The Word Becomes Art

When I first read my feedback for this assignment I felt quite discouraged. Having reread it I find the critique more helpful, but in order to do the extra work suggested I would need to be a full time student. The main problem I have with the coursework is this blog. It takes me around 2 hours to photograph everything, edit the photos and write the blog, dealing with the vagaries of how the software wants to change the layout, and so on. At times it seems that I spend more time blogging than actually getting the work done. That isn’t so, but I tend to do about 7 posts per project, which is around 15 hours’ work.  I tried to save time by doing my sketches digitally, to cut out the photographing and image editing tasks; however if I then need to do more with different thicknesses, pressure, colour and type of line, it will take even longer. I will go back to paper and pencils. Similarly, when I said that I ‘chose’ as opposed to ‘used’ the American Typewriter font, I thought it would...

I began by doing a mind map. From this I decided that the best ideas to pursue were ones which easily suggest numbers, as I learned in my business training that numbers work well on social media. The area of long waits for help seemed like a good awareness raising campaign. I considered and rejected the idea about the same level of investment going into weapons for Ukraine and mental health services. Support for Ukraine is rightly strong, so I thought the campaign could backfire.  Having decided on a theme for the video I checked out format requirements for Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. They all had the same dimension requirements which makes it easy to create a product that will work across multiple channels.. I chose these three platforms because the campaign is aimed at working age adults. I wanted to use multiple versions of the announcements that are often broadcast after programmes that raise sensitive issues, urging people to seek help if the programme has affected them. ...

https://depositphotos.com/vector-images/digital-marketing.html For this exercise we revisit the First Things First Manifesto, which I researched earlier in the course when first working with posters in Project 2. This time, the Manifesto is used as a prompt to create a social media campaign on a social cause. We are given the choice of  climate change,  mental health or refugee crisis. As I’m most familiar with mental health, having been a service user for getting on for 30 years, I choose to do a campaign about mental health. There are some stipulations. The campaign must include both image and text and give information on where to find out more or get help.We have to consider which platform/s to use, any size/ratio requirements, industry standards, real or fictional agencies etc. Bearing all that in mind, we are free to choose how to present our campaign. With some relief, I read that we’re not expected to produce a fully functioning campaign, but to show how we would go abo...

In order to decide on a format for my leaflet, following the paper folding I showed in my previous post, I decided to do some thumbnail sketches to see how the different elements would fit within the most promising formats. Before I could do this, I needed to see what 120 words looks like in terms of the space it needs. Given that my target demographic is older people I didn’t want to be squeezing text into tiny areas and fonts that would be difficult to see for people who might be visually impaired. Roughly speaking, 120 words would fit a column in a 3 column folded leaflet. Here are my thumbnails and the notes I made about them. Having constructed and evaluated a range of formats for my leaflet, I settled on the single fold leaflet as it seemed most appropriate for the combination of images and text blocks that are needed. I created two designs and variations of the second one, which I preferred. I spent some time thinking about the purpose of the leaflet and the practicalities of re...

Project 9 is about formats. This is somewhat familiar to me as I’ve been doing the copy editing and layout of a community magazine since 2017. Most people receive the magazine electronically but 91 people receive a print copy due to access issues. Therefore, I always need to work on the layout until it fills a multiple of 4 pages for print. I also have common fonts across all magazines and issues and try to maintain a similar style in terms of image placement, number of columns etc. Recently we have begun colour printing but for my first 4 years the print version was black and white, so I had to make sure that images and elements of design would have a similar impact in black and white as they would in colour, to the extent that it’s possible. For example, when editing images, I would view them in greyscale prior to use, even though I was working in colour. In this Project there are three genres of format for us to explore: leaflet, digital campaign and poster. I feel progressively mor...

The notes for this assignment, which is to create images for guidebooks of six cities beginning with M, reference the c1930s railway posters as a style that was so successful that it continues to inspire creatives to this day. As a child I had a small collection of these railway posters, mostly torn from magazines, but also a few renditions as postcards. I loved their sense of possibility, that we could step into these little worlds where the sun always shines and go on an adventure. Whilst I prefer using tonal variation rather than flat colour, this genre of image, with its feeling of joyful abandon, has had quite an influence on my own artistic style. I began by choosing my cities. I felt very reluctant about it. I haven’t been abroad for 20 years because travel insurance with my medical conditions dwarfs the cost of the holiday itself. As we were never taken abroad by our parents, I have only been abroad five times. I’ve never visited any of the cities listed, with the exception of ...