Bored?

My Positive Ireland campaign bill board based on the objective to get the people of Ireland outside into the fresh air and away from the stress of work, homelife or exams.

Relevant current Billboards

Final Set Up!

The day of reckoning! Now all we can do is cross our fingers :)

Revised and finalised experimental bookmaking project :)

Finished product!

Experimental Bookmaking Prototype

This is my first go at my toy mockingbird. The idea is to tear it apart or kill the innocent bird in order to grt to the text. The text is a series of quotes which will give the essence of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. They are based around racial prejudice ('You Nigger lover......What kinda man are you ?') and around innocence (How do you know we ain't Negroes?').

The bird is soft and cushion like to reinforce the idea of its innocence.

Development

I worked on my boook cover in photoshop adding a white wooden texture to the picket fence and making the mockingbird look fabric like. The sewing pin is to represent the constant annoyance of the white community as the Negroes are simply trying to live their lives.

My Experimental Book

Here is the template for my own experimental book;

I plan on making a mockingbird out of fabric and cushioning that can be pulled apart into diffferent pieces and velcroed back together. This will demonstrate how the black mockingbird, Tom Robinson, was treated by the white majority.

Each section of the bird will fall away to reveal one or two key quotes from the novel. These quotes I have specifically chosen to focus on illustrating my main chosen themes of racial prejudice and the loss/destruction of innocence.

The material will be slightly see through to show the white insides of the black mockingbird suggesting that all creeds and colours , races and religions are fundamentally the same on the inside. We are all people.
This is one of my pattern pieces;

Here is a rough picture of my mockingbird as it stands today;

As of yet, it is missing its tail and beak. Hopefully after these additions it will resemble more of a mockingbird than it does right now!

Typographic solutions

This typographic solution for 'The Raven' would be great for 'To Kill a Mockingbird' also and resembles one of my previous ideas but in a more sophisticated way.

RAINBOW IN YOUR HAND : Experimental bookmaking

I came across this cool idea while researching for my own experimental bookmaking project.
This book started as a parsons personal project in summer 2007, and was soon published from a Japanese bookstore "Utrecht".
It's a flipbook, but rather than seeing animation, it creates a 3D rainbow in your hand! Since being published it has been featured on Japanese TV, Newspapers, major news & blogsites like yahoo news.

Special Edition Books

Penguin Books just announced an upcoming series of re-issued classics called "Penguin Threads" with embroidered covers illustrated by Jillian Tamaki. They are breathtaking. Amazon already has all three titles that she did available for pre-order: Emma, Black Beauty and The Secret Garden.

Major kudos to publisher Penguin Books for such a beautifully art-directed and realized series of covers. (They're embossed to mimic the 3-D feel of embroidery.) Tamaki did an astonishing job of needlework. I absolutely love the multi-colored hair. Modern, sweet, beautiful. Inspired. There are more images via TheAtlantic.com

I think this idea would work well with my novel also to create the homely feel of Maycomb town, Alabama.

Related: Penguin Books Stitched Cover: Great Expectations

Embroidery As Art: Jillian Tamaki

From Black to Colour!

Here is my book cover which leans more towards the celebratory aspect of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. I didn,t like how my focus was on black and white because I understand the book to be a story of childhood understanding which is not always so black and white. The perspective of the story that we get comes from the innocent and colour laden eyes of a 5 year old girl and I wanted to illustrate this with the lighthearted bunting pattern.

Home is where the Heart is

Seeing as 'To kill a Mockingbird' is set in the 1930s I'm going to spend time now working in craft materials and fabric rather than technologically based media like photoshop and Illustrator.

I am going in search of rustic finishes rather than the crisp lines and starkness achieved with computers and technology.

Photoshop Mock - ups

This is a typical white American picket fence, caging in the black background. I was happy with the way the fence came out resembling the high enclosure of a prison also, giving it a double meaning. The stark contrast of the black and white serves to represent the high tensions which existed between the black and white communities at the time.

This cover is designed to resemble the newspaper headlines that would have been a massive topic for discussion over the course of Tom Robinsons trial. However, I feel it is too cliche and the black and white and red is a bit more forboding than I had intended!

To Display or NOT To Display

.........not a very forgiving shelving unit. . .especially for 'To Kill a Mockingbird' squashed right in the rigth hand corner!
Then again I suppose the classic does the jos of selling itself so it doesn't exactly require pride of place like other books might.

Personally, I'd prefer to see 'To Kill a Mockingbird' displayed somewhere prominant like this.....but I suppose I'm slightly biased seeing as my world is revolving around this novel at the moment!

Childrens books! What could be more fitting :)Know your audience!

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) - Theatrical Trailer - © Universal Pictures

I did read the book before watching the movie and, as always, the book was probably better from the point that I could create my own characters and settings, but all the same I do think the movie does an extremely good job of sticking to the essence of the novel.
Gregory Peck is a perfect Atticus Finch and I love the Southern accents. This is just the trailer but I recommend you watch the whole thing, as well as reading the classic novel itself of course!

DID YOU KNOW.... 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is Harper Lees only published novel!

Previous Cover Illustrations

This is the first published cover for the novel in the 1060's. Though it has been re published many times since, a 50th Anniversary publishing uses the first cover design.

This is the most recently published cover for the classic novel.

Somewhere in the midle comes my favourite jacket cover for the novel and the one I will always associate with it . I like the simplicity of the illustration and find it just enough.

To Kill a Mockingbird

We are into the Visual Communications ranking project and our research brief is to be done on a novel of our own choosing.

I choose 'To Kill a Mockingbird' by Harper Lee because I loved reading it and there is always something new to learn from this novel no matter how many times you read it. I studied it inside out and back to front for my Junior Cert and I'm still not sick of it, which can only be a good sign!

The relationship between Scout and her brother and the recluse Boo Radley is one of my favourutes, as he leaves them surprises in the hollow tree and in the end comes to their aid when they are attacked on the street. Though they had never met there was a strong friendship which I believe grew out of love and understanding.

Back to Basics

After going around in circles ....as you saw.....with complicated ideas and making everything more difficult than it had to be, I went back to the brief and focused on representing the word 'negotiate' simply but effectively. I think it has worked, combining the argumentative speech bubbles to form one negotiating speechbulle of agreement. The colours combine to make ourple and the figures finally look at eachother.

Negotiate : Revisited!

In the end I went back to my original idea of the negotiatng woman. I put her in a more complicated setting and developed further what she was negotiating. Between balabcing, avoiding traffic, saving food from the hawk and minding her child all while on roller skates , I think she is demonstrate how to negotiate pretty well!

The Business Side

Negotiation in the board room?

My basic idea was to have the office chairs shaking hands instead of the office workers.....I fear it hasn't worked too well....but I did learn a lot about Photoshop in the process so I can't complain!

Over Tea?

Negotiation over tea?! How could you say it better!

However, I didn,t realise at the outset that there wasn't in fact any tea in this cup, so I had to start again!

Photoshop Illustration

This is my first attempt at photoshop. Our second brief was to do with illustration and my word is still 'negotiate'.

My idea was to show a housewife negotiating her way around many daily chores as if it were of no trouble. Unfortunately this image seems to say 'juggling' more than 'negotiate' so I quit at this stage while I was ahead!

However, I would still like to work on this idea and illustrate it in a different way as I feel it would be efffective.

Signage and directions?

Although Ireland is renound for its lack of road signage I did manage to find a few scattered around the city!

I thought of making up the word negotiate in photoshop using only letters obtained from road direction signs.

This arrow sign could replace the 'a' if tilted a bit to the right,

and this arrow could represent the 't'. It's worth a try!

From Dreams to Reality

Just the beginning of me trying to illustrate the idea of negotiating your way into a parking space....I wanted negotiate to be written all around the white line of the parking space initially...but I didn't think the idea was working properly so I settled for one! Trial and error I suppose!

I got a toy car to park itself in the word negotiate , just for good measure!

Typography

......I could be on this site for years!

www.1001freefonts.com

Photoshop

So I just lost all faith in the model beauty...I knew about airbrushing but seeing what photoshop can do like in this video is a real eye opener!
http://youtu.be/omBfg3UwkYM

Graphics Elective!!

I finally got my word to work with for the graphics brief! The suspense nearly killed me....genuinely, I really wanted to know!.Negotiate!

I was a bit stumped at first but I broke out the old brainstorming and I think I'm on track!

It's time for typography now and this website is proving pretty interesting! I'm starting from the bottom up and hope to go from knowing ....pretty much nothing...to typography pro in the week we have !


www.ilovetypography.com

And six is the magic number!

So my final six designs were to be assaulted by my colour story.....which was rather wild.....but I like to think a dash of colour never hurt anyone!

...Blogger is fighting me on this one and not allowing me to upload any more of my coolour story pictures. This is probably a good thing....saving your eyes and my credibility!

Fashion Blogging

I figure you only learn from others! I find some really interesting things just looking through what other people blog about. Hopefully this doesn't count as stalking....but then again what else are blogs for only to be followed!

http://www.coutureinthecity.com/

http://www.stilettojungleblog.com/

Material World

So working in paper was fun but material is that bit more practical! Using the same shapes, it was interesting to see how different weight fabrics fell to form designs. you could say the material has a mind of its own, especially in the case of the lighter weights, like chiffon.

This is one of my shapes. It is my most simple shape but I managed to get some really inspired designs out of my work with it al the same.

These are some examples of what this medium weight fabric shape transformed into, it's amazing how much you can create from one piece of fabric! I could have been at the stand for days!

Working with heavy weight material (oil cloth) was an eye opener! The ease with which the chiffon had fallen was deffinately a thing of the past! Folds has to be much more structured because of the rigidness of the material but that was to be expected!No easily manipulating this oil cloth!

Fashion Elective

So Ive spent the last two weeks in the fashion world! Quite a change from ceramics but just as fun! I liked the challenge of working with shapes trying to directly inspire my final designs. Sometimes being restricted makes my ideas all the more inventive.

I could feel myself getting into the process of designing as the weeks went by. I can see the difference myself between the beginning and the finish of my sketchbook. I began to grow more comfortable with designing for the body and gradually developed my own style. The two weeks were challenging but I feel that I learned a lot, both about fashion practices and about my own capabilities.

Here are some of my initial paper shapes fashioned into design details on a menequin. I prefered working on the manequin to working in my sketchbook because of the 3D element. I found it easier to illustrate my ideas using paper and material rather than drawing.

Would you ever believe these shapes started out like as parts of teapots!