Studio brief 2 - Research

I have gathered some research into postcards where they came from and also the penny post as the postcards in my collection cost one penny to send. I have also researched into one of the artists Donald Mcgill who had made a few of the postcards in my collection. I have found this quite interesting as I found that a number of his postcards had been banned as they were thought to be obscene. 

I have struggled to find statistics related to postcards and have looked at some articles about letter writing and how it is becoming a dying art so have gathered a few statistics to do with this. 

When looking at these articles I found this video of people's opinions on letter writing filmed for Letter live which is an event that was held at the Southbank centre. I think I will use this video for 20 opinions as I have found them really intersting. 

 'Inspired by To the Letter by Simon Garfield and Letters of Note by Shaun Usher, LETTERS LIVE is a dynamic performance event that celebrates the enduring power of literary correspondence.'

 

Edible Type

For this brief we had to make something edible in the shape of a typeface. This could be a word, a letter or a glyph. 

When discussing the brief with our group we decided that we wanted to make something festive. We chose the word Noel as it fitted in with our festive theme. We decided that we wanted to make a cookie and found a recipe for sugar cookies, we chose yo alter the recipe slightly to make it more festive and decided that we would add orange flavouring and zest as well as winter spice. We chose the recipe we did because when reading about it, it said it would hold its shape well while cooking,we thought this would be ideal so that when our cookies had cooked they would hold the shape of the letter. 

Studio Brief 2 - Research

I have started to go through book of postcards and have scanned the ones that have been written on as as there are a number of postcards that have not been written on and I personally find the ones with messages on a lot more interesting. I would like to scan all of them but there are too many and it would be very time consuming.

Some of the postcards are not dated as they have no stamp on them but the earliest one I have found is from 1910 and I think the latest is around 1934.

I have taken some images of some of the pages of the book with some of the different postcard/birthday cards and images as I think it would be nice to include some of these images in the layout that they had been put together by the person who has collected these.

Studio Brief 2 - Initial ideas & Interim Crit

For this brief we have to produce a body of work that investigates the term/concept/value/number 100 by collecting, recording, documenting and categorising. Then we have to prepare a 2 minute presentation on this body of work. 

We have to collect 20 facts, opinions, words, statistics and photographs. 

I have been stuggling to come up with ideas for this brief as it is pretty vague and I'm not entirely sure where to start. I don’t particularly collect anything myself so have started thinking about things my family/friends collect. 

My cousin used to collect beanie babies and I know she still has a very large collection of these so this is one initial idea. Another idea I have had to begin with is takeaway menus as there are a collection of these scattered across the hallway in my flat but I'm not too sure where I could go with this idea. 

After some thought I've remembered  a collection of old postcards, photographs and birthday cards that my Mum and I found when going through a cupboard at my Grandparent’s house. It belonged to a relative of my Nan’s and she had held onto it.  I really like this idea as when we found this old book of postcards and photographs I found it really interesting reading through them and looking at the handwriting and the dates they were posted and as it had been a couple of years since I have looked through the book I know I will enjoy looking back at it again. 

After discussing this idea in the interim crit the group agreed that this would be really interesting but that I should choose to focus on one area of the collection, photographs, postcards or birthday cards.

I think I will chose to focus my research on the postcards as when looking through the collection I have found these the most interesting and it was nice to read through the messages although some of the handwriting is a little hard to read.

Studio Brief 1 - Final Designs

After experimenting with my designs I decided to remove some of the smaller triangles and replace them with a larger triangle in a block colour and have the text in white over the top. I think this works well as you can see the text a lot more clearly. I chose a light sans serif typeface as I felt this fitted in with the modern style of my design. 

Studio Brief 1 - Development

I have decided to develop on my geometric shape designs. I have decided to use images within my designs as this is a photoshop brief. I have chosen these images below after looking through the art work on sale at Urban Outfitters and finding some wall art by photographer and designer Leah Flores who take photos on her travels and adds different quotes about travel, I feel these style of images would suit the Urban Outfitters demographic as I think the type of people that shop there are interested in travel and they sell a lot of travel related books.