets we’ve had. But lets give it a go.

Click this text for his website (which I highly recommend)

The first principle I’m going to look at is “Experts”. Within Visual communication, there will be many experts in each discipline, who approach a given task each with different preferences in approach to and incorporating their own unique style.

Even within a specific specialism, such as illustration, there will be many experts, each excelling at different things, and one working in their own style is not necessarily better than another working in an opposing style. The expert I am looking at in regards to this task is the illustrator Kekai Kotaki. I feel that he is an expert in the art of concept design, an area that I am particularly interested in.

He has spent almost 10 years working for ArenaNet, the makers of the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game): Guild Wars, mostly as a concept artist, and 5 years as the Lead Concept Artist, and his designs are breathtaking. The drawings themselves are not all in intricate detail, but they are very atmospheric and you can feel the energy captured in the scene. Some of his work is beside and below this post:

The next principle that I am looking at is “a Brief History of Production”. It can be useful to know what our heritage is and the history behind the technology we use as visual communicators, as it informs our designs.

The Diamond Sutra is the earliest printed and dated book that has completely survived. It was produced in AD400, created using wood blocks and ink on paper. The wood blocks would have been hand carved, and then pressed onto the paper, in this case in the form of a scroll.

Below is a picture of a print within the Diamond Sutra. Considering the method used to create it, and how long it has survived, the level of detail is quite amazing:

In the mid 15^th century, Johann Gutenberg invented the mechanical printing press (including many of the components it was made up of, and processes upon which it relied), which was able to mass-produce prints, making them affordable for printers and readers alike, introducing printing to Europe. Prior to this invention, the method of book production in Europe had been hand-made manuscripts.

Our methods of production have changed dramatically throughout history, but knowledge of the old methods is nevertheless useful in creating new and interesting forms of art. As they say, knowledge is power.

Week 7 Production and Outcomes

Today’s lecture was on “Production and Outcomes”, and first I’ll be looking at “Interpretation”, both on the part of the viewer and the artist. Controlling how a piece of work will be interpreted by the viewer is very important in visual communication, as you will always have a purpose that you are trying to achieve in the viewers mind. A big influence of this is the artist’s own interpretation of the work based on the culture of the time. This is known as Zeitgeist (literally, “spirit of the age”), and can be seen in many places if you look for it. An example of this can be seen in the portrayal of the “good” characters (particularly superheroes) in the 30’s 50’s, compared to now. In the past, heroes will always be purely good and never have any negative qualities, regardless of any kind of traumatic upbringing. Obviously these kind of characters still exist in places, but are not close to as widespread, whereas media now has much more variety (and perhaps more humanity) in the characters, ranging from brooding heroes to ruthless anti-heroes and even sympathetic villain-protagonists. There could be many cultural factors relating to this, and it is difficult to analyse a time period that you are living in, but it may be that with the birth of the information age with the world at our fingertips, we are now very much desensitized to the idea of death.

Compare Batman in the 40’s in which he will never, ever kill...

...To the 2000’s *spoiler alerts*, in which he has deliberately left his mentor to die and blown up a building full of people.

The second principle I’m looking at is delivery. Choosing the correct method of delivery is very important for communicating effectively, as failure to do so can cause your message to go unnoticed, or misunderstood. A very effective delivery of advertising is to give the audience subtle puzzles, so they have to work out the message. Working out the message intrigues the viewer and draws them in, and solving it makes them feel good and associate that feeling with the message or product. A good example of this form of delivery is a certain recruitment campaign by Google. They placed billboards (pictured below) with a complicated puzzle leading to a website with another puzzle, which led to more puzzles of increasing complexity until the dedicated problem-solver would be asked for their CV.

In case you cannot read it, the writing says "first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e"

Week 6 Narrative and Structure

This week’s lecture is on Narrative and Structure. The first principle that I am going to look at is “Stories”. This doesn’t just cover fiction, but any set of causally linked events, of any genre or media, fiction or non-fiction. Humanity as a whole is a social species, and we have always enjoyed stories, whether they be told in cave (or other) paintings, verbally, in books or in films. We are generally more likely to remember things if we associate them with stories rather than just lists given to us. The most important thing when making stories for any purpose – but especially for art and illustration – is communication. There will be an intention to your work, maybe to enlighten, maybe to entertain, but whatever it is it must be communicated effectively to the target audience, in order that they will get the intended message and pass on your story.

Linking on from Stories, is Developing Narrative. All stories have a narrative in some form or another, but at a most basic level, a narrative consists of the conflict between protagonist and antagonist. These roles do not necessarily have to be filled by people or even individual entities (though they almost always are). The protagonist will be the main character, who has some sort of objective, whereas the antagonist will be someone (or maybe something) attempting to hinder the progress of the protagonist, and from their interaction, the conflict is born. This is really what all narrative boils down to.

There are many things that can set one story apart from another, but purely in terms of narrative, something that can make a story much more interesting is in telling it a different way. A good example would be the film Memento (trailer below), which mixes a non-linear narrative with in which the protagonist has a disorder that means that he can only store his memories for 6 minutes, after which time everything from the last 6 minutes disappears. The film is told in a way that mirrors his disorder, as the storyline is split up into 3 smaller narratives which it alternates between in short 5-10 minute sections, 1 starting from the most recent events and working backwards, 1 starting from a few days earlier and working forwards, and 1 starting somewhere in the middle of the two and also working forwards. These segments eventually meet for an exciting climax in which we as the audience have finally seen the protagonist’s entire journey leading up to the end, but are still left confused as we try to piece together the events. Alternatives to traditional narrative can be very interesting, and is definitely something worth exploring in the future.

Week 5 Visual Vocabulary Essay

The first principle that I’m going to look at is Legibility. In this context this does not simply mean how easy something is to read; this principle delves deeper, into how easy it is to identify and understand the intended message behind the piece of work, and how efficient the communication is. Good legibility is essential for the practice of visual communication. Without it, work will look unprofessional, and you will fail to communicate effectively. An example of bad legibility is having text over an image with little contrast between the two, as the image below shows:

The bottom section where the pictures are looks like it has been slapped together by a child, and if it had one it would confuse the message. It makes it look as if the image is not important, but you cannot easily read the text either.

It raises an interesting issue however, as work being difficult to read is not necessarily a sign of bad legibility. For example, on the sign below, the fact that it is hard to read is the intended message, so in this case the difficulty in reading the text is actually good legibility. Similar examples can be found in advertising, where a good technique is to make the message not immediately obvious, as the act of working out the intended message creates immediate gratification in the mind of the viewer that they then associate with that product or service.

The next principle I am going to look at is Tone of Voice. This is the idea that text and image have an equivalent to a tone of voice, so their message can be communicated by their style in addition to the meaning of the word or what the picture actually is. Like with legibility, there are specific instances where applications of the tone of voice can confuse the image where in another situation it might work much better. An easy example of where the tone of voice can confuse the image is with single word images.

If the typeface is not representative of the meaning of the word, as above, then it looks odd. Compare below:

This typeface makes much more sense in the context of the image, and makes it clear that the intended message is a loud shout. There are undoubtedly instances where you could use a conflicting typeface to the meaning of the word, and be communicating effectively, but this would be much more specific and situational. The only example I can think of would be in a graphic novel having characters ‘whisper’ in a huge typeface, and be called out for being unable to whisper quietly.

Week 4 Reliability and Creative Process Essay

The first principle that I want to look at is research. The dictionary definition of research is “the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions”. Within visual communication, it is the reaching of new conclusions that most interests us, but even then, this is actually a much broader scope than you might initially think. Research does not simply mean ‘looking things up’; it means gathering data in any sense. As a visual communicator, most of my research would be visual: collected items, drawings, photographs, etc. So for example testing out a new material is gathering data on how to use it effectively, and is therefore an important form of research. Research is always important within a project. Starting on ideas without doing any kind of research first will normally lead to less interesting ideas and failure to communicate effectively.

On top of the essentiality of doing research, an important point to consider in that definition is the word systematic. In other words, the research you do is not simply a small step at the beginning to get a foothold on your project, but a continuous process. You should always be looking at things that interest you as you continue to build up a visual understanding of your subject.

Below are some pages from a short project that I did on foundation, but worked on in more depth in my gap year. The continual research I did throughout the project on different artists and different methods of working was incredibly useful as a resource and allowed me to come up with some much better outcomes.

The next principle that I am going to look at is very similar to the first: it is inspiration. We find inspiration through our research (which is another reason why we should always be doing it). Unlike research however, the methodologies for gathering inspiration are not as clear-cut. Anything and everything can be of inspiration (and so you should ideally collect and research everything), and this inspiration leads into a cycle of more research and inspiration, but the starting spark requires you to be more engaged with your practice than research does. When collecting data, it is possible to switch off, and collect on autopilot. When looking for inspiration, your creative brain must be engaged with your practice, and you must really find what you are doing interesting, as one would hope that you do (I certainly do!). When you are engaged and inspired, you can create fresh and creative ideas.

Week 3 Originality Essay

It’s been a while between blog posts recently. I have actually got some stuff I’ve been meaning to put up, but I’ve been a bit busy with these lectures, and with actually doing the stuff that I’ve been meaning to put up.

Okay, anyway, I’m not quite sure what’s going on with this lecture… We were given 5 principles at the beginning, and reminded of them at the end, but everything in between was filed under the first one, and I’m not sure what 3 of them even mean… But lets give it a go. Here’s this weeks essay:

This week’s lecture is on originality, or when it is okay to steal someone’s idea. The immediate reaction (or mine anyway) is that you cannot steal someone’s idea – it’s more interesting to come up with an original idea, and stealing someone else’s can get you sued. However, this is not as strict as you would immediately think. First of all, everyone is inspired by something, so all ideas come from somewhere else. In addition, as time goes on people become inspired by things that were created by people that were inspired by other things. For example; (spoiler alert if you haven’t read/watched/listened to Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings or The Ring Cycle by Wagner) The Horcruxes in Harry Potter (written over 1997-2007) are very similar in nature to the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings (written over 1937-1949), as both contain the soul of an evil being, both are central to the plot, the destruction of each are the aim in order to destroy an evil overlord, etc. In turn, Tolkien took inspiration for his world from mythology. Though it shares some of his source material, he denies taking inspiration from The Ring Cycle by Wagner (written over 1848-1874), despite the fact that two of the characteristics possessed by the One Ring (it’s malevolence and corrupting power) were not in the mythical sources, but have a central role in Wagner’s opera. You can see from this how ideas have been taken from one source to the next and passed down as inspiration. Regardless of whether you personally enjoy them, these are all fantastic forms of media, and yet the ideas are not original.

Another way in which stealing ideas is accepted practice is in recontextualisng them. This is to take an old idea, and put it into a new context, thus creating something new and interesting and perhaps relevant to contemporary culture. This can occur in varying degrees, with different ramifications. For example, the (rather appropriate) quote by Picasso "The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal", stolen by Banksy (pictured below) makes for an ironic piece of work that is funny in a quirky sort of way. The act of stealing is itself the artwork in this case.

The work of Banksy is controversial – he is considered by many to be a vandal, due to the nature of most of his work. In this he is somewhat similar to the Chapman brothers, who have previously been accused of ‘cultural vandalism’. Their work involves taking classical masterpieces and defacing them. 

Chapman brothers 'vandalism' on the right, next to Goya's original Contra el bien general

They consistently seek to overstep social boundaries, and in doing so they create pieces of work that are built on provocation, rather than being an inherently original idea. In this sense, how original the idea is, is irrelevant. The purpose is to provoke; there is an argument in there, and it redefines the whole notion of what art can be.

Week 2 Development of Creative Thought Essay

The first principle that I want to look at is the process of getting rid of assumptions. This is the act of approaching projects with an open mind so that you can make new observations and connections, and therefore be more creative with your work. The basis of this would be to challenge your understanding of everything that you are working with and break it down to it’s most basic level. Question what a word exactly means, what it could mean, what it could be interpreted to mean. Think about alternative ways of using existing techniques. For example, you could use a method of work such as Japanese woodblock printing, and then colour it in photoshop, creating a very different style.

Yuko Shimizu, 7 Deadly Disasters. Shimizu uses the Japanese woodblock and photoshop method mentioned above

Related to the above principle, is Restating Problems. ‘Problems’ here does not necessarily mean that there is difficulty or an obstacle involved (though there is in the example I’ll be using), it simply refers to a question or brief to be answered or an objective to be reached. The idea is that you come into a problem from a different approach than either you did initially or you would normally in order to give yourself more options. This increases the likelihood of you producing more creative and original ideas. For example, one of the projects on my foundation course required that we (in groups of 4 or 5) set up a themed mini exhibition based on objects that we had been looking at previously. As the theme was an essential part of the brief, and all of our objects were totally unrelated, we used a different approach. Instead of trying to think how the objects could be related, we thought about why it is that they are all unrelated. What we came up with was that all of the objects were similarly out of context where we found them, and no longer held much, if any meaning in our time. The theme we chose therefore, was decay, thinking of the decay of meaning behind these objects.

Documentation of the exhibition we set up

Dragon guy design update

[Note to my tutors – my essay is the post below this one]. It's been a while since my last post, and I’ve done quite a lot since then so this post is going to be long. I’ve actually already sent my sister a design, as I wanted to get something sent before she came to visit, but I think I can do better, so I’m going to continue working on it in my downtime. Anyway, before that, here are some initial sketches of the guy:

As the character is my sisters idea and not my own, I didn't really have an image of him in my head before I started. I had some initial ideas about his behaviour and started there.

I've been thinking of him as quite introverted - keeping himself to himself, never staying too long in the same place - he does have a dragon for an arm after all! He would wear clothes that conceal as much as possible.

For the above reasoning, I've been picturing him with some kind of large cloak covering his body so that you cannot really see what is beneath it, especially his right arm. I've also been picturing him with one of those cone-shaped oriental hats, perhaps partly due to the Chinese theme of the dragon, but it would also be convenient for hiding his face.

I was thinking about other garments for hiding his face, and I found that I really liked the look of having a hood with his hair spilling out of the back. I thought it looked rather imperial, and something about it reminds me of the Chinese dragons. It also integrates well with having the guy wearing a large cloak.

At this point I decided for certain that this guy was, if not of Chinese descent, then certainly living in China or a fictional place based upon it. I googled some traditional Chinese garments, and chose some that I thought fit and looked good. I'm not certain that they definitely are traditional Chinese, but they look right for my purposes.

Although I had the clothing pictured fairly clearly in my mind, I found it easier to draw on the page after drawing out the cloak separately to the clothes worn underneath. I thought that the clothes underneath should have the sleeve missing for his right arm, in order to give him more comfort for his 'abnormality'.

Once I had the clothes sorted, I started working on a pose for the guy to be in on the postcard. It needed to have the dragon clearly visible, so it couldn't be hidden by the cloak, which means that the cloak either needed to be off or moved in some way. The pose I liked most in the end was the one I started with, with the guy braced and throwing back his cloak to release his dragon, as in the picture above.

This is the postcard I sent. Unfortunately due to being a bit pressed for time, this is the first time I'd tried out any colours for the guy, and I'm not convinced that I made the best choices. I had been imagining the hood being bright red, which in my head looked fantastic, and tied in with the imperialism I mentioned earlier. It conflicted with the idea of this guy trying to draw as little attention as possible to himself however, and I eventually decided to stick with that. When I get some more time I plan to come back to this and get the colours and textures right, and find a good way of representing the facial hair on the dragon. Anyway, hope you like it Iona!

Week 1 Design Principles Essay

Okay, so this next post is a little different to what I’ve been doing so far with this blog. As part of my course I have to do a 300-500 word essay giving a critical commentary on 2 of the 5 key principles covered in my Tuesday lecture, and post it on my blog. It looks like this is going to be a weekly thing too. Not the direction that I was expecting to be going with this blog, and my essay skills are a bit rusty, but we’ll see how we go. It could be interesting. Here’s the essay:

The first principle that I’m looking at is the idea of working by hand, and thinking on the page. Simply put, this is the process of getting my ideas down in hand-drawn images, rather than text or digital form. That is not to say that I have to draw with a conventional drawing tool such as a pen or pencil – I could use collage for example – but the key is that it is by hand. This process gives you a physical connection between your hand, eye, and creative right brain, which in turn allows the latter to operate more efficiently. This in turn results in a better environment for creativity and therefore idea generation.

There are several ideas here, and unfortunately I'm not sure what all of them are, but included is his idea for a flying machine.

A good example of an artist that thinks with images is Leonardo da Vinci. He has filled hundreds of sketchbooks with his drawings of ideas that he's had. There is certainly text in there too, but they are his notes to himself about parts of the ideas he's drawn. He was incredibly creative, and had scientific ideas that were centuries ahead of their time. While this obviously cannot be attributed merely to drawing by hand, he does nevertheless make a prime example of someone that follows this first principle.

The second principle that I’m looking at stems from the first: the idea of drawing as a visual language. This is more to do with the communication of my ideas than the generation of them, however. Visual language enables us to convey both greater quantities and more complex information far more effectively than with text. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. This may or may not be exactly true, but a picture is certainly much better at explaining complex ideas in ways that make them easier to understand. As a visual practitioner, this is especially important when communicating my ideas to others, as it is the best way of explaining short of giving a tour my mind. It is also important for my own reference, as it means I can recreate earlier experiences in my mind far more easily.

There are many examples of ways in which this principle is used. Probably the most prevalent is in instruction manuals. It would be a very lengthy process to describe (without images) the stages in completing a Lego kit.

Imagine trying to follow a step saying 'Attach the flat grey 2-by-12 brick to the top of the flat grey 2-by-2 brick with the nozzles on the sides so that the 2-by-2 brick is as far to one end as possible without the knobs being exposed and the nozzles are perpendicular to the 2-by-12 brick'.

Dragon design update

I did want to work on some ideas for the human body of this guy before I uploaded my sketches, but I now have uni work to do so I'll put up what I've done and come back to this later. I normally work in biro, as it allows me to get ideas down faster because I don't get hung up trying to get details exactly right as I do with pencil. I like the intensity you get from ink as well. I was having problems with ink here though because I need it to look like a dragon, and not a wolf, and the biro gives it a furrier texture. I did want to try out oil pastels, but I realised that it wouldn't work in the long run, as you can't work very small with oil pastels and I will be sending the final design to my sister on a postcard. Instead I've used water colour pencils, and I think it's turned out quite well, though I need to find a way to integrate the facial hair better, and it would be nice if I could make the surface look smoother.

Chinese dragons

So my sister saw the doodles I drew, and wants me to draw something similar for her! She's asked for a drawing of a guy with a Chinese dragon for an arm. It's not what my doodle was of, but I admit that it does look rather serpentine. I'm not particularly fond of the traditional Chinese image of dragons - I've always thought they look a bit silly, and not as impressive as the more western style, but it's what she wants so I'll run with it. I've had to look up a couple of pictures of Chinese style dragons for a starting point, as I'm not used to drawing them. The first place I looked was volume 2 of Fantasy Art magazine (which I totally recommend if you're into fantasy drawing, whether or not you can use digital media, which the magazine focuses on), as it contains the only image I've ever seen of a Chinese dragon that I actually like:

Celestial Party, by Amber Hill. Her website is vantid.deviantart.com, which I recommend taking a look at.

 
There are a variety of representations out there, but they all seem to have a lot of facial hair including really long strands of whiskers coming from the snout (silly looking things I say!). Some of them seem to have the facial structure of a different animal, and a scan through wikipedia showed that some specific dragons in Chinese mythology do indeed have the faces of different animals, including that of a human. To make things a bit more interesting for me therefore, I've decided to use the face of a wolf for my drawing. I could pretend that the reason is because wolves are similarly majestic, etc. but really it's just because I really, really like wolves. Initial sketches to follow.

Doodles

So I've finished my induction week of VisCom illustration - woo! Unfortunately most of it has been going over information we've already been given, or could have been covered in a short email, but that's all over now and we start properly this week. Fun times! Anyway, here are some doodles I was doing on Friday. They're pretty basic, but they've given me some ideas I'd like to try out. Thinking of making a graphic novel at some point, but at the moment I only have ideas for this character and not a story or anything.

Trying to get the pose I was imagining for the guy above. Not quite there but pretty close.