ITAP - Steph Parker - Design Heroes: Alfred Leete.

Alfred Leete, a British Graphic Artist, famous for the image below, was an illustrator from a young age, having had a cartoon published at age 16. He then worked in a printers workshop before going on to do his own work. I do not really like this image that much, I think it's lacking boldness and colour. The man looks very condescending and i feel as though i'm being told to do something I dont want to do rather than being motivated into action. I think the text is a little too illegible for a poster design, for a poster i think the whole message needs to be legible rather than just one word. Finally I think the positioning is not aligned correctly. I do not like how the arm is cropped and the face looks a little off centre to me. 

I prefer the work Leete did for the London Underground back in the early 1900's I think they're very cleaver and the style in wich they have been done is one that I particularly like. The reliance on wit and humour is what makes these adverts. I don't know whether he was the writer for these ads but he certainly has designed for the text with great care and sensitivity to the message.

The war poster design was copied in 1917 by the American artist James Montgomery Flagg for the US army and I think it's a better version for a number of reasons. Firstly I think the colour makes it much more eye catching and somewhat more believable. The colours also are more patriotic, it's mainly red white and blue, so this may subconsciously evoke patriotism in the viewers. I think the position of the subject is a more personal one, by that I mean it doesn't look as much as the other one that he is looking down his nose at you and pointing as you, he is more staring at you into your eyes and asking you rather than telling you. The YOU being in red also highlights the personal aspect of this image. It makes it about me the viewer.

ITAP - Design Heroes: Tim Allen.

Tim Allen himself gave this lecture as we joined the animation students to hear him talk of how he got started in the animation business and some highs and some lows of working in the industry. It was very interesting to hear what he had to say about working professionally and the pressures that are put on you as an animator. Tim works solely in the field of stop motion animation, an area I am fairly interested in, it was great to listen to the man who was the main animator on some of my favourite kids TV shows. El Nombre, Fireman Sam, Postman Pat

My personal favourite claymation TV show on earth is Creature Comforts which Tim Allen worked on too! I love the accuracy of the human characteristics portrayed through the clay animals and often with hilarious audio recordings the animation compliments and enhances them excellently!

Tim gave us some good advice during the talk,

 - Keep a record of all your work.

He said this so that you always have a record of where you have come from, the progression of your work and your style. Also you have a good bank of work to show agencies and clients when trying to secure a job.

 - By 'just doing it', you gain experience and have a lot of opportunity to practice and inevitably you get better.

I wholeheartedly agree with this one, the more you do the better you get at doing. Practice makes perfect. There are loads of cliche phrases for a reason, it's the truth. The more i practice drawing and freehand typography the better i become at it!

 - When putting together a showreel (we can translate this to portfolio) put your best work at the begging to grab their attention and then your best at the end, to leave them with a good feeling at the end, wanting more.

This is obviously a very helpful tip, i will have to find out weather it is true for graphic portfolios too but I think it sounds like a pretty sound piece of advice.

From Tim's talk I gained knowledge of a different field which is always useful, I was inspired to get out there and just DO more. He gave me a down-to-earth insight into what the real creative world is like and it was very refreshing to hear.

ITAP - David Osbaldestin - Design Heroes: SO ME

David Osbaldestin gave a great talk talking about the links between fine art and design and he spoke of over 10 of his design heroes. The first designer he spoke about was the one he focused on more. 

SO ME, real name Bertrand Lagros de Langeron, a french designer and animator who is also the art director for Ed Banger Records. Bertand is a self confessed part animal, he says that has best ideas come when hungover or on the road "so partying abroad is perfect" for him he told Surface to Air in a 2012 interview. Although from a Graphic Design background he spends most time in film making now, having made music videos for Kanye West, Kid Cudi, Justice, DJ Mehdi and MGMT. He also directs music videos and recently directed the music video for the 'Duck Sauce' song, "Barbra Streisand".



SO ME's video for the french electro duo Justice, friends of so me, incorporates hand drawn type that has links to Vernacular Typography (Lettering in the urban environment) the verity of type design is impressive and the composition on some of the T-shirts with more text is great. Here are some examples of Vernacular Type that remind me of SO ME's work.

(these 4 images are taken from http://vernaculartypography.com/)

I had a go at one of my own type designs using my initials. And in the process I learnt that it's not as easy as it looks to get it exactly right. I'm not very happy with this rushed attempt and I think I would have to do more by hand with pen and paper rather than simply using illustrator.

This video was a huge success and possibly landed him the job to do Kanye West's "Good Life" video after SO ME got his attention by creating this spoof cover of the artwork of the song that beat Kanye at the EMA awards when Kanye stormed the stage declaring that his video cost $1,000,000.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/collective/dnaimages/gallery/2/edbanger/2.jpg

These kind of bold acts are those that get you noticed and get you recognition along side good work. We can learn from SO ME here, his ability to respond so quickly to an event like this is great.

ITAP - Ranveer Nandra - Design Heroes: Peter Chung.

http://www.rubberslug.com/img_show.aspx?ImageID=316046&X=530&Section=Item

Here an original drawing of Aeon Flux by Peter Chung to one of his adoring fans at Comic-Con in 2005.

Peter Chung is a Korean American animator who is most famous for his creation, Aeon Flux which featured on MTV's Liquid Television and then aired as it's own 30 minute episode series. He is a man who was tired of the boundries/templates/rules set by Walt Disney and by Anime and Manga animation, so he broke those rules. And as far as examples of people who broke the rules go, this guy  b r o k e  the rules! Watch this.

He broke traditional animation styles, in the way this was animated but also in the plot lines, the dialogue or lack of it as the case may be here. He broke traditional methods of telling stories, Aeon Flux would die at the end of each episode for example, completely challenging the typical 'serial style' used in popular tv and film.

Compared to his other work on the Rugrats where he felt constrained buy the characters but also by the boundaries set in place by Nickelodeon and the standards of kids tv shows of the day. Some would say that Rugrats was quite an 'on the edge' childrens cartoon and there actually many theories about the show's hidden storylines, one being that there are no babies and they're all in Angelica's imagination they infact where all meant to have died at birth or in vitro and this is meant to explain the parents behaviour and also why Angelica can speak to both the babies and adults. I think that is going a bit far, but I think some of these theories are plausable because of Peter Chungs style of animation being quite quirky.



By watching the Rugrats however, you can see how Chung was trapped in a babies world with his animation and in an interview he expressed that his desire was to create athletic characters with long limbs. He wanted to create something that was super sexy and super cool and he certainly did that whilst blowing the rules out the water.

ITAP - Colette Jeffreys - Design Heroes: Otto Neurath

Colette gave us a very broad and extensive talk about the subkect of Information Design, talking about a broad number of people however I am going to talk about one of those names. Otto Neurath, one could say that he is the founder of information design, he certainly is the founder of the Isotype System and undoubtedly one of the key figures in the history of information design. 

Otto Neurath, born in Austria in 1882, died in England in 1945 sadly seeing non of his work come to completion. His work was continued on after he died by Marie Neurath, his 2nd wife who later died in the 1980's having completed and published Otto's work and herself written many children's books using the Isotype system.

What is the Isotype System? 
It is the International System Of TYpographic Picture Education. It's the idea of communication without words. It's a global language using symbols and pictures to speak and communicate with people. Let's take a look at some of his work. I'm going to jump straign into a very specific example of Neurath's work, I get the sense that it has a style but it's done completely for information purposes. It's as if the style isn't as important as the actual fact, figures, processes, stats etc.

http://www.humantific.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/image_04-450x600.jpg

http://www.humantific.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/image_02-450x600.jpg

Here Otto is displaying information about the production of plastics and their properties, sounds like a boring science lesson to me but when you look at it it's strangely inviting and you find yourself wanting to learn wanting to see what the plastics are made from. I think this is for a few reasons.

1 - Curiosity. You want to see what symbols have been used to represent each element. This hooks you in

2 - Simplicity. It's designed in such a simple way that you don't feel bombarded with scientific nonsense, it's clear and concise, so you're not put off.

3 - Use of shape and colour. Your eye follows the process through cleaver use of arrows and shapes that flow into each other and through cleaver use of colour that again makes it simple to follow.

I had a go at creating my own in the same style. It requires a lot of skill to use the right kind of symbols. Hence a near lifetime spent working on such symbols.

ITAP - Ros Sinclair - Design Heroes: Sir John Hegarty & Juan Cabral

Ros spoke about many different designers and art directors but I have chosen to blog about two, Sir John Hegarty & Juan Cabral as it was their work that stood out to me the most and I was interested in comparing the old and the new.

Sir John Hegarty

This man has been in the business of advertising since the 60's. He is a firm believer of being a specialist in your particular field and he's a believer of reductionism. Reductionism is where you strip an idea to it's bare bones whilst staying succinct and to the point.




I particularly admire his work for the launch of black Levis in 1982, it is a perfect example of Hegarty's Reductionism theory. It was a very bold decision to go with such a simple poster design but the idea behind it is so strong and Levis obviously wanted the bold statement of being different and not going with the crowd to represent their now product launch. You can agree that over 20 years later this is still a good advertisement, the idea still stands strong!

http://thegalleryfromoverthere.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/when-the-world-zigs-zag.png

"Music is 50% of advertising."

Hegarty was a big believer in music in advertising. Many of Hegarty's commercials would put songs in the charts and often right to the top. Which reminds me of the Windows Internet Explorer 9 advert with the Alex Clare's song, "Too Close" that went into the top 10 in both the UK and US charts and went double platinum all from the advert the aired the song a month early to it's release. This brings me nicely onto the 2nd design hero of this blogpost.

Juan Cabral - famously used Jose Gonzales, "Heartbeats" for the sony bravia 'colour' advert to it's glorious success.

This ad is so beautiful, when I first saw it I was in the cinema about to watch a film and I was utterly captivated and mesmerised by the stunning images that were before me. It hooks you to believing anything they tell you, "this TV has the best colour", "this TV uses alien spaceship technology". I would buy it; "because of the trance like state you have just lulled me into you can say thing you want to me and i'll buy it!". It's no secret that this advert heavily relies on it's music, if it was silent it would still be beautiful but the music engages your soul and spirit into it, as music has that unique capability.

Similarly this advery of Juan's also relies heavily on music and it really does contribute masses to the overall success of the advert. 

So what do we take from this? As designers, visual communicators you could take this information about music making 50% of an advert as bad news however I think we can use it to our advantage. It provides us with a new challenge, to create images/visuals that compliment, enhance or even outshine the music in an advert, it's more of an art to be able to create a perfect relationship between sound and image and I think Juan has this skill within his grasp and we too can aspire to attain such skills.