Contrast Workshop Extension

Create a coat of arms for each different area of London: The North, East, South and West. I wanted to find out the common stereotypes of the different areas of London and so I asked a few people and these are the words that cropped up the most frequent.

London 

City of London - Money, Banks, Bonuses, Suits

West End - Tourists, Expensive, Crowded, Nightlife

North London - Liberal, Leafy, Intellectual, Left-wing but wealthy, Jewish, Turkish

East London - Poor, 'Ironically' trendy, home of white working class, gangster films, a  certain soap opera

South London - Suburban, bad connections, gangs

West London - Rich, conservative, Indian

COLORS

Even the colors can have special meaning in a "family crest" or coat of arms: 

Gold (Or)

Generosity and elevation of the mind

Silver or White (Argent)

Peace and sincerity

Red (Gules)

Warrior or martyr; Military strength and magnanimity

Blue (Azure)

Truth and loyalty

Green (Vert)

Hope, joy, and loyalty in love

Black (Sable)

Constancy or grief

Purple (Purpure)

Royal majesty, sovereignty, and justice

Orange (Tawny or Tenne)

Worthy ambition

Maroon (Sanguine or Murray)

Patient in battle, and yet victorious

Time: Perpetual Shift

This workshop led by Darren was probably the most fascinating workshop of the whole term. It was about exploring time through changing your point of view and perspective, speeding up or slowing down recordings or audio or using a different sense. It explored that by altering how you experience a situation you take in and experience the incoming information in new and unusual ways. 


Time as a concept is interesting for the graphic design industry as graphic design, as soon as its produced its almost already out dated. but also the study into people, their habits the way they move etc. over time is vital in creating effective graphic design. However this can be so helpful to designers, studying things such as colours, where people move, their cycles, the busiest train station, people follow and walk in natural lines and so you could disturb these lines of follow them.
Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance

This is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalised narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. Reggio explains the lack of dialogue by stating "it's not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It's because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live."

The film changes from being fast motion to slow motion. When the camera is fixed in slow motion the position of the camera is interesting as its a head and shoulder shot and you can really study and investigate the movement of peoples clothes, facial expressions, their walk and personality but without them even talking, it highlights peoples differences in a non conventional way. However in fast motion the escalators spit out people, not one at a time as if it were first one person up and over then onto the next, but as a continuous stream, time dissolving people into a single organic mass. Outside even at night time the camera changes moving cars into red streaks of headlights, changing the modern technology and their movements into objects of the same biology as those escalator spitting out people, part of a contiguous whole. This fast-motion stream is infinite without beginning or end, no offer of rest, but only life, connected, systematic and obscene.

It made me feel really crap! It made it seem that even though we live in our highly modern life the way that each of us individuals live our lives when studied and explored at distance we just move in an animalistic manner, like ants, following a pattern. It makes each individual seem insignificant and strips away all humanity, like robots programmed to move like cogs in a machine. Its depressing as it makes you part of a number of race not an individual. 

Rhythm: Repeat Patterns

You will be generating patterns using a cut and fold technique and photocopies to experiment with different images with the frequency of the repeats and scales.

Using the folding method shown I wanted to create more repeat patterns and so quickly sketched out some random patterns.

I scanned them and then printed out lots of copies and then stuck them together to make an on going patterned piece of work. 

This was another one I did.

Scale: Board Game

The idea of the workshop was to use your own experience (like your 1st year as an LCC student) to create a board game, reducing a whole story into a few images. I tried to think how I could make mine different and so concentrated on the fact that I travel up to London everyday and I am not actually from London. I started to make a list of things that I struggled to get used to when first commuting to London, things I do not have and the things I have learned you just do not do like standing on the left side of the escalators. I thought I could just draw out a swirly line and have the game to just reach from A to B.

I then thought that I could take the game a bit further and have the board game as the tube map and the idea is to be given a destination and you have to be the first one to get to there, each station stop being a square on the board. As the concept for my board game is to survive being a non Londoner in London I wanted it to be a little tongue in cheek way of learning to get around London and the things you should or shouldn't do. 

I have been reading the book 'I never knew that about London' which is a brilliant book but I thought that I could use that idea to inform the game players more by having information about the location in London they have to get to. 

Back of the playing card

the question mark cards

Positive and Negative Space: Content Analysis and Representation

How do we identify what is positive and negative about London on a daily basis? How do we digest this information? Do we always experience an equal measure of both? We bought in a copy of a daily London Newspaper and in pairs went through it ticking or crossing what was positive and negative. 

We swapped papers with another group to see if they considered all the information on the page such as adverts, images or inserts or if there were any particular themes cropping up.

1. How did they decide what was positive and negative?

They based it on the headlines and imagery and personal feelings/opinions. 

2. Did they consider all of the information on the page: articles, adverts, images, inserts etc?

No they mainly considered the main article on the page/newspaper and disregarded the adverts, inserts and images. 

3. Is there anything remaining unmarked? What type of information is this? Neutral? Unnecessary? Arbitrary?

Yes-->they have unmarked smaller articles, images, adverts or repeated articles/ stories, arbitrary information i.e adverts or reviews, or obituaries and letters.

4. Are there are any particular themes/ topics cropping up?

Yes global and breaking news, looking at headlines and ignoring arbitrary information as they did not consider it important or could not decide whether it was positive or negative information such as the headline 'murdered family obtain retribution.' 

"Giving shape to meaning... distilling information down to its most essential and meaningful elements; sorting and organizing until the patterns come to the surface; bringing clarity and focus to what initially feels overwhelming; providing a layered visual experience encompassing both the big picture and, at closer examination, the smaller details." -Christina Van Vleck

The Shape of News: Front Page News Coverage Across the Country
This was Christina Van Vleck's exploration of the choices our nation's papers make about the stories on the front page. 

From the few remaining foreign news bureaus to the 

hyper-localism movement, do our papers reflect a nation at war?

The key of different colours to represent the different range of news that the newspapers were publishing about is a simple yet easy, clear and effective way of differentiating and clearly symbolising  her information. Its graphically intriguing and a successful way of illustrating her research. 

 “Like many around me in Beirut in the late 1970’s, I collected bullets and shrapnel. I would run out onto the streets after a night or day of helling to remove them from walls, cars and trees. I kept detailed notes of where I found every bullet and photographed the sites of my findings, covering the holes with dots that corresponded to the bullets diameter and the mesmerising hues I found on bullets tips. It took me ten years to realise that ammunition manufacturers follow distinct colour codes to mark and identify their cartridges and shells. It also took me another ten years to realise that my notebooks in part catalogue seventeen countries and organisations that continue to supply the various militias and armies fighting in Lebanon: Belgium, China, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Libya, NATO, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, USA and Venezuela”. _ Walid Raad notes, Whitechapel Gallery

This map charts the origins of disease, where that disease was carried to and the drop off of the contagions over distance carried.