Finn Kidd - Collection by Finnigan Kidd

1 contents:

hello about the module studio projects publishing unbound wim crouwel anthology riso show! workshops creative industry practice market ready kickstarter pastiche 1560 thoughts of the week alan fletcher pentagram kate moross critical & contextual studies postnaturalism visits, talks & exhibitions william kentridge Fig Taylor Calverts

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Locaedium re, que ficiemus poporicae nes conihici idii co atis; nonsimo moenisquod cone pondie es bonsultodiu mer audemus aciorenam non dienit adem ad nihilintemus fuem faci publii ca ius Marit virissid converdio, Cata sa vicerra? quis, vidiem ipices elintrum achiciv iliurop oenicerorte mus, sed duc me numus, que facia signa, tem nos nonum mius, opopti, P. Nenicutere pat ina, sentem quam inatum moltifecte nos factora dem ta num quo nos sentilis veriam utem in audam temus, clarisque te faciam conimo pratimperri, dii erudam dieropo rsultura? Namquem tabistri es is con ta prit; niumuro rudemortes confex suliam ili, none tus, senatius, ferdit, confena ripimuntus, serectua molium in auc tam adem constra rem pracrit urnictus ade patilie ributem mum sero, Catus, nondam tus perum periam viviviv ehemunum uspere hae tussend ertermihi, cris. Ad sinem or labut Cat. Omne essenatum in dit, teritui se consulvid iustion scriver ioccien iamenam nostrit; ignoximantre es? At furac rei primus bonsupi cercepernit, viris publium atquitum distra L. co vicaecie cone quiusse ntemquo hentercepost incepostra ocridere pes consum ausatilin tatum estri, Catem silicae omponsula quam queribulla noniusul corac rebemusse, contili cientro nostam nonsu su veres intem orae ne adducoe nihicae derorbis pero, virtem dicae, C. Habunihil uterei peciore benteme nonsus? Palari item vid inclari stilica; esignata, ut omnonsul vil hortum pricemultum inis ca rentife riussim anductum es renatium inatum medius; Caste pravoculut L. Cat. Vivis egilinatus et gra vescienina, quitam tam, qui iam furi, unum iacidestam ari sa Saturberei sulist ad co adetor ali con tere, Catiam, nos, depoerum is, ut atus, ut primula vitia seni si consule straeliena senihiliam simusum nu quit dius acchiln equemulis orterterum se arbeffre perissulla vervide mordinatiu coterio, vissus is suloccion tus hae potis neres ex nis

3 HELLO, MY NAME IS FINN KIDD. I AM A LONDON LIVING ILLUSTRATOR, GRAPHIC DESIGNER, AND MUSICIAN. THIS IS A COLLECTION OF MY RECENT UNIVERSITY WORK, SPANNING FROM AUTUMN 2016 TO THE SUMMER OF 2017. RABBIT RABBIT RABBIT BLAH BLAH BL A H . . .

ABOUT THE MODULE 4

Creative Industry Practice looks to develop an understanding of professional skill levels, including: negotiation, project management, recording, communication and presentation.

8 PUBLISHING UNBOUND

:-) The Publishing Unbound brief was set in two halves, the first part was to come up with an identity for our studio ‘Impression’. The second half was to write an article and create a poster zine that looked at contemporary publishing in London, this would also involve designing a way to “bind” all of our collective zines together at the end as a one off collected edition.

9 THE IDENTITY>>> After many iterations I got it down to its simplest form, a circle and some drop shadow for the text. A logo type and mark that could be printed in any colour.

THE PUBLICATION>>> For my zine I interveiwed Joe Kessler from Breakdown Press, a young independent comic book company based in London. I created a one off Breakdown Press fanzine in an edition of 20. Here is the final article and layout. The article would later be published by Grafik Magazine.

Joe kessler is a cartoonist and

How did Safari Festival happen? it’s been doing pretty well…

london based breakdown Press. i caught uP with Joe in his north east london Flat... Founding member oF the

We’ve been going to comic book shops and festivals for a long time. I always feel slightly tawdry about comics when I think about them like this, but they are the place to go for comics; they are the gallery. The real pure experience of reading comics is normally lying alone in bed, but the closest outside place where you can go and find new stuff is festivals and shops. we have Gosh! comics in Soho, which is a good shop, but it has all these financial demands on it, which means it has to be broad and have everything, so it doesn’t offer a weird perspective of comics that maybe I would like.

comic book comPany

By Finn Kidd Images from Breakdown Press

So, what made you start your own publishing company? I was working for NoBrow, and they asked me to do a ten page story. I spent a long time on it and went through a bunch of iterations and when I eventually handed it in, I got rejected in quite a magnificent fashion. They sent me this long email which wasn’t really dealing with the work very much, more me as a person and what was wrong with me. I had spent quite a long time on it and it was the first thing I’d made that I was actually happy with. I thought that I could make this book around it, so I started working on a bunch of other stories. My friends Simon and Tom were trying to put together a magazine of comics criticism. We got together and said, ‘it’s not like anyone else is gonna publish it, so why don’t we do it?’ Yea, it’s that thing with independent publishing, where it comes out of the necessity to put something out yourself because it’s the only option. You also get more interesting content because it’s not stuff that everyone else would publish. Yeah, there were all these people who we’d see online and we were kinda friends with and they just weren’t having books made, so it was kind of out of frustration with that. Do you feel there is a good independent comic and DIY publishing scene in London at the moment? Yeah, I think just having Breakdown makes it good, and there’s some others like the Silica Burn guys.

I think there’s a weird lack of history with UK independent comic book publishing, and comic book artists. A lot of the big mainstream artists in American comics are actually British. That’s what happened with 2000AD, with Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, then Vertigo came over and took them all In terms of an actual comics history in England or in London specifically, it’s pretty sparse, especially considering how influential artists from London have been in all other fields. When you go to Paris or New York there’re older cartoonists who you can have a drink with, who are your heroes. I was just in New York and Gary Panter was sitting ‘round a table with a bunch of the younger cartoonists. In Paris we had similar experiences. There was this other generation, which is great and we don’t really have that. I guess it’s nice though that it’s something that’s new here as well, and you’ll be those people Yeah, god, that’s a thought, hahaha. Do you have a manifesto? There’s no rules, no. We have quite different tastes between me, Simon and Tom. It’s interesting because the books that maybe I wouldn’t have done, I really like and they make the whole thing seem more interesting and richer than it otherwise would be if it was just a reflection of my own taste.

It has to be more mainstream It has to have everything. It has to be a better comic book shop than my ideal would be, which would be piles of stuff that I could rifle through. Shops like the Beguiling in Toronto, or various shops in Paris. We wanted to create a venue where people could come and work out what comics were, and what our broader vision of comics were. It comes back to wanting to make something happen in London. There’re all these artists around who are really good, and we can only publish a fraction of the stuff we want to. How do you print everything? Sometimes Riso, sometimes Offset, depending on how many we think we can sell. What are your feelings toward print? do you think it’s important in this digital age? I think it’s great, I love it, it’s self evidently not dead. Comics can be experienced on the screen or they can be intended to be experienced on screen but a lot of them are drawn for reproduction. They’re graphic work that is designed to be seen in a book, and if that’s the way it’s designed, it’s the way it should be experienced. There’s also the physical object part as well, which is something you can’t take away from That experience is quite unique. I’m sure it’s not the only way to experience comics but it’s a completely valid one. There’s something with comics like Robert Crumb, or Connor Willumsen’s - particularly

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How did Safari Festival happen? it’s been doing pretty well… We’ve been going to comic book shops and festivals for a long time. I always feel slightly tawdry about comics when I think about them like this, but they are the place to go for comics; they are the gallery. The real pure experience of reading comics is normally lying alone in bed, but the closest outside place where you can go and find new stuff is festivals and shops. we have Gosh! comics in Soho, which is a good shop, but it has all these financial demands on it, which means it has to be broad and have everything, so it doesn’t offer a weird perspective of comics that maybe I would like.

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Treasure Island - which feels like reading someone’s personal journal. Comics are inherently a very personal medium - every time you make them you have to invent your own language entirely. That’s something that some artists consciously engage with, even if the process of making them is about as far removed from making a personal journal as it can be. But that feeling might be lost if you were looking at them on screen. What’s coming up for Breakdown? We have the launch of The Artist and Viva Closing by Anna Haifisch and Liam Cobb, and then there’s Anti Nuclear Manga, which is enormous, which will be coming out sometime in the next ten years or so. The more we work on it, the further we get from finishing it, but i’m just doing the cover, so that’s cool, hopefully we’re almost there. Have you got anything of your own coming out? I have a bunch of projects that i’m doing, i’m working on a long story which is the counterpart to Windowpane 3. It’s a story that is meant to sit with Windowpane 3. Then there is a continuation of the story I did in Windowpane 3, but that will take quite a while. I’m also working on a large format book which will be Windowpane 4, which would be Offset, and it’s slightly looser drawings and small stories. It will be quite short but quite large, and printed in CMYK. Find out more about breakdown Press and Joe kessler -> www.breakdownPress.com Joe-kessler.tumblr.com

12 Final zine. Riso printed on deep yellow 120 gsm paper.

13 The binding. A small card box, painted with acrylic, with rub on lettering, shaped like a hollowed out book.

14 M I N I MONOGRAPH

This was primarily a research project, but with the outcome of producing a monograph which would sit within the leaflet for an imaginary exhibition at the Design Museum.

15 After writing my monograph I started developing some grid based text on InDesign and Illustrator inspired by his New Alphabet. This would evolve into a simple reproduction of his typeface, combined with his use of colours and layout, to be the basis for my leaflet design. Final outcome. Flat plan and printed leaflets.

16 ANTHOLOGY

The Anthology brief was in two parts; the first was to work in teams to pitch a design concept for the Creative Writing and English Literature departmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s annual anthology of work. The second was to create an individual visual response to a given text from the department. Mine was an essay on Rainer Maria Rilkeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Notebooks of Malte Laurid Brigge.

17 THE BOOK>>> Our team secured the cover design. This will be digitally printed in black onto a 300 gsm grey board, overlaid with a Risograph printed dust jacket.

18 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSE>>> My visual response was a Riso printed zoetrope template depicting scenes from the original book, along with a poster [seen below] and a moving image piece previewing the zoetrope images in motion.

20 RISO

SHOW!

Our studio was set the task of designing and producing the summer show booklet. The publication also serves as the signage for the show. One of my jobs was to create the signage for the Author:Reporter studio.

21 THE OUTCOME>>> Each sign is spread across four A3 sheets of paper and Riso printed in one designated colour.

24 S C R E E N PRINTING [R E C A P [

L E T T E R F O R M S

R I S O G R A P H

32 M A R K E T R E A D Y

The Market Ready brief was a group project where we pitched a business concept to Accelorator, hoping to get a spot a the Christmas market in Spitalfields London. We came up with the idea of combining popular culture icons, specifically music based, with quotes to create a range of products including posters, tote bags, and cards. We called ourselves Mash Up. [Mash Up logos by Hannah Gilbank]

33 RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT>>> My first job was creating some mock-ups. I started by researching images, quotes, and artwork from the people I was focusing on, as well as posters designers such as Saul Bass.

35 I then started making sketches and working out which people and quotes had the most character.

36 For my final two mock-ups I used marker pens to create simple stark portraits of Morrissey and Iggy Pop, filled with bright colours taken from album artwork relating to them.

38 KICKSTARTER

Kickstarter is primarily a follow on from Market Ready. The idea being that we take our initial idea, re-vamp it, and make a crowd funding campaign to further develop our business skills.

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT>>> My job this time is to create the video. I looked at films that had the right mood and aesthetic. I created a storyboard for the vide based on my findings.

40 PASTICHE 1560

The aim was to create a 15 to 60 second moving image pastiche of a practitioner of your choice. I chose to do mine on Adam Green.

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT>>> Adam Green has a range of work in various media including paintings, films, and music videos.

Mapping out my idea, I practiced drawing him and made a storyboard. My outcome was a 40 second hand-animated video showing Adam Green dancing to an original song I wrote, with animated subtitles.

OUTCOME>>>

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46 A L A N FLETCHER Alan Fletcher has an intriguing and almost humorous way of looking at things. Most of his work seems to play on its subject matter, being quite literal with its delivery. This makes for a very pleasing experience when exploring his work. In regards to his work within publishing, the same playfulness and intuition apply. Talking about his approach to designing The Art of Looking Sideways, he speaks of planning out the pages like a storyboard: each spread flowing on from the last, with the pace tightening and loosening when it feels right. This is a wonderful way of looking at it. To me this makes a lot more sense than having a rigid plan in place, sticking and abiding to a fixed grid just because you have so decided. I like to think of everything in this way, like a film, as you are always telling a story in some respect, whether a fictional narrative or the story of an idea.

48 P E N TAG R A M

Natasha Jenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work seems to have a slightly nostalgic feel to it, with her particular use of photography and muted colours, mainly lots of terracotta [or variants thereon]. Something almost 70s LA, very clean but with a warm side. Nice custom typefaces on OpenView and Border City. I really love the play with the colours on the Beyond Borders project, especially in the video/gif where the text switches from white to black to red.

50 KATE MOROSS Kate Moross is an art director, illustrator and designer, also working with moving image. She specialises in typography and pattern and geometry. Her style and approach are very particular to her, although also recognisable to a certain aesthetic that came about in 2006/2007 with the emergence of Nu Rave. Headed by bands like Klaxons, New Young Pony Club, Shit Disco, CSS and clubs like DURRR. What I really like about Moross is the way she completely embodies her work. Clothes, hair, accessories, everything looks like it has been art directed. She has created an entire world which she resides within. You can see this most clearly when you see her in her studio. The â&#x20AC;&#x2122;embodiment of your workâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; thing is something I have always been interested in, Warhol is a classic example of this idea, with himself being his biggest project.

54 P O S T NATURALISM

For my final CCS assignment I wrote a 4,000 word essay exploring postnaturism and contempary ideas of mans place in nature. This followed on from a case study which looked at the repurcussions of the publishing of Charles Darwinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s great work: On The Origin of Species. What follows is a sample of the final essay, the full text can be read online.

EXHIBITIONS Throughout the year I have attended many exhibitions big and small, including Hockney, Paths To Utopia, Making Nature, Gerald Scarfe, The Gift Art, and William Kentridge, here is my review from Thick Time... William Kentridge - Thick Time, The Whitechapel Gallery, 11/01/17 “My heart has been in ruins since” William Kentridge is definitely a man who likes theatrics. In his new exhibition Thick Time showing at The Whitechapel Gallery in East London, he presents a fully immersive environment. Casting you straight into his subconscious. Kentridge is known for his animated drawings and historical references and this exhibition certainly doesn’t disappoint. O Sentimental Machine explores Lenin and wartime Russia, while Second Hand Reading runs through page after page of hand drawn renditions of Kentridge himself pacing and pacing, deep in thought over the pages of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Kentridge appears a lot in his work, almost every piece features him in some guise, dressed as Lenin gesturing orchestral movements, or as in most he just paces, dressed in a white shirt and black trousers with one hand in his pocket, walking around throwing or ripping paper, always thinking, meandering, pondering something he hasn’t fully let us in on. As in Journey To The Moon where he uses simple video editing to create beautiful sweeping movements of floating objects. But surely the most impressive piece of the whole exhibition, a piece they decided to start the whole show with, is Refusal Of Time. A panoramic cinematic theatre installation, complete with full surround sound, projections on three out of four walls, and a giant old fashioned machine, slowly breathing in and out continuously. On the walls you see actors dancing around you, playing instruments, you feel more a participant rather than a voyeur, as if they are really in the room with you, and you with them.

Upstairs we see such mechanical mutations as the Heartbeat Sewing Machine, as well as fully realised sets like a television studio. All around you is constant noise, music, talking, movement. Low lighting adds to the mesmerising experience. My favourite piece would have to be Journey To The Moon, set in a dark room with projections on every wall, seven in total ( if I can remember correctly ), A slightly shorter loop than the other films, you can stand there and just keep turning and concentrating and absorbing a new screen, whilst feeling like you’re inside a warm black hole, floating in time. I wasn’t so keen on the room full of books and hanging tapestries. It felt a little confusing to just have a load of his books laid out on a table for everyone to browse through as it didn’t really feel like you could just stop and read through a book at that point, especially as it was so early on in the exhibition. It broke the mood a little. Saying that, this exhibition is definitely worth going to if you enjoy theatrical, historical art cinema. I know it’s definitely not to everyone’s taste, but I found it inspiring. Although that may just be my love and interest in film, I can just watch and think about how he’s made this bit or that and how fun it would be to create something similar. Unfortunately the exhibition finished yesterday, but if you ever have the chance to go to a William Kentridge show, do it.

T A L K S We have had many great talks from so many great people, including Hothouse Talks from the likes of Nina Chakrabarti, Rose Nordin, Sofia Clausse, Family & Friends, Russell Weekes, Alistair Hall, Abram Games and Grand Visual, as well other guest speakers like Nic Hill and my personal favourite Fig Taylor Fig Taylor is a portfolio consultant for The Association of Illustrators. She was absolutely brilliant to be honest, very enjoyable to listen to, she talked non stop for three hours and it never got boring, neither did it feel like three hours. She spoke in-depth about every aspect of how to create a successful portfolio, from the format to how to read an interview. It’s hard to pick out specific points to reiterate as every part of it was useful and important, but i’ll try… NO LIFE DRAWING. Never bigger than A3. Think about it like this: “This is who I am and this is how you can use me”. Only show finished work. If you want to show developmental work only have it as an option and if it relates to your work, i.e. you do character design. Put work in context. If it is an editorial piece, show the article it sat with. If you have 3D or oversized work, TAKE GOOD PHOTOS OF IT, or get someone else to if you can’t. Make sure everything is high quality. As in 300 dpi and not pixelated. etc etc.

V I S I T S Again too many great and inspirational visits to go into, Hato Press, MagCulture, Ti Pi Tin, Fedrigoni, Four Corners Books, to name a few. But one of the last places we went was Calverts Printers.

Calverts started in the 70s as a co-operative and still remain one today, there are 12 members of staff, who all earn the same amount as they all essentially own the company. Also the star in their logo comes from the fact they were originally called Calvertâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s North Star Press Ltd. Today we visited their Bethnal Green HQ. We got to discuss and get pointers on our current Anthology project, as well as get a guided tour, where we got talked through all the ins and outs of working there and how all the printing works, from digital to Litho to Riso. What was most interesting was how, knowing all that I already know about say how the Litho printer works, it was so fascinating seeing it in the flesh and actually getting a grasp on the scale of it, and all the smaller details that run along side it, like the fact they have to mix all the pantone colours for spot colours by hand.